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Aurora shook her head frantically: "But you—"
Jin'er looked at her firmly: "I will definitely come back to find you alive. We promised we would never be separated."
"I will never break my promise."
Despite her illness, Jin'er set off carrying the hopes of their lives.
...
...
...
Aurora watched her figure disappear outside the cave and couldn't help but smile.
"Ugh."
"Actually, it's okay if you don't come back to find me, Jin'er..."
She took out a small knife carved from a stone.
"Because there are many man-eating wolves outside. My internal injuries were caused by tearing myself apart while trying to escape them..."
"If you encounter them, you'll be too weak to survive and will die a gruesome death immediately..."
"I didn't tell you about the wolves because I was afraid you'd become suspicious and stay here with me, with no hope of survival..."
“My liver has ruptured, and I don’t have much time left, but you… still have a chance to get out alive.”
She looked at the small knife and smiled.
"Let the smell of blood... draw the attention of those man-eating beasts this way."
She stood up and staggered towards the cave entrance until she collapsed near the entrance, unable to walk any further.
She raised the stone knife, her expression one of helplessness, fearlessness, and acceptance.
"I'm going to break my promise, my dear Jin'er."
"Live bravely!"
Chapter 157 Blood Curse
In the endless forest, the abandoned blonde girl was not consumed by despair.
Her hands were blistered, her lips were cracked from thirst, and her wheelchair was completely destroyed when she fell down the hillside.
But she still didn't give up.
With astonishing willpower, she supported her battered body and stood up from the wreckage of her wheelchair.
Despite the excruciating pain of every step, she shakily abandoned her most important means of transportation and continued forward, step by step, along the direction she had calculated.
Aurora...
Aurora...
"Aurora Ludwig..."
"Wait for me..."
Even though her body had long exceeded its limits, she continued to move towards the hope of life.
She kept repeating her best friend's name; only in this way could she stay lucid.
Her small figure kept moving in one direction through the forest until it disappeared into the depths of the dense woods as night fell.
...
...
...
"What...does this smell?"
As the white-haired man, clad in a long black robe, flew low in the night, he caught a whiff of a sweet, fishy smell in the air.
For a creature of the night like him, this scent was all too familiar.
Human blood?
He was heading back from a nearby town, which should have been deserted long ago... so why was there the smell of human blood?
He removed the hood of his robe, revealing his face in the moonlight.
He was none other than the now infamous "Count Dracula," the vampire Kane who lived alone in "Dracula's Castle."
The smell of blood aroused his curiosity and appetite, so he flew towards the direction from which the smell was emanating and disappeared into the forest.
...
Before long, he easily found the source of the smell.
Later, Kane wrote the following in his diary:
Even as a thousand-year-old vampire, I couldn't remain calm in such a horrifying situation.
I find it difficult to describe what I saw in words; rather, I don't want to recall it. I imagine that if she were alive, she wouldn't want anyone to know about this through writing...
I dealt with the brutal beasts that killed her and retrieved all her remains.
I know she deserves a proper resting place.
Later, I buried her in the castle cemetery...
...
Now that Kane has dealt with the savage wolves, he hasn't overlooked the two clearly visible wheel tracks nearby.
He roughly guessed that perhaps the girl had voluntarily chosen to attract the wild animal's attention to protect her companions...
So he followed the wheel tracks and was amazed to find that the marks left by the man along the way were distinctive and clearly identifiable, providing extremely accurate guidance.
Presumably, the person who escaped still hopes to come back and save others.
But... it was all too late.
...
The marks left behind faded over time, indicating that the escapee's physical strength was nearing exhaustion.
As the last unfinished mark came into view, Kane found the blonde girl lying beside it.
"How are you!"
Kane went over to check on her and was immediately shocked by her injuries.
Her hands and feet were already covered in blood and flesh, and judging from the swelling of her muscles, she had walked several times her limit even when she was already extremely weak... It's hard to imagine how much pain she endured.
With her body subjected to such horrific torture, her breathing was extremely weak, as if she would stop breathing completely at any moment.
...
Kane could have abandoned her, because there was no reason for him to save a mere stranger on the verge of death.
But the moment Kane saw her gorgeous blonde hair, he felt a strange sense of disorientation and palpitation.
