My Shijie Seems Intent on Destroying the World – Chapter 20
by Little PandaQuestioning the Heart
Care for Me a Few More Days — What of It?
By the time Qi Zhi woke, the night’s tangled dreams had scattered without a trace, carried off on a single yawn.
With buying medicine for her shijie on her mind, she lingered only a moment in the warm cocoon of her quilt before drawing one long, deep breath and whimpering her way up out of bed.
A quick wash and a quick tidy later, Qi Zhi took her little pouch, and the moment she stepped out the door, she walked straight into a silver-haired girl.
The girl was petite, with fine, delicate features and a small, softly rounded face still carrying hints of baby fat. If not for that eye-catching silver hair, she would have looked the very picture of harmless.
Arms folded across her chest, she leaned against the wall to the left of the guest room, as though she had been waiting a long while. The instant Qi Zhi’s door opened, a pair of big, bright eyes stared straight over at her.
The face was a stranger’s; the gaze, inexplicably, was not.
Qi Zhi stood stunned under that stare for a good moment before venturing a call. “Ah Yun?”
“You got it!” Ah Yun clapped her hands, eyes curving into crescents. “Are you heading to the apothecary?”
“Mm-hm!” Qi Zhi nodded.
Ah Yun hooked a finger at her waist, unhooked a money pouch, and spun it in a circle by its drawstring in front of Qi Zhi’s face before turning to walk ahead. “Then let’s go. I’ll teach you to tell your money apart.”
Qi Zhi instinctively glanced at the room next door. Its door was shut tight; not a sound came from within.
Mu Qingshi’s injuries were no light matter. She needed proper rest.
With that thought, even Qi Zhi’s footsteps down the stairs grew gentler.
Ah Yun waited for her at the inn’s entrance; once Qi Zhi caught up, she began dispensing assorted common sense about the mortal world.
Whatever popped into her head came out of her mouth — one sentence east, the next west. Her guiding principle: zero preparation, zero planning, “I’m just talking, but you’d better listen properly.”
Qi Zhi trailed behind, listening earnestly the whole way, and couldn’t help feeling a wave of emotion rise in her chest.
For the past four hundred years, the Ah Yun she had known was nothing but a mute, low-tier spirit beast — tagging along beside Mu Qingshi purely to freeload her meals, vanishing into the sky every few days, most likely off foraging elsewhere.
Looking back now, she had been terribly naive.
The Qique — the ferocious beast at Demon Venerable Huiyue’s side — and she had been the only one in the world to genuinely feed Ah Yun like a little birdie.
Ah Yun glanced back at her. “Why are you spacing out?”
Qi Zhi snapped back to attention and hurriedly shook her head. “I am listening!”
Ah Yun: “Then what did I just say?”
Qi Zhi: “…” Did she have to ask that exact question?
“Forget it, forget it.” Ah Yun shook her head with a sigh and held the money pouch out to Qi Zhi, pointing at the apothecary not far away. “Here. Go give it a try. Don’t miscount now.”
Qi Zhi took the pouch and bowed to Ah Yun in all earnestness — whereupon Ah Yun instantly sidestepped a full meter away, waving both hands and muttering over and over, “Can’t take that, can’t take that…”
Qi Zhi blinked, at a loss for a second — then clutched the pouch tight and pelted off toward the apothecary.
Buying the medicine went smoothly enough; everything she wanted was in stock. It was only the money she truly didn’t know, and she lived in terror of miscounting. When the moment to count out her coins finally came, the apothecary owner stood by anxiously pointing things out for her several times over.
Ah Yun had waited outside a good while before she finally saw Qi Zhi come out lugging several big packets of medicine.
“That much?!” Ah Yun marveled, and couldn’t resist leaning in for a sniff. The jumbled reek of medicinal bitterness contorted her face on the spot — pinching her nose, waving her hands, she staggered back several steps in a row. “Bleh! Is this stuff for eating or for rubbing on?”
“Both!”
“How tragic!” Ah Yun scrunched her brows. “It smells bitter from here. I wouldn’t eat that if you killed me.”
“Haven’t you ever been injured?”
“How could I not have been?”
“You don’t use medicine when you’re hurt?”
“Obviously not. With my level of cultivation? Minor wounds don’t need tending at all.” Ah Yun shot a glance at the packets in Qi Zhi’s hands. “And if I ever took a real injury, how much good would these mortal things do anyway?”
