Raising a Wife in a Supernatural World [Infinite] – CH23

Chapter 23: Spook High (23)

Seeing the youth practically curled into a crimson shrimp beneath the onslaught of his words, Qin Fu’an showed no intention of letting him off lightly.

Free from the clinging tentacles, he lightly brushed off the nonexistent dust from his school uniform, the corners of his mouth curving upward as he let out a leisurely sigh into the freezing wind: “Student Xie, who knew that in your eyes, I was quite so delectable?”

“…” Xie Yunhuai had already quietly clamped his hands over his ears.

As long as he couldn’t hear, none of Qin Fu’an’s absurd nonsense could affect him in the slightest.

Noticing that the boy’s ears and neck were flushed a deep crimson, and that his entire body was curled into a small, rigid, defensive knot looking thoroughly bullied and pitiful, Qin Fu’an raised a silent brow.

Yet before he could utter another teasing remark that might tempt Xie Yunhuai to flee the instance overnight, a ravenous, frenzied head slid ghostlike from the narrow, darkened stairwell hatch.

It locked onto the pair sitting against the wall in an instant. Hollow, blood-smeared eyes curved into a grotesque, twisted arc brimming with manic bloodlust.

The next second, it surged toward them with breakneck speed, its elongated neck spooling across the rooftop at a skin-crawling length, its cavernous maw gaping wide as it snapped straight toward Xie Yunhuai.

The split second that spectral horror manifested, both Qin Fu’an and Xie Yunhuai had snapped onto high alert. As the head—bearing no resemblance to the Dean in face, yet wielding the exact same horrifying anatomy—lunged their way, Qin Fu’an was the first on his feet, grasping a steel desk leg in hand.

“Watch out!” Xie Yunhuai blurted out an urgent warning, his gaze sweeping their surroundings to guard against any identical horrors that might scale the rooftop edges.

The moment Xie Yunhuai’s warning left his lips, Qin Fu’an’s steel pipe bypassed the creature’s snapping jaw, swinging down with crushing force onto the elongated neck dragging across the ground behind it.

Crack—!

A sickening crunch tore through the air. The steel pipe in Qin Fu’an’s grip bent into a pronounced arc, yet the creature absorbed the full brunt of the devastating strike. Its snake-like, raised head crashed limply against the concrete, and its neck began squirming frantically in an attempt to retract, writhing like a serpent struck clean through its seven-inch fatal point.

“Since you’re already here, what’s the rush to leave?” Qin Fu’an murmured in a dark, gravelly drawl. Even as the words began, the deformed steel rod smashed ruthlessly into the exact same spot a second time.

“—!!” The monster let out an agonizing, choked shriek. It thrashed in wild convulsions around its nearly severed neck, the glare it locked onto Qin Fu’an burning with sharp, venomous hatred.

Hideous. Utterly hideous.

With raw revulsion, Qin Fu’an swung the pipe down and pulverized its hollow, gaping eyes.

“Stretching your neck out that long, raising your head up to bite people…” Qin Fu’an’s brow knotted in deep displeasure. Planting his foot down onto the flattened, pulverized skull oozing a slurry of red and white matter, he clicked his tongue in dark, disgusted mockery: “If you want to imitate a snake, you have to be ready to have your seven-inch mark snapped in half.”

Besides, he refused to acknowledge this grotesque parody of a human snake, meaning he had to formally revoke its serpentine status right here and now!

No one had anticipated that Qin Fu’an would strike with such ruthless finality, aiming straight for the kill on the first blow without a shred of the polite diplomacy he had shown the anomalies during the day.

During daylight hours, he had used that silver tongue of his to play half the school’s horrors like fiddles, swindling himself into an acting teacher role and walking away with items from the campus store.

When night fell, it was only natural for the anomalies to turn feral. But for Qin Fu’an to turn even more savage and bloodthirsty than the horrors themselves was something neither the players nor the livestream viewers had seen coming.

It seemed that from the moment he stepped downstairs and ran into Teacher Zhang, he had discarded every scrap of mercy.

With the immediate crisis resolved, Xie Yunhuai kept his grip firm on his weapon, showing no surprise at Qin Fu’an’s brutality.

Perhaps in his eyes, this was simply who Qin Fu’an truly was. The daytime Qin Fu’an… had merely worn a deceptive, calculating skin.

The real Qin Fu’an was no glib, laid-back orator; he was a humanoid monster dyed in fresh gore and built upon a mountain of bleached bones.

“Next time you talk behind my back, Student Xie, try keeping a leash on those loud-mouthed soul fragments of yours first.”

Qin Fu’an’s lazy, amused voice drifted into his ear once more.

Xie Yunhuai froze. Facing away from Qin Fu’an, his breathing slowed to a soft hush, and as if resigning himself to fate, he slowly closed his eyes.

He had forgotten.

Yet now Qin Fu’an had dragged it back to the surface.

Not just the fact that he had cursed Qin Fu’an in the privacy of his mind.

Rather… what Qin Fu’an had murmured while covering his eyes earlier.

The part where Qin Fu’an had said that more than his soul…

Xie Yunhuai’s breath caught as the realization hit: every word of it had been the truth.

“I wasn’t insulting you. I was just… trying to compliment you.”

“I wanted to say that your soul… I’m quite fond of them.”

“…as their master, you’re far more endearing than they are.”

The frantic, delayed fluttering of his heart, and that belated, breathless shudder of helplessness, left Xie Yunhuai entirely unable to turn around and face the man who had spoken those words.

His fingers curled tightly into fists, yet between ragged breaths, he could not quell the chaotic, aching cadence in his chest.

It wasn’t a flutter of romantic affection, but the sudden, staggering realization that Qin Fu’an was treating Xie Yunhuai well without asking for a single thing in return.

Xie Yunhuai had encountered countless “deskmates.” Some had watched with cold detachment as he perished; some had shoved him from high ledges with their own hands; others had recognized his anomaly, trying desperately to pamper him only to recruit and exploit him as a shield.

Xie Yunhuai had tasted every shade of emotion from those people—good and bad, cold indifference, patronizing pity, and veiled malice.

Yet in his eyes, every single one of them had harbored an agenda, striving with all their might to extract something of value from him.

Eventually, Xie Yunhuai had begun dying earlier and earlier in each run, speaking less and less to his “deskmates,” until even those calculated, transactional “kindnesses” vanished completely.

Qin Fu’an’s arrival had shattered that cold, distant isolation, forcibly closing the gap between them. In the span of a single day, he had crossed Xie Yunhuai’s boundaries uninvited more times than he could count.

Xie Yunhuai had assumed Qin Fu’an was just like the others, seeking some hidden prize.

Powerless to resist that blazing warmth drawing near, he had shamefully pushed it away only to accept it in the same breath, clinging to a thread of cold reason as he calculated whether what he received was equal to the price that would eventually be demanded of him.

Even when Qin Fu’an had taken that bite for him, Xie Yunhuai hadn’t wavered much; at most, he had resolved to concede a little more during their inevitable transaction down the line.

He had planned it out so neatly, blind to the fact that the scales were already tipping in silence.

Right up until Qin Fu’an covered his eyes, trapping him between that warm frame and the icy brick wall, murmuring those bizarre, gentle words with a soft chuckle.

Right up until this very moment, when Xie Yunhuai finally, belatedly felt the delicate, enveloping tenderness woven into every single syllable.

The scales crashed down completely toward the side bearing the name Qin Fu’an.

It turned out that someone truly could, with nothing more than a few words, pile an infinite weight onto their side of the scale.

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