Chapter 30 It Was You Who Saved Me

“Burn him to death! He’s a demon, don’t let him harm us!”

The villagers’ faces were fierce as they threw stones at the white-haired boy tied to a pile of firewood.

Torches were lit, and four or five villagers walked towards the woodpile with torches in hand. The flames danced and extended in the cold wind.

The boy’s face was wooden, his black eyes like dead water without a ripple. He lowered his head, motionless.

As the woodpile was being lit, he raised his head and looked through the flames at his parents.

They watched him coldly, their faces full of delight at getting rid of this demon.

The boy lowered his eyes and pulled at the corners of his mouth in self-mockery.

Oil was poured on the woodpile, and the flames quickly rose and spread. The boy’s body soon caught fire. The villagers’ faces wore cruel and ignorant smiles as they shouted enthusiastically, “Burn him to death! Demons should be burned to death.”

The boy bit his lower lip hard, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, as his flesh was slowly enveloped by the raging fire. His lifeless eyes stared fixedly at the broken hut not far away. He had been waiting for her. That woman had promised to come back to see him, but she hadn’t returned.

He had been abandoned by her.

Even though his body was in extreme pain, he didn’t make a sound. No one cared about him, and crying out in pain would only excite them more.

He had been abandoned by everyone.

He was about to die.

After the excruciating pain of the raging fire, there was a sense of lightness, of being freed from the flesh.

Black smoke slowly emerged from the boy’s body, which visibly grew and mutated at a rapid pace.

A thick black mist burst from the fire pile, quickly spreading in all directions. Wherever the black mist reached, all living things were infected with plague. The villagers screamed in panic as they looked at their blackening and rotting skin.

The flames extinguished, the smoke dissipated, and a huge ferocious beast appeared above the woodpile. Red beast eyes, black fur, with two huge wings on its back.

“Demon!” The villagers fled in panic.

The beast jumped down from the woodpile, its red eyes scanning the fleeing villagers. It snorted softly, its wings fluttering gently, and the snowflakes blackened by the dark mist danced wildly.

“Get away! Demon!” A few braver villagers, holding hoes, smashed them fiercely towards the beast. But before the hoes could touch the beast, they were corroded and melted by the surging black mist surrounding it.

The beast coldly watched them, its tail casually sweeping, shattering their bones and sending flesh flying.

……

Zhang Meng had just entered the dream when she saw such a scene.

The sky was dark, corpses were strewn about, and blood covered the ground. In the center of the corpses, a huge beast’s paw was crushing a person’s skull.

Zhang Meng cried out in surprise, and the beast suddenly raised its red eyes to fix on her, then walked towards her step by step.

The beast’s body was emitting a thick black mist. The closer it got to Zhang Meng, the more she struggled to breathe.

Zhang Meng watched it warily.

This was her dream, she wouldn’t be killed by it in her dream. She wasn’t afraid of it.

She had entered the dream to find the white-haired boy, but all the villagers had been killed, and the white-haired boy had probably not escaped either.

But, the boy was a door demon, he wouldn’t die so easily.

She turned and ran, running towards the broken hut not far away, shouting the boy’s name loudly: “Ying!”

The door demon had always survived, always being the guardian deity of people’s homes.

He wouldn’t die, he should still be alive and well in the broken hut. She wanted to go and confirm his safety.

What if the boy wasn’t a door demon? What if he was just an ordinary boy?

Zhang Meng’s footsteps towards the broken hut suddenly stopped.

If the boy was just an ordinary boy, and she rashly went to find him, being discovered by the monster, even if the boy had luckily escaped death before, he would be killed because of her.

The monster was right behind her, getting closer and closer. Even though she ran with all her might, in an instant, the monster was already close to her back. She could even feel the monster’s breath on her neck.

Zhang Meng’s whole body was cold.

But when the beast pounced on Zhang Meng, its head unexpectedly nuzzled her neck gently.

In just a moment, the thick black mist on the beast’s body dissipated, and the black fur and black wings slowly lost their color, turning into a sacred white.

“You didn’t abandon me after all…” the beast sighed softly.

It gently took Zhang Meng’s waistband in its mouth, placed her on its back, and with a flap of its wings, took to the air.

It circled twice in the air, a soft white light enveloping the snow-covered ground below where countless corpses lay.

The dead villagers slowly regained their vitality. They raised their heads to look at the strange beast flying away, their hearts seeming to be washed by a clear spring, their bodies and minds feeling unprecedentedly relaxed. They all unanimously knelt and kowtowed in the direction the strange beast had departed.

Zhang Meng sat on the beast’s back, maintaining a dumbfounded expression. She didn’t quite understand what had happened.

The cold wind mixed with snow flakes rushed towards Zhang Meng, making her shiver all over. She bent down and hugged the beast’s neck tightly.

She might never know that when he was about to fall into becoming a demon, it was she who awakened the only softness in his heart, making him realize that there was still someone in this world who cared for him, that this world was still beautiful.

The beast landed on a mountaintop. Before Zhang Meng could react, the beast turned into a small white animal due to extreme weakness.

Zhang Meng pressed on top of it, almost crushing it to death. She hurriedly got up, knelt on the rock, and placed the weak little animal on her knee.

The beast was snow-white all over, fluffy, and looked a bit like a cat, except that its round eyes were red. It also had two small wings on its back.

“Are you that white-haired boy?” Zhang Meng asked carefully.

