Free Web NovelChapter 53: Chapter 53: This Is a Small Token of My Appreciation—Please Accept It
Blood Slaughter held Tuantuan’s hand and led her up the basement stairs. The walls were still lined with bloodstains they couldn’t scrub clean, but neither of them paid it any mind.
Blood Slaughter glanced at the little kid by his side. He’d never found this building lonely before, no matter how many times he looked at it. The house itself hadn’t changed, but something indescribable had been added to it.
As they neared the top of the stairs, he looked at Tuantuan. "Wait a second... I need to get something..."
After leaving the basement, he stopped and opened a door as they passed by a room.
Tuantuan tilted her head at him. The things piled inside were an utter mess, as if every miscellaneous item had been dumped there.
It was so much messier than outside, not just a little.
The contrast made her want to laugh even more. Outside was all pristine and tidy, but inside, this room was a disaster.
Blood Slaughter rummaged through a cabinet, tossing boxes and drawers aside. Before long, two objects appeared in his hands.
Tuantuan stared intently — one was a carefully-polished blood-red crescent bone necklace, the other a white bone blade.
"I don’t have much to give..." Blood Slaughter awkwardly averted his gaze as he handed her the bone blade. His voice was rough, "It’s a present."
Tuantuan looked at the bone blade in her hand. It was the length of a child’s forearm, the tip gleaming with a razor-sharp white light.
"A Tier Seven human’s arm bone!" Tuantuan exclaimed, overjoyed as she examined the blade. Dungeon 9 had only opened a handful of times in total. Unlike Blood Slaughter and the others who actively hunted, she mostly waited for humans to wander into her territory before finishing them off.
She never participated in the hunts either. She knew she was still weak and needed to lie low to grow stronger.
Since the arrival of the supernatural, humans had been leveling up non-stop, breaking through one dungeon after another, killing evil spirits left and right, gaining skills, and just growing more powerful overall.
The three humans they ran into earlier had only just cleared their first dungeon, complete novices without even a proper level.
Tuantuan stroked the arm bone — to her shock, there were three skills sealed inside!
Skills were harvested by humans after killing evil spirits, but for them to be kept inside the arm bone, the human in question had to be alive and use a special refining process beforehand.
Tuantuan could say it flat out: even if her evil spirit body were shattered, this arm bone would survive.
"As long as you like it..." Blood Slaughter had traded items with other evil spirits before.
He didn’t have many items at this tier, but giving one away now didn’t hurt at all.
Looking at this brat who called him grandpa, and seeing her so delighted with her present, he found the whole thing hilarious.
Could this really be a bond formed because of a human?
As they left the basement, Jiang Che glanced over at them. Before he could ask where they’d been, Tuantuan darted over and leapt into his arms.
"Daddy, Grandpa just gave me a present! I love it so much!"
She didn’t mention their trip to the basement — the present served as cover for that period of time.
Blood Slaughter crept up and handed the blood-red crescent necklace to Ding Ning. This was the finest piece in his collection.
Just thinking about how the Lord had called Jiang Che "daddy" made him feel his own gift was a bit lackluster by comparison.
If he were giving it to the Lord, the value would already be more than enough.
But as a gift for his daughter-in-law, he felt this token of introduction was lacking.
Ding Ning accepted the necklace calmly. "Thank you, Dad, I really like it."
Hearing this "Dad" from her, Blood Slaughter suddenly felt everything was worth it. He didn’t know how Jiang Che had managed to win over Ding Ning, but now — well, this daughter-in-law actually called him Dad, and she meant it!
The Blood Nurse, meanwhile, was staring intently at the bone blade in Tuantuan’s hand and the necklace in Ding Ning’s palm.
Fine, fine, fine, so you’re handing out gifts without telling me, huh!
Blood Slaughter felt his wife’s gaze and sheepishly scratched his head. "These are gifts that we, as a couple, prepared together."
Their collection was a shared one, and it was hard to instantly come up with two items of the same tier.
Ding Ning stood up to take the items, folding her hands behind her back. When she brought them out again, two gifts had appeared in her hands.
"Mom, Dad, these are a small token from me. Please accept them."
Ding Ning produced a pair of rings from her hand, one black, one red, each radiating a dark, bloodthirsty edge.
The moment they came out, everyone felt an oppressive, suffocating aura from the rings. The air grew eerie. Even just one ring felt like it could devour life itself; together, they looked sinister and unstoppable.
"I got these a while ago, but there was never a good match for them, so I kept them."
"Once you wear the rings, your lives become connected. If one gets hurt, the other shares the pain. If one dies, the other will be devoured soon after."
"Beyond shared damage, while wearing the rings, both of your powers will be amplified — you can think of it as temporarily borrowing each other’s strength to boost yourself. The side effect, though, is that recovery will take even longer."
Ding Ning explained the rings’ function. As the leader of many evil spirits, she’d never found the right pairing.
Even if there was a benefit, few evil spirits were willing to tie their lives to another.
Blood Slaughter and the Blood Nurse took the rings and slid them on without hesitation.
In that instant, they experienced the [Power Sharing] effect to its fullest.
[Power Sharing: Temporarily siphon the other’s strength to increase your own. Loss rate: 50%]
Their own power levels were close, so the rings meant they split all damage, but at the same time, for a short while, one could raise their power by half of the other’s!
For evil spirits at their tier, advancing further was nearly impossible. They needed more fear, or to hunt even stronger humans.
But with these rings, Blood Slaughter, who was already on the cusp of a breakthrough, could borrow strength in a critical moment — boosting by half, overturning the odds in no time.
For the two of them, these rings were practically divine artifacts.
Jiang Che looked completely lost. What were they even mumbling about — powers, damage, combat ability?
"This is way too valuable," Blood Slaughter finally protested after slipping on the ring.
Extra power, double defense.
His entire collection couldn’t exchange for such a divine artifact.
For evil spirits who operated solo, binding with another was a burden. While borrowing strength, the other lost an equivalent amount — two strong spirits would never tolerate being reduced to a sidekick for the other’s sake.
But for the two of them, it truly was a godsend.
You could say, if these had no suitable owners, they’d be stuffed in a crate at the bottom of a warehouse somewhere.
"Che, thank you for looking after him all this time." She looked at Jiang Che nearby — this dumb kid was shunned as a freak by humans, and if he survived till now, it really was thanks to those two artifacts from the Blood Slaughter Couple.
The group’s conversation left Jiang Che’s mind in chaos.
Even trying his hardest, he still couldn’t understand what power or damage or combat strength even meant.
Blood Slaughter looked at the ring on his finger, then at the confused Jiang Che staring at all of them.
He never could have imagined — he’d actually benefited just by knowing a human!
