Chapter 56: Different worlds collide
Suddenly, the darkness that caused a loud buzzing in his head, depriving him of his senses of sight, touch, and hearing, seemed to have engulfed Chen Wei's world for endless centuries, yet at the same time for such a brief moment that it hardly seemed real. And as quickly as it arrived the darkness vanishes as if it had never existed.
The first sensation Chen Wei feels after the darkness disappears is someone embracing him tightly, while he feels his chest soaked as if by someone's tears. Upon looking at his body, he discovers it's Wang Mei.
"Mei'er, what happened? Why are you like this? I only remember an old..." But before he could finish his query, Wang Mei quickly advances, embracing his neck and kissing him, tears streaming from her eyes.
"Oh my God! I was so worried that this might have been a Wisdom Path attack and that you might not wake up!" She speaks while holding him close, as for her, these few minutes when he was unconscious were the longest of her life, especially after Chen Wei repeatedly informed her about the capabilities of immortals and the Wisdom Path.
"Mei'er, it's okay, I'm here, nothing will happen to me... I won't leave your side." Chen Wei, seeing Wang Mei's tearful state, instinctively brings his left hand to stroke her head, which, upon realizing his action, leaves him shocked.
The reason is simple; he shouldn't have this arm since he lost it in battle. However, as he had just awakened and his attention was focused on Wang Mei, only now does he notice that, just like his arm, his entire body is healed, without the slightest injury, not even the fatigue of battle weighing on him.
"Mei'er, was it you who healed...!" Seeing this unexpected situation, he can only ask Wang Mei if she healed him to the point of bringing his arm back, which is unlikely, or if she knows who did it, which is much more likely, but he is interrupted in the middle of his sentence by footsteps.
"Ah, that path was a dead end, but it sho—!" Feng Hua speaks as she returns after exploring one of the tunnels in the cave, as she has been determined to leave this place. However, she is interrupted mid-sentence when she feels a suffocating killing aura advancing towards her.
She quickly turns her head towards a piercing blood killer move advancing towards her, but unexpectedly to Chen Wei, who has his hand extended after making his attack, despite the slight shock on Feng Hua's face, she doesn't attempt to retreat or defend herself.
"Ah, so that's it..." Chen Wei murmurs with a complicated expression on his face as he sees his killer move dissolve just before hitting Feng Hua's body, as if an invisible and unbreakable barrier were surrounding her.
Of course, Chen Wei, still with his battle intent at its peak after coming out of a deadly battle against three Rank 3 Gu Masters, instinctively attacks Feng Hua without hesitation. However, even his continuous use of the BloodSoul Baby to try to attack Feng Hua's soul fails.
"None of us can harm each other; she tried before when you were unconscious..." Wang Mei whispers to Chen Wei as he gets up from the ground, not wanting to be at a disadvantage against the enemy.
"I guess that's why both Mei'er and I are still alive, right?" Chen Wei doesn't take his gaze off Feng Hua, who also looks at him with a serious expression on her face, along with a hint of scorn, probably because she's no longer afraid of him since he can't harm her either.
"So, do you happen to know how we ended up here? Also, are you sure you reached a dead end?" Chen Wei speaks while looking at Feng Hua, still mostly focused on figuring out a way to kill her.
"Well, I saw with my own eyes that it was a dead end... and if I knew how we ended up here, I would have left already." Feng Hua speaks with annoyance on her face, speaking to someone trying to kill her, although she tried to do the same "If she was telling the truth, she also has no idea how she ended up here"Feng Hua points to a corner that is full of books in the cave.
Chen Wei quickly shifts his gaze to see a girl with purple hair sitting in a corner of the cave, with one of the books scattered on the ground in her hand, reading attentively as if she weren't in the same dangerous situation as them.
From what he observes from the girl's aura, she's just a mortal, which her appearance confirms, as she doesn't act like a Gu Master would in this situation.
"...ah, her name is Yu Lian; from what she said, she comes from the Xiong Mao clan and was the daughter of two relatively wealthy Gu Masters who had an herbalistic shop." Wang Mei quickly speaks, seeing the doubt in Chen Wei's eyes as he looks at the girl neither of them knew before as his eyes lit up as if he had made an important decision.
"...well, by the fact that you two are also here, I guess you're not from this world either." After hearing these words, the three girls are completely shocked. Wang Mei didn't expect him to reveal their otherworldly demon status so casually, considering he emphasized not letting anyone know they were otherworldly demons. For the other two, it's shocking that this would even come out of Chen Wei's mouth.
"How do you know...! You're not from this world either!?" Feng Hua speaks with an incredulous expression.
"Are you like me? Are you a blood warlock...!?" Yu Lian, who was reading her book, now pays attention to him, her eyes widened as if she had seen a ghost, focused on Chen Wei.
Listening to both their exclamations, Chen Wei sighs as he rethinks his plans in his head. Now that he's sure of why they're in this unknown cave, revealing this secret, even though he can't harm them, is worth it because it might be the slight difference that allows him and Wang Mei to leave here alive.
"Well, yes, Mei'er and I are also otherworldly demons... but I'm not what you would call a blood warlock, as my world didn't have magic as I imagine yours does from this name." Yu Lian nods, hearing Chen Wei's words, which she has no way to confirm whether they're true or not, but the way he speaks makes her think he's not lying.
"Why did you call yourself a 'demon'... and what is this magic? Is it like Gu?" Feng Hua looks at Chen Wei suspiciously while keeping her guard up against him.
