That beauty’s smile was indeed very good-looking, but Yan Luqing instantly panicked and scrambled half a meter away: “I don’t want it I don’t want it I don’t want it—!”

The smile on Gu Ci’s lips deepened. He stood up again with the support of the tree, walked toward her, ignored her cries, and directly took hold of her immobilized right calf.

Yan Luqing felt no pain, but her hair stood on end.

Gu Ci shone the flashlight and examined it briefly, then gently moved it with his fingers. He gave his conclusion: “Ankle dislocation.” Then he lifted his head to look at Yan Luqing. “You really don’t want it?”

Yan Luqing shook her head violently: “No, no. Just let me hurt like this. I feel like I can almost get used to this kind of pain, I can endure until the police uncles come rescue us…”

Gu Ci seemed amused by her appearance, released her ankle, and said, “Miss Yan, a dislocation doesn’t become a pain you get used to if not reset in time. It only grows worse. And if too much time passes without resetting, it may cause permanent—”

The more Yan Luqing listened, the more hatred grew in her heart.

In her past life she had been healthy, rarely even visiting a hospital. But in this body she had transmigrated into, every day it was either pain here or sickness there. Even after Gu Ci had taken so many hits for her, her ankle still ended up dislocated.

But she was afraid of pain, and still couldn’t bring herself to decide.

“…Let me do some more psychological preparation.”

“Alright.” Gu Ci actually agreed readily.

Yan Luqing watched as he left her right leg and moved directly in front of her. He said, “My left hand was just reset, so for now it has no strength.” He crouched before her again, but this time with his back to her, turning his head slightly to show her his profile. “So, brace the ground with your knees. I’ll carry you in.”

Inside the tree hollow, it instantly grew much warmer than outside. At least there was no longer the ceaseless gusting cold wind.

The two of them followed Gu Ci’s arrangement, each switching on their phones to send messages outside.

Because of this mountain climb, the twelve of them had created a small group outside of the main classmates’ group. As soon as Yan Luqing opened WeChat, she saw there were many, many messages about her and Gu Ci. She sent a message in reply.

【Runaway Saintess】: At a place about five hundred meters from the supermarket, Gu Ci and I accidentally fell down the slope. Gu Ci is calling the police now. Both of us are only lightly injured, so don’t worry too much.

After sending, she looked toward Gu Ci. “I’ve sent a message to the group.”

“Did it go through?” Gu Ci pulled his phone from his ear. “I have no service.”

“……”

Yan Luqing tried dialing the police again with her phone, but the result was the same as Gu Ci’s: no service.

Then why had she just been able to receive messages in the group chat? And why had her own message seemed to go out?

Yan Luqing opened the chat again.

And there it was—the message she had sent now had a glaring red exclamation mark on the left. She had failed too.

Able to receive but not send?

Impossible.

When Gu Ci saw the exclamation mark, he immediately braced himself against the inside of the tree hollow wall and stood up, walking out: “I’ll go out and test the signal.”

Yan Luqing nodded assent. As soon as his footsteps faded, she tried once more to call out in her mind to Makka Pakka, who hadn’t shown up since the evening. There was not the slightest response.

The moment she saw the exclamation mark, Yan Luqing had instantly thought of the root cause of why the two of them were here—it was the system punishing her.

Why was the system punishing, most likely because the male and female leads had collapsed again.

Leaning back against the inner wall of the tree, Yan Luqing also tried opening the dialogue boxes of Big Black and Little Black. Without exception, all were red exclamation marks.

She opened the chat with Jiang Baichu with a sense of speechless helplessness.

The last time the two little ones had a small quarrel, her punishment had been to have a high fever. This time, perhaps because they’d had a big fight, she had been thrown into this kind of place, even dragging Gu Ci down with her.

Sure enough, the girl’s head was now bubbling with a cluster of glaringly red bubbles, furious beyond doubt. Yan Luqing didn’t even need to click to know, this was definitely her being angry at the male lead Qi Yanchuan.

Did it mean that until the male and female leads sparked again, she and Gu Ci would not be able to send out any rescue messages?

Damn it! How was she supposed to play matchmaker if they locked her up? They had to let her out in order for her to do that! Was this system seriously sick in the head???

At this moment, Gu Ci came back inside and said: “Outside, I couldn’t get through either.”

His expression didn’t look the same as before. His voice and face seemed colder as well.

But the beam of the flashlight was too dim, and Yan Luqing wondered if her eyes were playing tricks on her. She said: “Mine didn’t go through either…”

Gu Ci gave a quiet “Mm.”

When he spoke again, the coldness was gone. Sitting down beside her instead of across from her, his voice was light, almost like comfort: “If we don’t go back for a long time, they’ll definitely call the police. It won’t be much slower than us doing it ourselves.”

Yan Luqing thought so too.

But…

“Why are you suddenly sitting closer?” She had an ominous feeling.

Gu Ci shone the flashlight directly on her right ankle, his meaning perfectly clear: “I walked around outside. I couldn’t determine how far it is to the top. So you can’t delay.”

Indeed.

Now, compared to the very beginning, her ankle already hurt unbearably.

“…But I’m scared.” Yan Luqing gritted her teeth. “How about this, Gu Ci—you talk to me, or tell me a story, then when I’m not paying attention, set it right, alright?”

Gu Ci didn’t respond.

