The old shaman had asked that man if he needed to do anything else. That man had only said, “Let them struggle. That wolf won’t die so easily. I’ll come back again in two months.”
Thinking of this, the shaman didn’t continue to pursue the matter of those wolf demons being so useless today with Ruan Qiuqiu’s matter.
Lin Xun saw that the old shaman’s expression had improved, and he asked, “Shaman, do you still want Guo-er to introduce her to the humans in the tribe?”
The shaman was silent for a moment, then he shook his head. “Never mind that.”
He had originally found that human girl pitiful. Thinking that she would die in less than two months, he had wanted to help her. However, now that Ruan Qiuqiu had offended so many wolf demons and humans and told them that she had been infected with the curse, there was no need to help her.
In such a cruel winter, Yuan Jue might be able to survive it because of his special blood, but it was unlikely that she would. Whether Ruan Qiuqiu survived or not, what did that have to do with the Fire Wolf Tribe? She was just a chess piece that had jumped into the pit herself. It didn’t matter if she lived or died.
—
The chess piece Qiuqiu, who was ignored and thought about by several people, was currently lying on the inside part of the stone bed and beside Mr. Gray Wolf.
Although her altered spiritual energy and the fiend energy in his body were entangled together and she would feel his pain and hunger from time to time, once Ruan Qiuqiu became accustomed to the pain, her exhaustion won out and she fell asleep despite the pain.
She had fallen asleep, but Yuan Jue, whose pain had been alleviated by a lot, slowly woke up.
He was so hungry that his stomach had gone numb a long time, but now he had the warm feeling of a full stomach. The pain from the injuries that had gotten inflamed and infected had also lessened.
Spiritual energy hovered around his damaged demon core, suppressing the fiend energy. It was a pure form of spiritual energy that belonged to Ruan Qiuqiu.
His disappointing heart heated up again. Yuan Jue moved his right hand, which was warmer than the rest of his body, and came into contact with Ruan Qiuqiu’s cold fingertips.
He felt as if he had been scalded. His face gradually turned red, and his ears trembled unnaturally.
She… She held his hand.
Mr. Gray Wolf didn’t dare to move. He laid his hand flat as if he had been paralzyed, letting Ruan Qiuqiu leave her much smaller hand on his.
The place where their skins touched gradually grew hot. Yuan Jue opened his long and narrow eyes. Although he couldn’t see anything, he still instinctively turned his head towards her in the dark cave.
He could smell Ruan Qiuqiu’s scent. It was the fresh smell of someone that had taken a bath.
Right. She had taken a bath today.
She had also, maybe, hinted something at him.
But… he was such an embarrassing wolf. He had actually fainted from pain.
His palm was pressed against Ruan Qiuqiu’s. He could feel her exquisite, pleasant-to-touch skin.
A question popped into his head, and his heart beat faster. Had his tail’s softness and warmness met her expectations?
Thinking of the sensation when her fingertips touched his furry tail, Yuan Jue faintly blushed.
He pressed his lips tightly together. Slowly, shamelessly, he quietly raised his fingers on the hand that was underneath Ruan Qiuqiu’s. Wrapping his hand around Ruan Qiuqiu’s, Yuan Jue felt as if his mind had gone blank. Heat quickly spread over his body. He giddly thought, so that’s what it felt like to be intimate with his little wife?
No wonder those demons liked to copulate so much.
Yuan Jue didn’t know what was wrong with him, but his heart wasn’t beating at normal rate.
Reason told him that it wasn’t okay to take advantage. There was no difference between the him that was secretly touching Ruan Qiuqiu’s and those hoodlum wolf demons!
He was probably an inherently very perverted wolf. He knew that he was going too far, and yet he still decided to be shameless. He tightly held the hand that Ruan Qiuqiu had slipped underneath his animal skin blanket.
She was the one that held his hand first. She was the one that slipped her hand underneath his animal skin blanket…
Translator Ramblings: For Yuan Jue to have the same misunderstanding/lack of knowledge as Mo Yu, I wonder if that means he hasn’t had close contact with anyone since he was a child, so that childhood misunderstanding/lack of knowledge never got corrected. It was mentioned earlier in the story that there were people who were nice to him at one point, and he suspected that he was somehow stealing their life force. I assumed that once he noticed that happening, he would have purposely avoided getting close to anyone at a young age.
On that note, I think his lack of social contact with others explains his inability to talk things through with Ruan Qiuqiu. He hasn’t learn how to moderate or cope with his emotions, so he always vacillating between the extremes of elation of having a companion and debilitating trepidation of losing her and guilt that he’s not being more selfless by asking her leave. And, he has no idea how to break that cycle.
While Ruan Qiuqiu has a relatively simple character development that’s already been accomplished – becoming more courageous and relying on herself instead of a protector – and the rest of her journey is external in the form of making new friends and exploring this fantasy primitive world, Yuan Jue’s progress is mostly internal and will be much harder.
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