My Shijie Seems Intent on Destroying the World – Chapter 40
by Little PandaQuestioning the Heart
Will You Kill Her?
While Ah Yun was away, Ling Qiansu taught Qi Zhi, with the utmost care, how to seal a dream realm.
Peering into a dream and entering one were, in the end, two different things.
Another person’s dream is easy to enter and hard to leave. The dream-master’s consciousness reigns over everything within, and outsiders are mostly at the dream’s mercy — one careless slip, and damaging the divine soul would be the lesser loss. Losing your life wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
That was why Ling Qiansu, until now, had only dared to observe dreams, never to disturb them.
But Yinsha was different. Her way of entering dreams was to add a brewing primer to the Yinmeng wine.
No one knew what the primer was, but it presumably let her slip in and out at will.
And what Qi Zhi had to do was this: the instant she sensed Yinsha’s arrival, unfurl an enormous domain to shroud the entire dream — cutting off any chance of Yinsha being drawn out or fleeing in any direction.
Yinsha’s cultivation was deep beyond fathoming. Who knew what myriad shapes she might assume inside the dream? Qi Zhi had to learn to distinguish spiritual auras, so she could pick Yinsha out from countless faces.
And Yinsha’s spiritual aura was right there on the Mingyue Token.
Qi Zhi untied the token from her waist, blinked, and held it up to her nose for a sniff.
“…Not with your nose — you have to feel it.” Ling Qiansu touched a fingertip to the token, magnifying the aura upon it. “Close your eyes and try to feel it.”
Qi Zhi shut her eyes and tried with all her might.
Her cultivation was too low. Even with the aura magnified many times over, she could only sense the faintest sliver of difference.
As if terrified of failing this expectation, Qi Zhi knit her brow, wishing she could muster every last ounce of strength in her body to carve that single thread of difference into her soul.
In a trance, it was as though a cool breeze swept past, greening a stretch of wasteland — softly stirring her Sea of Divine Sense.
Qi Zhi froze. Just as she thought to slip into her Sea of Divine Sense for a look, that magnified wisp of aura on the token vanished.
Ling Qiansu: “Familiar with it now?”
Qi Zhi came back to herself and nodded quickly.
Ling Qiansu let out a breath, then moved on to other matters that might need attention.
She could tell that Qi Zhi had not a shred of experience at crossing wits and spells with anyone.
This little grass demon’s spiritual root was damaged, and the spiritual power in her body was scant. Presumably the reason she could take human form at all was that the Daoist Venerable, in his mercy, had once granted her a measure of immortal power.
Faced with a Qi Zhi this weak, Ling Qiansu feared only one thing — that she hadn’t taught enough, and that when the time came, Qi Zhi wouldn’t even hold her own against Yinsha inside her own dream.
So Ling Qiansu patiently explained a great deal, and taught her several simple technique hand seals, telling her they could all be used within the dream.
Qi Zhi memorized everything earnestly. Perhaps from sheer nerves, her ten fingers felt freshly borrowed — as stiff as stiff could be.
Mu Qingshi watched from the side, now and then reaching over with a smile to correct her form.
After who knew how long, a sudden commotion came from outside the window.
Qi Zhi had just lifted her head when a ball of spiritual light, wrapped around a white fluffy lump, came smashing in through the window like a rattan ball.
A muffled yelp sounded as it rolled to Ling Qiansu’s feet and bounced a little ways off.
The next second, Ah Yun landed neatly on the windowsill, then — under the utterly astonished gazes of Qi Zhi and Ling Qiansu — flapped her way over to the table.
One twig-like little foot rose and gave the ball of light a kick—
The light burst apart. The white bundle curled up inside uncurled itself, hugging its big tail, long ears drooping, and looked up at the three before it — blank, terrified, and shocked.
It shrank its neck and sneaked a glance around; the shock in its eyes deepened several degrees at once.
Was this still Mingyue Villa?
How had it, inside Mingyue Villa, been tied up and hauled into a guest’s room by a seemingly ordinary little bird with no regard for reason whatsoever?
And Ling Qiansu, the Sword Venerable’s disciple of Guizhen Sect — she was with Mu Qingshi and the others too?
The little rabbit tilted its head in confusion, mouth hanging open, not daring to make a sound for a long while.
It was unquestionably shocked — but the shock in Qi Zhi’s and Ling Qiansu’s eyes was not one bit less than its own.
Ling Qiansu: “…This — this is the one you mentioned? The one who knows where the Yinmeng—”
Halfway through, she saw the dazed rabbit’s ears suddenly shoot up, realized her slip, and shut her mouth at once.
Ah Yun had no such scruples: “Just say whether she has it or not.”
This bandit-style conduct left Qi Zhi and Ling Qiansu both gaping.
Xixue: “You want Yinmeng wine?”
Ah Yun: “Yep!”
