After Death, I Became My Shijie’s Palm-Sized Birdie – Chapter 29
by Little PandaFailure
She couldn’t find Ah Que’s soul
“Chirp chirp!” The little phoenix’s crisp call rang from the cage. She craned her head up, staring intently at her shijie1, studying her shijie’s complexion carefully.
You’re injured, so don’t go running around everywhere. Where did you go, Shijie? Are you all right? Did you have the Medical Immortal look at you…
Stop worrying about me and focus on recovering. Or just open the cage—that would work too.
For the past two days, Wen Qiwu’s heart had been fraught with anxiety, frightening herself half to death. If Yun Heng didn’t come back soon, she would figure out a way to roll the cage out the door and go looking for her. If she had to endure a few more days like this, she feared she might develop a Heart Demon.
Fortunately, her shijie looked a little better than before. Those eyes that had been clouded with gloom and sorrow were much brighter now, though she had no idea what her shijie had been doing these past two days.
Yun Heng’s attention was drawn by the commotion in the birdcage. The spiritual fruits and spiritual grains inside had barely been touched. Yun Heng cleared them out and replaced them with some different immortal fruits.
She gathered the birdcage in her arms, her gaze seeming to pass through the snowstorm beyond the window toward somewhere farther away.
Wen Qiwu didn’t eat the new fruits. Her attention was entirely on Yun Heng. Her shijie seemed calm now, but she couldn’t tell whether she had recovered her clarity of mind.
“Two days ago, Lin Shu came to find me. She wanted to trade a stalk of Soul-Swapping Grass for a memento of Zuo Lan’s. Soul-Swapping Grass can protect Ah Que’s soul, and it’s also the key to the secret technique’s success, so I gave her one of Zuo Lan’s letters. I don’t know if Ah Que will be angry with me. If she is, could you help me coax her around?” Yun Heng looked down at the little white puffball in the cage. She still seemed to mistake Wen Qiwu for Qingtuan.
Wen Qiwu tilted her little head. Zuo Lan’s letter?
Her shijie’s pale fingertips rubbed her little head. The white puffball half-closed her eyes, looking quite content.
She wouldn’t be angry with her shijie at all. Wen Qiwu nuzzled against Yun Heng’s hand.
Still… Wen Qiwu remembered that the contents of the letters between her and Zuo Lan were mostly things she couldn’t let others see. She had also been afraid of her shijie discovering her secret, so she destroyed each letter after reading it. She shouldn’t have left any of Zuo Lan’s letters behind.
Wen Qiwu didn’t know that this was all from after her “death.” A century ago, the news of her death hadn’t reached the frontier. Zuo Lan, who had been fighting Demon Realm forces at the front lines, still worried about her, confined at the Cliff of Reflection, so she occasionally sent letters.
After she “died,” Wenshen Sect was in chaos for a long time. By the time everything settled down, the sect’s disciples discovered those letters. Since Wen Qiwu had already “passed away,” the letters were given to Yun Heng.
Who knew where Lin Shu had heard about this. She showed up with Soul-Swapping Grass to trade for Zuo Lan’s memento at the exact moment Yun Heng needed it most—a coincidence suspicious enough to make one wonder if it was deliberate.
In fact, it was indeed deliberate.
“I actually know her purpose.” Yun Heng’s fingertips paused briefly, her gaze gradually going vacant as it settled on a certain direction. “She wants to resurrect Zuo Lan. She means to have me test the feasibility of the resurrection technique for her first.”
The Immortal-Demon War that erupted at the frontier a century ago was devastatingly brutal. Even though Yun Heng alone held off three Demon Lords, the pressure elsewhere remained immense. Perhaps by the cruelties of fate, or perhaps because their bond wasn’t yet severed, Zuo Lan and Lin Shu were stationed at the same critical pass.
Later, Zuo Lan was ambushed outside the pass. She perished together with her enemy, and her body fell into a spatial rift, leaving not even a trace behind. Yuxi Sect sent word that her token had already shattered. Lin Shu couldn’t even deceive herself.
The grievances and ill-fated bond between them should have ended with one side’s death. Yet that ever-rational and cold Immortal Lord Lin Shu refused to let go, until she ultimately destroyed her cultivation and rebuilt it anew.
The dead may find release, but for those left behind, it is a torment worse than death. It was so for Yun Heng, and so it was for Lin Shu.
They were both slow, obtuse people. If not for the soul-rending agony of loss, they might never have confronted their own feelings.
“Chirp!” So that was what she was after! Wen Qiwu gave a little huff, but on second thought, she felt that Zuo Lan and Lin Shu reaching this point was truly regrettable.
Wen Qiwu had heard about their past from Zuo Lan. The two had been neighbors since childhood, living in a small village in the mortal realm. When they were seven or eight, bandits raided the village. Those vicious bandits burned, killed, and plundered, intending to leave no one alive.
Zuo Lan and Lin Shu were lucky enough to escape. The two young children supported each other all the way to where the Qianyue Sword Sect was taking disciples in the mortal world. In those turbulent times, they had only each other, leaning on one another through countless life-and-death trials. How had they gradually ended up like this?
Wen Qiwu sighed in her heart.
“Zuo Lan is your friend. Shijie knows you must want her to live again. Don’t worry, once you come back, Shijie will help her…” Yun Heng murmured.
As Wen Qiwu listened, she suddenly sensed something wrong. Who was her shijie talking to?!
She looked up at Yun Heng, only to see her shijie gazing tenderly at an empty spot ahead.
