Chapter 33: The Blazing Embrace

Look at such an outrageous fellow.

If you died, you should part cleanly, yet you cling on to torment people even after death?

Rather than sharing a ancestral sacrificial meal at the same table as this fellow, I would rather starve and go begging for sacrificial food.

However, the demon, this brainless fellow, burst out laughing and chuckled no matter how he took my words.

“Just cover your mouth well. Poison is getting in.”

At those words, I hurriedly pressed down on my sleeve.

The sleeve that I had momentarily pulled away to look serious blocked my mouth and nose without a single gap.

For a brief moment, the flames grew even fiercer.

The birds that tried to fly high to avoid the fire were also swallowed up by the wall of fire.

Some had sparks splashing onto their feathers, causing huge flames to catch on their wing-joints so they fluttered their burning wings, while others suffocated from the suffocating heat and plummeted to the stone floor before even touching the fire.

Thus, the birds turned into fireballs fell and burned upon the ancestral shrine, and the flames spread over the shrine using the carcasses of the fallen birds as firewood.

“……There’s no blaming the pitiful creatures.”

Given the sheer number of birds, the carcasses scattered across the shrine were more than enough to serve as firewood for the spreading flames.

The fire, which had crept stealthily onto the ancestral shrine, tightened its grip in a swirling, circular fashion.

I didn’t even dare to dream of breaking through the fire.

It was already all I could do just to dodge the fire attacking like a raging wildfire, and before I knew it, I was surrounded by flames in the exact middle of the ancestral shrine.

It was hot.

Was I really going to burn to death helplessly like this?

Surrounded by flames, it was as bright as broad daylight and as hot as midsummer.

Sweat poured down like rain, making my clothes stick and my hair dampen and cling.

With the flames resembling the vast sea, the fire surged like waves creating a storm.

The soaring flames bent with the wind and burned as if to cover the top of my head in a round dome shape.

Unlike my complexion, which was baked red by the heat, my liver grew cold.

“Are you scared?”

“I am scared.”

I answered while staring at the yellow and red wall of fire.

Hiding one’s true feelings before death was pointless, so I calmly confessed my thoughts, which had always pretended to be composed.

“Being dead is scary.”

“Acting as if your liver had popped out of your belly, you must have some fear after all.”

The aftermath of the death I had just experienced still lingered.

As the agony of having my chest pierced was recalled, I could no longer throw my words around carelessly.

I simply gazed at the demon, who was smiling mockingly, and tried to guess the bizarre situation that had befallen me.

In the two previous deaths I experienced earlier, the demon was there.

However, this time I was burning to death together with the demon.

Will I revive this time as well, dying together?

Does returning through time have anything to do with this fellow?

At that moment, the heat distorting the air of the empty space rushed in heavily and blocked my thoughts.

When I staggered, dizzy from the suffocating heat, the demon pulled my head to lean against him.

“Stay still.”

Those words again.

Yet this time, I had no choice but to follow the demon’s words.

In the middle of a fiery pit where sweat poured like rain even while standing still, the only place to lean upon was the demon’s embrace.

Yielding obediently to the hand wrapping around my waist and pulling me into his embrace, I muttered:

“……Even if someone comes from outside, it would be impossible to put out this fire. Dying, dying, and now ending up burned to death.”

“As long as I am here, you cannot die even if you want to.”

Such a creepy fellow.

Not even ‘I won’t die’, but ‘you cannot die’.

Since I was on the verge of dying, I didn’t even have the energy to get angry, so I could only let out a hollow laugh.

“What will you do if I die?”

“I’ll save you.”

“Such bluster. How can you do something even Hua Tuo couldn’t?”

I placed my weight onto the chest where I leaned my cheek.

Since even the peerless demon was helpless before the blazing heat, his bronze skin was drenched in sweat.

Though it was hot sweat, in a fiery pit that felt like it would bake you to a crisp, even that felt like a blessing.

As soon as I felt the moisture dropping onto the bridge of my nose, it was instinct to stick out my tongue.

However, discovering the droplet of sweat pooled on the demon’s chin and protruding my tongue out was an impulse, and licking it was a natural flow.

There was no particular sense of disgust like filth; after all, having tasted each other’s saliva, what was a bit of sweat?

We were already in a state where I had received this demon fellow’s saliva and stuck together filthily.

They say there is no bottom to the abyss, but reaching the abyss once fallen was easier than expected.

Once I tasted the salty moisture, the rest was a trance.

Clinging to his skin, which felt relatively cool because the demon fellow’s body temperature was lower than the burning heat of the fire.

Reaching the chin line required standing on tiptoes, so I gradually moved down and comfortably licked the chest right before my eyes.

