Chapter 552: Recognition (Two in One)

The Great Prison.

Yan Jing walked to the window and looked out.

A curtain of rain and clouds obscured everything in sight. The world had turned a dull, dark gray, rendering all details indistinguishable.

Other than those who had reached Summit, no one could survive this downpour.

A deathly silence hung over the Great Prison.

Inside the Prison Fortress, everyone was hiding in their rooms.

Days ago, Yan Jing had ordered the entire Prison Fortress into a state of war.

Everything was operating on bare survival minimums, cutting out all unnecessary activities and personnel.

Everyone was waiting for the disaster to pass.

They did not know that this disaster would never pass.

This disaster would mark the end of the prison.

He turned and looked in a specific direction.

In Mu Tian's room, the pitch-black Weird Energy had already materialized into a dense fog, surging out through the gap under the door.

Three days ago, Mu Tian's aura had shifted from decline to resurgence. By today, it had already surpassed the strength he displayed against the Pure Blood Heavenly Kingdom.

Yan Jing finally understood why Mu Tian had bound himself to the Great Prison.

Mu Tian had temporarily transferred all his injuries to the Domain of the Great Prison.

This bought him a brief moment at his absolute peak, and with this peak strength, he intended to take the final step.

It was a massive gamble.

A Lord of the Domain and their Domain were inextricably linked.

If he failed to take that step before the Great Prison completely collapsed, the prison would drag him down with it.

Yan Jing picked up the lunchbox from the table and made his way to the Special Prison Cell.

This was where the black fog in the Great Prison was thickest.

The fog tangled together like silk and brocade, blocking anyone who tried to enter.

Hidden within was the key to Mu Tian taking his final step. He would never allow anyone to lay a finger on it.

For Yan Jing, of course, this fog was practically nonexistent. He reached out and parted it as easily as peeling silk, walking deeper into the Special Prison Cell.

This was not his first visit recently.

For the past seven days, he had come here once every day.

Compared to the Ship in Haidu, this place was actually far more troublesome.

Although the Ship's construction schedule seemed tight, Yan Jing could send thousands of Lesser Wandering Ghosts to Haidu at any time if he wished.

He only held back because he did not want to expose the connection between his identities as Yan Jing and Wen Xu until the very end.

Things were different here.

The current situation was that if Wen Qiao wanted to die, no one could stop her.

Seeing the red threads appear in the fog at his feet, he paused.

He had arrived.

Heading right, the inexplicable red threads grew denser, forming a massive red net that firmly trapped Wen Qiao's room in the center.

He reached the entrance and finally saw the door to Wen Qiao's room.

The red threads wrapped around the cold, black iron bars layer by layer, extending inward. They covered the floor, the ceiling, and even the bed. Several red threads landed on the window, forming a large Double Happiness character.

The room no longer looked like a prison cell. It looked more like a bridal chamber after a newlywed couple's wild celebration.

However, the room was small, and the red threads looked old. It felt like a couple who had moved from the countryside to the big city, buying a palm-sized room in an urban village—a wedding without friends, without a banquet, without even a marriage certificate.

But it genuinely looked like a wedding was taking place.

They bought some colored ribbons and a Double Happiness cutout, made a simple meal, and held it in an un-air-conditioned room. The wedding was in the winter, on a reasonably auspicious day picked out carefully from the calendar.

The phone used to record this wedding was not great. The lens was blurry, and a puff of white mist would escape their lips every time they spoke.

Amidst that permeating mist, only the smiles on their faces were warm.

Perhaps this was the wedding Wen Qiao wanted.

Yan Jing had attended a wedding before.

Just a week or two ago.

Compared to that wedding of the century, the one before his eyes was incredibly shabby. There were no guests, no officiant, no band, no flower girls or ring bearers, and no choir singing hymns. Naturally, there was also no spectacle of someone beating back five Ninth Tier experts to catch the bouquet, nor was there an elder stepping in to suppress an entire Domain.

But Yan Jing thought it was quite nice.