Qi Zhi faltered for a beat, lowered her head, and said nothing more — she simply followed Ah Yun back to the inn. There she borrowed fire, a medicine pot, and a mortar and pestle from the innkeeper, spread out her packets, and set to work alone in her room.
Of the medicine she’d bought, one portion was to be decocted into a drink to take internally; the other was to be ground into powder for external use.
Qi Zhi saw to both at once — one eye on the fire beneath the decoction while she pounded the herbs destined for her powders.
As she worked, a thread of doubt rose unbidden from the bottom of her heart.
Ah Yun wasn’t wrong: with sufficiently high cultivation, these utterly ordinary mortal herbs would fall far short of simply channeling spiritual power to heal.
Then why, last night, had Mu Qingshi applied medicine by herself?
Had she been putting on a show for her benefit?
Qi Zhi: “…”
No, no — that wasn’t it!
Qi Zhi shook her head hard, flinging the thought beyond the nine heavens.
What would even be worth pretending about? An injury was an injury. Even if you could heal with spiritual power, a little medicine would still speed the recovery along!
Ah Yun was simply picky — she didn’t understand that good medicine tastes bitter. She’d rather hurt for longer than let her mouth stay bitter a few days.
And if not for saving her, Mu Qingshi would never have been injured at all. Rather than fill her head with rubbish, better to hurry up, finish the medicine, and bring it to her!
With that thought, her pestle came down with a bit more force.
Force enough, in fact, as if the mortar held not herbs but her Fourth Senior Brother, the Master who had wanted to take her life, and the whole great crowd of people who had loved piling chores on her at every opportunity — or for no opportunity at all.
Not that she needed to pound any of them anymore. Every last one of them had gone stone cold days ago.
In the shuttered guest room, a bitter, acrid medicinal smell hung in the air.
When the decoction was finally done, Qi Zhi set down her mortar and pestle, poured the medicine into a bowl, and carried it with the utmost care to Mu Qingshi’s door next door.
“Shijie?”
Qi Zhi called out tentatively, and the tightly closed door opened a crack for her, just as it had the night before.
She peeked inside. Mu Qingshi sat sideways by the window, a bowl of congee gone cold before her, and at the sight of her, a smile surfaced in her eyes.
“I brewed a medicinal drink. For shijie’s injuries it will…” Qi Zhi paused mid-sentence, walked steadily up to Mu Qingshi with the bowl, and quietly amended, “…do a tiny little bit of good.”
“All right.” Mu Qingshi took the decoction, blew on it, and drank it down without a word, without so much as a furrowed brow.
When it was gone, she set the bowl down and said, with a faint smile, “Thank you.”
Qi Zhi glanced at the congee on the table and couldn’t help asking, “No appetite, shijie?”
Mu Qingshi: “It’s all right, I suppose.”
“The demon venom hasn’t dispersed yet — of course shijie feels out of sorts. I’ve prepared an external medicine too. It isn’t finished yet, but once it is, I’ll come change your dressing!”
Mu Qingshi smiled and lifted her eyes to Qi Zhi. “Aren’t you afraid of me?”
Qi Zhi: “…”
Mu Qingshi: “Nothing to say?”
Qi Zhi’s lashes lowered. “Shijie has never hurt me,” she said softly.
Mu Qingshi: “And if I do, someday?”
“Then I couldn’t outrun her anyway, and I couldn’t outfight her…” Qi Zhi went on in a mumble, “This is all the skill I have. If someone wants me dead, it’s not as if they need my consent.”
Mu Qingshi gazed at that pair of utterly woebegone eyes, let out a soft laugh, and reached up to tweak the tip of her nose. “They don’t have mine.”
Qi Zhi: “Huh?”
Mu Qingshi: “While I’m here, no one can hurt you.”
She said it softly, her eyes brimming with earnestness.
Qi Zhi had no answer for that. She could only scoop the empty medicine bowl into her arms, scurry to the door, toss back an “I need to get back to the medicine,” and flee back to her own room in disgrace.
After that, her grinding was thoroughly distracted.
Crush the herbs, sift the powder, filter out impurities — through the entire process, her mind kept drifting.
She seemed to be thinking about something, yet seemed to arrive at no conclusion at all.
