The large room was filled with the heavy scent of blood, permeating every corner.

Lance’s body was being torn apart by the swarming corpses. These were all sins he had committed, and he deserved to pay for them.

Meanwhile, the carpet beneath Yu Sen was soaked through with the blood from his neck. His near-death face was pale, and it was nearly impossible to detect any breath from him.

Si Xuanyang couldn’t explain how he was feeling as he dragged Yu Sen out of the room. He only knew that all the blood in his body had turned as cold as Yu Sen’s, and when he tried to cover the wound with his hand, the gushing blood nearly made his heart stop.

Si Nan, who had arrived in time, gritted his teeth and poured corpse oil into the room. The candlestick was knocked over, and a raging fire ignited, but Si Xuanyang seemed oblivious to the heat.

He stared blankly at the person in his arms, looking down at him. Yu Sen’s clothes were soaked in blood, his body limp and lifeless, like a shattered glass doll, ready to break at the slightest touch.

The clock appeared in the air once again. Amid the sea of flames and the wailing of ghosts, their consciousness once again fell into a chaotic space.

---

Si Xuanyang opened his eyes in his sleep, and the intense palpitations made him fall off the bed in an instant.

His ankle hit the edge of the bed with a ‘thud,’ the pain causing a shiver that ran through his body.

But he couldn’t care about that, or even notice it. Panicked, he fumbled for his phone under the pillow, his fingers trembling like a sieve as he pulled up the contact list, biting his lip until it bled.

Scrolling to the number of the nurse station on Yu Sen’s hospital floor that he had saved earlier, he pressed it hard.

The two ‘beeps’ in the receiver took only a few seconds, but to him, it felt like an eternity.

“Hello, this is…”

“Room 1207, Yu Sen! He’s in critical condition, you need to get there now!” Si Xuanyang cut her off, too impatient to let her finish.

He stood up shakily, taking a few steps, nearly tripping in his panic, and stumbled out of the room.

“May I ask who you are…?”

“Don’t worry about who I am! Just get someone there! Quickly…” He wiped his face roughly, realizing for the first time that he was crying.

His voice was filled with desperation and regret, almost pleading, even choking on a sob: “Please, hurry… there’s no one watching him at night…”

After a brief silence, he heard the nurse’s brisk voice in the receiver: “Ting Ting, go check on the patient in Room 1207, see if there’s anything unusual… Xiaofang, you go with her, and call me immediately if anything happens.”

“Thank you.” Si Xuanyang’s voice was hoarse as he nearly collapsed while pressing the ‘end call’ button. He was terrified of receiving news he couldn’t bear.

He felt powerless to face such an outcome.

…

There weren’t many cars on the road in the early morning. He drove like a madman, running red lights all the way. The tension in his mind was like a dangerous steel wire, ready to snap at the slightest ring from the phone on the passenger seat.

The drive from home to the hospital usually took twenty minutes, but he made it to the hospital entrance in just six minutes.

Clutching his phone, he jumped out of the car. Before he had taken more than two steps, the familiar ringtone suddenly sounded. Si Xuanyang’s heart tightened, and his legs nearly gave out beneath him.

After standing rigidly for a few seconds, he raised the phone. The caller ID showed ‘Si Nan.’

The tension in his heart did not ease; Si Xuanyang’s eyes flickered as he walked towards the elevator and answered the call. “Hello?”

“Yang Yang, where are you!? Where’s Yu Ge?” Si Nan’s voice was urgent, his breathing heavy, as if he was running.

Si Xuanyang’s shoulders relaxed slightly, his voice still hoarse, “I’m at the hospital. I don’t know the situation yet.”

Once inside the elevator, the phone signal weakened, and he couldn’t hear anything. He hung up and leaned heavily against the cold wall. His heartbeat was like the ticking of a countdown clock, each beat tugging at his extremely fragile nerves.

The elevator was clearly ascending, but he felt as if he were falling.

With a ‘ding,’ the 12th floor arrived.

Si Xuanyang swallowed and took a few steps out, arriving at the nurse’s station.

Everyone was busy. The corridor was quiet, and a cleaning lady was mopping the floor as if nothing special had happened.

He forced himself not to look at room 1207. Clearing his hoarse throat, he said, “Please help me check… Yu Sen, the ‘Yu’ from ‘melancholy’ and the ‘Sen’ from ‘forest.'”

The nurse, who was engrossed in her work, looked up. She was used to seeing such lost expressions after working in the hospital for a long time. She said, “Just a moment,” and was about to search on the computer.

Another nurse standing nearby tugged on her sleeve, glanced cautiously at Si Xuanyang, and softly hinted, “Yuan Yuan, you forgot. The patient in room 1207 is named Yu Sen.”