Wen Qiwu felt that the space in that spot was somehow strange. She narrowed her eyes to examine it closely, and at last she faintly discerned a wisp of black fog that warped the very space around it!
Wen Qiwu’s feathers puffed up instantly, going from a little white puffball to a little white puffball a size bigger.
The phoenix’s cry rang out abruptly. The phoenix was an auspicious immortal beast, wielding flames that countered all things sinister and malevolent in the world. Her furious voice made the shadow in that spot flinch, and then it vanished without a trace.
What was that? Had it been following her shijie all along? Wen Qiwu spread her wings slightly, assuming an attack stance.
After that wisp disappeared, the light in Yun Heng’s eyes gradually returned to clarity.
She stood stunned for a moment, and at last a trace of sorrow showed in her gaze.
When she was lucid, she would know that the “Wen Qiwu” she had just perceived was an illusion born of her Heart Demon. Yet even if it was like drinking poison to quench her thirst2, she still wanted to see Ah Que.
“Qingtuan…” Yun Heng suddenly froze. She glanced down at the cage, meeting eyes with the well-behaved little white puffball.
“Right, you’re not Qingtuan.” Yun Heng withdrew her hand, her mood sinking. She remembered—this was just a little creature that looked a lot like Qingtuan.
Wen Qiwu found herself placed on the desk again. Her shijie’s cold fragrance receded, and she let out a plaintive chirp.
Just because she wasn’t Qingtuan, her shijie wouldn’t even hold her? Since when did Qingtuan earn such fondness from her shijie?
She shouldn’t have let her shijie make this cage in the first place. It would’ve been better to let Qingtuan be a free-ranging wild bird—then she wouldn’t be locked in here, unable to get out!
Yun Heng took out the Soul-Swapping Grass from her storage bag. The herb’s veins glinted silver, just as the ancient texts described.
Most of the Demon Realm’s secret techniques were no good thing. If she hadn’t been driven to the edge of despair, she would never have used something like this on her shimei3.
The slightest misstep, and the person being resurrected could suffer unforeseeable mishaps.
She gently closed her fingers around the Soul-Swapping Grass, a tender light in her eyes.
It didn’t matter. No matter what Ah Que became, she would stay by her side.
“Chirp chirp!” Before Wen Qiwu could finish feeling wronged, she noticed her shijie suddenly stand up.
Where are you going, Shijie?
Wen Qiwu hurriedly hopped to the edge of the cage. For some reason, a bad premonition rose in her heart. She tried to grip her shijie’s sleeve with her tender yellow beak, but unfortunately she couldn’t hold on.
Yun Heng took the Soul-Swapping Grass to the dungeon. Under the Ten Thousand Souls Demon Lord’s terrified gaze, she initiated the first step of the resurrection ritual.
The Demon Lord’s soul was thrown into the “furnace” as fuel, and the array began spinning rapidly. Yun Heng then placed the Soul-Swapping Grass and various other prepared materials into the center.
In the Cangwang Realm, spells that tampered with time were the ultimate taboo—even deities who had reached the God Realm were forbidden from touching such things. Once, a God Realm powerhouse created the Great Time Reversal Technique, and he later died from his own technique’s backlash.
The Demon Realm’s Resurrection Secret Technique was somewhat similar to the Great Time Reversal Technique. The Demon Realm’s method could be called the Lesser Time Reversal Technique. It couldn’t reverse the flow of time across the entire Cangwang Realm, but it could summon a soul from the past into the present, provided that the person’s soul had already dissipated—no duplicate soul could exist in the same timeline.
Yun Heng’s goal was to first collect her shimei’s soul. As long as she had the soul, everything that followed would be manageable.
The Ten Thousand Souls Demon Lord was nearly drained into a dried soul husk. Sustaining the Lesser Time Reversal Technique required an enormous amount of power. As the Demon Lord’s strength neared exhaustion, Yun Heng filled the gap with her own power.
Fortunately, she had rested for a long time two days ago, and her body had recovered somewhat. Yun Heng could feel her power being swallowed endlessly, as if sinking into a swamp. Her complexion grew increasingly pale, yet her eyes were extraordinarily bright. After an unknown amount of time, the fluctuation of a time rift appeared at the center of the array!
Yun Heng immediately threw the prepared talisman paper into the center of the time rift. She could retrieve her shimei’s soul from there. From the preliminary preparations to this moment, Yun Heng had repeatedly verified that every step was absolutely correct! But when she searched the rift for her shimei’s soul, she found that place completely empty—nothing was there.
How could this be…
The time the rift could remain open was limited. To extend it, Yun Heng poured more power into the center of the array, even aggravating her old wounds without stopping.
But no matter how she searched, her shimei’s soul never appeared in that chaotic void. Not even the faintest trace of a soul fragment.
Had something gone wrong somewhere? Yun Heng held the rift open while investigating the ritual’s setup, but by the time she could no longer sustain the array, when she could only watch helplessly as the rift closed bit by bit, that chaotic place was still empty.
When everything returned to stillness, Yun Heng looked at her pale, empty hands. Blood dripping from somewhere unknown stained them red, yet she remained completely unaware. Only the light in her eyes went utterly dark.
Footnotes
- 'Shijie' means senior martial sister; a respectful address for a female senior fellow disciple in a cultivation sect.
- A Chinese idiom meaning to seek temporary relief at the cost of ultimate ruin; choosing a harmful remedy for momentary comfort.
- 'Shimei' means junior martial sister; a respectful address for a female junior fellow disciple in a cultivation sect.
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