My Shijie Seems Intent on Destroying the World – Chapter 42

Questioning the Heart

Is He Sick in the Head?

“With my own hands…?” Qi Zhi asked, bewildered. “M-me?”

Even as the words left her lips, Mu Qingshi had already drifted soundlessly around behind her.

            

Sleeves fluttering, ten fingers released spiritual light, and gossamer strands wound themselves around Qi Zhi’s fingertips.

Yinsha saw the situation turning against her and wheeled to flee.

Mu Qingshi drew upon the spiritual threads. Qi Zhi felt a current of spiritual power flow through her, and with it a single thought flashed through her heart with unusual clarity—her left hand flew through a seal before her chest.

            

Chunsheng burst free in an instant, whipping up countless fallen leaves in the air, and in the space of a breath spun them into a leaf-woven cage that pressed downward.

Her escape blocked, Yinsha frowned and shot backward, waist twisting lightly in midair, the tips of her feet skimming the lake’s surface. One hand channeled spiritual power, heaving up a wave of water that shattered into ten thousand ice spikes and hurled them at the two behind her.

Qi Zhi’s heart clenched—then another surge of spiritual power washed through her whole body. As her left hand traced its seal, her right hand rose and pressed down, and spiritual light blazed before her. The ice spikes passed through it and, in an instant, bloomed into spiritual flowers.

            

The spiritual light gave way to a gentle breeze, and the flowers drifted down on the wind.

They touched the lake water and melted away in moments.

Yinsha couldn’t help faltering. Twice she had struck out; twice it had been turned aside with ease.

            

Within a dream, how strong a person could be depended on how strong they were in the heart of the dream’s master.

Qi Zhi feared her from the bottom of her soul, so here, in Qi Zhi’s dream, she could summon wind and rain at will.

Then what of Mu Qingshi? With a mere lift of a hand, ten thousand ice spikes had become drifting, dancing blossoms…

            

What manner of being was Mu Qingshi in this little girl’s heart?!

She couldn’t linger here to grapple with them. Only by leaving could the situation return to her control!

“Xixue!” Yinsha called from the depths of her mind.

            

Her hands sealed before her chest, and a thread of spiritual light tore through the night sky.

Beyond the dream, no one received it.

After a brief silence, guided by the pull of the spiritual threads, Qi Zhi raised her hand, called Chunsheng back to her, and swung it forward in a slash.

            

In a single instant, it shattered that sky-piercing thread of light.

Bewilderment flickered through Yinsha’s astonished eyes—then, inch by inch, it curdled into pure fury.

So that was why Xixue had been so evasive today.

            

That little rabbit had betrayed her after all.

Guessing the truth, Yinsha laughed in spite of her rage. “You’re quite something, actually managing to make it betray me.”

Qi Zhi knew perfectly well that she lacked the silver tongue to debate right and wrong with anyone.

            

So she simply took two steps forward and demanded at the top of her voice, “Why do you steal people’s souls and imprison them inside wooden puppets?!”

“My, you know quite a lot!” Yinsha said with a soft laugh. “Such a simple question, and you insist on my answer. Then I can only tell you this—I. Like. It.”

She liked it, she said. She simply liked the bustle and liveliness of the villa.

            

Who came didn’t matter—good souls or bad, so long as they could talk and breathe.

The pity was that human lifespans ran so short. Puppets were better—never aging, never dying, forever at her side!

And whether they were beautiful or ugly lay entirely within a single thought of hers.

            

Yinsha said she had never taken anyone’s life for nothing—it was all simply a trade.

She charged not a single coin, freely granting sweet dreams, room and board for who knew how many years, and in the end took only what those people had long since stopped wanting. Willing seller, willing buyer—what was wrong with that?

“Little Foolish Grass, don’t tell me your companions sent you here to lecture me on morality?” Yinsha’s brow creased, a hint of grievance in her eyes. “Do you think I’m hurting people?”

            

“Here in this dream, your spiritual root is whole again. You could achieve immortality with ease; everyone would honor and revere you.” She pressed on. “Even the shijie you adore would revolve around you, day after day, exactly as your heart pleased!”

“A dream like this—you don’t like it?” Yinsha asked, genuinely curious. “If it were real, wouldn’t you want to live such a life?”

“But it isn’t real!” Qi Zhi retorted, frowning. “Dreams always end—you wake up!”

            

“You can just not wake up.” With a sweep of her long sleeve, Yinsha restored the ruined lakescape before her eyes to wholeness.