In that instant, he thought of someone. A princess who had passed away a thousand years ago.
She once possessed such flawless blonde hair, but it vanished long ago after she transformed into a vampire queen.
...
"Tsk. Saving humans is just a piece of cake..."
"I will let you live, hang in there, human."
As I picked her up, a pendant fell from her arms, engraved with an elegant Chinese character.
Kane searched his memory for a moment and recognized it.
"Yang?"
He picked up the pendant, wiped it for a moment, and examined it closely. It was indeed a work of art from the East.
"This girl is Asian? But why is her hair blonde?"
"...Now is not the time to think about these things, let's..."
It would be best to take her back to the castle for treatment.
...
...
...
Deep within Dracula's castle, Kane has temporarily converted the secret room he built into a medical ward.
Because he discovered that this girl was unusual—at least in terms of her condition, it was far more complex than it appeared on the surface.
He used a combination of blood curse magic and conventional medicine to maintain her vital signs, but in the long run, she still could not escape death.
Given the advanced medical technology of that era, it would have been difficult to diagnose the true cause of her illness; but the blood curse was different.
This dark magic, derived from blood, inadvertently discovered the culprit behind her abnormally high body temperature—her blood.
The blood flowing through the girl's body carries an unusually powerful blood energy, but her body seems completely unable to control this power, causing this blood energy to be "trapped" within her body.
The power contained in her blood could not be released and remained trapped in her blood vessels. The accumulation of energy caused her blood temperature to rise along with her body temperature, eventually leading to a number of complications that were enough to break her body.
Kane documented many characteristics of this strange illness, and after scouring countless books in the castle's grand archives, he finally found an entry that perfectly matched the symptoms—
"Atlantis Warriors"
According to the forbidden book of vampires, the ancient civilization "Atlantis" once fought against the darkness that devoured the world, and ultimately expelled the dark will from the world at the cost of destroying its own civilization.
However, not all of the "Atlantean warriors" who carried out this heroic act sank to the bottom of the sea along with this glorious civilization.
These people are extremely special beings among the ancient civilization's humans. Their blood not only has the natural ability to resist the corruption of darkness, but also provides these warriors with power beyond the imagination of ordinary people.
After perishing together with the dark will in that glorious era, the surviving warriors of the ancient civilization disappeared into the vast sea of humanity through generations of inheritance.
But their bloodline did not disappear.
In order to perpetuate this powerful force that can fight against darkness and prevent it from being diluted in the passing down of generations, the warriors managed to "evolve" the power contained in their blood into a unique blood energy.
They will lie dormant in the blood of future generations, no longer diluted with the inheritance of blood, waiting to be awakened when the time comes.
If they do not awaken, then the descendants of these ancient civilizations will be no different from ordinary people, and will live an ordinary life.
But... things are unpredictable.
An innocent girl was thus chosen by fate and became an awakened "descendant of warriors".
Those who awaken this power, though individual differences exist, will all invariably have golden hair;
The blood of warriors not only gave them powerful physical attributes, but also endowed them with intelligence and willpower far exceeding that of ordinary people.
Blessed by this blood of destiny, the descendants of warriors from ancient civilizations will, like their ancestors, embark on a path destined to be extraordinary.
But for Yang Jin'er, this was nothing more than a cruel joke of fate—
Her delicate body could not contain this powerful force, and born in such a chaotic world, she was merely a well-bred young lady who could not change anything.
Ultimately, this "gift" from her ancestors burdened her with an unbearable weight, becoming a "curse" that crushed her.
"How could this be... She is actually a descendant of a warrior, a rare find in a century?"
"...But this gift from our ancestors is undoubtedly going to kill her. If there were a way to suppress the blood energy within her..."
"...etc."
A thought flashed through Kane's mind; he already had a well-developed idea.
The way to save this girl, and the entire vampire clan.
Chapter 158 Birth
Kane knelt respectfully on one knee.
He had been gazing at the "Queen's Blood Essence," a bottle that was unique in the world, for quite some time now.
He was still hesitant about whether to gamble everything and use it on the dying girl.
...
This essence blood extracted from the vampire queen is undoubtedly the most concentrated blood of the Dark Night vampires in the world.