Chapter 64: White Peace

“White Night, you really did choose me in the end.”

Her voice was no longer the ethereal echo in her mind.

It was truly exhaled from between her lips and teeth.

Carrying the warmth of her breath.

Carrying the slight tremor from her chest.

“You’re still as foolish as ever.”

“Choosing me, without a single thought for your own safety.”

There was an unmistakable sorrow buried in her voice.

But the eyes looking at White Night grew even more fervent. Starlight, gathered for a thousand years, finally landed where it was meant to.

She drifted down from above the blood pool.

Her bare feet stepping onto the gradually drying ground.

Her figure was even slightly taller than White Night.

She lowered her head slightly, her gaze dropping to look at the person before her.

“Then from now on, I’ll follow you.”

A hint of sly, playful laughter rippled at the corners of her eyes, like a little girl who had finally gotten her wish.

“This time, it’s me who owes you.”

“With thousands of years of interest to add.”

“A lifetime, a thousand lifetimes, still won’t be enough to repay it.”

White Night didn’t understand the deeper meaning behind her words.

Too many questions were lodged in her throat.

For a moment, she couldn’t even begin to speak.

She could only stare blankly at the smiling face of the girl before her.

At those pure black eyes.

Inside them was nothing but clear, clean emptiness, reflecting only her own silhouette.

Those tangled, rooted questions were eventually pushed down by her, for now.

Su Shuang’er and Mu Yingying stood at the edge of the blood pool.

Su Shuang’er’s hand was still tightly clenched around the gun barrel.

She didn’t say a word.

But her gaze never once strayed from White Night.

Mu Yingying’s expression was complex to the extreme.

Her mouth opened and closed, then closed and opened again.

Finally, she squeezed out a single word.

“Huh?”

“Great, just great. One more added. How is this car even supposed to drive?”

Mu Yingying’s quiet muttering drifted over on the wind.

Gu Jiao, meanwhile, had collapsed on the ground. Fighting against her own Greed, combined with her injuries, had left her completely exhausted.

Now, seeing this miraculous scene, she was actually the calmest one. More than anything, she felt relief at surviving a disaster.

It was fortunate she had followed White Night’s group. Thinking back, if she had come alone, she would likely have already perished in Hundred Flower Valley.

She watched the miraculous scene before her with perfect calm, only the constant heaving of her chest proving she was still breathing.

“White Night, do you still remember my name?”

The girl suddenly spoke, her voice soft.

White Night instinctively wanted to shake her head.

She didn’t remember anything at all.

All that happened in her past life was just a blank page to her.

But just as the words were about to leave her mouth,

looking at the girl’s pure black eyes,

she felt pulled by some invisible force.

“Peace.”

The words slipped out of White Night’s mouth.

The moment she said it,

White Night herself was stunned.

She didn’t know why she had suddenly blurted out that name.

Nor did she know why those two words slid out so naturally, as if they were carved into the depths of her soul.

White Peace’s face instantly blossomed into a radiant smile.

More dazzling, more vivid than all the flowers in full bloom in Hundred Flower Valley.

“That’s right, I am White Peace.”

She took a step forward.

Her warm palm gently pressed against White Night’s cheek.

Her voice was filled with undisguised joy, along with a faint, almost imperceptible sob.

“This name, you gave it to me yourself, back then.”

White Night felt the real warmth in that palm.

Besides Auntie Frost, there was actually someone else who could truly touch her Soul Body.

Even the real sensation when she had kissed her forehead earlier hadn’t been an illusion at all.

White Night stared blankly at the White Peace before her.

White Peace didn’t rush to answer the flood of questions in White Night’s mind.

She stood in the center of the blood pool.

Her bare feet stepping on the dried plasma.

She looked down at her own hands.

Turned them over.

Then clenched them.

As if truly sensing this hard-won physical body.

Confirming the nimbleness of each finger, the temperature of every inch of skin.

The next second.

A golden light orb slowly rose from her open palm.

The orb was only the size of a fist.

But it emitted a soft and warm halo.

Inside, a flowing river of stars swirled, concealing endless ages.

“This is my memory, sealed away for a thousand years.”

White Peace looked at the light orb in her palm, her voice very light.

“I sealed it, first, out of fear that over the long years, I would forget my first meeting with you.”

“Second, I was afraid that this endless longing and pain, gnawing at me day and night,”

“would keep me from holding on until the day I found you.”

She lifted her eyes to look at White Night.

And gently held the light orb up before her.

“This is also why, when I first met you, I didn’t immediately remember everything.”

“The memories slowly revived, little by little, as I spent time with you.”

“It was only at the moment I swallowed the Seven-Colored Flower that I finally remembered everything completely.”

“White Night, you want to know what happened between us too, don’t you?”

White Peace’s gaze locked onto her with focus.

“Touch it.”

“See our past.”

“See what it is that I’ve been waiting for, for five thousand years.”

White Night looked at the gentleness in her eyes.

And nodded heavily.