She drifted a few steps closer and asked in earnest, “If dream and reality could be swapped—more time asleep than awake—why couldn’t a perfect world within the dream be called real?”

Qi Zhi: “Everyone in it is false. How could that be called real?”

            

“But they are all woven from your own heart’s wishes, each one the finest version you can imagine. They will never hurt you, never betray you; before them, you need never lower your guard. Who in the waking world could ever treat you so?”

Qi Zhi: “…”

“They wanted a life without pain. I gave them one.”

            

“Until that life ran its course, I never interfered in the slightest—they were happy from beginning to end! Had I not acted, not one of them would have lived so beautiful a life.”

“Their minds were gone, their bodies decayed; the leftover fragments of their souls served no purpose. Even if they entered reincarnation and were born again as humans—wouldn’t they just meet with want after want they could never fulfill?”

“Why not house them in finer, prettier shells—clean and spotless—and let them stay and keep me company?”

            

By the time she finished, her eyes shone bright as snow, innocent to the point of artlessness.

Qi Zhi’s eyes went wide; for a long moment she couldn’t find a single word.

She could see it now—that whole speech the little rabbit had given was learned straight from Yinsha. The little rabbit had simply lost out for lacking a measure of that unshakable conviction.

            

Mu Qingshi spoke. “You think you’ve done nothing wrong?”

“And what wrong have I done?” Yinsha laughed softly, slender fingers winding lazily around a strand of hair at her shoulder, the very picture of innocence. “True, quite a few people have died at my hands. But how many good souls do you suppose there are among those who’d stop at nothing for a Mingyue Token? Their dreams were filth from top to bottom—left alive in the world, most would only have been blights upon it. Falling into my hands may well have been a bargain for them!”

Qi Zhi opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, her head spinning with a single thought—how did this woman always have an answer for everything?

            

After a moment’s silence, she snapped back to herself and demanded, “Fine words! Then what about me? You wanted to trap me here, and you tried to steal my shijie’s natal sword—how do you explain that?!”

Yinsha sighed, and said faintly, “That one, I can’t explain. I genuinely like you.”

Qi Zhi: “…”

            

“Little Foolish Grass, you’re such a sweet, darling little thing—I took a fancy to you the moment I laid eyes on you.” Yinsha’s tone went soft, her gaze brimming with coaxing appeal. “You’re a demon; your lifespan is long. I’d never treat you the way I treat humans. If you’re willing to stay and keep me company, I can give you more than sweet dreams—much more.”

Qi Zhi: “…”

Yinsha: “And if you’d rather not stay, I won’t force you. Let me out, and I’ll let you go. Your shijie’s sword? You can keep it. All right?”

            

Qi Zhi: “…”

She was, quite frankly, out of her depth entirely. She could only turn back to look at Mu Qingshi, and she couldn’t help wondering—if the figure behind her were not merely a phantom within the dream, what choice would she be led to make?

In that instant, the dream itself seemed to answer her heart’s question.

            

Mu Qingshi met her gaze and said softly, “The world’s affairs—why must they always be weighed as right or wrong?”

Qi Zhi’s lips parted. Confusion flickered through her eyes.

So right and wrong… could simply not matter?

            

“Others may produce a thousand reasons and ten thousand more—but the moment anyone conceives the intention of harming you—” Mu Qingshi paused, lifting her eyes to Yinsha, “—they no longer need to be spared.”

As she spoke, her gaze darkened, and the spiritual threads at her fingertips drew taut.

By the time Qi Zhi came back to herself, her hands had already formed a dharma seal before her chest.

            

Within the dream, all the spiritual energy of heaven and earth converged toward her.

Pure white spiritual flowers, tinged with a soft lunar halo, rode a gentle breeze and bloomed across the whole of this world like falling snow.

Every phantom in a dream—no matter who—should find its every thought rooted in the heart of the dream’s master.

            

Qi Zhi’s heart was simple, without a trace of killing intent; no phantom of her dream would ever speak such words!

A third person had entered this dream!

There was no time to think further. The pressure that quietly unfurled alongside the blooming flowers nearly stole the beating of her heart.

            

Yinsha gritted her teeth, brow knotted, instinctively raising her spiritual power to resist.

Even as her hands formed the seal, her expression froze.

In the depths of her dark eyes, together with the lake’s surface, was reflected a black moon slowly emerging at the edge of the sky.

            

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Ah Yun trailed Xixue the whole way, passing through a barrier she had never noticed before.

Within the barrier, bright as day, a colossal banyan tree grew in silence.