Yan Luqing pressed on, blinking at him. “I really am afraid of pain.”

Gu Ci looked into the girl’s eyes.

Those apricot eyes seemed to hold a pool of water at the very bottom, making the pupils appear all the more crystal clear in the dimness. Her expression was clearly a deliberately feigned pitifulness, yet it was not off-putting.

Only—he still remembered this same mad body slicing itself with a knife, stabbing itself with needle holes in fits of madness.

And now, again the same body.

But it was as if a pair of entirely different eyes were staring at him, saying: Gu Ci, I really am so afraid of pain.

Yan Luqing saw him looking at her without expression, as if in the next instant he was about to refuse. Yet suddenly he blinked extremely fast, and then that familiar, dazzling smile appeared on his face once more.

“Alright,” Gu Ci said. “What do you want to hear?”

“Just… just an ordinary bedtime story is fine,” Yan Luqing said.

Mainly, Gu Ci’s voice was pleasant to hear. But he usually spoke little, and Yan Luqing thought that if she kept listening to this pleasant voice, her attention would surely be somewhat distracted. She really had no demands for the story itself.

“Alright.”

Gu Ci first opened his backpack, took out the glasses case Yan Luqing had given him not long ago, and put on his glasses.

Then he half-lowered his eyes at her side. The flashlight swept here and there; he was probably inspecting her ankle. Yan Luqing was even too nervous to look.

Gu Ci’s voice sounded slowly in the tree hollow. In the quiet atmosphere, that cool, pleasant voice truly had the feeling of a bedtime story.

“Once upon a time, there was a person. He liked to sleep with the quilt pulled up to his neck, covering him except for his head.”

“Eh, what a coincidence.” Yan Luqing thought this opening rather cliché, but to encourage Gu Ci’s storytelling mood, she still praised it warmly. “I also sleep with the quilt pulled up to my neck! And then? What story about this person?”

She watched Gu Ci’s eyelashes stir now and then, and heard him continue in that unhurried tone: “And then one day, while this person was sleeping, his head was eaten by a ghost.”

“…???”

The fuck—this was a bedtime story?

Yan Luqing froze on the spot. And just at the moment her mind filled with question marks, a sharp pain suddenly came from her ankle. Once more she heard that tooth-aching sound of a joint being reset.

Gu Ci released her foot and said lightly: “Done.”

Yan Luqing hadn’t even cried out yet before it was already over.

It did hurt, but once that instant had passed, all the pain from her ankle was gradually easing.

Gu Ci said: “Try moving it.”

She instinctively hugged her right leg and twisted it a little, then called softly: “Gu Ci.”

“Mm.”

“Thank you.”

He lifted his eyes. “For what?”

“For my foot… and,” Yan Luqing paused, “for coming down with me.”

Without him, with no way to contact the outside, Yan Luqing felt she could have frightened herself to death.

But with him there, she couldn’t even summon a sense of crisis.

Yet Gu Ci gave no reply to her thanks. After moving her ankle once more to confirm it was fine, he rose from her side, went to sit across from her, and pulled his backpack over to rummage through it.

As he passed by, he stirred a faint breeze.

Yan Luqing once again smelled the same shampoo fragrance as on herself from his body, and also… the scent of blood.

Was it because of that little cut on his face?

Could such a tiny wound really give off such a distinct scent of blood?

Just as her thoughts wandered, Gu Ci suddenly asked her: “What did you bring in your bag?”

His question broke her train of thought. She answered: “I gave you your medicine and glasses, the rest is power bank, hot dogs, bread, jelly, chips, water, luncheon meat, beef… sticks…”

When she finished reporting, the tree hollow fell into a long silence.

“…………”

By the flashlight’s glow, Yan Luqing saw Gu Ci’s face. Although expressionless, it seemed to read four glaring characters: Not surprising it’s you.

Gu Ci asked: “And your sleeping bag?”

Yan Luqing’s voice softened: “Because there wasn’t space, I left the sleeping bag with Xia Yutian…”

On Gu Ci’s face… this time there truly was no expression at all.

Yan Luqing felt unbearably awkward.

Worst of all, bringing a bag full of food really did seem to match with the fact that she had dragged down her rescuer with her own weight.

After staring at each other for a while, Yan Luqing saw Gu Ci take off his glasses, put them back in the bag, then pull out a foldable sleeping bag and toss it to her: “You sleep in mine.”

She hesitated. “But aren’t we…”

“Not sure how long it’ll take them to find us. Rest first and conserve energy.” Gu Ci said this, then leaned his whole body against the inner wall of the tree and closed his eyes to rest—he really did seem to like leaning back against something today. With his long legs drawn up, even sitting like this, his posture looked rather handsome.

Yan Luqing had hiked the whole day, and then gone through such a perilous ordeal. It was impossible for her not to be tired or sleepy; she had just been forcing herself in the unfamiliar environment.

But holding his foldable sleeping bag and squeezing it, she couldn’t help but feel this didn’t seem to be a single size.

When she laid it out and let it naturally fluff and inflate on the ground, no matter how she looked, it seemed like a double size.

“Gu Ci.”

“Mm.”

“Actually, you see this sleeping bag is so big,” Yan Luqing asked casually, “can’t we sleep together?”

Gu Ci, who had been resting with closed eyes, suddenly opened them. His gaze shot straight toward her.