A few seconds later, Ran Qingmo plummeted from the sky holding a gigantic white tiger, slamming it heavily onto the ground.
The white tiger's massive body, two zhang long, was like an oversized cat in Ran Qingmo's grip. Pinned down by the scruff of its neck, it could not move an inch.
Ran Qingmo released her hold, pointed at the tiger sprawled on the ground, and walked toward Xu Yuan, asking softly,
"Will it... do?"
Xu Yuan said nothing.
He watched as the great tiger quietly lifted its head after she let go, a pair of slitted pupils glaring malevolently at Ran Qingmo's back.
In the next moment,
The great white tiger attempted to use its own life to demonstrate before Ran Qingmo what it meant to demand "give me liberty or give me death."
The gigantic white tiger lunged violently at the slender, graceful figure of the woman—only for Ran Qingmo to swing her scabbard backhanded, clobbering it right over the skull.
In that instant,
Xu Yuan faintly glimpsed the dazed, soul-departing gaze in the white tiger's eyes as it sailed through the air.
*Boom!*
The tiger's colossal frame became a blur as it flew backward, crashing violently into the roots of a hundred-meter-tall tree dozens of meters away.
Ran Qingmo halted her steps toward Xu Yuan, glanced back at the tiger, and murmured with a hint of disappointment,
"Seems like it won't do yet..."
Telling Xu Yuan softly, "Wait a moment," she held her sword and strode toward the billowing dust.
After a brief silence, a white blur burst from the swirling cloud of dust. But this time, it did not pounce toward Ran Qingmo; instead, it scrambled and tumbled in a desperate bid to flee into the depths of the forest.
*Human woman. Terrifying. Must run.*
Ran Qingmo kicked off the ground, her figure vanishing on the spot.
*Bang!*
A dull thud shattered the quiet forest, startling a flock of birds into flight.
Ran Qingmo landed steadily. Glancing at the motionless tiger whose head had been hammered into the dirt, she silently grabbed the fur on its head and dragged it slowly toward Xu Yuan.
Watching the scene unfold, Xu Yuan's eyelid twitched.
Coming to a stop, Ran Qingmo nodded to Xu Yuan.
"It should do now. Go ahead and try."
Xu Yuan opened his mouth, then glanced at the great white tiger lying prone on the ground.
The white tiger's eyes were half-squinted, clearly playing dead, its gaze fixed on Xu Yuan with a hint of a warning.
Demonic beasts all possessed intelligence, varying only in degree. By this point, the great white tiger understood that this terrifying human woman intended to give it as a mount to the human man before it.
Xu Yuan paused for a moment. Trusting in Ran Qingmo's strength, he still walked toward the tiger sprawled on the ground, step by step.
The moment he drew near,
The tiger opened its half-closed eyes and stared at Xu Yuan, slightly raising its head as a warning growl rumbled in its throat:
*"Roar..."*
*A warrior can be killed, but never disgraced.*
*Bang!*
Hearing the sound, the woman standing beside it struck with her scabbard without hesitation.
*"Awooo..."* Following its instincts for self-preservation, the tiger dutifully lowered its head.
Seeing this, Xu Yuan grabbed the tiger's fur and clambered onto its back.
Its fur was sleek, soft, and fluffy, pleasant to the touch, evoking the sensation of petting a cat in his past life.
Xu Yuan tried patting the tiger's head a couple of times, only to feel several large, swollen bumps.
*"Roar..."* The tiger bared its fangs and growled softly.
*Bang!* Another bump was added.
*"Whimper..."* The tiger submissively flattened its head against the ground.
Ran Qingmo slowly withdrew her scabbard and said softly,
"Let's go."
With that, she glanced sideways at the tiger.
At Ran Qingmo's glance, Xu Yuan felt the great white tiger beneath him tremble. It didn't rush to get up, but instead first rubbed its head against the hem of Ran Qingmo's black robes.
Seeing this, Xu Yuan felt like laughing. But just as the corners of his lips curved upward, a tightness in his chest, mingled with a faint itching sensation, suddenly spread through his heart.
"..."
The smile vanished, and Xu Yuan frowned.
Over the past two days, he had experienced this itching sensation several times.
