After Death, I Became My Shijie’s Palm-Sized Birdie – Chapter 75
by Little PandaMachinations
Mother said that if you kill them all, every problem is solved.
The second day in Jiaoyue City was bitterly cold. The moment people pushed open their windows, they saw thick snow piled up outside — even cultivators whose bodies had been tempered by heavenly thunder felt the chill burrowing deep into their bones.
In the span of a single night, many cultivators had thrown on padded jackets. Someone tried to melt the snow off the streets, only to fail to clear so much as a palm-sized patch.
“Just as I thought… the ones who clashed last night must have been several Golden Immortal Realm immortals!” declared an Earth Immortal Realm immortal with a fire spiritual root, after examining the snow on the ground.
The commotion last night had been genuinely terrifying. When the sky-fire meteors came falling, plenty of people were certain they were about to die right there. Mercifully, an immortal with an ice spiritual root had stepped in at the last moment and swept those meteors flat.
“When immortals fight, it’s little people like us who suffer. Sigh — the Dragon Gate Grand Ceremony hasn’t even begun, the Dragon Gate itself hasn’t even appeared, and already they’ve fought themselves into this state. If something actually happens later… and the City Master hasn’t given any statement at all. Who’s to say last night’s business won’t happen again.” The Demon Race cultivators who had made the trip to Jiaoyue City had come specifically to draw closer to the Dragon Gate that might appear. The Human Race had no such need — they had no reason to stake their lives just to gawk at close range.
“A fair point…” When the forbidden techniques erupted last night, the entire stretch of space had been warped. Cultivators of low strength couldn’t even run. No one wanted to relive last night’s experience.
So when Wen Qiwu pushed open the window and looked out, she found quite a few people leaving the city. The roads were much emptier; of the stalls once packed densely along both sides of the streets, half were gone.
“Lots of people have left.” Wen Qiwu sighed softly. If the City Master of Jiaoyue City weren’t her shijie1‘s friend, she would rather have taken her shijie away from this den of trouble entirely.
She had already suspected as much last night, and after seeing the city cloaked in silvery white this morning, she was all the more certain… when her shijie struck last night, her power had slipped somewhat out of control.
In the past, whenever her shijie acted, the climate would shift too — but as long as she kept her power in check, she could rein in the rampaging frost in an instant. Yet the snow outside hadn’t melted all night, and the air was now so cold that Wen Qiwu had to drape on the outer robe woven from Fire Feather Bird feathers she’d worn before.
Her shijie kept saying she was fine, but that sword last night must have torn at her old wounds. Wen Qiwu was just about to close the window when a sea bird, common enough along this coast, flew in. Shivering, it landed on her shoulder and let out a couple of timid, halting little chirps.
Even the birds in the city couldn’t take the cold anymore.
Wen Qiwu shut the window, then tucked a fire crystal stone into the little sea bird’s breast feathers.
With the fire crystal stone, the little bird stopped shivering at once. It gave two crisp chirps, nuzzled affectionately against Wen Qiwu’s arm — and then, from an angle Wen Qiwu couldn’t see, pecked a couple of times at her clothing.
To the Feather Tribe, having one’s own clan’s feathers appear on the body of a phoenix would be a glory immense enough for that clan’s birds to crow about for generation after generation. Even this little sea bird, whose spiritual intelligence had barely awakened, subconsciously wanted to peck the feathers out of this robe and swap in its own.
“Good girl. It’s cold outside today — you stay in here for now, and head back out once it warms up.” Wen Qiwu stroked the little bird’s head, and the little thing chirped twice, rather excited.
“Ahem.” A soft cough came from the bedside. Wen Qiwu hurriedly set the little sea bird on the low cabinet nearby, and with a flick of her mind, she was at her shijie’s side.
She had long since finished simmering the medicine; its faintly bitter scent filled the room.
