My Shijie Seems Intent on Destroying the World – Chapter 1
by Little PandaWhen the Spirit Flowers Bloom
Mu-shijie Is the Best!
Early morning. The autumn wind carried a faint chill.
Dawn light filtered through thinning mist, chasing leaves that fluttered like butterflies, scattering orange and crimson across the mountainside.
“Ah—ah-choo—choo—choo!!”
A sudden string of sneezes jolted her from sleep and startled the birds outside the window.
Qi Zhi sniffled, wiped her tears, and burrowed her face back into the quilt with a muffled whimper.
She had wanted to go back to sleep, but her head was dizzy, her ears felt stuffed, and her nose was so congested that sleep had vanished with that sneeze, never to return.
Outside the window, in the small courtyard, the bamboo wind chime hanging from a tree swayed gently in the breeze. Amidst the rustling of autumn leaves, it rang tinkle-tinkle clack-clack, its notes scattered and ethereal.
Qi Zhi sat up wrapped in her quilt, tilted her head, and gazed at the wind chime, lost in thought for a moment.
This bamboo wind chime had been made by Mu-shijie1 just the other day, crafted by her own hands.
She had infused it with a trace of spiritual power—when the wind blew and the chime rang, it was said to calm the mind.
Calming the mind was all well and good, but she couldn’t help being useless. She had gone and fallen ill out of nowhere, making it impossible to sleep peacefully no matter what she did.
Strange, really. She was a demon nearly of age. Even with damaged spiritual roots, she had been cultivating for years. She should have had at least some spiritual energy protecting her body. She shouldn’t be getting sick anymore.
This illness had come out of nowhere, giving those who already looked down on her yet another reason to mock her.
She had overheard some of it the day before.
“Qi-shijie is truly one of a kind. I’ve never seen anyone fall ill after hundreds of years of cultivation. How novel!”
“Trash is trash. So what if she’s an inner sect disciple? So what if she’s the Daoist Venerable’s disciple? Apart from living in a nicer place, she’s no different from the rest of us—still has to do all the menial chores…”
“I really don’t understand why the Daoist Venerable took her as a disciple.”
“Exactly. Out of all the disciples who’ve entered the mountain, whose aptitude could be worse than hers? How does she alone have such dog-shit luck?”
“Keep it down, don’t let her hear you!”
“So what if she hears? What’s there to be afraid of?”
True—what was there to be afraid of?
If she overheard, she overheard. What consequence could there possibly be?
Qi Zhi knew full well that she was nothing more than the most ordinary blade of grass on the mountain. Born with damaged spiritual roots, she couldn’t retain spiritual energy in her body—like a broken wooden bucket, leaking as fast as it filled. No amount of effort could change that.
Tiandao Sect on Mount Qiongju was the foremost immortal sect of the age, with the Daoist Venerable—one of the Three Venerables—overseeing the mountain gate. Countless people tried to squeeze in at all costs, yet someone of her aptitude had been taken on as a disciple by the Daoist Venerable himself. It was no wonder some felt resentful.
As for why the Sect Master had accepted her as a disciple all those years ago—
Qi Zhi figured it must have been sheer luck. She had transformed into human form early, giving off a rather convincing illusion of future greatness. That must have been what made Master misjudge and take her in.
In any case, for hundreds of years now, Master had paid her no attention whatsoever. The only thing that proved she was indeed the Daoist Venerable’s disciple was that when she made mistakes, she would be personally reprimanded and punished by Master, just like her senior brothers and sisters.
The door suddenly creaked softly, calling back her wandering thoughts.
Qi Zhi turned her head toward the sound, and her previously dejected expression instantly brightened with joy.
The newcomer wore plain white robes, her figure slender and slight. She carried a bowl of medicine in her fingertips, using her elbow to gently push the door shut behind her.
As the door closed, she looked up at Qi Zhi, her eyes brimming with a tenderness soft as water.
“Mu-shijie!” Qi Zhi called out delightedly.
Even her voice, hoarse from illness, carried an unmistakable sweetness.
Mu Qingshi walked to the bedside and sat down, her voice gentle. “You’re awake.”
“Mm!” Qi Zhi nodded, pulling her hands from the quilt to accept the steaming bowl of medicine, cradling it carefully beside her face.
Her nose was blocked, so she couldn’t smell the medicine’s bitterness. She only frowned for an instant as it went down.
She had crushed the herbs into the medicine pot last night, meaning to brew them before bed. But she had felt too miserable and had collapsed back onto the bed half-dead instead.
Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that the medicine she had left sitting in the corner of the courtyard would be brewed by Mu-shijie first thing in the morning and brought right to her lips.
At the thought, Qi Zhi pressed her lips together, hugging the empty bowl, and peeked up timidly. Her gaze at Mu Qingshi carried a hint of embarrassment.
Her just-woken hair was slightly disheveled, and her round face with its lingering baby fat was flushed pink from the fever—the very picture of pitiful, endearing docility.
Mu Qingshi took the empty bowl, reached over to tidy the quilt wrapped around Qi Zhi, then rose and walked to the table to set the bowl down.
Turning back, she saw her junior sister huddled in the quilt with a miserable expression and couldn’t help the slight curve of her lips. She returned to the bedside, a flicker of spiritual light at her fingertips, and pressed three pieces of taffy into Qi Zhi’s palm.
Qi Zhi’s eyes lit up. She happily unwrapped one piece, popped it into her mouth, and let it dissolve.
The sweetness of the taffy washed away the bitterness of the medicine.
“Mu-shijie is the best!” Qi Zhi beamed, her eyes curving into crescents. Her fingers quietly tightened around the remaining two pieces as she tucked them back under the quilt, secretly stashing them beneath her pillow—then remembered to blink and ask, “Why did you come today, Shijie?”
Mu Qingshi brushed the stray strands from Qi Zhi’s forehead, checking her temperature, and said softly, “Ah Yun told me last night that you were ill. I thought I’d come see you.”
Qi Zhi glanced toward the window at that. “Did Ah Yun come too?”
Mu Qingshi shook her head.
Qi Zhi looked back and gave a soft “Oh.”
After a moment of silence, she seemed to remember something. She reached a hand out from the quilt and listlessly tried to grab the clothes piled at the foot of the bed.
“Getting up?”
Mu Qingshi asked casually, already picking up the clothes by reflex. But just as she was about to hand them over, she heard Qi Zhi’s hoarse reply: “The herbs Fourth Senior Brother wanted—I haven’t gone to gather them yet.”
“…”
Mu Qingshi’s brow furrowed slightly. The hand holding the clothes quietly withdrew. She deftly pressed Qi Zhi back down onto the bed, tucking the quilt around her until not a gap remained.
“Huh?” Qi Zhi’s eyes went wide.
“No matter what needs doing, you rest and recover first.”
“But—”
“I’ll explain to the others.” Mu Qingshi tapped Qi Zhi lightly on the nose, then rose to leave.
She didn’t forget one last instruction before going—rest well.
Qi Zhi half-propped herself up, staring at the closed door with her mouth open. Finally, she blinked and happily burrowed back into the quilt, settling in to laze about in bed.
Even though she had no sleepiness left, lying there was still far more comfortable than going out to work.
Outside, the wind blew and the chime rang. Soft spiritual light, gentle as smoke, drifted around the small courtyard on the breeze.
Qi Zhi didn’t know when she had fallen asleep, but when she woke again, it was already afternoon.
Her body felt somewhat better—her head didn’t ache as much, and her nose wasn’t as stuffed.
She shifted slightly and spotted a rosewood food box on the table, kept warm by pearly white spiritual energy—clearly, her shijie had come by again after she fell asleep.
Qi Zhi blinked, crawled out of the quilt, threw on some clothes, and shuffled to the table to fill her stomach. Then she climbed back into bed, hugged a corner of the quilt, and stared blankly into space.
After a long silence, she rolled onto her stomach, reached under her pillow for the two pieces of taffy, and began playing with them in her fingers.
She looked at one of them. “Mu-shijie…”
Then she gave the other one a fiercely cute squeeze. “Other! People!”
Finally, she smiled, her brows curving, and her legs lifted unconsciously, swaying back and forth in the air.
The people of Mount Qiongju, whether human or demon, didn’t think much of Qi Zhi.
There was one exception.
And that was the person who had stood up for her today—the Sect Master’s most favored direct disciple, the Second Senior Sister of all of Tiandao Sect—Mu Qingshi.
All the best food, the most amusing toys, the finest supplies on Mount Qiongju rarely made their way to Qi Zhi.
Only by thickening her skin and going to Mu-shijie could she catch a little reflected glory.
When others saw her coming to bask in that glow, most couldn’t get away fast enough, their contempt and distaste barely concealed.
But Mu-shijie was different from the rest.
Qi Zhi could feel it. When Mu-shijie looked at her, there was never disdain, disgust, or pity for the weak.
