Yan Qing: “......”
Oh! So sorry to bother you! It was so kind of you to lower yourself and watch me pretend to be loony for so long.
Was that necessary? If my acting sucks then my acting sucks, why step on my dignity?
Yan Qing laughed with scorn.
But then, when he thought of Jing Ruyu’s performance that tangled truth and lies, weaving love and hate together, and then he remembered his own performance, he sank into a strange silence.
Holding his cage, he chose to awkwardly change the topic. “Why did you enter this secret realm?”
Xie Shiyi said, “I was looking for clues about the Qin family.”
Yan Qing: “The Qin family?”
Xie Shiyi nodded. “Yes. The Qin family of Plummount in the Violetaurum continent. They should be the ones behind that phoenix.”
Yan Qing thought of what had happened before and reminded him, “There was a phantasm-commanding spell within the phoenix demonseed.”
Xie Shiyi: “Yes.”
Yan Qing: “I suspect that the Qin family has connections with the demonic realm.”
Xie Shiyi: “Yes.”
A green maple leaf fell before them, leaving a long silence in its wake.
Yan Qing lost focus, his fingers clasping the ice cage. Once he finished saying these words that seemed important but were really inconsequential, he abruptly didn’t know what to say.
Distracted, he stroked Trouble’s wings, his gaze drifting across the maple grove before him.
In his last life, after he and Xie Shiyi parted in the land where the gods fell, an intangible barrier seemed to arise, separating them from the days where they were close enough to bicker and fight, and bringing them foreign paths instead. When they met again in Tenside City, danger was all around them and ambushes lay in every corner. They hadn’t been in the mood for reminiscing over old times.
He hadn’t expected that now, they would be walking the same road in peace for the first time.
He had thrown off the demon god and his role as the young city master of Tenside City. He was unfettered and carefree. Once he calmed down, he found there was nothing he could say to the person he used to be most familiar with in the past.
The golden sunlight streamed through the maple leaves. Yan Qing fell into a slight daze.
Trouble was still gnawing at the bars of the cage. No matter how insensitive he was, he could still tell that something was wrong with the atmosphere. His eyes turned left and right, but he was still afraid of Xie Shiyi, so he chose to lie on the floor with his wings drooping, swallowing all the words that wanted to tumble out of him.
Once they passed through the grove of green maples, they came to the exit, the long tunnel that he had come here through. The exit was damp and dark, with blue butterflies fluttering through it.
Yan Qing wanted to say something.
Then he heard Xie Shiyi ask him calmly, “What about you? Have you finished what you came here to do?”
Yan Qing: “Ah?”
Xie Shiyi had great patience. “You came to the Void Comprehension secret realm.”
Yan Qing sacrificed Trouble once again. “No, I came here to find out what exactly this bat was. But I didn’t expect that this bat wasn’t even worthy of notice in Zixiao’s memories. Not even his shadow appeared.”
Trouble: “.......” He had nothing to say. He continued grinding his teeth on the bars.
Xie Shiyi paused for a moment, then took the cage from Yan Qing.
His fingers reached out of his snowy sleeve in the darkness, pale and slender. In the cage, focused on chewing the bars, Trouble stiffened. Tears almost flew from his red eyes.
Inside, he was bawling. He didn’t want to! He didn’t want to end up in this man’s hands!
Xie Shiyi looked down, and the overwhelming spiritual energy of a Soul Formation cultivator poured straight into Trouble’s body.
Trouble felt he had lost all hope for life. Ice filled his stomach, and he felt his soul was about to return to the western pure land.
Curious, Yan Qing asked at the side, “Did you find anything?”
Xie Shiyi said, “No.”
Yan Qing took back Trouble and mused, “Before, I felt like his stomach was a black hole, able to swallow anything.”
Xie Shiyi said, “Bring him back to the Southluster continent and there may be a way to assess him.”
Yan Qing: “Yeah.”
Wait a second, the Southluster continent? Only when Yan Qing heard him mention the Southluster continent did his thoughts move away from their current peaceful surroundings, and onto everything that had happened just before.
The siftrain flower, Springturn Sect, the token, the marriage, Bai Xiaoxiao.
“......”