It was rooted upon the jade-green lake, its root system stretching on into a forest without visible end.

            

A soft green spiritual light, clean and pure, hung about this little world like fireflies, carrying an endless breath of fresh wind.

Xixue stood upon the lake as if it were flat ground.

Beneath the banyan, the Dream Furnace, inscribed cover to cover with runes, gave off a halo of light like drifting smoke and mist.

            

The little rabbit hopped up, nudged the heavy furnace lid open a crack, and spat the last few dreams inside.

Ah Yun fluttered down onto the lid, looked it in the eye, and asked, “Mingyue Villa is about to be finished, and you’re still brewing wine?”

Xixue: “…”

            

Ah Yun: “What’s it even for?”

Xixue: “It’s for me to drink. Is that not allowed?”

Ah Yun: “Can I have a little? This wine seems pretty interesting.”

            

Xixue didn’t want to talk. It turned its head away, gave its big tail a swing, and slammed the lid shut.

It hopped down from the Dream Furnace, blew out a wisp of spiritual power, and kindled a tongue of blue flame beneath it.

Ah Yun flapped over to its side, tapped the lake’s surface with her feet to confirm it would hold her, settled down comfortably, and tilted her head up to take stock of this place.

            

She hadn’t noticed before, but now, looking closely, she realized with a start that this place was less a lake’s surface than the bottom of a lake.

The sky above was no sky, but a shimmering expanse of misty water.

The ground below was no ground, but the jade waters of a lake, lit through and through with spiritual light.

            

If one probed toward the lakebed with spiritual power, one would see the banyan’s countless roots winding their way into clusters of clear lotuses, hanging upside-down, piercing through a faint layer of spiritual light, and blossoming in another world entirely.

Fish steeped in spiritual energy drifted among them, and there seemed to be little boats too, carrying lantern light, swaying slowly past.

All of Mingyue Villa, it seemed, was born of this banyan.

            

And it lay hidden in the deepest reaches of the lakebed.

“What kind of tree is this? It’s got something going on!” Ah Yun couldn’t help asking.

“The Tree of Vitality,” Xixue answered.

            

“Never heard of it. What’s it for?”

Xixue didn’t answer. It only crouched down and looked up at the Dream Furnace, where spiritual smoke had begun to rise.

After a long while, it said quietly, “You won’t be able to take Yinsha away.”

            

Ah Yun tilted her head and grinned. “That’s not your call to make. With me standing right here, you won’t be pulling any little tricks.”

“It’s no one’s call.” Xixue wrapped its tail in its arms. “Her life soul is warmed and nourished by this tree. If she leaves, her soul will simply scatter to nothing.”

Ah Yun couldn’t help looking up at the colossal banyan before her.

            

It took her a good long while to sigh out, “It actually binds souls? That’s a dark art, isn’t it?”

Xixue: “…More or less.”

Ah Yun: “Don’t tell me you’re about to tell me she only lured all those people here and turned them into puppets because she was lonely, and she’s really quite pitiable?”

            

Xixue: “…”

Ah Yun shook her head. “A speech like that’s pure wasted breath on me. Tell you what—go out there and give it to those two little girls who just came down the mountain not long ago.”

“I wasn’t pleading for her.”

            

“Oh?”

“Yinsha’s… obsession runs too deep. She’ll never repent.”

Hearing this, Ah Yun edged a little closer and lifted one small wing.

            

Being too small to reach its back, she simply patted its thigh gently.

“Come on, cheer up! She’s never been good to you anyway, and you two never formed a spiritual contract. The world’s wide—go wherever you please. Why wait hand and foot on a master like that?” She patted the rabbit’s thigh again. “Just watching you is making me stressed on your behalf!”

“…”

            

“But I promised Beilu I’d take good care of her…” Xixue’s ears drooped, its eyes growing wet. “I broke that promise.”

Ah Yun cocked her head and thought for a good while, then asked, curious, “But didn’t this Beilu die at Yinsha’s own hands?”

Xixue: “…He did.”

            

Ah Yun: “He’s already croaked, and he still wants you looking after his killer!”

A flicker of speechless exasperation rose in the little bird’s eyes.

“Is he sick in the head?”

            

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The author has something to say:

Yue Jinzhu: “Someone will be coming down to keep us company soon.”

Huaixu: “But you’re still the only one holding the bag.”

            

Yue Jinzhu: “😎 Used to it.”

There’s a little mini-theater of shijie entering the dream, drawn by the artist Beishui, over on Weibo¹ 😉👌

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