In those seemingly still eyes, there was only a deep, hidden gentleness—buried where no one thought to look, beyond the reach of others—gentle and subtle, nurturing in silence.
Ever since Qi Zhi had taken human form and could remember, she had known that Tiandao Sect had a legendary Second Senior Sister.
This shijie’s talent was peerless—the most astonishing disciple the immortal sects of the human realm had seen in thousands of years.
It was said that she had reached the Heavenly Tribulation Realm before her nominal age2 of one hundred. At the Immortal Alliance’s grand assembly, she had stood upon the immortal stage in white robes, fighting for an entire day without once drawing her sword—until dozens of opponents joined forces to attack at once, and only then did her natal sword sing free of its sheath.
Mu Qingshi—her name was known to every soul in the immortal sects.
At the time, everyone said that if the Heavenly Gates had not been severed thousands of years ago, Mu Qingshi would surely have ascended to immortality.
But that was all a very long time ago.
Five hundred years ago, in the battle between the immortal sects and Demon Venerable Huiyue, Mu Qingshi was gravely wounded by demon qi. Her spiritual roots were destroyed, her cultivation realm plummeted, and she would never break through again for the rest of her life.
After that, Tiandao Sect’s Second Senior Sister fell into total silence, locking herself away in Suihan Hall, the most remote corner of Mount Qiongju.
They said Suihan Hall had been a tranquil retreat that Mu Qingshi had requested from the Sect Master for secluded cultivation.
No one could have imagined that such tranquility would ultimately become the prison of her own heart.
The most dazzling young cultivator the immortal sects had seen in a thousand years had thus become a cripple that fewer and fewer people remembered.
When Qi Zhi first joined the sect, everyone told her there were two places on Mount Qiongju she must never go.
One was the Forbidden Back Mountain.
Two divine seals lay there, imprisoning Demon Venerable Huiyue and the Demon God’s Natal Sword respectively. The yin energy was overwhelming.
The other was Suihan Hall on the north side.
That was where the Second Senior Sister with ruined spiritual roots lived. They said she had gone mad—terrifying to behold.
Qi Zhi was timid by nature and believed it completely.
She had been born with damaged spiritual roots. No matter how hard she tried, her progress was negligible, so she had turned to studying herbal medicine, hoping to make herself more useful to the sect.
In her first hundred years, she had searched high and low for medicinal herbs across the mountain. She knew exactly where every flower liked to bloom and every herb grew on Mount Qiongju—but she had always steered clear of those two forbidden places.
Every autumn, Qi Zhi would go to the Osmanthus Grove in the mountains to shake down osmanthus flowers.
She would turn those flowers into osmanthus jam, enough to supply the entire sect for the coming year.
She was so inconspicuous on the mountain that sometimes she even felt she was something of an eyesore to others. Only at this time of year did she receive a few offhand words of praise.
So she always found this task a bit more enjoyable than anything else.
One time, as in years past, she took a borrowed Qiankun Bag3 and went running and skipping through the mountain woods. Stepping on a carpet of fallen gold, she shook the osmanthus blossoms from one tree after another.
The rich fragrance of the grove surrounded her as the petals she shook loose drifted down like snow, covering her from head to toe.
She was shaking the trees happily when she turned and met a pair of deep, star-bright eyes.
In that instant, she stopped. A breeze swept past, setting the falling flowers dancing.
She looked at that person, as if through a veil of thin mist and smoke, catching a glimpse of a lone moon reflected in water.
Luminous. Fragile. Yet so gentle that she couldn’t help wanting to move closer.
She opened her mouth, tilted her head, and asked timidly, “I’ve been in the sect for a hundred years and I’ve never seen you before… Who… who are you?”
“Mu Qingshi.”
The woman answered softly, lowering her gaze to catch two falling osmanthus petals. A gentle smile curved her lips.
Between the flutter of her robes, the wind stilled and the flowers fell.
In that single moment, Qi Zhi could never look away again.
The author has something to say:
Qi Zhi: It was fate!
Mu Qingshi: It was intentional.
I’ve finally overcome my laziness and started a new story! My little angels, please collect and comment lots to give me endless motivation to keep writing!
Footnotes
- 'Shijie' is a respectful term for a female senior fellow disciple in a cultivation sect; attached to a surname, it forms a polite address.
- In the traditional Chinese age-counting system, a person is considered one year old at birth and gains an additional year at each Lunar New Year, making the nominal age one to two years higher than the actual age.
- 'Qiankun' refers to heaven and earth in Chinese cosmology; a Qiankun Bag is a spatial storage artifact that can hold far more than its outward size suggests.
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