Si Xuanyang’s fingers trembled slightly at his side.

“Oh, it’s him…” The nurse, recalling the recent chaos, frowned and looked at Si Xuanyang. “He had a severe intracranial hemorrhage about ten minutes ago and has been sent to the emergency room. They should still be trying to save him.”

“Trying to… save him?” Si Xuanyang stood there dazed, not fully comprehending.

Seeing his pale face, the nurse sighed sympathetically and said, “The emergency room is on the third floor. You should go quickly, don’t waste time.”

Si Xuanyang’s whole body shuddered violently. He turned and ran, forgetting about the elevator, and rushed down from the 12th floor. He stopped abruptly in front of the emergency room’s red light and slowly crouched down, supporting himself against the wall.

---

Many thoughts flashed through his mind. He wondered what Yu Sen felt when he just woke up in the hospital bed. Panic? Despair? Fear? Or was he unable to wake up at all?

If he couldn’t wake up, was his consciousness still stuck in that cold, bloody world? Drifting alone, facing endless corpses and ghosts?

The thought made Si Xuanyang tense up instantly. His heart felt like it was being crushed by a giant hand, and he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t even notice when Si Nan and Luo Yu arrived, only that Si Nan’s voice was buzzing in his ears, saying something he couldn’t understand.

…

When the red light in the emergency room finally went out, Si Xuanyang, in a daze, even tasted the metallic taste of blood in his throat. He felt Luo Yu helping him up, his clothes soaked in cold sweat.

The doctor who walked out opened and closed his mouth, but Si Xuanyang couldn’t hear a thing. The veins in his temples were throbbing violently, and his body was trembling uncontrollably.

After a few seconds, Si Nan exclaimed with joy in his ear, “He’s fine! Yang Yang, did you hear that!? The doctor said he’s out of danger! He’s fine… Yang Yang! Yang Yang—!”

Si Xuanyang felt all his strength drain away. Everything went dark, and his body began to slide down uncontrollably. The noise around him blurred, and he murmured the name that had been haunting his mind, “Yu Sen.”

Then he lost consciousness.

---

When Yu Sen woke up, his first reaction was a strange sense of familiarity with the dizziness and drowsiness. How pathetic, he thought. If this vicious cycle continued, would he have to get used to being a sickly person?

In the warm glow before his eyes, a voice, trembling slightly, sounded in his ear.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”

Yu Sen blinked, shifting his gaze to look at Si Xuanyang’s focused expression as he leaned down to watch him. He licked his dry lips and weakly sighed, “Wow, this face is way too handsome. Excuse me, kind and charming knight, have I been transported to a fairytale world?”

Si Xuanyang chuckled softly, pressed the call button on the bedside, dipped a cotton swab into some warm water from a thermos, and gently touched it to Yu Sen’s lips.

“…This tiny bit of water, it’s not even enough to wet my teeth. Yang Yang, be good and give me some more.”

“We’ll wait until the doctor comes to check you,” Si Xuanyang said, lowering his eyes as he tucked the blanket around him.

Just as he finished speaking, a group of doctors and nurses filed in, surrounding Yu Sen, checking him from all sides, asking a bunch of questions. After reviewing the synchronized readings from the medical instruments, they exclaimed, “Mr. Yu, you really are lucky!”

Yu Sen: “…”

Honestly, this was hardly luck. It was only because he hadn’t completely died in the old castle, still having a faint heartbeat and breathing, though very weak. If another ten minutes had passed, he would have been undoubtedly dead. But in the end, when he left the clock world, he was still alive, so he wouldn’t die in the real world, just suffer a bit.

“My mom always says I’m like a cat with nine lives.”

With the second young master of the Si family watching over, the doctor didn’t dare to be careless and carefully conducted the examination. Afterward, he gave a long list of things to be cautious about, while the two caregivers and the cook nodded repeatedly, almost as if they were about to take out a notebook to jot everything down.

In the end, Si Xuanyang frowned and asked carefully, “Will there be any adverse reactions during his recovery?”

“I’ll just tell you when the time comes,” Yu Sen replied quietly. “Or are you worried I’ll exaggerate and try to play the victim?”

Si Xuanyang glanced at him, “I’m not afraid of you exaggerating, I’m afraid you won’t tell me at all.”

“…”

The doctor, guessing at the relationship between the two while pretending not to notice the undercurrent between them, quickly listed all the possible conditions: “There could be headaches, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, loss of appetite, shock, irregular heartbeat, blurred vision, weakness, muscle soreness…”

With each word, Yu Sen groaned inwardly: What the hell is all this? At this rate, does he still have a chance of being a top?