One moment, her head held the Second Senior Sister of old — forever gentle — and that little chirping ball of a bird, so greedy for fruit. The next, it held a dark moon hanging high, black mist churning, and that man-eating monster bird with its avian body and tiger claws planted at her courtyard gate.
It was like a dream she couldn’t wake from — contradictory, strange, impossible to know how to face.
Lost in thought, she sieved the powder in her hands over and over without realizing it.
When no coarse grains remained, she poured the sifted powder onto a plate, set it on a rack, and placed it over the charcoal brazier to dry-bake.
She rose, stretched a great big stretch, let out one heavy breath that blew the tangled thoughts clean out of her head, pushed open her door, and headed downstairs.
The Wu Hour slipped past before she knew it. Qi Zhi decided she ought to eat something; she had barely settled at an empty table when she heard the name Lady Yue.
She looked up: the waiter who should have come over to take her order was instead standing at the next table beside two customers, kettle of hot water in hand, listening to gossip in open shock.
“Lady Yue on North Street died last night!”
“The people living nearby say they never heard a sound in the night, and the morning was quiet too. When the shop didn’t open at the usual hour, someone pushed a window open to look — and only then did they realize something terrible had happened!”
“Lady Yue’s shop — you could catch the fragrance from a hundred meters off. But today, that smell was gone… The moment that person opened the window, all they got was a wave of blood-stench. Scared half out of their wits, they called a whole crowd over at once, and everyone screwed up courage to push the door in and check.”
The speaker’s brows were knotted tight as he said it.
“They found that in Lady Yue’s back kitchen, the floor had a huge hole broken clean through it! Someone looked down through that hole—” He sucked in a hiss of cold air, his voice dropping considerably. “—and below was a hidden chamber. A great bloody medicine cauldron sat in it, and hanging from the beams, dead people, wrapped in spider silk — loads of them!”
The waiter listened spellbound, jaw hanging open.
“And here’s the stranger part — they say that inside the chamber there was a fox with seven tails, and a purple-furred spider bigger than a person!”
“Isn’t that a demon, then?”
“Isn’t it just!” The diner frowned and waved a hand. “Dead or not, the very sight of those things makes your skin crawl. Who’d dare go handle them?”
“So what now? Just leave them there?”
“The authorities have sealed the place up. Word is they’ve sent men to Qingshi Town to fetch cultivators.” At this point the diner looked down at his stir-fried pork with greens and abruptly lost his appetite. “Ai, the talk going around now is that Lady Yue and that Huaixu girl were man-eating demons. With all those human cocoons hanging in that chamber, who knows whether the food in the shop was ever really…”
His friend beside him hurriedly cut in. “Don’t frighten people! I’ve eaten there plenty of times!”
“Who hasn’t?” The diner shook his head, brows locked tight, as though one more thought would make him sick. “…Enough. Enough of this.”
“Stop scaring yourselves.” Ah Yun materialized out of nowhere, drifted close to that table, and abruptly cut in. “Good stuff like that — that great big fox was surely keeping it all for herself.”
With that, under the two diners’ astonished gazes, she bounced over in a few steps and plopped down beside Qi Zhi, then turned toward the waiter, rapping the table with a smile. “Waiter, enough with the gossip! The young lady’s been sitting here how long already, and no one’s come to serve her!”
The waiter snapped back to his senses and hurried over. “What can I get you two young ladies?”
Ah Yun propped her chin in her hand and looked at Qi Zhi. “Ask her.”
Qi Zhi thought a moment and ordered a bowl of noodle soup, then looked at Ah Yun and asked softly, “You’re not eating?”
Ah Yun: “Already ate.”
Already ate?
Right — Ah Yun had just called the things inside those blood cocoons “good stuff.”
Surely she hadn’t slipped off to Lady Yue’s for a meal in passing…
A horrid chill crawled up from the bottom of Qi Zhi’s heart. She hastily lowered her lashes, not daring to let out so much as a full breath.
Ah Yun: “What’s with that reaction?”
Qi Zhi: “…”
Ah Yun: “Hey, what are you thinking?”
Qi Zhi: “…”
“You don’t think I sneaked over there for a snack, do you!” Ah Yun’s brows pinched, and she thumped the table, face full of disgust. “That stuff’s been hanging out to dry for who knows how long, wrapped up in that lousy spider silk — a pain to peel besides. Who knows if eating it would upset your stomach!”