Xixue: “…Like this?”
Ah Yun: “Got a problem with that?”
The little rabbit’s ears drooped, and it shrank its neck once more.
Ling Qiansu looked at Ah Yun, then at Mu Qingshi, eyes brimming with disbelief.
She’d just been praising this little bird as reliable — and this was how she got things done?!
This wasn’t beating the grass to startle the snake1 anymore. This was basically walking up and slapping the snake across the face!!
If she pretended, right now, not to know any of these people — that she’d merely dropped by for a chat out of boredom — could she still salvage anything?
“What’s with those looks on all of you?” Ah Yun said, sidling two steps closer to Xixue.
Xixue instinctively edged away, eyes warily fixed on this terrifying little bird thinner than its own leg, its mind full of the image of itself being subdued by her in a single move.
“Don’t be scared, little rabbit! We won’t hurt you!” Ah Yun said, then, apparently feeling that lacked rigor, added, “Temporarily!”
The little rabbit trembled at that.
The little bird beside it, wings folded behind its back, opened its beak in full bandit posture: “You’ve got Yinmeng wine on you, right? Hand it over!”
It took Xixue a good long moment to recover. Hugging her tail, she said weakly, “Yinmeng… has to, has to be exchanged for dreams…”
Ah Yun hopped up and kicked a rabbit leg, tone ferocious: “We tied you up precisely because we don’t have dreams! If we had dreams, we’d just ring the bell, wouldn’t we?”
Xixue: “…”
“Isn’t your master waiting for our Zhi-zhi to renew her dream? And isn’t something like a brewing primer supposed to go in?” Ah Yun craned her head up at the spineless rabbit before her and said loudly, “If our Zhi-zhi can’t renew her dream, you can’t complete your errand either, right?”
Xixue couldn’t help being startled: “How did you know that?”
Ah Yun: “None of your business?!”
Xixue: “…”
The little rabbit’s ears drooped, and it didn’t dare speak again.
Ah Yun sighed, unable to hold back the urging: “Hurry it up, get everything ready at once. Then once our Zhi-zhi drinks it, you can go back and report, can’t you!”
Xixue: “B-but without dreams, I can’t complete the errand either…”
Ah Yun: “Then give us one cup first, let her drink it. Tomorrow you come back to collect the dream and deliver the wine, and add that whatever-it’s-called primer while you’re at it. Wouldn’t that work?”
Xixue tilted her head: “But without dreams, I can’t give out wine!”
Ah Yun: “Rules are dead, rabbits are alive! Can’t you bend a little?”
Xixue swung her two long ears and shook her head like a bolanggu2.
Ah Yun opened her beak, wanting to speak, then not, then wanting again.
Why was this rabbit so stubborn?
As if meeting such a hard-to-communicate creature for the first time, Ah Yun’s eyes flushed red for an instant: “Are you looking to die?!”
Mu Qingshi’s brow creased faintly: “Ah Yun.”
Ah Yun hurriedly shut her eyes and drew one long, deep breath. When she opened them again, her bean-sized eyes had returned to inky black.
She’d had her back turned, so Ling Qiansu didn’t see this — only saw the little rabbit seemingly scared out of its wits, huddled trembling by the table leg, and her heart couldn’t help softening.
She crouched down and stroked the little rabbit’s furry head. “There, there, don’t be afraid — Ah Yun’s just joking with you! Little rabbit, your name is Xixue, isn’t it?”
Xixue nodded.
Ling Qiansu: “If Yinmeng wine is handed over without a dream collected in return, is it very easy to be discovered?”
Xixue nodded instinctively, then shook her head.
Ah Yun: “What do you mean?”
Xixue was silent a long while, then mumbled, “You’ve come to make trouble for Yinsha. If I give you the Yinmeng wine, I’ll have harmed her.”
Hearing this, Ah Yun laughed despite herself: “My, aren’t you loyal. And how does she treat you, hmm?”
The little rabbit didn’t answer. It only buried its head.
Qi Zhi crouched down beside it too and asked softly, “Do you know your master has been harming people all along?”
Xixue thought in silence for a long time, then answered in a low voice, “They all came of their own will. It’s only a trade.”
Ling Qiansu: “A trade of your life for one dream?! And you call that not harming people?!”
“It’s only… trading an imperfect present for a perfectly complete lifetime.” Xixue spoke with some hesitation, yet somehow fluently. “In their dreams, they all lived out a whole life — even their deaths came smiling.”
It said these people, every time they woke from the dream, scrambled to find it and renew the dream. It wasn’t that they couldn’t see their own bodies withering day by day — and still they insisted on staying in the dream.
They had all chosen this themselves. They simply believed the dream was better. Yinsha had only granted their wish — how did that count as harming people?
Ling Qiansu was struck speechless; the hand resting on the little rabbit’s head quietly withdrew.