Without a moment’s hesitation.

White Night reached out her hand.

Her fingertips gently touched the golden light orb.

A gentle force surged over instantly.

Countless fragmented yet vivid memory fragments crashed into her mind.

A tale sealed for a thousand years slowly unfurled before her eyes like a scroll painting.

It was a harsh winter, with goose-feather snowflakes drifting down.

The world was a vast expanse of white.

Only the mass grave, littered with corpses lying every which way, exuded a deathly black.

A little beggar girl, so thin she was nothing but skin and bones, crawled with difficulty through the snow.

Her dirty little face was frozen purple.

Her eyes were blurry from hunger.

She had searched the mass grave for a long time, only finding a long-dead, frozen male corpse.

On the male corpse was half a piece of tattered cotton-padded jacket.

Hunger gnawed at her insides like countless ants.

The little beggar stared fixedly at the corpse.

Her eyes were full of struggle.

But with her vision blurred by hunger, she ultimately couldn’t control herself and crawled towards the corpse.

Only one thought remained in her mind.

Eat it.

And live.

Just as she was about to reach the corpse, even opening her mouth, ready to bite into it raw,

the frozen corpse suddenly moved.

With a soft sound.

The corpse’s abdomen split open from the inside.

A girl covered in blood and grime slowly crawled out.

Snow fell onto the girl’s face.

The girl blinked.

Her eyes held the confusion of just being reborn.

Then, she saw the little beggar lying not far away, barely clinging to life from hunger.

The little beggar used the last shred of her strength to crawl towards the girl.

Opened her mouth.

And gently bit down on the girl’s arm.

But she was truly too weak.

Her teeth couldn’t even break the skin.

Leaving only a shallow, damp mark.

Her vision went black.

The little beggar fainted directly.

Falling heavily into the snow.

When the little beggar woke up again,

she was covered with the cotton-padded jacket stripped from the corpse, just barely warm enough.

Beside her, a pile of firewood crackled with flames.

The warm, toasty heat dispelled the biting cold.

The girl who had crawled out of the corpse was sitting by the fire.

Using a piece of broken iron, she roasted some unknown prey.

The rich aroma of meat drifted over, making her stomach growl loudly.

The girl turned her head.

Smiled at her, with not a hint of disgust.

She tore the cooked meat into small pieces and held them to the little beggar’s mouth.

That day, the girl carried her, leaving that man-eating mass grave.

In the frozen wasteland, they found a broken-down hut that could block the wind.

The girl stripped clothes from the dead to wear, went hunting in the woods to make a fire, and shared all the little food she had with her.

In the flickering firelight,

the girl looked at the little beggar, curled up in her arms, wolfing down the food, and spoke softly.

“My name is White Night. From now on, you’ll follow me, okay?”

“I can’t just keep calling you ‘Little Beggar’.”

“My surname is White. Would you like to take my surname too?”

“Let’s call you Peace. ‘Peace,’ meaning safety and tranquility.”

White Peace.

She finally had a name.

Had a home.

Had White Night, who had pulled her out of hell.

That night,

she curled up in White Night’s arms, sleeping soundly in the warm firelight.

The images of the memory continued to churn in White Night’s mind.

Their peaceful days didn’t last long before they were shattered by Weirdness.

Black Mist covered the earth.

Monsters that devoured humans spread across the wilderness.

The mortal world became a living hell.

White Night took her, hiding and fleeing everywhere.

Time and again, they narrowly escaped death from the claws of Weirdness.

Countless times, White Night used her own body to stand firmly in front of her.

The last time,

it happened in a broken temple on the mountain.

Weirdness surrounded them from all sides.

To let her escape,

White Night burned up all her power.

Perishing together with the surging Weirdness.

Leaving only one final sentence for her.

“Peace, live well.”

She survived.

But she refused to leave.

She guarded White Night’s body, day after day.

Watched the corpse slowly rot, watched the flesh and blood gradually dissolve, until only a skeleton remained.

Everyone told her to let go, but she wouldn’t.

She had seen White Night be reborn from a corpse, and she firmly believed White Night could come back to life again.

She carried that skeleton on her back, traveling to every corner of that world.

Searching like a madwoman for any way to bring White Night back.

Even if there was only the slightest shred of hope, she was willing to risk her life to try.

But what awaited her, time and again, was despair.

She kept the skeleton polished clean, always carrying it on her back.

Through countless springs, summers, autumns, and winters.

In the end, trapped in boundless obsession and insane persistence,

her body and Divine Soul underwent a mutation.

In the endless darkness, she transformed into Weirdness.

The memories became chaotic at this point.

White Peace slept for a long, long time.

And woke again, time after time, in countless reincarnation cycles.

Walking through one broken, collapsing world of Weirdness after another.

All to find the person who gave her a name, gave her warmth, gave her everything…

The torrent of memories ended there.

The golden light orb at White Night’s fingertips scattered into specks of starlight, re-merging into White Peace’s palm.