Before, he hadn’t thought much about it, but once he bared his identity before Xie Shiyi, all the blood in his body congealed. His fingers tugged wildly at his red thread, and he was morose and agitated.
When they parted, he wished he could kill the other man. He thought that in this lifetime, they wouldn’t meet again. What were they now?
They seemed like enemies, yet also friends—intimate, and yet resentful.
Yan Qing said, “Xie Shiyi.”
As soon as he called his name, Yan Qing found that they had abruptly left the Void Comprehension secret realm. Daylight filled his sight.
A crowd of people pressed together outside.
The sky was still dark, and the clear radiance of the cold moon shone down on the peach flowers like snow. Bai Xiaoxiao knelt on the ground, and before him were the Springturn Sect leader and Huaixu, filled with anger.
The sect leader was so furious his face was red. “Yan Qing was the one who took the siftrain flower, so what does it have to do with you?! What are you acting pitiful for?!”
Tianshu sighed. When he saw this little boy crying, his head hurt. He chose to look away. What the eye didn’t see, the heart didn’t grieve over.
Bai Xiaxiao almost ground his teeth to pieces. He looked up, his eyes full of tears. “But the token was mine! Yan Qing used his power to force me to give it to him! Then he shamelessly made a request of Desireless Sect! He beat his brains out to become Venerable Duwei’s cultivation partner! But why does he deserve to? Why does Yan Qing deserve anything?!”
Once Bai Xiaoxiao finished speaking, he closed his eyes, believing the sect leader wouldn’t be able to stop himself from slapping him. But he didn’t expect the pain would never come. When he opened his eyes, he saw that everyone before him seemed to have turned to stone, their eyes wide and their bodies stiff, completely still.
The cold wind stirred the peach blossoms on the ground. The moonlight spilled over the earth, bringing with it the familiar, cool fragrance that had engraved itself in the depths of their memories the first time they saw that man under the peach trees.
Bai Xiaoxiao realized something. He paled and turned around.
His line of sight captured only distant, snow-white robes.
Bai Xiaoxiao couldn’t speak. Trembling, he prostrated himself on the ground. “V-Venerable Immortal…”
In that moment, thousands of emotions surged into his heart. There was fear, surprise and reverence.
But following in their wake was secret delight, the joy of his grievances seeing the light of day.
Venerable Duwei heard him, Venerable Duwei heard him…
He heard him.
He knew the token was originally his!
He knew that Yan Qing was a shameless, vile thief!
He knew Yan Qing’s two-faced, venomous true nature!
Yan Qing: “......”
Yan Qing could only torment Trouble.
A peach flower flew past his temple, landing in the hand of Xie Shiyi, who was standing behind him.
Catching the peach blossom in his palm, he looked quietly down at him. After a moment of silence, he gave a low chuckle.
He spoke with a voice that was as soft as a cloud of smoke, hazy and subtle.
“You really took painstaking effort just to become my cultivation partner, huh?”
***
The author has something to say:
We’ll be entering VIP status next chapter. Thank you for your support.
[Below follows a summary for an as-yet unpublished novel that the author recommends, This Gentleman is Ill (君有疾) by Wu Jiudian (吾九殿). I have condensed it for you.]
The novel follows a boy, Yan Jinyi, who is reborn, discovering his world is a novel. The main character is Jun Yanbai, his enemy in his past life. In the novel, Jun Yanbai lives a miserable life, betrayed by the sect he was loyal to, but still remains pure of heart, traveling thousands of miles just to bury the bones of his enemy, Yan Jinyi. Thinking this boy must have some kind of mental illness, Yan Jinyi shows the true faces of all his hidden enemies to Jun Yanbai, hoping to cure him of his kindness. Only when Jun Yanbai drags him into the ghost realm does Yan Jinyi realize his medicine was a little too strong, and the protagonist has blackened. Yan Jinyi: “This guy does have a mental illness.”
[The author then thanks all of the readers who have given them gifts.]
***
cela's notes
1 hour and 10 minutes
Thank you for the chapter!!!
ReplyDeleteXie Shiyi: Oh no, my crush who I had been pining since childhood propose to become my cultivation partner even going as far stealing a token to propose this marriage how could I ever refuse
ReplyDelete