“Well, aren’t you a self-consistent little rabbit!” Ah Yun flew up onto Qi Zhi’s shoulder, gazing down from on high. “Then why don’t you explain the situation with those puppet servants?”
Xixue froze, ears drooping, and asked timidly, “How do you all know everything?”
Ah Yun: “When you’re asked a question, answer it properly. Always answering with questions — do you even know who’s guest and who’s host here?”
Xixue: “…?”
Who exactly doesn’t know guest from host here?
The little rabbit opened its mouth, wanting to argue back, but didn’t dare.
After a brief internal struggle, it gave up on speaking again — silently ducked its head, hugged its tail, and curled itself into a ball.
Ah Yun: “No more arguing back — so you do know it’s wrong!”
Xixue’s ears twitched, and it curled itself tighter.
Mu Qingshi suddenly sighed, releasing a wisp of spiritual power from her fingertip that flowed into the ear-rabbit’s brow.
Xixue couldn’t help trembling; a whimper escaped it instinctively — but after a brief terror, it realized that wisp of spiritual power had not harmed it in the slightest.
It raised its eyes toward Mu Qingshi, gaze dazed.
Qi Zhi pressed her lips together. Her legs had gone soft from crouching so long, so she simply sat down on the floor, hugging her knees.
Eyes drifting, she earnestly pondered whether Mu Qingshi and Ah Yun, at this very moment, were putting on an act — or truly didn’t know this ear-rabbit’s background.
The next second, Mu Qingshi withdrew her spiritual power and asked softly, “If we truly meant to kill you, you wouldn’t even beg for mercy?”
Xixue thought about it, then answered in a small voice, “If I begged, would you let me go?”
Mu Qingshi: “What do you think?”
“If you want to hurt Yinsha, I won’t help you.” The tiny rabbit spoke with uncommon earnestness. “As long as I don’t cooperate, you can’t hurt her.”
“You really aren’t scared of dying, huh!” Just as Ah Yun nearly lunged, Qi Zhi’s quick hands shot out and pinned her down in an instant.
Xixue shrank back: “If you kill me, Yinsha will discover it very soon. That’s no good for you either…”
It lifted its head, looking at the three humans and one bird before it, and advised in a small voice, “You should just leave! I’ll pretend nothing happened today. When night comes, I’ll open a gap in the villa’s barrier, and you can slip away quietly — and never come back!”
Ling Qiansu: “…”
Mu Qingshi looked at Xixue and said evenly, “I probed you just now. There is no spiritual contract within you.”
Ling Qiansu frowned at that: “If you never formed a contract, and you know this is wrong, and she doesn’t even treat you well… why do you still follow her, help her, shield her like this?”
Ah Yun: “Yeah — what incredible perks are there? A job that stinks that badly, and you just have to keep at it!”
This little rabbit had a muffled temperament and didn’t look like a liar — but the moment it hit a question it couldn’t answer, it just dropped its ears, shrank into itself, and wouldn’t say half a word more.
Ah Yun stamped her claws on Qi Zhi’s shoulder in frustration, half angry and half laughing when she spoke — she looked genuinely, achingly curious.
Mu Qingshi, as ever, wore a tranquil expression that gave nothing away.
After a brief silence, Mu Qingshi laughed softly and asked Xixue, “Do you come from Mount Han?”
The little rabbit’s ears quivered. Still, it said nothing.
Mu Qingshi asked again, “Does Yinsha come from Mount Han?”
The little rabbit didn’t move a muscle.
Mu Qingshi raised her head, exchanged a glance with Ling Qiansu, and softly asked the third question: “Do you know Beilu?”
Xixue’s body gave a faint shudder. Its ears shot up instinctively, then slowly drooped.
The down around its eyes grew damp.
Clearly, that name meant something most unusual to it.
Qi Zhi looked toward Mu Qingshi, only to see her press on: “He was your true master, wasn’t he?”
“…”
“What?!” Ling Qiansu couldn’t hold back her astonishment.
“Did Miss Ling not say so herself — that the spiritual power on the Mingyue Token closely resembles this man’s?” Mu Qingshi said, gazing at Xixue, her voice cold. “Should I call that coincidence — or should I ask you how this Villa Master Yin managed to replace him without a sound?”
“…”
After a long silence, the little rabbit curled itself up once more, whimpering low, trembling without end.
It had said nothing at all — and had given the answer all the same.
Ling Qiansu stared, dazed, as if unable to believe it, yet still striving to understand, to accept, everything she was hearing.
Qi Zhi’s heart was full of astonishment too.
She remembered Ah Yun saying that Beilu’s death was connected to Yinsha — but she’d never known that the ear-rabbit who had been doing Yinsha’s bidding all this time in Mingyue Villa was Beilu’s spirit beast.
Its master was dead. Why did it still serve his killer?
