Blood Emperor's Lazy Doctor [Under Revision]

Chapter 05: Home (I)

The pelting rain felt like knives across Hong Luo's skin while Mo Meifeng sprinted through the forest. Locked inside in mortal combat, the harsh outside feelings tussled the sensations of reality and dream against one another. Reality painfully beating delusion into the mud, but the hallucination that all this was a dream, being too deeply rooted, although suffered quite heavily, in actuality, it merely bleed out from small scraps and bruises. Not affected in the slightest.

To Hong Luo, the withered and hollowed out Doctor Mozen, everything before her eyes was delirium conjured up at the end of her life. Wishing too strongly for the impossible had sprung forth a fever dream, just as it had done before beneath the corpse riddled banyan tree, the horrific sight that turned a dream into a nightmare. This, before her now, was nothing more than a false reality to soothe her soul as it slowly destroys itself.

Because that's what she had done, she had destroyed her soul, fearing that her life would renew again, terrified to be forced to repeat it on a never ending cycle.

But what if she was over thinking, destroying herself unnecessarily? Well, she wasn't willing to put it to chance. The thought of living again——– was simply too tiring, her exhaustion already at its limit.

Taking hold of the demonic aura in her soul, the dark power inherited from her father, she burned away her existence, erasing herself in hopes to never be reincarnated again, to obliterate any possible likelihood she may ever have. Using the wood aura hidden in her soul, the elven one inherited by her mother, to soothe the damage, to save her world from herself, she used the years worth of accumulated essence to calm the curse, before it had the chance to spread. A linchpin that would also serve for its inevitable end, that she would unfortunately not be there to assure its continued livinghood.

Every tiny detail was planned. Letters were sent out on the backs of her feathery children. Her worldly belongings scattered. Patients handed over. Her death long written off as certain, for even without intervention, it would have ended months later on its own. From the terminal illness even she could not cure. Not like she tried too hard either. A basic understanding was all she sought, nothing more. After all, illnesses were not her forte.

But this——– wasn't planned.

The world she never thought to see again, the faces she raced off to lay eyes on before it all fades to black. And the flickering life holding tight to her back, the one she regretted long into her proceeding life. She'd never forgotten him. The foolish, silly, adorable man who kept a broken child company as she was slowly slipping away, holding her to his own deteriorating body until she breathed no longer.

She glanced back at the dying man she never knew the name of, and lifted her lips into the first true smile she's had in years. "For however long this dream may last, I will spend it saving you, even though your existence is not real. You, my heaviest of regrets and my sweetest of memories." The whisper lost to the rain.

And like that, a reason to see this dream to the end had been formed, a piece of driftwood to keep her from drowning if the illusion were to ever break. But would it be enough? Or will she shatter along with the dream and step off the ledge into the awaiting abyss? Afraid only time will tell.

Barely without notice there's a break in the rain, the heavy pelting turned into light drizzle. Hong Luo turned back forward, just in time for Mo Meifeng to break through the forest, with Mo Yin close behind. They slow and come to a steady trot, Mo Yin takes the lead, walking around a building right along the garden pathway, though a poor excuse it was, as no flowers could be seen no matter how far they went.

Eventually they come to halt on one of many small mounds littering the front yard.

Dim lighted and mist hangs at the ground, a humble home with its foundation raised greets them amidst the rain. There stood three buildings combined into one, though oddly enough the rightmost one is half there, only partially built with planks of wood and tools sitting to the side. It was obvious that the one who placed them, for whatever reason had left, and had planned to return soon after to finish up. Yet with moss growing over the wood, leaves filling the toolbox, and hammers partially buried, the one who had gone, never managed to return.