"That's the name people in this world give us; you haven't heard about it because our clans are just mortal clans. As for magic, I don't know how it works in my world; this concept only appeared in stories." Chen Wei speaks honestly since he sees no reason to lie about it.
"Hmm, magic is different from Gu because we'd have to memorize spells as well as use magic crystals of our element to enhance the quality of our magic core, which would be like an aperture. Also, most magic was elemental, unlike the Gu paths in this world." Yu Lian speaks with some apprehension since it's probably difficult for her to calmly talk about something that was a big secret of hers.
"Well... in my world, we had martial Daoists... they could basically only exert the equivalent of strength path of this world." Feng Hua speaks hesitantly to decide whether to tell the truth or not, which she ultimately does, but of course, she doesn't mention that the peak of Martial Daoists' strength was equivalent to a Rank 3 Strength Path Gu Master.
"That's really interesting to me, as well as Mei'er, because things like magic or Gu and a person being as strong as an army are just fanciful stories in our worlds.... since our worlds focus on something called technology." Chen Wei, who is now poking the cave wall in various ways to confirm it's real, speaks calmly.
He still vividly remembers the conversation he had with Wang Mei about them being otherworldly demons, which led him to discover that she comes from the German Empire of the early 20th century. But even more surprising is that this German Empire is not the same as his world's, as he also found out that the history in her world is completely different from his.
For example, Portugal and Spain formed a single country called Iberia, or Russia never formed as a country, just as the Ottoman Empire never rose to power, among many other differences, like a great war where most European countries joined forces to defeat France, similar to the Napoleonic wars in his world, but at least Wang Mei said her people called it the Franco-Prussian War because of the main German kingdom at the time.
But none of this surprised him as much as Wang Mei's description of the technology in her world, which, if he had to describe in one word, would be Steampunk. This is because of things like autonomous robots, high-tech weapons, people using robotic prosthetics, as well as large airships that use steam power.
For Wang Mei, she was also extremely surprised to hear about things like electricity, mini computers, internet networks, and especially atomic bombs and space exploration technologies.
"What are you trying to figure out by touching that wall?" Yu Lian snaps him out of his reverie as she asks him curiously, receiving a nod from Feng Hua who wonders the same.
"...well, I'm trying to verify if this wall is real or just the effect of a Wisdom Path method." Chen Wei doesn't believe that the immortal who brought them here wants to kill him because if he did, he would have already done so. However, he still maintains his cautious nature.
"Not even the greatest Wisdom Path specialist would be able to do that; this path only has the ability to make grand plans and deductions with a small capacity to create illusions, right?" Feng Hua has some knowledge about the capabilities of the Wisdom Path and knows that this isn't one of them.
"Not for mortal Gu Masters, but the one who brought us here is probably an immortal, at least Rank 7 or above..." Finishing his inspection of the wall without finding anything suspicious, although he didn't think he would, as he believes this is the arrangement of an immortal, but it's better to be sure.
"Immortals...rank 7..... you seem to have an incredibly large amount of information for someone who came from a world without Gu..." Feng Hua speaks with great suspicion, a sentiment even Wang Mei agrees with since Chen Wei never told her where this knowledge came from, as he said this knowledge could put her at risk.
"Ah... in my world... we have a famous story that tells about this world... I believe that maybe because of another otherworldly demon like us." Chen Wei sighs as he reveals half-truths about his knowledge of this world.
Of course, the reason Chen Wei is revealing this is only because he's sure this information has already been compromised, as the immortal who brought them to this place must have already read the minds of all of them, and he has several reasons to believe this.
Firstly, something the other three girls can't notice due to a lack of knowledge in the Blood Path is that these red cave walls were artificially made using Blood Path methods, which he noticed after inspecting the wall.
Secondly, despite the BloodSoul Baby being a mortal Gu, it still shouldn't have been so easily stopped by a method left in this time when people don't even know about the existence of the Soul Path. Therefore, he believes the immortal found out about the Gu in his aperture and preemptively created a countermeasure.
And besides, according to what Chen Wei knows about the abilities of an immortal, it's possible that Wang Mei, Feng Hua, and Yu Lian aren't even here and are just illusions. At this point, he's even wondering if all his time in the Gu world was just an illusion created by an immortal.
"What do you mean, a story like one of the Venerable's biographies?" Yu Lian quickly becomes interested in this incredible concept of a story written in another world depicting facts from another world.
"Not exactly, as it followed the biography of another otherworldly demon like us... in fact, most of my knowledge about the Venerables' lives came from reading in this world..." Chen Wei now looks at the other two paths of this cave that remained after Feng Hua fully explored one that led her to a dead end.
"So what exactly do you know because of this story?" Feng Hua asks, but this falls on deaf ears as Chen Wei is no longer interested in answering her and simply calls Wang Mei to follow him down one of the two paths he randomly chose.
"Hey, you're not going to answer now, remember we're in this together! Hey!" Feng Hua starts to follow Chen Wei and Wang Mei, who head down the path.
"Ahh... I'll tell you along the way what I know that can help us survive... hey, girl from the Xiong Mao clan, do you plan on just reading there alone until you die, or do you want to come escape too?" Yu Lian, hearing Chen Wei's call, is quickly snapped out of her reverie about how a story could span from one world to another and starts following them too.
Thus, while being observed by the shadows, the four otherworldly demons follow the path, with their suspicion of each other decreasing greatly with each passing second.
Of course, this isn't entirely because they're innocent people who trust others easily, since apart from Wang Mei and Chen Wei, all here are strangers. But still, the tension and mistrust between them decrease greatly because there's nothing they mere Gu Masters can do against an immortal's manipulation methods.
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