Yun Heng had just wrapped up her brief session of circulating energy to treat her wounds — and the moment she opened her eyes, she saw yet another bird stuck to her shimei. She sighed without quite meaning to. Well, a bird was a bird. An ordinary bird was nothing. As long as it wasn’t one of those bird demons or humans — those were the ones genuinely trying to steal her Little Phoenix away from her.
It was merely that the sigh had accidentally tugged at the old wound near her heart, hence the cough. Mm. Purely accidental. Absolutely, definitely not a deliberate ploy to make her shimei put that sea bird away somewhere.
“Shijie, drink your medicine first.” Wen Qiwu placed the bowl — its temperature exactly right — into Yun Heng’s hands.
Yun Heng’s face looked a shade paler than yesterday, and Wen Qiwu’s heart tightened with a quiet ache.
Yun Heng drained the medicine in one gulp, and Wen Qiwu fished a candy out of her storage bag and popped it into her shijie’s mouth.
“What’s wrong with your hand?!” A trace of gravity showed in Wen Qiwu’s slightly widened eyes. As she moved to take the empty bowl from Yun Heng, she noticed that her shijie’s right hand — the one holding the bowl — seemed to tremble, ever so faintly. Her shijie wielded her sword with that right hand; even bearing grave wounds, her sword tip had never once wavered. How could she fail to hold a bowl steady?
Yun Heng seemed to notice it only upon hearing Wen Qiwu’s voice. Brow furrowing, she looked down at her right hand — and indeed, just as her shimei said, it was trembling faintly.
Once Wen Qiwu had taken the empty bowl, Yun Heng pressed her left hand over her right wrist.
Yun Heng chanted an abstruse, astringent incantation — and in the end, she actually drew out from her own wrist a thread of Demonic Qi she had never detected before!
The moment that faint wisp of Demonic Qi was pulled free of her wrist, Yun Heng felt the strength in it return to normal. She had assumed the slight weakness in her right hand was an aftereffect of her injuries relapsing — she’d never imagined a smear of Demonic Qi had been silently coiled inside her own flesh and blood.
Yun Heng’s thoughts went at once to the thing she’d brushed against outside the window when she swung that sword last night. She hadn’t seen what it was — only felt herself touch a mass of faintly cool Demonic Qi — and the instant she made contact, the thing had vanished without a trace. If not for Yun Heng’s absolute confidence in her own perception, she might have suspected she was imagining things.
That thing had never reappeared after vanishing, as if it had been annihilated outright by the passing sword intent. Yun Heng searched thoroughly and found no clue whatsoever.
She had been careful — and still, without ever realizing it, she’d suffered a small loss.
“It was the thing I touched last night.” Yun Heng told Wen Qiwu about the accident.
“Shijie, give me your hand.” Wen Qiwu’s gaze darkened. She gathered her shijie’s right arm into her hands, then summoned Phoenix Flame and wrapped it around Yun Heng’s entire arm.
The phoenix’s flame is a sacred medium for expelling evil and scouring filth — better than any human perception. Under Wen Qiwu’s slow, careful roasting, she discovered yet more residual Demonic Qi lurking in the crevices between the bones of her shijie’s arm. The stuff hid as if it possessed a will of its own — but the phoenix flame was more formidable still, and even this Demonic Qi, so adept at concealment, was burned to ash all the same.
Meanwhile, in the Canghai sea not far from Jiaoyue City.
This was the deep sea where the ceremony to summon the Dragon Gate would be held. Nearby lay a self-contained pocket of space, and within it a young man was making offerings before an incense burner — except the burner held neither ash nor incense. Only a mass of pitch-black Demonic Qi.
He chanted incantations without pause, fresh corpses laid beside him as sacrifices.
When the time was about right, he tossed one corpse into the burner. But this time the burner was nothing like its usual calm — it shuddered and roiled like boiling water, crackling and clattering without stop.
