“You…” Qiu Shiliu felt as if she had discovered something. After releasing her hands, she slowly stood up.

She took out that “Door” from her pocket, swallowed several times before loudly calling out, “Jiu Jie!!”

“I’m here.” Bai Jiu’s reassuring voice came from the other end. “I just finished explaining what happened to Qi Ge and the others, so what’s the situation now…?”

Qiu Shiliu no longer stood on ceremony. She directly pulled little Xuanwu in front of herself and used the “Door” to show her.

“Jiu Jie, what should I do with this person?” Qiu Shiliu said irritably. “Can you see how pitiful she looks? Not only does she not resist, she doesn’t even cry out loudly. She just wants to eat some corn cobs here. Killing this kind of child is really too difficult for me.”

Bai Jiu also stared at Jiang Shi’s left eye for a long time before saying, “But she really does look like Xuanwu.”

“Isn’t that right?” Qiu Shiliu said. “I’ve also prepared myself. If your final discussion result is that I must kill her, I’ll overcome my psychological barriers and beat her to death right here.”

“Is there anything strange about this Xuanwu?” A voice that sounded like Song Qi’s asked.

“Strange…?”

Qiu Shiliu looked at the little girl before her. This situation was truly too difficult to describe.

“Jiu Jie, the only ‘strange’ thing about this little girl is that she looks completely not strange.” Qiu Shiliu explained. “She seems a bit too normal… The only thing worth noting is that her right eye seems to have some problem.”

“Right eye…?”

Qiu Shiliu nodded and reached out to brush aside little Xuanwu’s hair, but the little Xuanwu who had been obedient and compliant just moments ago, not even fighting back when being beaten, uncharacteristically dodged.

“Don’t run!” Qiu Shiliu said irritably. “Come here! Be obedient!”

Little Xuanwu was startled and could only stop resisting, staying in place to be manipulated at will.

Two eyeballs were awkwardly squeezed into the same eye, looking both somewhat frightening and somewhat pathological.

At this moment, Qiu Shiliu was closest to little Xuanwu and discovered that both of the other party’s eyes seemed somewhat bloodshot, as if they had both been injured.

“In one eye, two… eyeballs?” Bai Jiu’s voice came from within the “Door.” She suddenly thought of something. “Could this be Xuanwu’s weakness…?”

Qiu Shiliu furrowed her brow and thought for a while. “Jiu Jie, although I understand your thinking… are you certain that Xuanwu’s ‘eyes’ are placed on ‘her childhood self’? Isn’t this statement a bit too abstract?”

“This…” Bai Jiu also knew her statement was somewhat fantastical. “But we’ve never discovered eyes on Xuanwu’s body… Thinking about it now… perhaps we can try with this little Xuanwu before us. After all, when it comes to Xuanwu, there’s nothing that can’t be understood.”

After hearing this, Qiu Shiliu was slightly stunned. “Wait… Jiu Jie, you mean… I need to gouge out this child’s eyes right here and now?”

Little Xuanwu, who hadn’t spoken for a long time, was so frightened by these words that she took a step back and broke free from Qiu Shiliu’s grasp.

“Don’t gouge out my eyes… just kill me directly…” Little Xuanwu spoke tremblingly. “Why only gouge out my eyes… and not kill me?”

Naturally, Qiu Shiliu found this question very difficult to answer. For such a suffering child, to specifically gouge out her eyes… to let her not only remain in poverty but also live blindly in this space—what difference was there between such an act and being a beast? What difference was there from Heavenly-Dragon and Qinglong?

“You, you listen to me…” Qiu Shiliu said with conflicted emotions. “Child, even if we kill you, those eyes on your body might still take effect… so we have no choice but to gouge out your eyes to block that terrifying ‘Immortality.’ I…”

“Then kill me first!” Little Xuanwu raised her voice and shouted. “Kill me first, and after I’m dead you can gouge my eyes however you want. Is that okay?”

“I…” Qiu Shiliu was stunned for a moment. This question was equally difficult to answer.

Seeing this, little Xuanwu immediately stepped forward and grabbed Qiu Shiliu’s hand. “Big brother…”

“I’m your damn big sister,” Qiu Shiliu said irritably.

Little Xuanwu seemed to have never seen such a handsome girl who looked so much like a boy, and hurriedly corrected herself.

“Big sister, you look like someone who’s not afraid of anything… Please kill me! The people in the village are afraid of breaking the law. They’ll be executed by firing squad for killing me, so none of them dare to really beat me to death. Only you can save me… I’m begging you…”

This fragmented statement lingered in Qiu Shiliu’s mind for a long time, leaving her speechless for quite a while.

To what degree of despair must a person reach to consider death as salvation?

“Xuanwu, exactly what have you…” Qiu Shiliu slowly sighed.

After hearing this, little Xuanwu slightly tilted her head, looking at Qiu Shiliu with that scarred face of hers. “Big sister… who exactly is ‘Xuanwu’?”

“You…” Qiu Shiliu nodded. “I almost forgot, you’re not called Xuanwu now. Then how should I address you?”

“I’m Xuanzi from Wujia Village,” little Xuanwu said.

“Wujia Village… Xuanzi?” Qiu Shiliu furrowed her brow.

“So can you kill me?” Little Xuanwu said again. “Even if after killing me you want to pull out my tongue and throw me to feed the wolves, that’s fine.”

Bai Jiu, on the other end of the “Door,” heard little Xuanwu’s words and began to hesitate for a moment. It seemed as if something subtle had connected at this moment.

Xuanwu was like this, and little Xuanwu was also like this. The two of them shared a very strange commonality.

“Shiliu, I have something to ask her,” Bai Jiu said in a deep voice from within the “Door.” “You relay it for me. I’ll say one sentence, and you say one sentence.”

“Okay.” Qiu Shiliu nodded, picked up the “Door” and placed it near her ear, then lowered her head and said, “Xuanwu, I have something to ask you.”

“What…?” Little Xuanwu asked blankly.

“Why don’t you commit suicide?” Qiu Shiliu, following Bai Jiu’s words, accurately asked the key question.

“Suicide…?”

“Whether now or in the future, it’s the same,” Qiu Shiliu said with furrowed brows. “The feeling you give people is that you’re seeking death every day, yet you’ve never once tried to take your own life. Why not? If you truly want to die, you have many methods you could try.”

Little Xuanwu stared at Qiu Shiliu for a long time before slowly opening her mouth to say, “I cannot commit suicide. I can only be killed.”

“Be killed…?” Qiu Shiliu clearly didn’t quite understand. “Isn’t that just causing trouble for others? You said it yourself—killing you is helping you, but the person who helps you has to be executed by firing squad.”

“But I truly cannot commit suicide… My life belongs to the Bodhisattva.”

“Bodhisattva…?”