Alone, Beautifully – Chapter 115
by Little PandaMy Wife (27)
“Today should have been our grand wedding day.”
Zheng Zhiyu clearly likes her too.
Xu Jiao can see that.
But no matter what, the other party refuses to agree to marry her. The girl in the dream had no choice, and one day she secretly used the spirit wine brewed by Zheng Zhiyu herself to get her drunk, and then secretly changed Zheng Zhiyu into the wedding dress she had been sewing for a long time.
Just after finishing all this, the girl began to arrange the bridal chamber.
Red candles, ceremonial wine cups, peanuts, melon seeds…
She arranged everything one by one.
Humming a song, her mood was extremely joyful.
She even calculated the time, waiting for the right moment, when she could wake up that awkward and stubborn Taoist priestess and marry her, after all, she had long seen that the other party also liked her the same way.
She just hoped that Zheng Zhiyu wouldn’t be too angry at that time.
The place where the two lived was a temporary shelter, in a small mountain village. The people in the village all worked from sunrise to sunset, simple and kind. Just as the auspicious time was almost there, suddenly there was a knock at the door.
Xu Jiao was aware that she approached the door without any guard, and when she opened it, her face still wore a joyful expression, “Who… ah?”
Before the words had even fallen.
Her chest was already in pain.
She saw a woman with hatred on her face, and also saw the butcher’s knife in the woman’s hand. At this moment, that sharp blade was pointing at her, half-buried in her chest.
The girl recognized this woman.
Previously, Zheng Zhiyu had taken her along to accept this person’s commission. The woman said her husband’s soul had been stolen by a fox spirit, and she wanted to ask the immortal master for help. The two of them went together, but it turned out that it wasn’t a fox spirit, but a weasel. Originally, this woman’s husband’s ancestors had killed a whole family of weasels, and now they had come for revenge.
That weasel was stubborn and unrepentant, willing to sacrifice all its cultivation just to make this man die of heartbreak for losing his love.
Zheng Zhiyu couldn’t wake it up.
The weasel was no match for Zheng Zhiyu. With its last breath, it used itself as a curse, cursing that family’s men to end within three generations. At that time, both the cursed man and the woman who had made the request looked desperate and heartbroken.
That man woke up from his confusion and kept scolding the woman: “Why did you find these charlatans! They can’t even resolve a weasel! What should I do! How will I deal with this curse in the future!”
“It’s all your fault! Women’s short-sightedness!”
Zheng Zhiyu had originally planned to go and find a way to break the curse.
The girl had seen her planning many times to go to the Miao villages or to the north, all for breaking the curse, who knew…
She looked down at the knife in her chest.
The woman seemed terrified, yet also as if her hatred was resolved. She looked around, thinking Zheng Zhiyu wasn’t there, and then spat viciously at Xu Jiao, cursing: “Evil Taoist, it’s all your fault! It’s all your fault! You’ve ruined my family! You’ve caused our family line to end! It’s all because of you!”
Xu Jiao was again in Zheng Zhiyu’s perspective.
She experienced the Taoist priestess’s pain as she rubbed her forehead after sobering up. She saw the beautiful wedding dress on herself, and thought of something unknown. Then, she suddenly started to tear at this dress, muttering:
“No good…”
“The trial of love is not over… cannot marry…”
Halfway through her words, she finally noticed a faint smell of blood in the air.
Zheng Zhiyu’s heart jolted, she sat up and called out towards the courtyard, but there was no response.
She had a strong bad premonition in her heart, and even without any divination, she had already guessed who had met with an accident. She hurriedly went outside, the overly long skirt of the wedding dress hindered her for a moment, but fortunately, she managed to stand steady with her good physical skills.
Zheng Zhiyu kept telling herself to stay calm, to stay calm, but when she saw the figure lying in the pool of blood, her breath still caught.
Immediately after—
She quickly went over, pressed several major acupoints on that person’s body, trying to stop the bleeding, but the body she picked up was already cold.
The three hun and seven po were about to scatter.
It was beyond salvation.
As Zheng Zhiyu held this person, the first words that echoed in her mind were from many years ago, when she carried this person out of her nominal husband’s home, and the other asked with seeming innocence:
“I don’t love him… do I still need to go through this trial?”
Zheng Zhiyu had only calculated that day was the other’s day of tribulation.
It turned out.
It turned out that the trial to be faced was not about that so-called husband, but herself.
Because the girl’s beloved was her.
From the moment she rescued the other, this girl had already begun facing her trial.
No wonder no matter how Zheng Zhiyu calculated their marriage now, it always showed great misfortune, no wonder…
She didn’t care at all that her red robe was stained with blood, holding the person and sitting there in a daze. Many techniques for defying heaven and changing fate flashed through her mind, each one she had heard of or learned from her master, and also what her master had repeatedly warned her about:
“These techniques, I pass on to you, but we, the inheritors of Taoism, all seek longevity and the great Dao. The great Dao has its natural laws, but these techniques all go against heaven’s will, they will reduce one’s lifespan and cause karmic retribution. I pass them on to you so they won’t be lost, but I hope you will never use them in your lifetime.”
On this path of immortal cultivation.
One wrong step, and every step after is wrong.
Zheng Zhiyu looked down at the person in her arms whose face had already turned pale, feeling that every voice in her mind was urging her: Use it, you’ve devoted your life to the Dao, done countless good deeds, saved who knows how many people, yet you can’t even save your own beloved, don’t you feel pathetic?