Finished, she couldn’t hold back a “bleh,” screwed up her mouth, shook her head, and pointed loudly at the door. “I just went across the street for a bowl of beef noodles!”
Qi Zhi frantically waved her hands at her, terrified someone in the room might catch the drift.
“Relax, they can’t hear.” Ah Yun curled a finger and rapped the table twice.
A faint spiritual light flickered, raising a small barrier around the two of them.
Qi Zhi blinked, then realized it must be a one-way soundproof barrier — and one invisible to everyone except her and Ah Yun.
The customers who came in after went on whispering about something; Qi Zhi pricked up her ears. Still Lady Yue.
Lady Yue had been in Qingxi Commandery a good number of years, and in all that time nothing strange had ever happened here — no household had ever reported someone missing. To call her a man-eating demon now was genuinely hard to believe.
And there was one more thing nobody could wrap their heads around: how did a man-eating demon end up dying without a sound on her own turf?
“A fox spirit with seven tails, a spider spirit bigger than a person! Thousand-year demons at the very least, right? What manner of holy being could kill them that quietly?”
The diners traded speculation back and forth.
Qi Zhi listened on with a guilty conscience, daring only to bury her head and slurp her noodles in earnest.
Ah Yun, meanwhile, was lapping it all up. She even ordered a plate of melon seeds and sat sideways against the table, cracking them one by one as she listened. Whenever a theory grew especially absurd, she couldn’t help honking out a few “goose, goose, goose” laughs.
Watching her laugh so brightly, like a small child, Qi Zhi briefly drifted.
Then or now, Ah Yun seemed nothing like the ferocious beast of legend.
Qi Zhi: “Ah Yun…”
“Mm?” Ah Yun answered without turning her head.
Qi Zhi: “Do you… especially like eating people?”
Ah Yun: “Nope.”
Qi Zhi couldn’t help a breath of relief.
Ah Yun: “I’m not a picky eater!”
Qi Zhi: “…”
Well. Good. That was good.
Eating anything and everything did, at least, mean she wasn’t fondest of human flesh, as the legends claimed.
The noodles in her bowl were gone. Qi Zhi gripped her chopsticks, holding a single leaf of greens, unconsciously stirring circles in the broth. “Have you always… followed Mu — Mu-shijie?”
Ah Yun: “Yep!”
Qi Zhi: “Then… why is Mu-shijie so good to me?”
Ah Yun: “She likes you, obviously!”
Such a breezy little “she likes you.” Ah Yun was still absorbed in the gossip around them, head never once turning, as though she were remarking on the most ordinary thing in the world.
But Mu Qingshi’s liking was such an exceptional thing. How could it possibly have landed on her head?
“What is there about me to like?” Qi Zhi asked quietly.
Mount Qiongju was so vast, and not a single person there had liked her. What could Mu-shijie possibly like about her?
Ah Yun clicked her tongue, turned around, and tilted her head at her. “Asking and asking like this — it doesn’t make you very likable, you know.”
Qi Zhi: “…”
“Liking is liking. How do you explain the reason for it?” Ah Yun propped her chin in both hands and spoke in earnest. “Maybe it was some thing you did once, some sentence you said once — nothing much, and so long ago you don’t even remember it yourself. You touched her. She decided you were worth it. So she likes you!”
Qi Zhi seemed about to say something, but before she could open her mouth, Ah Yun was already rattling on.
“I’m just saying — when someone wants to be good to you, you take it, and that’s that. Why tie yourself in knots over whether you ‘deserve’ it? Isn’t that just a fool inventing troubles for herself?” As she spoke, Ah Yun poured herself a cup of tea and downed it in one go.
She cleared her throat and spread her hands. “And take it ten thousand steps back — say one day you really do find out it was all fake. By then you’ll have enjoyed every bit of the good there was to enjoy. You can wail to the heavens then, demand your whys then — won’t there still be time for all that? Why agonize now? And if you worry and worry and it turns out you were only scaring yourself, think how exhausting all those days of worry will have been!”
Having said her piece, Ah Yun smiled, brows curving. “Am I right or am I right?”
Qi Zhi’s jaw had dropped and would not close. For a moment she opened her mouth, then stopped; stopped, then opened it again.
She had the feeling something wasn’t quite right about all that, but she had no idea how to argue with it.
