My Shijie Seems Intent on Destroying the World – Chapter 43
by Little PandaQuestioning the Heart
I Didn’t Mean to Bond with Chunsheng…
When the spiritual flowers bloomed across the whole of the dreamscape, ten thousand miles arose and perished at her fingertips.
Less an immortal than a god.
Yinsha had resisted with everything she had, and still been defeated in the space of a single breath.
Qi Zhi had never imagined that a sorry little scrap of grass like herself would ever know such a glorious day.
Even if it was only a dream — even if, inside the dream, her shijie had to guide her hands through every spell — it was still one deeply, thoroughly satisfying thrill!
Still, something felt off.
Before the spiritual light churned the jade lake to shreds, a dark moon had hung suspended in the night sky, eclipsing the bright moon’s radiance, mirrored on the lake’s surface for a single instant.
Yinsha clutched her chest, her face white as paper, her eyes brimming with dread as she stared at Mu Qingshi.
“You… who are you?”
Impossible. The person before her could never be merely a disciple of Tiandao Sect!
Mu Qingshi didn’t answer. She only dispersed the spiritual threads at her fingertips and walked slowly to Yinsha’s side, casting a downward glance — her gaze pure indifference.
“Do you know where you went wrong?”
Yinsha’s brow knotted tight. She gritted her teeth through a long silence, then suddenly lifted her blood-stained lips and sneered. “It was nothing more than… the weak being prey for the strong. Kill me or flay me, do as you please. Or must I confess to this crime for it to count as a merit on your ledger?”
Spiritual power stirred at Mu Qingshi’s fingertip, and Yinsha vomited another mouthful of blood.
She said flatly, “A thousand wrongs, ten thousand wrongs — but you should never have turned even half a thought toward my shimei.”
Yinsha: “…”
Qi Zhi came back to herself and hurried after her, staring at Mu Qingshi in wide-eyed astonishment.
“A naive young girl promised that rabbit she’d spare your life — bring you back to Mount Baopu and hand you over to the Sword Venerable’s judgment.” Mu Qingshi gazed at Yinsha, her tone indifferent. “I see no repentance in you. Even at Mount Baopu, the Sword Venerable would not spare your life. If you choose me to see you off instead, you may be spared some of the punishments — the road out will be easier.”
At that, Yinsha couldn’t help laughing. “And what difference would that make?”
She had said she would not leave this place…
She could not leave this place.
With that, Yinsha suddenly laughed aloud — her shaking body pulling at the wounds of her soul, laughing until she coughed without pause, as if she wished to hack up her very lungs.
Her eyes, brimming at some point with tears, shimmered with threads upon threads of endless hatred.
Qi Zhi watched, a chill sweeping across her heart.
It was the first time she had ever seen such a look in the eyes of someone about to die.
Just as Mu Qingshi had once told her, when they first descended the mountain.
— No one ever thinks they were in the wrong.
In their final moments, they hate only those who thwarted them — and hate themselves for not being strong enough.
Laughing, laughing, Yinsha retched up another mouthful of blood.
She gritted her teeth, lifted her eyes to Qi Zhi, and curved her lips into a smile. “Little Foolish Grass… your shijie is no simple creature.”
Qi Zhi: “…”
Yinsha: “Even in a dream, some things cannot come from thin air. Techniques she has never seen — how could she wield them?”
Qi Zhi: “…”
Yinsha: “The way you look — you didn’t even realize she’s no mere phantom, did you? She must have hidden a great deal from you.”
Even as she spoke, she laughed again, weakly.
Qi Zhi’s mouth opened and closed. She turned toward Mu Qingshi in a daze.
If she truly wasn’t a phantom, then when had she come in?
Mu Qingshi offered no explanation. She only frowned faintly and met that pair of jade-green eyes.
When their gazes locked, a flicker of panic crossed Qi Zhi’s eyes.
That look, that feeling — this really was Mu Qingshi herself.
