Favorite of the Beast-world: I Got Rich Through Farming-Chapter 382 - 255: Unwilling to Give Her to Others and Her Crisis
Ze Sheng was completely unable to control the frantic emotions roiling within him. He didn’t even hear what she was saying, his gaze fixed, mesmerized, on her face, which was gently kissed by the moonlight.
A hint of worry was hidden beneath her gentle expression. Her silvery-white, curly hair shimmered with a captivating luster, its strands dancing in the thin, cool air.
"..." His expression was dark, his breathing ragged. A thousand thoughts, his very soul, trembled with an irrepressible joy.
His fingers twitched. He fought back the urge to pull her into his arms, and this restraint, this self-control, was driving him mad.
’How many years has it been?’ This meeting wasn’t an illusion, nor was it an ethereal dream.
He could truly see her, alive and real. He could feel the warmth radiating from her so vividly—she wasn’t just some intangible, untouchable phantom.
"I got separated from Mi Yin and the others. Do you know the way out of here?" An Jin’s lips curved into a light smile as she looked at him, her earlier worry quickly blown away by the breeze.
She was undoubtedly studying the expression of the man before her.
The female’s gentle voice snapped him back to reality. Ze Sheng tried to pull his searing gaze from her face, but found it impossible.
He reached out and caressed her fair, beautiful face.
An Jin’s eyes widened in sheer astonishment. Strangely, however, her body had no conscious impulse to resist. The touch, both familiar and strange, sparked a sense of inexplicable nostalgia within her.
"Are you lost? It’s alright, I can lead you out." His smile was gentle and warm as he met her gaze. The slight drawl in his tone held a bewitching quality.
It was as if no hardship, no matter how great, was more than a trivial matter to him.
He leaned down slightly. His right hand lovingly traced the line of her brow and eyes, while his other hand rested on her waist. "..." For a split second, An Jin’s body tensed in shock, thinking he was about to embrace her. But after a brief pause, he simply took her hand.
He gently but firmly clasped her slender hand, lacing their fingers together, then turned and led her forward.
More moonlight pierced the dark clouds, spilling across the land. The air was cold and still. A thin layer of frost crept over the rough tree trunks and lush ferns, making them seem to droop listlessly.
An awe-inspiring power silently encroached upon the space.
The man walked at a slow, deliberate pace. It seemed he was intentionally waiting for her, or perhaps... he wasn’t in a hurry to leave. This place, a trap that could corrode one’s mind, was like a leisurely post-dinner stroll to him.
An Jin turned her head to look at his coolly handsome profile. His features were refined and striking, his eyelashes long. His waterfall of long, silvery-white hair seemed to flow with the cool moonlight.
He was so beautiful it was almost impossible to look away.
Hand in hand with him, she followed closely by his side. A strange sense of peace and reliance spread rapidly through the depths of her soul, leaving her feeling both odd and out of control. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞
"Have we met before?" she suddenly asked, sensing that things weren’t so simple. "I don’t know why... I-I feel an indescribable sense of familiarity with you. Actually, before I met you for the first time, I had a series of dreams..."
"The person in my dreams... I think it was you." She bit her lip, a conflicted look flashing in her eyes.
"You dreamed of me?" The man chuckled playfully, as if he’d heard something amusing, but An Jin felt his body stiffen slightly. The large hand holding hers also tightened its grip.
"Yes." She nodded, the pain in her wrist making her frown slightly. She found it strange that this was the second time Ze Sheng had lost control of his emotions.
If before it could be chalked up to coincidence or something else, this strange sense of familiarity was now far too strong for her to ignore.
"What if I told you that *was* me? Wa... Ah Jin?" He suddenly spun around, gripping her wrist even tighter. He loomed over her, his presence overwhelming as he locked his eyes with hers.
An Jin felt a faint sense of breathlessness.
She placed a hand on her chest and took a deep breath, then looked up and demanded:
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Our relationship isn’t that simple." ’Before,’ he thought, ’I could deceive myself into thinking An Jin and Wamiya were two different people. I had no right to force my way into the happy life she has now.’
’But now that she’s appeared before me again in this familiar form... I’m sorry, but I can’t hold back the dark, possessive desires in my heart.’
Ze Sheng realized with chilling clarity that he could no longer easily hand her over to another male.
Besides... the moment he first saw her, he’d sensed a fragility about her, a feeling as if part of her flesh and life force had been forcibly stripped away and would not recover quickly. It was the sign of a female who had given birth.
His long fingers landed on her pale cheek, tracing from her delicate brow bone down to the bridge of her nose. The cool touch gradually grew scorching hot. He traced her features inch by inch, his touch filled with both love and sorrow.
"’Not that simple?’" An Jin placed her hand over his, surprised that she felt no impulse to reject him. Her voice grew more frustrated. "Can you be more specific? I don’t understand."
"...You will."
He reached out and gently brushed his fingers over her lips, his gaze darkening. But at the very moment his emotions threatened to burst forth, he let her go.
The lingering warmth from her skin seemed to remain on his hand, like a single spark starting a prairie fire. It flared from a flicker into a blaze, burning all the way into the depths of his heart, where it blossomed with even greater intensity.
To think that after all that, he was still just speaking in riddles.
’That’s it?’ An Jin was a little disappointed. She turned her head to look around, no longer looking at him. She wasn’t the type to press for an answer until the bitter end.
A smile appeared in Ze Sheng’s eyes. "But I can tell you something else. Aren’t you curious why I came here?"
"You weren’t just passing by, were you?"
He smiled and shook his head, unable to stop his gaze from landing on her, his heart filled with joy just from looking. Decades of gloom could be instantly swept away by a few of her little expressions. "It’s because of a Divination I performed a few days ago. It was about you."
At this, An Jin finally turned her head back to him. Whether the Ze Sheng before her was real or not, every word he spoke held a hidden clue. "A Divination about me?"
"My clan are not only born King Beasts, but we are also the High Priests appointed by the Beast God. We are born with immense spiritual power and the ability to perform Divination and prophecy."
"And just the other day, I foresaw a crisis, one that is nearly irreversible. And the key to this crisis..." He lowered his gaze to her, his voice dropping. "Is you."
Ze Sheng’s fingers tightened around hers, his grip growing stronger as his tone changed.
His Divinations were never wrong, but this time, he wished more than anything that his power had failed him.
He had divined that this crisis was irreversible.
Fate would not grant him a more precise Divination or a more definite answer. There was a faint thread connecting to her, one that would be severed by another power in half a month... but it wouldn’t disappear completely. Instead, it would merely approach the point of vanishing. How strange.
—Neither truly alive, nor truly dead.
’I want to part the mists,’ he thought, ’to see into the corners obscured by fate. What stories, what future, lie hidden there?’