Seeing her like this, Ah Yun sighed. “I know. What happened at Tiandao Sect frightened you badly, and after the things you heard later, it’s only natural you don’t trust us. But some people simply deserve to die — the only reason they’re still alive is that nobody has gone and dealt with them yet.”
“Let me tell you another secret.” Ah Yun scooted over, leaned in close to Qi Zhi’s ear, and whispered, “Your spiritual root — Fu Qingsong destroyed it with his own hands.”
Qi Zhi’s breath snagged. She looked at Ah Yun, rigid, eyes brimming with disbelief.
Ah Yun: “If your spiritual root were truly congenitally damaged, how could you have taken human form the instant you gained spiritual awareness?”
Qi Zhi: “…”
Ah Yun: “And if you were truly ordinary, how could you — on nothing more than that thin, scant thread of spiritual power — coax withered grass and trees back to life so easily?”
Qi Zhi: “…”
“You are not the least bit ordinary.” Ah Yun spoke in earnest. “From the moment he first laid eyes on you, he had it all planned: when the spiritual flower inside you bloomed, he would borrow your power to break through into the Heavenly Tribulation Realm and become the one and only god in this mortal world.”
Seeing that Qi Zhi seemed unable to believe it, she simply laid things out even more plainly.
“He crushed your spiritual root with his own hands so that you could never cultivate normally — then took you into the sect all the same, and never once allowed you off the mountain. What is that, if not control?”
“In five hundred years, he did far more than merely neglect you.” Ah Yun rested her chin in her hands, gazing at Qi Zhi, speaking with unhurried leisure. “Even the foremost of the immortal sects has finite resources. How much ever trickles down to the outer sect disciples? Plenty awaken a spiritual root and never cultivate anything their whole lives — so why was it you, of all people, whom everyone repelled and froze out?”
“Even if the whole sect believed you occupied a seat you had no right to, you were still a disciple the Daoist Venerable had taken in personally. If he had never so much as hinted at anything, how would your senior brothers and sisters have dared treat you that way? And if they hadn’t treated you that way, why would everyone else have trimmed their sails to match?”
“Think again, carefully — everyone who ever cared for you, whatever their station, didn’t they all leave Tiandao Sect one after another?” At this, Ah Yun could not help a scornful little laugh. “Because so long as those people stayed, the wind might have changed. As for your Second Senior Sister — few in Tiandao Sect ever thought well of her anyway. Your closeness with her only invited more mockery, so Fu Qingsong naturally couldn’t be bothered to intervene.”
Qi Zhi’s brow knotted tight. The chopsticks in her hand clutched tighter and tighter, and the corners of her eyes reddened.
“You did nothing at all, yet you became the one being everyone loathed. If that isn’t design, what is? He let it all happen so that, on the day he finally devoured you, not a single soul would raise an objection.”
Ah Yun told Qi Zhi that her spiritual root had not been congenitally damaged — it had been forcibly destroyed, and was therefore weak beyond measure.
So that the ruined root might bloom its spiritual flower without a hitch, Fu Qingsong had not hesitated to plant a Soul-Spirit Guide inside her at the cost of his own divine-soul power — that very strand of spiritual power which had been nurturing her root all along.
Beyond nourishing the root, this Soul-Spirit Guide served another purpose.
It was like an invisible thread, carrying a wisp of Fu Qingsong’s spiritual power, silently taking root inside her body, becoming a part of her — and holding her divine soul fast on a tether.
That way, when the spiritual flower bloomed, he could use that slender thread of connection to fuse all the more easily with a power that was not his.
At which point Ah Yun could not stop herself from rolling her eyes. “If your spiritual root hadn’t still needed his precious care and feeding, he’d have died good and proper ages ago, okay?”
Qi Zhi: “…” Was that really how it had been?
Ah Yun had spoken with such earnestness, every detail laid out crisp and clear — and it all matched the dead end she had so very nearly walked into.
So she could have been something other than the small, weak creature she was now…
Fury tipped over at last into laughter, the red at the corners of her eyes deepening a shade.
“Qingshi told me not to tell you any of this. She was afraid it would only grieve you more. I told you so that you could judge for yourself what all of this is really for…” Ah Yun muttered in a low voice — then suddenly went wide-eyed and stressed, with the utmost seriousness, “You absolutely cannot sell me out! If you do, I’ll never tell you anything again!”