It was likely an addictive craving brought on by the original host's substance abuse. As long as he endured it for seven or eight minutes, the feeling would naturally subside.
The thought had barely crossed his mind, and Xu Yuan was about to ask to delay their departure for a moment, but before the words could leave his mouth, the itch inside his chest suddenly spread like a wild pathological outbreak, transforming within seconds into a maddening craving.
A suffocating tightness instantly caused Xu Yuan's vision to go black.
Instinctively, Xu Yuan gripped the tiger's sleek fur to steady himself, but waves of dizziness surged through him. His once straight back bowed little by little, and his hand clutching the fur slowly lost its strength and slipped free as his body tumbled helplessly to the side.
Ran Qingmo noticed his abnormality immediately. Flickering forward, she caught Xu Yuan just before he hit the ground, her delicate brows slightly furrowed.
"What's wrong?"
Xu Yuan's vision was swimming in darkness. He opened his mouth to speak, but a metallic, coppery taste violently surged up his throat.
*Blegh...*
He vomited a mouthful of fresh blood onto the brown soil. The overwhelming misery made Xu Yuan instinctively push Ran Qingmo away, letting himself collapse onto one knee.
His consciousness blurred. The agony and suffocating craving drove Xu Yuan to dig his fingers deep into the earth.
*There is something wrong with this body.*
*A pain that felt carved into the depths of the soul couldn't possibly be the result of drugs.*
Xu Yuan rapidly searched his memory for information regarding his original host, Xu Changtian, but no matter how many times he turned it over in his mind, he found no clues whatsoever.
Neither the setting guidebooks, the game's plotlines, nor the related novels contained any record of the original host suffering from such symptoms, let alone any explanation for them.
*Could it be... the world's automatic completion?*
A thought flashed through Xu Yuan's mind.
Even if Cangyuan possessed tens of millions of words of text, it was still far too little to account for an entire world; the blank spaces left unwritten would naturally be filled in and completed on their own.
*But why would the world's completion give the original host such a condition?!*
Xu Yuan tried to analyze and search for clues within his mind, but his consciousness was already fading. The heavy weight of his eyelids forced him to shut his eyes in agony...
Who knew how much time had passed, but when he opened his eyes again, the stars had shifted, and the morning sun was long gone.
Through the gaps between his fingers, Xu Yuan could faintly see a bright moon hanging beyond the canopy alongside a sky full of stars. He stared blankly at the night sky for a long time, the memories from before he lost consciousness rushing back like a tide.
Frowning slightly, Xu Yuan sat up at once and touched his chest, still shaken. Yet the source of that agony that had gripped his chest was completely gone.
"Awake?"
The woman's cool, detached voice drew Xu Yuan's attention. Turning his gaze, he immediately saw the woman in black resting her eyes in a familiar posture beside a tree.
Xu Yuan looked around.
His surroundings had changed completely from before he passed out. The towering giant trees reminiscent of Pandora's forests in Avatar were gone, replaced by barren, snow-capped mountains.
It seemed that while he was unconscious, Ran Qingmo had carried him a great distance.
Xu Yuan rubbed between his brows and asked softly, "How long was I out?"
"Four days," Ran Qingmo replied.
Xu Yuan was somewhat surprised. "I was out for that long?"
After a pause, Xu Yuan reined in his surprise. Recalling the symptoms before his blackout, a shadow fell across his eyes.
Now that he was awake, remembering the horrifying pain rooted in his marrow and that suffocating sensation, Xu Yuan was even more certain that drug abuse could not have caused such a condition.
Given the personality of his original host's father, if anyone dared supply him with such a lethal drug, all nine generations of their clan would have been wiped out.
*Could it be a special physique?*
As a traditional Chinese-style xianxia work, Cangyuan featured physiques belonging to life's natural winners—things like Sword Embryo Spirit Bodies or Dao Soul Divine Bones. Yet no matter how he thought about it, none of them matched his current condition.
Xu Yuan knitted his brows, pondering the cause.
As he was lost in thought, the woman beside him quietly opened her clear, aloof eyes, and her calm voice drifted over from his side:
"Has your Rejection Syndrome ended?"
Chapter 10