“Your name is Ying?”

“What exactly happened just now? They were clearly dead, how did they come back to life?” Zhang Meng pushed its head, asking urgently.

The beast didn’t respond to her, lying on her knee, curling its body into a ball, and closing its eyes.

……

When Zhang Meng opened her eyes, the breakfast bell of the government office had already rung.

She sat up, rubbing her slightly swollen temples.

The dreams she was having were becoming more and more bizarre, but strangely, she privately believed that door demons really existed.

She patted her cheeks, forcing herself not to think wildly. She dressed and washed up as usual.

In the afternoon, when she went on patrol, Zhang Meng saw Liang Bing leading a group of hooligans to smash Lin Hao’s stall.

Liang Bing was fierce, threatening Lin Hao: “If you don’t marry me, I’ll come and smash your stall every day. Even if you find someone from the government, I’m not afraid of you.”

A few days ago, when Zhang Meng was on patrol, she had been watching Lin Hao’s situation almost constantly, but she didn’t dare to act rashly. It was only now that she had lost all her money gambling and owed a huge debt to the gambling house, and all the gambling houses in Yun City wouldn’t let her in. This had driven her to desperation, and she took the opportunity to cause trouble while Zhang Meng wasn’t around.

“Lin Hao! It’s your good fortune that I fancy you. Look at yourself, who else in all of Yun City would want you except me?”

Lin Hao also had a fiery temper and wasn’t a pushover. He immediately grabbed a wooden stick placed nearby and struck fiercely at the hooligans.

He single-handedly beat five or six female hooligans until they were in a sorry state, crying for their parents.

“Get lost! You scum, if you dare to cause trouble again, I’ll beat you every time I see you!”

The female hooligans covered their wounds and ran away in disarray. Before leaving, Liang Bing snarled viciously, “Lin Ugly Man! I’ll make you kneel on the ground like a dog begging me to marry you.”

Zhang Meng happened to see Lin Hao beating the female hooligans and was shocked for a moment. In a female-dominated country, most men were gentle, and some were even submissive and timid. Although she had heard that Lin Hao had cursed and beaten people before, Lin Hao had always been very gentle in front of her, so she thought that although Lin Hao looked rough on the outside, he still had a rather delicate heart. Now seeing Lin Hao so fierce, it indeed surprised her.

When the female hooligans were about to escape, Zhang Meng reacted and quickly ran forward to catch several of them.

Liang Bing ran faster, and Zhang Meng didn’t catch her, but soon after, Liang Bing, who hadn’t escaped far, was caught and brought back by the constables from the neighboring street.

The constables took those female hooligans back to the government office, leaving Zhang Meng to clean up the mess.

Lin Hao’s stall had been badly smashed, and many beautiful pieces of jewelry were destroyed. Zhang Meng squatted down and helped Lin Hao pick up the jewelry from the ground.

Lin Hao squatted beside her, his dark face flushed red, too embarrassed to look at her. After a long while, he finally spoke: “You saw me beating people, didn’t you?”

Zhang Meng replied: “Yes, but you don’t need to worry. They were causing trouble intentionally, you were just defending yourself. I won’t take you back to the government office.”

Lin Hao: “I… I wanted to ask you… do you also find this fiery me disgusting?”

Lin Hao’s dark face was flushed, his thick eyebrows furrowed tightly, his lips pressed together nervously, but his eyes didn’t dare to look at her.

“…I rarely hit people usually… it’s just that they went too far…” Lin Hao’s voice was a bit weak, his deep eyes somewhat reddened.

Zhang Meng put the sorted jewelry on the wooden rack, lowered her head and smiled at him: “I don’t find Lin Hao disgusting at all. I think it’s good that you know how to defend your rights and protect yourself.”

Zhang Meng had been a constable for more than a year and had seen many men who were too weak and afraid to report to the authorities when bullied by hooligans, or who endured domestic violence from their wife-masters in silence. Although Zhang Meng sympathized with them and tried her best to fight for their rights after incidents occurred, she privately hoped that they could learn to protect themselves.

Lin Hao looked at Zhang Meng’s smile, his unease dissipating, feeling some warmth and shyness in his heart.

He had been ugly since he was young, and no one had ever treated him as a delicate man, even his deceased parents had raised him like a daughter.

Because he was ugly, he had to endure a lot of malicious language and many cold shoulders, which slowly made him grow into a fiery temperament in his childhood. Whoever dared to scold him, whoever dared to bully him, he would pay them back one by one.

After his parents passed away, they left him a fortune. Many distant relatives who had nothing to do with him became envious and came to cause trouble. He took a stick and drove dozens of them out the door, and since then, his fiery temper became famous in Yun City.

Almost everyone thought he was made of iron and steel, and treated him as harshly as they could.

It was only after meeting Zhang Meng that he truly realized that no matter how strong and fiery he was, he was still a man, and he also hoped that someone could care for him a little. Zhang Meng never had any prejudice against him, treated him as a man, and was gentle and considerate towards him.

Falling in love with her was inevitable. Although he knew he was ugly, although he knew he wasn’t good enough for her, he still wanted to ask the aunt who ran the teahouse to help probe her feelings.

He thought, as long as she was willing to marry him, he would give her all his property, and he would devote all his tenderness to cherish her.

But she already had someone she liked.

Lin Hao lowered his head and eyes, biting his lower lip bitterly.

Even though she had someone she liked, he still couldn’t help but get close to her.