However incomprehensible Qi Zhi found it, seeing the little rabbit cry so bitterly, she couldn’t help reaching out to stroke its head, gently soothing.
That comfort only made it cry harder.
The little creature huddled by the table leg and wept for a long time — until its tail was wet, until its paws were damp — and still it said nothing.
Mu Qingshi rose and returned to her seat at the table, quietly watching it cry itself slowly quiet. Only then did she ask, evenly, “If your master were still alive, would he want all this to continue?”
Its last shred of hesitation was shattered utterly in that instant.
It raised its eyes, voice choking: “Will you kill her?”
Mu Qingshi turned her gaze to Ling Qiansu.
Ling Qiansu hesitated a long while, then said gravely, “She carries too many sins on her back. I…”
The light died out of Xixue’s eyes.
Ling Qiansu’s heart softened, and she changed course: “I can bring her back to Mount Baopu and hand her to my Master for judgment. If any repentance remains in her, her life should be safe…”
Xixue was silent a long time, then finally made up its mind. Borrowing an empty stool, it bounded onto the table in a few hops.
It stood upright, snowy spiritual light flashing past its paws.
Two jade cups now stood on the table.
Xixue said the brewing primer was already in the wine. Qi Zhi had only to drink it, and Yinsha could enter her dream with ease, her cultivation not weakened in the slightest by the entry.
Ling Qiansu rose and asked, “And getting out?”
Xixue: “I need to guide her out…”
Ah Yun flew onto the table and clicked her tongue with a sigh: “So she trusts you quite a lot! How is it that after killing your master, she still trusts you that much?”
She went on, head tilting: “You wouldn’t happen to be an accomplice too, would you?”
Xixue: “…”
Ah Yun: “Cried that miserably just now — was it all an act?”
Xixue, eyes still wet, said nothing.
Mu Qingshi glanced at Ah Yun, closed her eyes, and shook her head.
Ah Yun said nothing more, only bobbed her head and settled down on the table.
Beyond doubt, Yinsha trusted Xixue — but Ling Qiansu didn’t trust this rabbit one bit.
Before letting Xixue go back to “report,” she made it swear a soul oath; only when she saw the power of the oath flash once at its brow did she release it.
Qi Zhi leaned at the window, watching the rabbit glide farther and farther away, and couldn’t help asking, “Will it really cooperate with us?”
Ah Yun: “The soul oath’s on it. Unless it doesn’t want to live anymore, nothing will go wrong.”
Qi Zhi: “But what if it isn’t afraid of death?”
“I’d say it’s terrified of dying.” Ah Yun settled onto the windowsill with a laugh. “Don’t disbelieve me — I’m an excellent judge of character. If I’d really run into the type who fears death not at all, I’d never have grabbed her outright!”
Qi Zhi thought a while, then sighed softly, “But Yinsha seems to matter so much to it. Its master died at Yinsha’s hands, and it still protects her…”
Ah Yun: “But it did cry pretty loudly just now, didn’t it?”
Qi Zhi nodded.
It really had been pretty loud — loud enough to be almost noisy.
“If you’re not at ease, I’ll go keep an eye on it!” Ah Yun said, little wings patting Qi Zhi’s elbow. “You — drink the wine and go to sleep in peace!”
“Oh…” Qi Zhi answered, watched Ah Yun fly out the window, then rose and returned to the table, habitually meeting Mu Qingshi’s gaze.
The Shuiyue Jinghua had already fused into one, radiating a soft lunar halo.
There was no small tension in Qi Zhi’s eyes.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be right here guarding you.” Mu Qingshi coaxed gently.
At that, Qi Zhi drew one long, deep breath and, nerves strung tight, drained the wine in her cup in a single go.
As a weightless buoyancy welled up through her, she quietly climbed into bed and burrowed deep into the covers.
Seeing her drop off to sleep just like that, Ling Qiansu couldn’t help clutching her skirt, nerves taut.
“Miss Mu, will we succeed…”
“We will.” Mu Qingshi answered, rising and walking to the bedside, sitting down sideways.
Her fingertip, faintly cool, slipped beneath the thin quilt and quietly took hold of the girl’s warm, soft hand.
The author has something to say:
Qi Zhi: 🥺 Am I really dueling her one-on-one? So nervous!
Mu Qingshi: She’s the one dueling one-on-one.
Footnotes
- 打草惊蛇 | Dacao Jingshe | Literally 'beating the grass startles the snake' — a classical idiom from Tang-dynasty records describing a rash or careless action that alerts the very target one hoped to catch unawares.
- 拨浪鼓 | Bolanggu | A traditional Chinese two-headed pellet drum on a handheld stick; cords tipped with small balls swing around and strike both drumheads when the handle is twirled. Street peddlers historically used it to hawk their wares, and it also serves as a children's toy.
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