After Death, I Became My Shijie’s Palm-Sized Birdie – Chapter 14

Events of the Past, Part 13

She lightly licked her shijie’s fingertip while taking the candy

After realizing what she was doing, Wen Qiwu felt her already warm face burn even hotter.

            

She could smell a faint wine fragrance on her own breath, but she hadn’t drunk a single sip—she had only caught a whiff of it. Besides, her shijie¹ had said that wine wouldn’t intoxicate anyone.

She frowned slightly. Wen Qiwu couldn’t figure out the key to it, and she certainly wouldn’t question what her shijie said, so she could only suspect that the wine had loosened her true nature!

Under normal circumstances, Wen Qiwu would never have been so bold. Her reason told her she should let go now, but another thought surfaced in her heart.

            

It wasn’t as if her shijie—dense as a block of wood—could read her feelings anyway. What did it matter if she held on a little longer? Let her indulge herself just a bit. Just this once.

Her shijie’s embrace was fragrant and soft. She didn’t want to let go.

Wen Qiwu’s face still carried a faint flush, as if the effects of the wine hadn’t fully faded. Because of this, she didn’t notice that her dense shijie was so flustered she didn’t even know where to put her hands.

            

Her shimei² hadn’t acted this clingy in a long time. The last time she’d held her like this was when she was a teenager. Yun Heng, who had just been thinking about how her shimei wasn’t as close to her as before, now found herself struggling to handle it.

What had her shimei been pleading for that time? Hmm… it seemed to be candy.

Yun Heng raised her hand and awkwardly patted her shimei’s back. “Do you want some candy?”

            

Wen Qiwu hadn’t even registered what her shijie said before she answered, “I want some.”

At that moment, even if Yun Heng had produced a handful of poison, Wen Qiwu would have opened her mouth.

Yun Heng didn’t particularly like sweets. It was only because her shimei loved them that she’d unknowingly developed the habit of carrying candy with her.

            

She took a small piece of candy from her Storage Bag³, and Wen Qiwu, finally lifting her head from her shijie’s embrace, took the candy directly into her mouth.

The candy was so small that when Wen Qiwu took it, she inevitably touched her shijie’s fingertip.

But the person focused on the candy wasn’t particularly self-aware, so as she gently closed her lips around her shijie’s fingertip, she instinctively licked the lingering sweetness off it.

            

When that soft, wet sensation reached her fingertip, Yun Heng’s once-steady state of mind was like still water into which a stone had been cast—in an instant, ripples splashed everywhere.

She pulled her hand back instinctively. From the corner of her eye, she could still see her shimei’s small, rosy tongue. A strange heat rose in her chest, and to suppress it, she even channeled extremely cold immortal power.

“So sweet~” Wen Qiwu curved her lips into a smile, though it was unclear whether she meant the candy or her shijie’s fingertip.

            

Yun Heng, of course, assumed the former. In her mind, her shimei was pure and well-behaved—how could she possibly mean something so flirtatious? The one overthinking… was herself.

Her shimei looked at her with such innocent eyes, that pure, unconditional trust giving Yun Heng a flicker of guilt—though she didn’t know where this guilt came from either.

Yun Heng concealed the complexity in her eyes. She thought that after curing her shimei’s illness, she should perhaps enter the Heart-Questioning Realm for a period of closed-door cultivation⁴, to properly sort through the strange emotions that had welled up inside her these days.

            

…

After that jar of Drunken Phoenix wine caused the little incident, Wen Qiwu noticed that her shijie seemed even busier. For days on end, she hadn’t seen her at all.

That day, Wen Qiwu had downed several cups of cold water before she fully regained her senses. Without the wine fogging her mind, the thought that she had hugged and licked her shijie made her wish she could dig a hole in the ground and bury herself alive.

            

Just as Wen Qiwu was wondering how she would face her shijie, she realized she’d been overthinking it—because she couldn’t even get a glimpse of her!

Wen Qiwu consoled herself: her birthday was in a few days. Her shijie must be busy preparing a birthday gift for her—that was why she hadn’t had time to come to Wanyao Mountain.

There was no way she was avoiding her.

            

Wen Qiwu recalled her shijie’s expression when she left that day. It had looked no different from usual—she probably hadn’t thought too much of it. After all, her shijie was dense as a block of wood.

Wen Qiwu sighed, unsure whether she should feel relieved or bitter.

She’d definitely see her shijie on her birthday. No rush—it was only a few days away. She could wait a little longer.

