Chapter 178: What am I

The scream came again, broken and distant, as though the flames were swallowing her voice one piece at a time.

Ugo tried to run toward them.

His wolf body moved, but the ground stretched beneath his paws. No matter how hard he ran, the distance remained the same. The fire rose higher, and the heat pressed against his fur.

He could only watch.

Little Moon was still beneath the tree, clutching the vine against his chest.

"Mummy?" The child’s voice was soft, almost lost beneath the crackling flames.

Ugo forced himself forward, his claws scraping against the scorched earth.

He wanted to reach the child.

He wanted to take him away from this place, but the courtyard seemed to grow farther with every step.

The sacred vine in the boy’s arms pulsed once with a faint green light.

For an instant, the flames around them seemed to pause.

Then the tree began to tilt.

A deep crack echoed through the courtyard. The ground split beneath Ugo’s paws, and everything lurched sideways.

The boy, the tree, and the burning courtyard blurred together, their shapes stretching as though the world itself were being pulled apart.

Cold water surged up from nowhere.

The fire was gone.

He was falling.

He tried to find the ground beneath his paws, but there was nothing.

No earth.

No branches.

No familiar scent of leaves or soil.

Only darkness and water.

Then he saw a pair of frightened eyes staring up at him through the depths.

They belonged to a youth.

Tears floated around the face, dissolving into the water.

The body sank farther and farther, both arms reaching upward, fingers opening and closing as though desperately searching for something to hold.

Ugo’s heart tightened.

He stretched out a paw.

He had to reach him.

He had to—

The water closed over the eyes.

Then everything went black.

And Ugo’s eyes snapped open. He huffed and panted as soon as he woke up, like he was just fished out of the lake.

He was alone on the platform, and the sanctuary was deadly silent.

Ugo pressed a hand to his chest as though something was tearing him.

"You are awake?" An almost transparent figure manifested in front of Ugo.

Ugo’s brows knitted together. He squinted his eyes to avoid the last sunlight in the distant tree line and looked at the vague silhouette in the air.

Then his breathing slowly calmed down. After a while, he whispered, "Was it you?"

"What?" RuYi floated to Ugo’s side and asked confusedly.

"The man in my dream." Ugo pressed his palm over his eyes.

"I don’t know what dream you saw. But that was not me." RuYi said plainly.

"Why do you look so alike?"

"There are plenty of people in this world who look alike."

"But I always feel you have some connection with Mooney. Don’t you?" He removed his palm and looked at the figure.

RuYi was silent for a while, then he slowly spoke up. "I don’t know. I died long, long ago... when—"

"Stop." Ugo’s voice suddenly cracked.

"You don’t want to break your soul even more, do you?" he said exasperatedly.

RuYi chuckled. "I have already been dead. I have long lost the hope of collecting my scattered soul and being reborn again."

His voice was calm, but Ugo felt a stabbing pain from his words.

"Go back, Master. Don’t come out. You can’t even manifest an illusory body."

RuYi laughed at his words. But he didn’t argue.

"Ugo, sometimes you need to be honest with your feelings. You don’t want to suspect your partner for a lifetime, do you?" RuYi’s figure slowly blended with the wind as he left his words behind.

But Ugo knew he was still there.

He was always there.

"You pulled me into that sacred vine before when I fell into the gorge. Didn’t you?"

The sanctuary remained silent. Only a soft shifting of Stardust Lily leaves broke the silence from time to time.

"Sigh. I didn’t pull you this time."

"Yet you say you don’t have any connection with him." Ugo laughed.

But he didn’t press further.

Who knew when another bolt would come and burn this sanctuary into charcoal. His wife quite liked this place. He couldn’t randomly anger some unknown entity.

He sat up and called Lupine in his mind.

"Master Lupine, take me in. I have no energy to go inside the pond to teleport."

And then the figure also vanished from the platform.

.

.

.

Inside the Lupine Palace, the atmosphere was very strange.

Moon could feel a tremor, fear, and also sadness. He knew Ugo had woken up. But he was still angry about being left with nothing.

So he took out the cauldron and just started to refine fasting and recovery pills that were easier.

On the other side, Nox and Axe were also very silent.

No one was talking, and no one was asking why the others were silent.

Lupine went back inside his statue and didn’t come out again until he heard Ugo’s call.

But as soon as Ugo’s feet landed on the ground, Moon stood up.

"Let’s go outside. It’s already dusk, and soon the caravan will prepare to continue the journey. Levi might come looking for us."

And thus the four of them left the Lupine Palace to the inn they rented.

After coming inside the room, neither of them exchanged a word.

If Moon was not angry, he might have noticed the change. But he was also lost in his own thoughts.

Axe went out to check on Oshan, and Nox went out because he couldn’t bear to see Ugo and Moon’s ambiguous behavior.

He should have been happy since Moon was not talking to Ugo.

Yet he felt more heartache.

He felt like this was some sweet couple fight that had never happened between him and Moon.

At least he felt like it.

When they left, Moon didn’t go out. Instead, he sat on the bed and rested against the backrest.

Ugo lay on the bed and chuckled. "Why aren’t you talking?"

He was baffled as to why Moon was giving him that face, so he couldn’t help but ask.

"Don’t you have anything to say?" Moon raised his brows.

"What to say?" Ugo asked.

"You blocked your memories when we made the soul contract, yet you have seen my memory fragment. Didn’t you?" Moon said in a low voice.

Ugo stared at his enraged face, and his heart ached to get closer.

"No, I didn’t block them. I just wanted to suppress any big outburst from my spirit. We have to move from here."

Moon went silent.

This was so logical that he couldn’t rebuke it anymore.

"Anyway, just keep your distance for a while." He mumbled and curled up on the bed.

Ugo sighed but didn’t force any closeness. He was also tired, and his mind was still messy.

For a while, he even started to suspect that he was not a wolf but a vine or a big snake.

But then again, he was a wolf. He felt his wolf.

And no one had ever heard of a she-wolf giving birth to a snake in the same litter.

He exhaled sharply and muttered under his breath, "What am I?"