Qi Zhi was silent for several seconds, then nodded, eyes lowered.
Ah Yun slowly let out a breath of relief — and relaxed for less than three seconds before edging warily back in, one little finger extended. “No good. We have to pinky-swear!”
Qi Zhi’s mouth opened and closed and, utterly baffled, she held out her own little finger and hooked it with Ah Yun’s.
The moment the promise was hooked, the little bird’s heart settled right back down into her belly — as though one little hook of two little fingers truly meant a person would never go back on her word again.
Qi Zhi bowed her head and drained the rest of her broth, then sat hugging the empty bowl, staring blankly out the window for a long, long while.
Having heard a truth like that, she had expected to be crushed with grief. Yet once the brief spate of hurt and anger ebbed away, what remained at the bottom of her heart was, astonishingly, only calm.
What-ifs, and could-have-beens…
She had never possessed those things to begin with. She could not picture them, and so could not summon much regret for them either.
Qi Zhi exhaled heavily, thanked Ah Yun, and ran back up to her own room.
The powder over the charcoal had finished drying. Qi Zhi fetched a small porcelain vial and packed it in, bit by careful bit.
Vial filled, she crouched by the brazier hugging it, and thought for a good while.
Coming back to herself, she ordered another bowl of noodle soup from the waiter, took the bowl and chopsticks in her own hands, and knocked gently on Mu Qingshi’s door.
The shut door swung open for her, just as it had before.
Qi Zhi carried the noodle soup in and found Mu Qingshi sitting back against the head of the bed, blanket covering half of her. Her hair-bun had come undone, draping loosely over one shoulder, and her robes hung slack — the very picture of someone about to turn in for the night.
She froze for a beat, then hurriedly shut the door behind her. “Is shijie going to sleep? Did I disturb…”
“It’s fine.” Mu Qingshi glanced at what she carried and smiled, brows curving. “Bringing me food?”
“Ah, mm—when I came this morning, the congee in front of shijie had already gone cold. I supposed you had no appetite, but if the wound is to heal quickly, you still ought to eat a little something. I just had this noodle soup myself — it’s really quite good!” As she spoke, Qi Zhi set the bowl down gently on the table and drew the little porcelain vial from the pouch at her waist. “And the medicine — the medicine is ready too!”
Mu Qingshi: “Then do I eat first, or change the dressing first?”
Qi Zhi pointed at the noodle soup. “Eat first? I’ll wait right here. Once shijie finishes, I’ll change the dressing for you, and then shijie can rest!”
“All right.” Mu Qingshi reached for the outer robe at her bedside, draped it half across her shoulders, drew the collar together, and rose from bed to sit at the table.
Qi Zhi sat to one side, watching Mu Qingshi pick up her chopsticks and begin to eat, and a small, unbidden happiness sprouted in her chest.
When the noodles were gone, Mu Qingshi returned to the bedside and, as she had the night before, slipped half her clothing from her shoulder.
The cotton cloth wound about the injury had seeped faint stains of blackish-purple blood. Qi Zhi’s brow creased. She unwound the cloth, soaked a silk handkerchief in spirits, and began cleaning the wound for Mu Qingshi with the utmost care.
Qi Zhi: “Will the demon venom disperse?”
Mu Qingshi: “It will.”
“Good.” Qi Zhi murmured, gently shaking the powder from the vial over the cleaned wound.
Then she reached for the cotton cloth at hand and carefully wrapped the wound once more.
Dressing done, Qi Zhi finally breathed easy.
The charcoal in the room was burning down to its last embers. Distracted, her gaze skimmed Mu Qingshi’s half-open collar — and, bending forward, she gathered it closed for her.
Mu Qingshi could not help looking up at her.
Qi Zhi jolted back to herself and snatched her hand away, eyes darting aside as she explained timidly, “It’s cold. Shijie shouldn’t catch a chill on top of everything.”
“All right.” Mu Qingshi lowered her gaze and tidied her collar.
Staring a little guiltily out the window, Qi Zhi took a long moment to work up her courage, then asked softly, “Shijie, may I ask you a question?”
Mu Qingshi raised her brows at her. “What question?”
“It’s — on the day I came of age, that spiritual flower bloomed.” Qi Zhi’s hands kneaded each other in front of her without her noticing, her expression nervous. “I’ve been wanting to ask you to take a look. My spiritual root, is it… that is, has it healed?”