He glanced down at his tracksuit, thought for a moment, and lightly tapped his chest with his finger.

Ink materialized, shifting and transforming into a black suit.

It was not a fancy suit.

The cuffs lacked tight, hand-stitched seams, and the fabric did not have any intricately designed dark patterns. The material was a bit rough, lacking any real texture.

There was even a slight tear at the cuff, making it look like it had been stitched and mended several times. A patch of fabric on the inside clearly mismatched the rest.

But Yan Jing was very satisfied with it.

Wearing this suit, he walked through the door on the right, which had been opened from the inside.

Wen Qiao sat at the table with her back to him.

The red threads wrapped around her body, forming a rather cheap-looking wedding dress. Bright red wedding dresses had long fallen out of fashion; they looked tacky now. Most women preferred elegant white, while some of the more trendy ones might seek out newer colors, like pale green or light blue.

Red was definitely not the first choice.

However, Wen Qiao liked it. She had fallen in love with this dress the moment she saw it in the shop window. Compared to the others, this one was much cheaper.

Even though it looked like something from twenty or thirty years ago.

But Wen Qiao genuinely loved it. She thought it looked festive.

In the soil of poverty, festivity was a rare flower.

When she heard the footsteps behind her, the hand holding her comb paused in midair.

Neither of them spoke.

For the past few days, it had been like this every time Yan Jing came. No one said a word.

They had leaned against the iron bars together. Wen Qiao would finish the food in the lunchbox while Yan Jing remained silent, simply watching the ever-increasing red threads continue to grow.

"I'm not eating today. I'm getting married today."

Wen Qiao broke the silence first. Her voice trembled slightly, but she was much calmer than she had been seven days ago.

"To whom?"

Yan Jing asked softly.

"To the person I've been looking for," Wen Qiao said quietly. "You were right. People change. The person I'm looking for is no longer here. He can't be salvaged from the River of Time."

"I'm going to join him."

Wen Qiao's heart was already dead.

After hearing what Yan Jing said a week ago, her heart had slowly died.

On this path of searching, an ending she had never imagined had appeared.

She had considered that she might not find him for thousands of years, or that she might sink forever in the River of Time, the two of them never to meet again.

But she never thought that people could change.

That was something even the River of Time couldn't alter.

The River of Time could salvage lost lives, but how could it turn back a person's heart?

The boy she was looking for was already gone.

She was going to follow him today, just like she had always done in her dreams.

"Alright. Since you've decided, I won't stop you."

Yan Jing's expression was calm. "Of course, I wouldn't be able to stop you anyway."

From the moment Wen Qiao extended the first red thread, no one could stop her.

Those red threads contained Wen Qiao's vitality. Even a Tenth Tier entity would be unable to interfere. Making someone die was easy, but keeping someone from dying was always a difficult problem.

"Thank you."

Wen Qiao pursed her lips.

She finally turned around and looked at Yan Jing.

She was truly beautiful today.

She wore a touch of makeup, making her naturally gentle face look exceptionally bright, completely different from her usual approachable vibe.

Although her makeup showed a hint of unfamiliarity and the lipstick she used seemed a bit too vibrant, Yan Jing thought she looked even prettier.

Her eyes were watery, as if she were wearing cosmetic contact lenses.

Oh, they weren't contacts.

She was crying.

Wen Qiao was crying a river of tears.

Because the suit Yan Jing wore was the one she had bought with her own hands back then.

When Yan Jing was in college, he had an important national innovation project defense. Wen Qiao had taken him to buy a suit.

499 yuan.

Wen Qiao had picked it out herself. Every event Yan Jing attended afterward, he wore this exact suit.

Every time before he wore it, Wen Qiao would iron it thoroughly with a secondhand iron she'd bought.

In an era where fashion still revolved around popular brands, this outfit was Yan Jing's only branded item, even if the brand was only famous in name.

"Have you changed or not?" Wen Qiao pouted, her tears ruining her makeup.

The question had shifted from whether it was him to whether he had changed.

"I've changed."

