Chapter 203: Chapter 203: We Also Have a Daughter
"I haven’t been controlled." Jiang Che fixed his gaze on him, once again repeating those words.
Leng Feng seemed a little dazed; he could feel the Dark Star energy inside him suddenly growing restless. The black veins on his skin twisted and squirmed like serpents.
He instantly pressed a hand against the center of his forehead.
A moment later, that restless energy finally calmed down.
This seemed to be what he and Jiang Che had discussed—a method to temporarily break free from control.
Leng Feng let go of his hand. He once again fished out the already shriveled pack of cigarettes from his pocket, mechanically reaching inside with his fingers.
Not long ago, he’d smoked the last cigarette.
Now, his two fingers pinched nothing, nothing came out at all.
He had considered many possibilities—the one he hadn’t thought of was that Jiang Che hadn’t been controlled.
Because to him, everything about Jiang Che was disturbingly strange, showing not a single trace of human behavior.
Even dealing with Long Yun, he’d acted cold and heartless.
Just as Long Yun said, Jiang Che’s actions didn’t resemble those of a human at all—more like those of an evil spirit.
But now, Jiang Che denied it, and Leng Feng had checked for himself.
The result: indeed, there was nothing there.
But if he wasn’t controlled by an evil spirit, how did Jiang Che walk out of that SSS-level dungeon, escape the so-called Six-Star Pond, make it through Rule Dungeon No. 1?
Was it really just because of his strength?
Or was it luck—unprecedented and unrepeatable?
No matter how much you dilute a bowl of water, you can’t hide the fact it once had a drop of ink in it.
The ink just becomes sparse, but it doesn’t disappear.
"You..." Leng Feng opened his mouth, but the words that flooded his mind were all stuck in his throat.
"I..." He slumped onto the hospital bed, staring at the sealed room, and the cold, pale overhead light.
He only felt dizzy and disoriented. So Jiang Che telling humanity how to create dungeons was all true—it all came from his own intention.
Suddenly, Leng Feng recalled what Jiang Che had just said: ’This isn’t Ning’s task.’
"Then who is this Ning you mentioned?"
"Ning is, as you called her, the Lord of Dungeon No. 9—my wife." Jiang Che didn’t hide Ding Ning’s information.
Leng Feng: ...?
No. 9 Dungeon? Lord? Wife?
He knew each of these words, but jumbled together, they suddenly became incomprehensible.
He looked at Jiang Che sitting naturally across from him. In this ward conjured by Spiritual Power, Jiang Che seemed more at ease than himself.
"So, you mean, you have a wife in Dungeon No. 9? And she’s the Lord—and she didn’t hurt you?" He remembered Jiang Che’s livestream; he’d watched that footage countless times.
In the video, Jiang Che did have a wife, and a daughter, and parents labeled as extremely dangerous.
When he finished the video, like everyone else, he thought Jiang Che was lucky.
Because he left the evil spirits’ side during their torment, somehow survived, and, by some miracle, escaped the dungeon.
Once you leave the dungeon, even if those evil spirits want to chase Jiang Che, they’d have to wait for the Hunt to arrive and capture him.
But Jiang Che never acted against the evil spirits inside the dungeon.
The evil spirits wouldn’t hound an ordinary person; Jiang Che simply slipped out, miraculously surviving until now.
Everyone tagged him as "lucky."
So when people later discovered he survived the nearly all-destroyed Six-Star Pond dungeon, they immediately applied the label of lucky survivor to him.
No video had ever emerged from the Six-Star Pond dungeon.
But Jiang Che’s first entrance was replayed in that livestream.
No matter how many times he watched it, he never believed the murderous intent in the evil spirits’ eyes was fake.
"Yes, and we have an adorable daughter." When Jiang Che mentioned Tuantuan, his eyes softened with a smile.
Leng Feng recognized the tenderness on Jiang Che’s face. Before the weirdness had descended, he’d seen that same look on many fathers—when speaking of their children, the warmth always showed.
Hearing Jiang Che’s words, Leng Feng hugged his stomach, laughing so hard he leaned from the sky to the ground.
If he harmed humans, kept sending seeds to Dark Star, it wasn’t by choice—it was an order he had to obey.
He only struggled to resist within that necessity, plotting rebellion, searching for freedom—hoping someday to shed the collar from his neck.
But Jiang Che’s actions were by choice.
The harm he did to humans now was all voluntary, no one forced him, there was never a chain around his neck.
"Are you saying the little girl in the stream—the one with filthy, sand-caked intestines who nearly strangled you—she’s your daughter? That Little Evil Spirit, whose smile almost splits her face from ear to ear, she’s your daughter?"
Tears nearly ran from his eyes as he laughed; he didn’t know whether he had gone mad, or the world had.
"Which of those evil spirits didn’t want you dead?"
"And you actually consider them your family?"
"So, has humanity ever truly wronged you? You actually don’t count evil spirits’ actions as harm?" He practically roared these words.
But as soon as the words left his lips, he froze.
Because he remembered Jiang Che’s past, the records from Red Pearl Mental Hospital.
He knew Jiang Che had endured numerous matches and bone marrow transplants since childhood.
The most recent—he’d lost a kidney. Leng Feng wondered if, lifting Jiang Che’s shirt, you could still see the patchwork wound on his lower back.
Compared with what evil spirits did, their harm almost paled into insignificance.
No matter how much killing intent those evil spirits showed in the stream, Jiang Che had never suffered such real, tangible wounds.
He even gained skills; the evil spirits helped him kill those who wanted him dead.
To him, Red Pearl Mental Hospital was like a deep well.
Maybe, once, he had stood at the rim calling for help.
His cries echoed down the winding wall of the shaft, reverberating until fading away without any answer.
Who knew why the evil spirits recruited Jiang Che—but clearly, Jiang Che didn’t need to worry about allegiances.
"So... are you on the evil spirits’ side?" Leng Feng really wanted a cigarette now.
"Since you’re on the evil spirits’ side, what’s your purpose in telling everyone to create dungeons?"
"Is it revenge on all humanity?" Leng Feng let out a faint laugh, the sorrow flickering and quickly extinguished in his eyes—a kind of indescribable defeat. At the moment Jiang Che was found not to be controlled, a surge of joy welled up in his heart.
He’d always believed that when things reach the extreme, they reverse; when misfortune peaks, good fortune follows.
After learning Jiang Che wasn’t controlled, he even felt this was the dawn of hope for humanity.
"Ning said I don’t need to stand on any side. I just need to take care of myself."
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