            

Before her birthday, however, a moderately significant event took place in the sect. The Qianyue Sword Sect Master arrived at Wenshen Sect as a guest, bringing his daughter along. He, too, brought many gifts to express his gratitude to Yun Heng. Being in the same Dongzhao Domain, he should have arrived earlier than the Qingluan King, but his daughter’s injuries from the secret realm had been quite severe, so she’d only recovered enough to make the trip now.

Since the Qingluan King hadn’t departed yet, the elders prepared a banquet to entertain them all.

Wen Qiwu only learned of this from Lu Qiaoyi. It was then that she realized she still hadn’t received a reply from Zuo Lan. Given that Holy Maiden’s personality, she should have said something regardless of whether things worked out or not. Could her letter not have reached her?

            

Too much had happened lately, and she hadn’t been able to attend to this matter. She hadn’t expected that one lapse of attention would let that person come.

Lu Qiaoyi, seeming not to notice the change in Wen Qiwu’s expression, continued, “That Sect Master’s daughter has decent talent and plenty of nerve. She’s right now seeking your shijie for sword instruction. Even our sect’s elders wouldn’t dare to… Xiao Que’er⁵? Where are you going?”

Where to?

            

To observe, of course! Her shijie hadn’t had time to see her these past few days, but she had time to instruct some other young girl? Wen Qiwu was still smiling just as brightly as ever, but even Lu Qiaoyi felt a chill run down her spine.

Meanwhile, at Wendao Mountain.

Before a large open training ground, a dozen or so people stood at a distance, including the Qingluan King, the Qianyue Sword Sect Master, and various elders. At the center, Yun Heng held the most ordinary of wooden swords—on the small side, like one meant for children to practice with. The one seeking her instruction knelt half-collapsed on the ground, nearly spent.

            

But her eyes were bright, even fervent. Though she was still nursing injuries, she’d achieved a deeper comprehension of sword intent.

The Qianyue Sword Sect Master, seeing that his daughter’s sword intent had grown sharper, was so overjoyed his eyes nearly disappeared into his smile. He hurriedly fed his daughter a pill, then thanked Yun Heng repeatedly.

Yun Heng had only instructed this young girl out of regard for the relationship between the two sects. Once she’d gone through the motions, she planned to hand the rest over to the elders and return to the Cliff of Reflection herself.

            

But she hadn’t expected that shortly after she walked away, the young girl from the Qianyue Sword Sect followed.

“I-Immortal Venerable.” The young girl was extremely nervous when she saw her, stammering over her words, nothing like the crisp decisiveness she showed when swinging a sword.

“Is there something you need?” Yun Heng stopped and turned to look at her.

            

“I, um, that is…” The young girl was so anxious that sweat beaded on her forehead and her face flushed crimson. As she struggled to organize her words, she couldn’t help sneaking glances at Yun Heng. It was her first time standing this close to the Immortal Venerable. Immortal Venerable Yun Heng was indeed more beautiful than the moon hanging in the distant sky, and so powerful. Standing before her, she couldn’t help feeling inadequate—and that thought only made her more nervous. The speech she’d rehearsed back at the sect was now completely forgotten. “You—I don’t know if you’ve heard of our sect’s Lin…”

“Shijie.”

A soft voice drifted from not far away, interrupting the young girl’s hastily improvised words. Then both of them, as if by some unspoken agreement, revealed a look of nervousness.

            

The young girl’s nervousness was understandable, but why was her shijie nervous?

Wen Qiwu walked over step by step, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. She still looked as gentle and frail as ever, yet every alarm in the little sword cultivator’s heart went off at once. Her instincts told her this person was dangerous.

This Fellow Daoist⁶ called Immortal Venerable Yun Heng “shijie”? Oh—she remembered now. There were rumors that the Immortal Venerable had a frail shimei. So this was her.

            

Truly worthy of being Immortal Venerable Yun Heng’s shimei. Frail she might be, but her strength was nothing to scoff at.

“Qiwu.” Yun Heng’s voice softened. The young girl from the Qianyue Sword Sect beside her had never heard the Immortal Venerable speak so gently, and her eyes went wide with shock.

It wasn’t just her voice. When Immortal Venerable Yun Heng looked at her shimei, her gaze changed too. The indifference that had once treated all things beneath notice now held warmth. Even solid ice melted in that tenderness—as if an exalted immortal had been touched by the mortal world.

            

“What brings you here?”

Wen Qiwu looked at Yun Heng, then at the young girl who seemed to have frozen in place, and sighed inwardly for reasons she couldn’t quite name. A block of wood left out on its own—how reassuring.

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The author has something to say:

            

The people and props are all assembled. Ah Que is about to charge right in.

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