Upon discovering myself greedily licking the fellow’s skin, I wore a bitter smile and pushed him away.

“You’ve gone mad.”

Yet the demon, who pulled back my pushing arm, was also out of his mind.

“Do it more.”

“It seems both of us have suffered from the heat.”

Could it be that a madman looks pleased while dying?

Even with death right before his nose, the demon wearing a broad, full smile seemed to have lost his mind to the heat as well.

Since we were dying together in a narrow pit-like place, we were doing all sorts of things.

I tried to poke the eyes of the demon fellow, who had turned his eyes into half-moons out of sheer joy, with my index and middle fingers, but I held back, thinking I must have truly gone mad from the heat.

“They say that in the desert, severe heat can make one see illusions. That’s why people see illusions and do strange things.”

I tried to put some distance between myself and the demon, but I couldn’t get far.

Soon, my mind grew so hazy that my eyes felt like they were rolling back, so I buried my forehead back into the demon’s shoulder and muttered:

“I can’t…… breathe.”

Just as the demon said, the fire had burned away the toxic smoke, so I hadn’t been poisoned.

However, it had also burned away the oxygen, making it progressively harder to breathe.

As I buried my nose into the gap under his arm and panted, my chin was caught and my head was lifted.

“Lift your head.”

Lips overlapped through the teeth parted from gasping.

Through the narrow gap, I received the breath blown into me by the demon from the dark cave connecting us.

A madman.

He had repeatedly sworn that I couldn’t die, and was this what he meant?

Given that we were in the exact same state of dying, how much longer could I live just because he breathed his breath into me?

However, contrary to the inner thoughts cursing the demon, my arms hugged the demon’s neck tightly.

Standing on tiptoes, I firmly embraced the back of the fellow’s neck.

It was only because this was the only place to cling to inside the fiery pit.

I was losing my mind from the heat and doing crazy things.

That was all.

Instructing myself as if through self-hypnosis, I hugged the back of the demon’s neck with all my might.

Before I knew it, our tongues were entwined through the opening where breath was being passed.

Even though the breath I was already short of quickly depleted and my mind grew hazy, the stubbornly entwined tongues did not untwine.

The demon wrapped his arms around my waist as my body lost strength and tried to slump down.

I too grabbed a handful of the demon’s hair and forced my buckling legs to stand firm.

As our lips deepened their overlap, my head tilted.

In the vision half-blurred from a lack of air, a wall of fire blazing red and yellow boasted of soaring high.

The wildfire, thrashing like an evil spirit, dynamic as if alive.

……!

The flames swept over the demon’s back like a house-sized wave.

We’re swallowed.

The moment I faced the wildfire overwhelming my vision, no other thought crossed my mind.

Must protect him.

Even while overwhelmed by terror, instinct commanded thus.

If the person trapped together in the fiery pit had been His Majesty, I would have thrown my body to protect His Majesty.

Though it would merely extend His Majesty’s life by a few seconds, I wouldn’t spare my life for those few seconds.

However, the person with me now was the demon.

A fellow who, sharing the same fate of dying, yielded his own breath to me.

Although it was as bright as broad daylight due to the scorching heat and glowing light, once I was trapped in the demon’s embrace, the world was once again covered in dark shadows.

The demon pulled my arms wrapped around his neck, completely trapping me within his embrace.

I could feel the movement of the fellow hugging me and crouching down.

My head, my limbs, all curled up and rolled into a ball, trapped inside the demon’s arms.

The embrace that blocked both light and heat was dark and spacious, feeling like a mother’s embrace I had never been held in, yet its solid sturdiness was as cozy as a deeply dug earth shelter.

I curled my body and burrowed deeper inside the demon.

With this fellow, it felt like this would be fine.

He was strong-willed and outrageous, but it felt like I could hide within his shadow.

How long had it been since I endured the scorching heat inside his embrace?

A chill brushed against my cheek.

The heat that had made sweat pour like rain subsided as if it were a lie, and a cool breeze pierced through the space.

A single stream of refreshing breeze was as delicate yet vividly existent as a single flower blooming from a heap of ashes.

I snapped back to my senses.

I pushed away the embrace that trapped me, got up, and fumbled with whatever my hands could touch.

Slick, drenched flesh slipped across my palms.

The bulging shape was smooth without any distortion from the fire.

“A-, are you, are you alright? Did you survive? Any injured spots?”

Unable to calm down at all, I frantically fumbled over the demon’s bare shoulders and chest.

Glittering sweat soaked both my palms.

Clutching my startled heart, I turned the demon’s back around.

The bare back, smooth without any burn marks, had its scapulae rippling.

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