Yan Jing's eyes were calm.

"Liar!"

Wen Qiao wiped her tears with her hand. "If you've changed, why are you wearing this suit?"

"I know what you want to see, so that's what I wore," Yan Jing said expressionlessly. "I hope you can leave a little happier."

Wen Qiao's tears gradually stopped.

She lowered her head, finally speaking in a soft voice. "Mm, thank you."

"..."

"Mm."

Yan Jing calmly handed her a tissue. "Of course, you could also choose to answer me first. Who exactly are you?"

Wen Qiao took the tissue and wiped her tears. "I won't answer."

The person she was looking for would definitely answer her first.

If he couldn't answer her first, then he wasn't the person she was looking for.

Since the person she sought was no longer around, there was no reason for her to keep living.

That was Wen Qiao's logic.

"What happened to your finger?"

She looked at Yan Jing's index finger, which had some bloody scratches, and asked subconsciously.

"It's nothing."

Yan Jing nodded. "Then let's leave it at that. Do you need me to provide music for this wedding?"

"There's no need." Wen Qiao seemed to have fully regained her composure as she looked at the fog behind Yan Jing. "The person I love and I are both very poor. We don't have the money to hire a pianist."

"Just him and me is enough."

"If you want, you can stay on the side and be an audience member."

"Alright."

Weird Energy gathered in Yan Jing's palm, morphing into a stool.

He sat down.

Beside him, the fog coalesced, and Mu Tian's figure emerged. A chair formed beneath him as well, and he took a seat.

He looked much younger than before. His originally pale white hair had turned jet-black, and the wrinkles on his face had completely vanished. He looked to be in his early thirties at most.

But Yan Jing didn't even glance at him, keeping his eyes entirely on Wen Qiao.

Mu Tian didn't speak either, quietly watching Wen Qiao.

They truly looked like two audience members, completely isolated from the scene.

Wen Qiao reached into the side pocket of her wedding dress, as if fishing for something in an apron, and pulled out a photograph.

In the photo was Yan Jing as a child.

He was reading under a tree, his face in profile, lips pursed in a serious expression.

At the time, Wen Qiao had just gotten a secondhand smartphone with a camera. The two of them had huddled around the phone, studying it for ages, until Wen Qiao finally urged Yan Jing into taking this picture.

Yan Jing hadn't expected Wen Qiao to get the photo printed.

Then, Wen Qiao fumbled clumsily in her pocket again, carefully taking out a flower pieced together from plastic tubes.

Yan Jing remembered the origin of this flower. It was an assignment from one of the few shop classes that hadn't been commandeered for other subjects when he first started high school.

Wen Qiao loved roses. Every Valentine's Day, she would drag him along to browse the flower shops, but she never wanted him to spend money to actually buy one, thinking they were too expensive.

"Better to buy half a jin of meat instead."

Yan Jing had made this flower in shop class and given it to Wen Qiao.

He hadn't expected it to be preserved until now.

"And this..."

Wen Qiao mumbled as she pulled a drawing from her pocket.

The image was a simple stick-figure sketch of two people.

It was from the only time the two of them had ever gone "traveling."

The university Yan Jing attended had a newly built campus, located right on the border between the subordinate county and the urban district.

When Wen Qiao went to drop him off, they happened to see someone sketching at a stall by the school gate.

They spent ten yuan to buy this drawing.

Looking at the drawing, Wen Qiao suddenly burst into a happy smile.

She reached out gently and touched the face of the boy in the drawing, smiling more radiantly than ever.

Finally, she pulled a tin box from her pocket.

It was a tin box used for cookies—the most classic style, a light blue box with pictures of cookies printed on it.

Wen Qiao carefully opened the box and took out two pieces of candy. She placed one in front of their drawing, tore the wrapper off the other, and popped it into her mouth.

She narrowed her eyes in delight.

Over all these years, this was how she had made it through every time.

Whenever she missed that boy, she would eat a piece of the candy he had stored with her.

"I'm coming to find you. Don't be afraid."