Use it, since your master has passed these techniques to you, it means you have a connection with them. You ultimately cannot cultivate the great Dao, so why not just today, become an ordinary pair of mandarin ducks with her in the mortal world, staying together for a lifetime.
Cast the spell, you only want one lifetime, don’t you?
But there was still some remaining rationality telling her—
If she sends the other to reincarnate now, the girl will still have a chance for happiness in the next life. In this life, she has followed her doing good deeds and accumulating virtue, so in the next life, she will surely be blessed, and need not become something neither human nor spirit again.
If you use those heaven-defying evil techniques, Zheng Zhiyu, you’re sacrificing your own lifetime, that’s one thing, but do you want her to be unable to transcend after death, to vanish into thin air?
Those whose fate has been altered will not be recognized by the cycle of reincarnation after death.
If it’s altering the fate of the living, it’s still acceptable, but forcibly extending the life of the dead is equivalent to changing life and death, reversing yin and yang. It’s an existence that violates the ultimate principle of the world, how could the cycle of reincarnation recognize her?
Zheng Zhiyu sat in that courtyard for an entire afternoon.
That night, she finally moved, cleaned the girl thoroughly, and changed her own clothes as well. She purified herself, bathed, changed clothes, set up an altar, performed rituals, directly left her body, and personally escorted the other’s soul to the underworld.
The pale white soul, a person with a tail, clung to her sleeve pitifully, looking very guilty:
“If only I…”
“If only I hadn’t gotten you drunk, this is what I deserve, don’t be sad.”
Zheng Zhiyu only responded with a faint “Mm.”
When she watched the person pass by the Three-Life Stone and was about to cross the Bridge of Helplessness, the other stopped and said to her: “You… you should go back, don’t see me off anymore. In the past, when I left the mountain, you watched me go. This time, let me watch you leave.”
Zheng Zhiyu looked at her, her feet seemingly rooted to the ground, not moving.
But the girl smiled at her: “Go quickly, while I still remember you. I’ll see you off for a bit. Once I cross the Bridge of Helplessness and drink Meng Po’s soup, I won’t remember you anymore. You should forget me too, go cultivate your great Dao, go be your immortal.”
Zheng Zhiyu stood without moving, just looking at her, listening to what she said about becoming an immortal.
Looking at that face, which was exceptionally beautiful even as a soul, Zheng Zhiyu’s most steadfast core belief since she started cultivating immortality with her master at six or seven years old, began to waver gradually…
Becoming an immortal.
Did she still want to become an immortal?
Having entered this mortal world, having faced this trial of love, how could she still become an immortal?
But she didn’t want to worry the other, so she just silently turned back. Like how she usually hid her thoughts, this time she also carefully concealed her struggle, pain, and emotions of parting, and walked out of the underworld as if nothing had happened.
She didn’t know, but Xu Jiao knew, that the girl hadn’t left from in front of the Three-Life Stone. She just stood there foolishly, because Xu Jiao’s perspective had changed again, this time returning to the girl who had the same face and name as herself.
She saw a person from within the Three-Life Stone, Zheng Zhiyu.
Legend has it that when souls in the underworld pass this Three-Life Stone, they can see the lives of the people they cared about most when they were alive. Some souls are so attached to their loved ones that they can’t bear to leave, insisting on waiting in front of this Three-Life Stone for the person they care about to come again.
The girl thought, she had no wish, she only wanted to see Zheng Zhiyu forget her and become an immortal, then she would leave to be reincarnated.
This way…
This way she could also forget this Taoist priestess.
With such thoughts in mind, Xu Jiao stood in front of the Three-Life Stone for a long time.
She saw how Zheng Zhiyu looked when she returned from the underworld.
That person hadn’t even changed her Taoist robe, and just sat like this in the bridal chamber she had prepared, sitting blankly for a long time, as if in a trance. Then, Zheng Zhiyu slowly raised her hand to touch the bright red bed sheet beneath her, touching each of the lilies, melon seeds, and peanuts one by one.
At first, Xu Jiao didn’t know what she was doing.
Until Zheng Zhiyu got up from the bedside, carefully collected all those things, and then filled the two brand new cups on the table with wine. She picked up one cup herself, bent her arm slightly, as if drinking a wedding toast with someone.
Just as the wine cup reached her lips, Zheng Zhiyu put it down again, a hint of shyness appearing on her face, slightly flushed. After a long while, she gently clinked her cup against the other cup already filled with wine, making a crisp sound.
Xu Jiao heard her say:
“I don’t blame you.”
“You were fond of me, wanted to marry me, I… how could I not feel the same?”
“Today should have been our grand wedding day.”
As soon as she finished speaking, Zheng Zhiyu threw her head back and drained the cup of wine.
She poured herself another cup.
Xu Jiao watched her drink cup after cup, the wine flowing over her face, chin, and everywhere. Perhaps she was drunk; towards the end, her eyes were also moist.
It looked like she was crying.
It also looked like wine had spilled.
She tore off her Taoist robe, and put on the wedding dress that Xu Jiao had secretly changed her into, then slept alone on that wedding bed.
Seeing this, although she didn’t know what happened between the two of them afterwards, Xu Jiao understood at this moment why Zheng Zhiyu always wore that bright red wedding dress when she was with her.
Damn.