2: Underneath A Thousand Skies

268 Reality (24)

The dream he wanted for so long, the two of them standing in front of an altar declaring their love for each other and becoming lifelong partners, was no longer an impossibility.

During their wedding night, he wanted to call her with the title of being his wife before completely joining their bodies together. It would be a complete and perfect union.

"Hk!"

Xu Jinhai suddenly bent forward in pain, gritting his teeth. The redness in his eyes flickered like flames, burning brighter and nearly covering the ice-blue color of his irises.

"Don't you dare...!"

But it was too late. Like fire growing quickly as it devoured everything in its path, the redness in his eyes flared and exploded. He dropped his hands to the floor to steady himself, heaving deep breaths. After a while, the corners of his lips lifted upwards.

"I finally came out of his control. I guess that gatekeeper is beginning to disappear."

The corners of Xiang Feng's lips curved upwards, and a cold laugh with a twisted mirth in it echoed inside the bathroom. Had anyone heard it, it would surely fill their hearts with fear. It was a laugh that seemed to be cruel, however what was terrifying about it was the degree of sadness and heartache that it contained.

"I wasn't able to do this before, but I will make sure to be able to do it now. Not even my present reincarnation will be able to stop me."

Xiang Feng raised his head and Song Jia's peaceful sleeping face entered his gaze. Each of her features was reflected on his dilated pupils. His heart was squeezed tightly, and that heart-clamping pain and intense feeling of heartache made him clench his hands into fists. Except for Song Jia, he could see nothing else.

It wasn't only Zhao Cheng who waited to see her all this time.

It wasn't only him that imagined living together with her, getting married with her, sleeping on the same bed with her, brushing their teeth together, creating a family and a life together.

He wasn't the only one! Xiang Feng's eyes trembled for a moment, and he pressed his lips tightly together. Just because that bastard gave up on her didn't mean he had to give up his chance with her as well.

Xiang Feng didn't know why he could no longer recall some other parts of his memory, but he was confident that he was about to propose to Song Jia. Unfortunately, after he killed the crown princess, he could no longer recall what happened later.

Xiang Feng drove his palms into his eye sockets from the intense headache of trying to recall his memories.

"Jia...."

Xiang Feng leaned over the bathtub and pressed his face close to her, leaving only an inch of space between them. She was only asleep, he couldn't wake her up yet. Hungrily, he devoured her with his gaze. All uncomfortable feelings disappeared when he inhaled her flowery scent, which had long been deeply integrated into his bones.

His twisted expression of both heartache and happiness made him look like a demon. However, Xiang Feng was a sober lunatic.

What he wanted was not a moment of her, but everything of her, from the moment she woke up from this bathtub up to the moment that she would close her eyes for the last time.

He wanted everything that she had, monopolizing each and every one of her expressions and words, loving her body until neither of them could determine where one began and the other ended. These kinds of desires had fermented inside Xiang Feng for too long, and it was about to explode.

What was the meaning of being a past incarnation? What did it mean that he couldn't be with Song Jia because he was just the remaining dregs of a memory? Why should Xu Jinhai be the one to marry her?

Why should he be the one to let go and move on?

Who decided these kind of things!

Letting go of her after loving her with all of his being...what was he supposed to do? Without her, what was he supposed to be?

Seeing Song Jia interacting happily with Xu Jinhai and even opening her heart to him, Xiang Feng felt a searing pain that felt as if all the blood in his body had turned corrosive, tearing at him. Jealousy burned like acid in his stomach, bubbling up with suppressed agitation.

He wanted to kill!

This intense feeling of irritability inside his heart, he wanted to vent it through murder and destruction. He felt pain, so in order to keep himself a little bit sane, other people should also share his agony and suffer with him.

Since childhood, it was the only way he knew how to dealt with these intense emotions that was strangling him. If he was injured, it was better to inflict the same injury to others. That way, they wouldn't be able to harm him anymore.

"Jia, why wasn't I the one? Because I was only a job mission for you, you erected a high wall between us, completely isolating yourself from me. I love you just as much as him, so why...why? Why isn't it me?"

There was a tremor in his voice that betrayed the depth of his emotions.  Xiang Feng closed his eyes and pressed his face on the side of the bathtub, regaining control of his composure.

"It doesn't matter. If you don't like the person I am, then as long as you love me, I don't care what kind of person I have to be. If the one you like is him, then..."

Xiang Feng knew that he couldn't win over Song Jia by being violent. Just like his repulsive scar from before, his sadistic nature disgusted normal people. If Song Jia didn't like him, then he can pretend to be another person for her. Anything and everything didn't matter, as long as she stayed beside him.

He didn't care about other people or the world, or even his other incarnations and future lives. He had been an abandoned person since childhood, so he never really felt like he lost anything. He never cared for anything either.

That was why, he could never let go of Song Jia. For Xiang Feng, she was his whole world. Even if they pried his hands apart and tried to separate them, he would never agree.

When he was still being sent by Song Jia to the village school, he once heard the story of the spider's thread from his teacher. It was a story about how Buddha, in a random act of kindness, decided to lower a shining golden thread into hell in order to give a single criminal a chance at redemption. However, the criminal was so greedy that he kicked off every other person that tried to climb it. In the end, because of his selfish heart, the thread broke and he didn't have a chance to go to Paradise.

After Song Jia rescued him from that perverted guard in the slave camp, she was like a ray of sunlight breaking into his dark world. A golden spider's thread of salvation.

And like the criminal, Xiang Feng knew the depth of his own selfishness. It didn't matter if he climbed out of hell or not; what mattered was that she was beside him.

He didn't need the forgiveness of Buddha, nor for his sins to be forgiven. From start to finish, he only wanted one thing.

He only wanted her.

Even if he truly became a monster to achieve it.