She touched the boy's face on the portrait. "Don't be afraid. Big sister is here. I made you wait too long. I'm sorry."

Outside the frame.

Mu Tian turned his head and looked at Yan Jing.

"If you rush up there now, there might still be a final turning point."

"She stayed in that river for far too long. She's practically gone mad."

"People can't always live on memories. It'll drive them crazy."

"It's hard to imagine that she actually held on for so many years just relying on these few things."

Mu Tian was speaking from the bottom of his heart, because the person across from them wasn't the only one who was mad.

He was one of them too.

Yan Jing lowered his gaze. "Isn't this a good thing for you?"

"I'm telling you this out of a friend's advice." Mu Tian let out a yawn. "But if you actually step forward, I'll intervene and stop you."

"I must step into the Tenth Tier, Yan Jing. Like I told you before, your biggest mistake was not killing me back then."

Yan Jing remained calm. "She has already decided. Since she's made her decision, I have no right to change it."

"I have other people who need me. I can't afford to gamble."

"You really don't seem like someone who has entered the River of Time." Mu Tian chuckled. "Then you'd better prepare to lose."

"Yan Jing, you might be confident in fighting a Tenth Tier, but definitely not a Tenth Tier like me."

"Mm. Let's just leave it at that."

Yan Jing's expression was placid.

Mu Tian smiled, seeing through the faint trace of unease beneath Yan Jing's calm exterior.

He was smiling at Yan Jing's lack of candor.

Under both of their gazes, the red threads surrounding Wen Qiao surged at a visible rate, while her body weakened just as rapidly.

The red threads shone brilliantly, dancing wildly in the air. Their explosive vitality carried the power of time, radiating a dazzling, blinding light.

The light was so intense that it even pierced through the walls and penetrated the endless rain and fog, reaching all the way to distant Haidu.

The entire Great Prison saw this flash of red light.

The walls surrounding the three of them were completely destroyed, blasting a massive hole in the Prison Fortress. The three floated in midair, bathed in the red glow.

Wen Qiao carefully cradled those few items in her arms, singing softly in a voice only she could hear: "The tide of last night has retreated this dawn, and the returning fishermen cry out the wind and rain they just braved..."

"A wedding is held in the church; I pass by and feel the sweetness, and it also makes me think of you and me..."

She was genuinely holding a wedding.

Giving herself an answer for thousands of years of waiting, and giving that boy an answer too.

Amidst her singing, her life force gradually withered away. The red threads grew ever more saturated, each one as thick as an arm, until they finally surged toward Yan Jing and Mu Tian.

Mu Tian smiled and reached out, extending his hand toward the red threads.

But an unexpected thing happened. The red threads bypassed his palm entirely. Catching them all off guard, they plunged straight into the center of Yan Jing's brow.

An overwhelming rush of life force instantly flooded into him.

Yan Jing felt the power within his body skyrocket at a terrifying pace. His physical body, which would have normally needed more time to reach the Ninth Tier, instantly crossed the threshold into the Ninth Tier, and it was still continuing to refine itself upwards.

His body had already been tempered by deities twice, obtaining the seed of the deity governing strength. Under normal circumstances, he would have advanced step by step into the Ninth Tier anyway.

Now, that timeframe was drastically shortened.

And in the next second, an even more shocking scene unfolded.

In front of Yan Jing, the System Panel popped up.

[Experience +2.5%, Experience +2.5%, Experience +...]

Yan Jing's experience value shot up from the original 14.44%, directly approaching 80%.

It had been a long time since Yan Jing had encountered a situation that directly granted experience like this. The last time had been when he ate the apple in Yi Ji's room during his very first time entering a Dungeon.

He looked at the source of the red threads. There, Wen Qiao was gradually wrapping herself completely in them.

Her neck, her arms... only a small portion of her face remained exposed. Those eyes were looking at Yan Jing, carrying a faint smile.

This was the wedding she was holding for herself and Yan Jing.

Not for a portrait, not for some pronoun of a boy, but for Yan Jing.