“I want to know whether I can finally cultivate.” She pressed her lips hard together, voice as small as a mosquito’s whine. “May I?”
Mu Qingshi hesitated a moment, then answered softly, “You may.”
At that, Qi Zhi’s eyes brightened several degrees. She hastily bent down, braced her hands on the edge of the bed, closed her eyes, and leaned her brow toward Mu Qingshi.
Mu Qingshi was silent a long moment. She did not enter Qi Zhi’s Sea of Divine Sense — she only reached out and touched one fingertip lightly to the center of her brow.
Spiritual light swept through her body, and Mu Qingshi sighed without a sound.
Qi Zhi waited and waited, and no verdict came. At last she couldn’t help sneaking one eye open a sliver. “…Shijie?”
Mu Qingshi: “Better than before. But still damaged — not fit for cultivation.”
Qi Zhi bit her lower lip and was quietly disappointed for a few seconds.
Then, quickly, she straightened up, let out a long breath, and smiled as though it didn’t matter. “Then let it rot! I’ve always been an idler anyway — who’s to say I’d even have the mind to cultivate!”
Mu Qingshi looked into Qi Zhi’s eyes, the corner of her mouth curving faintly, and said gently, “Don’t be afraid. It will be mended.”
Qi Zhi: “Hm?”
Mu Qingshi: “I have heard that the Master of Mount Han holds the Force of Vitality — she can make stone bloom with flowers and breathe life into dead wood. Of all who exist in this mortal world today, she is the one most likely to stand shoulder to shoulder with the gods. With her aid, even a damaged spiritual root should be mendable, I should think.”
Qi Zhi: “Really?”
Mu Qingshi nodded in earnest.
Qi Zhi: “But everyone says Mount Han has always kept itself closed away. Even the Three Venerables of the Mortal Realm would find it no easy thing to meet the Mountain Lord even once…”
Mu Qingshi: “I’ll take you there.”
Qi Zhi: “Huh?”
Mu Qingshi: “Anywhere you wish to go, I can go with you.”
Qi Zhi stared into Mu Qingshi’s eyes, very nearly astonished — half disbelieving, and yet unable to stop herself from wanting to believe.
After a brief silence, she nodded hard. “Then it’s a promise. No take-backs!”
Mu Qingshi gave an “mm.” “No take-backs.”
Qi Zhi thought a moment, then timidly held out one little finger. “Then — then pinky-swear!”
Mu Qingshi couldn’t help a laugh, and hooked pinkies with her.
Qi Zhi no longer had any right to say a word about Ah Yun.
Because she was just as childish — one hook of a little finger, and she took it for a vow that could never be broken.
Qi Zhi set down the medicine vial, went to the table for the empty bowl and chopsticks, and left Mu Qingshi’s room.
Ah Yun was right, she thought.
The things she couldn’t make sense of — agonizing over them would not necessarily yield any answers.
Mu Qingshi was good to her. She had been before, and for now, she still was.
Demon Venerable this, demonic sword that — at the end of the day, life was still livable, even better than before. Why wear herself sick with worry every single day?
With that thought, Qi Zhi pushed open her door — and, spotting the charcoal basin on the floor, suddenly smacked her forehead. She hurriedly called for a fresh basin of charcoal and personally swapped out the nearly spent one next door.
“Rest well, shijie — heal quickly!” she said, and bounced out the door once more.
Door and window shut tight, the room was dim as though night were already falling.
The little lass who had come and gone seemed to have carried every sound away with her, leaving only silence behind.
Mu Qingshi gazed at the fresh charcoal glowing on the floor, and a smile lifted the corners of her eyes.
“Shijie, hurry up and get better…”
She murmured it under her breath.
“Shijie doesn’t want to get better that quickly…”
Demonic qi flickered faintly over her shoulder. Beneath the cotton dressing, the wound that had been healing so swiftly welled, once more, with blackish-purple venom-blood.
Shimei, oh shimei—
Care for me a few more days — what of it?
Early morning came around again. Qi Zhi sat up in bed, swaddled in her quilt.
Eyes still closed, she yawned a yawn that wound through nine twists and eighteen bends1.
“No more lying about — there’s still shijie’s medicine to brew!”
She mumbled it in a small voice, lips pressing shut, then pouting, like a little mosquito, humming and grumbling through her nose for the longest time.