Facing such a scene for the first time, the young man panicked. He struggled to control the burner with one hand while shouting for help — but before any backup arrived, white flames suddenly burst up from the burner.
“Bang!”
With one tremendous blast, the burner exploded.
Only then did the Worthy Master of the Demon Realm stroll over, unhurried.
The explosion just now had been deafening. The young man minding the burner had nearly been blown up along with it, and he was still shaken even now.
Worse still — how was he supposed to account for this to the Worthy Master?! That burner was a treasure, and from the sound of the Worthy Master’s words, he’d been using it against a troublesome enemy!
And now the burner had exploded right before his eyes! The Worthy Master would surely flay him alive!
“Da, da!” Footsteps. The Worthy Master was here!
The young man trembled and knelt to one side, not daring to raise his head.
“These flames… it seems someone helped her.”
He picked up a shard of the burner, and his expression bore none of the fury the young man had braced for.
“Stop kneeling. Get up.”
The young man clambered to his feet, weak with relief, then asked, “Worthy Master, should we set the trap once more?”
“No need. The same trick won’t work on her twice. Besides… my goal has already been achieved.” His deep gaze turned toward Jiaoyue City.
“To deal with her, I spent one Demon Lord and one Demon Seed. An opportunity won back at such cost cannot be wasted.” The demon sighed, as if in lament. “If Yun Heng does not die, unifying the six domains will remain nothing but a dream.”
“With you at the helm, that so-called Immortal Venerable can only wait for death.” The young man didn’t forget to flatter him.
“It won’t be that easy. If she hadn’t acquired a soft spot of her own, I’d have no hold over her whatsoever. Perhaps it was heaven’s will that let me see that child.” In the demon’s mind rose a scene from long, long ago — Yun Heng, holding a little girl in her arms, glimpsed by pure chance. He had never forgotten it, scheming over it every waking moment.
To say such a thing aloud might be rather embarrassing: in the entire Demon Realm, there wasn’t a single demon who could stand against the Immortal Venerable in the open. All they had were schemes and machinations.
But so long as a scheme worked, demons — whose moral scruples ran thin, or didn’t run at all — accepted them gladly.
“It’s only strange that Yun Heng’s condition seems to have improved considerably.” The demon recalled the figure of the woman traveling at Yun Heng’s side. Could some accident he’d failed to divine be interfering with fate?
Back in the room, Wen Qiwu sneezed, and Yun Heng at once picked up the outer robe her shimei had just shed and wrapped it around her.
“Cold?” Yun Heng took her shimei’s hand. It was very warm — like a little stove. She didn’t seem cold at all.
“Not cold.” Wen Qiwu shook her head. The sea bird nearby, sensing the shift in her mood, flew over in concern and gave a soft chirp.
“Ah Que?” Yun Heng had barely gotten the name out when a pair of wings abruptly enveloped her. From the state of those feathers, it wasn’t hard to tell the Little Phoenix had puffed up in fury.
“Scared?” Yun Heng gathered her shimei into her arms and gently patted her back.
Her shimei’s feathers were very soft. A pleasure to touch.
“The Demon Realm has set its sights on you, Shijie.” Wen Qiwu spoke through gritted teeth. She refused to believe any of this was an accident. “I’m going to hunt those demons down.”
Those demons were like snakes in a gutter. Until they were dragged out into the sunlight, no one could say when they’d sink their fangs in next.
“Their origins are unknown — don’t rush to strike.” Yun Heng rubbed her long hair.
Wen Qiwu nodded inside her shijie’s embrace. “That’s what Mother said. She said if you just kill every last one of them, all problems are solved.”
Yun Heng froze — and then a gust of wind from beating wings swept past, and a round, plump white dumpling of a bird landed on Wen Qiwu’s shoulder. Qingtuan gave a “Chirp!” — as if to ask, was something wrong with what she’d said?
Sure enough… Yun Heng sighed inwardly. The only one who could lead the Little Phoenix astray was the big phoenix.
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