Even if she knew that Yan Jing might have changed, when millions of thoughts flashed through her mind, her only choice in the end was still that boy.

The one standing right across from her.

Those loving words she spoke were meant for the Yan Jing opposite her alone, from beginning to end.

You might have changed, but I still want to say them to you.

I saved these words for a very, very long time, and they are all for you.

Everything was over.

Thousands of years of waiting...

Wen Qiao closed her eyes. She felt so tired; she just wanted to sleep.

Her life was fading, and her consciousness was scattering, but she wore a smile on her face.

She could finally be together with that boy forever in her dreams.

In her daze, the unsmiling boy in white appeared before her eyes again. He stood there, reaching his hand out to her. He held a sunflower and some candy in his hands, smiling faintly at her.

"Big sister is here, Little Jing."

She spoke with a smile.

The next second, the boy pulled her into his embrace.

"You're a coward, Wen He."

Yan Jing spoke softly, saying the name he had held back all this time. "I already told you not to wait anymore. That guy you're waiting for isn't ready yet."

"He was so despicable and cowardly. Back then, he didn't even dare to charge into the fire to die with you. Why would he be willing to gamble everything he has now for you?"

"Fortunately, besides being a coward, he's also greedy and reckless."

"You won."

"I'm a bit braver than you. Just a little bit."

Yan Jing spoke Wen He's name and raised his bleeding right hand, prepared to lose himself in the River.

But nothing happened.

It turned out that this name held back in his heart was so light. Saying it out loud wouldn't change the world, nor would it change anything important.

In Yan Jing's arms, Wen He, finally realizing what was happening, cried so hard she couldn't speak.

She clutched tightly at Yan Jing, as if trying to pour all the tears she had saved over the years into this person's embrace in the final moments of her life.

"Don't look at me, Little Jing... Big sister is so ugly right now..."

This was the reason why she had wrapped herself in the red threads. As her life force withered, her skin had shriveled like a dry sheet of paper. She didn't want her final image in his heart to be such a hideous sight.

Blood trickled from the corners of Wen He's mouth. She couldn't hold on any longer; everything was approaching its end.

Yet she looked at Yan Jing, her tear-filled eyes full of smiles. "Little Jing, you idiot... This time... don't come looking for me anymore..."

"How could you not have charged into the fire back then?"

"If you hadn't charged in, how could big sister have survived?"

"Little Jing, living the rest of those days without you... I was so sad..."

Wen He's words were like a sharp blade, piercing through the fog of memory in Yan Jing's mind, making him remember everything.

He finally understood which part of his memories the River of Time had distorted.

In his memories, he had tried to rush into the fire but was stopped by the firefighters.

But in reality, that hadn't happened.

He had charged in.

He pushed Wen He out of the fire.

His subsequent graduation, his job—they were all just a dying flash of memories playing out in his mind.

What would life without Wen Qiao be like? Perhaps it would be exactly like that...

Following that, he had crossed over into this world amidst the raging flames.

That was why... whenever he thought of that fire, it made him feel so incredibly hot.

"Our Little Jing is the bravest person in this world."

Wen Qiao closed her eyes. Her breath was as weak as a gossamer thread, but her face was serene. "Our Little Jing hasn't changed at all. Little Jing, you lied to me..."

She had never felt so happy for a single moment in her life, even though she was about to die.

"Mm. I lied."

Yan Jing held Wen Qiao. A pill materialized in his hand. He activated the Divine Heart - Earth, peeling away the layer of floating soil to reveal a world-shaking pill hovering in midair.

It possessed the smooth, warm texture of white jade and was crystal clear, with a single drop of blood suspended in its center. The terrifying power it radiated the moment it appeared immediately caused the lightning dragons hidden within the clouds above to surge straight toward Yan Jing.

Immortal Pill: Turbid World. Yan Jing placed the Immortal Pill into Wen Qiao's mouth, his expression calm. "And I also lied about not being afraid of you dying."

He waved his hand, and millions of lightning dragons instantly scattered into nothingness.