The bed-clinging little blade of grass might whimper all she liked — the medicine that had to be brewed was not delayed by half a jot.
Come to think of it, it had been four days since Mu Qingshi was wounded, yet her injuries had shown only the slightest improvement. She had no spirit about her, resting in her room day after day.
After delivering the decoction, Qi Zhi went downstairs alone to eat and happened upon Ah Yun idling over a cup of tea. She couldn’t help grumbling, “Why is shijie’s wound healing so slowly!”
Ah Yun laughed out loud, arched a brow, and shot back at once, “What do you think?”
Qi Zhi’s head dropped at once.
Ah Yun clearly meant more than she was saying.
For instance — if you hadn’t gone wandering off everywhere, would your shijie have been hurt at all?
Or, for another — did you think being saved out of Yue Jinzhu’s hands was some easy little task?
Qi Zhi pressed her lips together and sighed quietly. “No wonder Lady Yue was once the Spirit Venerable’s Left Protector. Cultivation that high, and demon venom this hard to purge…”
Ah Yun held up one forefinger. Her mouth opened, shut, opened again — on the verge of speech any number of times — until at last she simply pursed her lips, flagged down the waiter for a plate of fried peanuts, and put her head down to eat them all by herself.
The matter of Lady Yue had yet to be wrapped up, and plenty of people in Qingxi Commandery still brought it up the moment they crossed paths.
Qi Zhi ate her noodles, ears pricked toward the idle talk around her.
Word had it that after days of everyone’s waiting, several cultivators had at last come over from Qingshi Town.
They had only given that blood-cocoon-filled hidden chamber the briefest of inspections, only glanced at the two demons lying dead within — and their faces changed on the spot!
“Those cultivators said — whatever killed those two great demons, it seems to have been some kind of demonic creature!”
“We’re this close to Tiandao Sect, immortals pass through all the time — how could there be a demonic creature here?”
“Ai, it’s already spread all through Qingshi Town! Something happened at Tiandao Sect — the demonic entity sealed on the mountain slipped its chains and slaughtered everyone. Even the Daoist Venerable met his end!”
“And Tiandao Sect is just… gone, like that?”
“The Daoist Venerable’s first disciple — the one who spent all these centuries in Yu City, honored by the royal family as the Tiandao Celestial Master — has gone back to Tiandao Sect now, swearing to uncover the truth of that day’s massacre.” The man shook his head, sighing heavily despite himself. “But a junior is a junior, and he’s no Mu Qingshi of the old days. However capable he may be, a Tiandao Sect without its Daoist Venerable exists in name only — it will never rise again.”
“Quiet down, would you? Traces of a demonic creature have turned up here. Once word gets out, who’s to say they won’t come looking straight away? Aren’t you afraid of being overheard!”
“These immortals… surely they wouldn’t bicker with us common folk…”
“Well, that one’s hard to say!”
…
Qi Zhi listened in silence, her heart drumming a little quicker with alarm.
Across from her, Ah Yun shelled peanut after peanut — whether she was listening was anyone’s guess.
Qi Zhi: “Ah Yun.”
Ah Yun: “Mm?”
Qi Zhi darted a look around and lowered her voice. “They’re saying demonic qi showed up here… my Eldest Senior Brother might come…”
Ah Yun: “Ah. And?”
Qi Zhi: “My Eldest Senior Brother’s cultivation is very high, and his Spirit-Search has never once been wrong… Will we be found out?”
“Oh, that?” Ah Yun blinked and tossed a peanut into her mouth. “Yep! Nothing to worry about!”
Qi Zhi breathed a sigh of relief.
Ah Yun flattened one hand into a blade and drew it across her own throat, tongue poking out in a grimace.
Tilting her head, she grinned. “Relax. Any fish that slips the net — one comes, one gets killed! Senior brothers, senior sisters, the Eldest, the Third, the Sixth — not one of them is dragging you back!”
Qi Zhi’s mouth opened, the corners of her eyes twitching twice.
What she was afraid of was precisely this!
The author has something to say:
Mu Qingshi: (人 •͈ᴗ•͈) I’m ever so frail (I’m faking it)
Ah Yun: d(ゝω・´○) Nobody is taking Zhi-zhi away from Qingshi!
Qi Zhi: (๑°ㅁ°๑)‼ So this is what a ferocious beast is?!!
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