"You stubborn little brat!" The old undead seemed to be trembling with anger.
"Likewise, you stubborn old ghost." Xue Dili had no intention of showing any respect to the old undead.
The two seemed to have fallen into a cold war, like two elementary school students ignoring each other, waiting to see who would give in first.
After a long time, just as Xue Dili seemed to have fallen asleep due to exhaustion and the erosion of death energy, the old undead finally couldn't help but speak first.
"Let's go, kid, go! Back to your world, I don't want anything anymore, I just want to see you and Alola get married and have children..."
After a long silence, Xue Dili still didn't respond.
"Kid, say something!"
Old Barak eventually softened, as if he was going to use a speaker right in Xue Dili's ear, repeating his words.
"And the Julia Family," Xue Dili added.
"What?"
"In the previous contract, I haven't dealt with the Julia Family yet." Xue Dili turned over.
"To hell with the damn Julia Family! Now, let's get up, go to the Great Cathedral, find Alola, and head home!"
"Home... let's go home..."
The old man, for some reason, felt more at home with the modern little house on Blue Star, where he only stayed for a few days, than with the Empire where he had spent his whole life.
Perhaps, to him, Xue Dili's old family homestead was the only home for this old general from the Otherworld.
"Old Deng, actually, I've wanted to say for a long time," Xue Dili got up, seemingly looking seriously at the Skeleton Demon within him.
"Your arrangements have never considered others; you've always stubbornly done things your way. Like forcibly arranging your granddaughter to marry me—did you ever ask her opinion?" Xue Dili retorted.
"I'm her grandfather, I..."
"Don't interrupt. She hasn't even met me, and I've only glanced at her. Our worlds are completely different; our values might differ more than those between a person and a cat."
"Moreover, she's the Pope now. She's more than just herself; she has to consider the lives of nearly ten thousand clergy and hundreds of thousands of believers! Taking her away like this, aren't you forcing her to be a deserter?"
Xue Dili's words stunned the old undead.
Especially the word "deserter."
He hated deserters the most. On the battlefield against the Witch Demon King, if Julia hadn't been a deserter, he might have sealed the Witch Demon King long ago...
This word "deserter" made the old undead feel like his soul was being pricked with pain.
He felt as if he had become the type of person he once despised—a deserter who only knew how to run away...
No, I've been PUA'd!
The old undead instantly realized and looked at Xue Dili, who was taking out a small can of drink from a pile of straw at that moment.
The old undead remembered that Xue Dili had carried this with him before departure, claiming it was for energy replenishment, along with some pieces of something called "earth power shelves," unsure if they had been destroyed during battle.
"No, why does this plain water have no taste?" Xue Dili muttered, chanting the Holy Light Technique softly as if working a light bulb with low power, and looked at the text on the can.
"White Event Cola... makes sense..." Xue Dili looked at the blue can, silently rummaging through his pocket, and in the next moment, he pulled out a deformed chocolate bar.
This was an energy product made of chocolate and sugar, its sweetness was enough to hurt one's teeth, but at this moment, it tasted like wax to Xue Dili...
"Undead Power is eroding your nerves; you're already losing your sense of taste," the old undead added.
"Next will be your sense of smell, then your hearing, your sight, and finally, even your sense of touch will be stripped away..."
"Transforming into an undead that can only perceive through its soul, without any sensory feedback."
The old undead sighed, now considering the logical inconsistencies in the words of this born-evil brat; he was someone from this world, the Female Pope of Alola's church—both had reasons to stay in this world.
But what stance does this evil little brat have?
Just for revenge for this dead undead, risking his life?
"Clang! Clang! Clang!"
The sound of the war bell echoed through the Imperial Capital, interrupting the quarrel between Xue Dili and the old undead, the fight between the Church Court and the Golden Knight Order, and the battle of the grandsons for succession in the Imperial Palace.
Everyone turned in terror to the direction of the distant city wall.
That was the direction of the city wall defending against the undead, meaning the undead army had arrived!
Crows croaked harshly over the Imperial Capital, echoing like the death knell in everyone's ears.
No one could believe it; not the current Female Pope Alola or the imperial grandsons could believe it.
Clearly, there were still hundreds of kilometers left—how did the undead army reach the Imperial Capital overnight?
"I'll go take a look." Without saying a word, Xue Dili crushed the can in his hand and headed towards the direction of the bell.
"Don't get involved in this mess, I said, I..." The old undead immediately wanted to stop him, but he suddenly realized he absolutely couldn't stop this kid.
Be it going to kill General Julia or checking on the undead army.
The doomsday bell continued to echo over the Imperial Capital, as if the stench of the undead army had already permeated the entire city.
"Why?" the old undead asked.
"Hmm?" Xue Dili tilted his head.
"You've done enough for me, a dead man. Why?" The voice of the old undead echoed in his mind.
While parkouring over the earthen houses of the residential area, Xue Dili chatted with the old undead: "Because I feel like it!"
"?"
While rushing, Xue Dili began to tell the story of General Yue to the old undead.
"Isn't General Yue's experience quite similar to yours?" Xue Dili asked the old undead.
"In the previous campus group, there were posts about what you would most want to do if you could travel to the early Southern Song dynasty. Do you know how my cyber buddies chose?"
"How did they choose?" the old undead returned perplexed.
"They'd crawl to Lin'an, crawl in front of Wanyan Gou, and even in death, they'd make sure to splash him with blood!" Xue Dili revealed a gentle smile.
"Even if it means dying on the way to kill them, that's a death worth its price," Xue Dili laughed, "Similar options included Yu Shaobao, Gao Changgong, and even the French village girl and Northern Europe's Siegfried..."
"Even the cyber Wanyan Gou dies enough times every day to loop around Blue Star tens of thousands of times," Xue Dili laughed, jokingly saying,
"This time, it seems I've come across such an opportunity. I don't know if it's my only chance in this life... Anyway, I'm duty-bound!"
By now, Xue Dili could see the distant city wall, standing atop a flagpole, catching sight of the vast undead army in the distance.
He fully felt what it meant to be vast and endless now.
Inside Xue Dili's consciousness space, the old undead clearly didn't buy into such nonsense.
No sane person would risk their life to help someone else just because of some vaguely relatable surrogate literature, especially not with someone who could be considered the "closest stranger" like them.
With Xue Dili's predictable behaviors, Old Barak always knew what nonsense was unfolding.
Such absurd and bizarre arguments had the fragrance of lies.
"Tsk, I've been doing my best to brush you off, not outright stating 'because I'm a Young Pioneer', or 'don't underestimate the bond between us', is already humoring you," Xue Dili said.
His words made the old undead wish he could pull out a cane and give Xue Dili a six-second wild strike; if the old undead were still alive, his blood pressure would have likely already skyrocketed.
"You born evil brat, I won't help you anymore!" the old undead said viciously.
But Xue Dili just smiled and continued, "When I was a kid, a firefighter pulled me out of a forest fire..."
"So, I wonder how I should use this life to make it most worthwhile." He looked towards the sky.
The light of dawn gently broke through the clouds, quietly sweeping across the horizon.