— She was doomed!
Inside a dream, no less, she had claimed Mu Qingshi’s natal sword for her own — such an audacious, heaven-defying1 act of insubordination — and she’d been caught red-handed doing it!
How was she supposed to explain this once they got out?!
Qi Zhi frowned, the hand holding the sword trembling faintly as she pointed it at Yinsha and stammered out: “You — y-y-you stop… stop trying to sow discord!”
“My shijie was never any good person — I’ve known that since day one!” she blurted, her eyes brimming with the desperate will to survive. “My shijie and I are in the same boat! If she’s hiding things from me, she must have her reasons. It’s not for some outsider to run her mouth!”
Having gone this far, she looked at Mu Qingshi again, her voice even taking on a note of pride. “Shijie, am I right?!”
Mu Qingshi seemed to pause, startled — and the smile rose in her eyes before it ever reached her lips.
After that brief flicker of delight, she condensed spiritual power at her fingertip and touched it gently to Yinsha’s brow.
It was a cold that pierced to the bone, soaking through Yinsha’s three souls and seven spirits2.
She did not struggle. She only laid a hand over her heart, unthinking.
The heart beating in her chest seemed to freeze in that instant — and then, deep in memory, shattered into the snow and ice that had once filled the sky outside a dilapidated wooden hut.
So it was finally to be lost?
Perhaps for the best…
A human heart is a restless thing — it beats and beats and beats.
And it’s fragile, too. It can’t bear the slightest wound.
It had truly taken her such a long time to grow used to it.
Had she known, two hundred years ago she would never have taken it at all.
Yinsha smiled a sorrowful smile and slowly closed her eyes, concealing the last faint thread of regret.
What seeped from her body was spiritual power much like Chunsheng’s own.
Soft as a breeze, clean and pure.
A moment of surprise crossed Qi Zhi’s face. She clutched Chunsheng in her hand, wanting to ask something — but not knowing where to begin.
When the last of the spiritual power dispersed, all that remained before them was a small wooden puppet.
A round little face, true to life as anything, hair done in pretty twin buns, dressed in a clean white jacket tied with little pompom balls.
In its arms, it held a snow-white little rabbit — fluffy, with a big tail drooping down.
Qi Zhi stayed blank for a good while before crouching to pick the puppet up.
“So she was a puppet too…” Bracing her knees, she rose and held the puppet up before Mu Qingshi’s eyes.
Mu Qingshi glanced at it, thoughtful. “Well hidden. I truly didn’t see it.”
Qi Zhi: “Then, like this, is she… dead?”
Mu Qingshi: “Mm.”
Qi Zhi couldn’t help worrying. “But Lady Ling promised the little rabbit she wouldn’t kill her…”
Mu Qingshi: “Just say her killing intent ran too deep — that in seeking to protect yourself, you unavoidably lost your restraint.”
Qi Zhi: “…Oh.”
Mu Qingshi ruffled Qi Zhi’s hair. “Once we’re out, don’t tell anyone I was here.”
Hugging the puppet, Qi Zhi nodded obediently, her face full of guilt.
The moonlight lay silent, the night wind faintly cool. Shimmering ripples spread across the lake amid the swaying lotus — yet none of it caught the eye so much as that single drifting hem of robes.
Silence — no telling how long the silence lasted.
Eyes lowered, Qi Zhi asked softly, “Shijie… when did you come?”
Mu Qingshi glanced at her, answering past the question entirely. “I couldn’t rest easy, so I came in to look.”
By her tone, at least, she didn’t sound upset.
Qi Zhi pressed her lips together, her voice very small. “I didn’t mean to bond with Chunsheng… it’s just that in that whole Sword Tomb, it was the only one I recognized…”
Mu Qingshi laughed despite herself. She bent down, tilted her head, and gazed at Qi Zhi’s lowered eyes, her voice gentle. “If you like it, then from now on, whenever you meet danger, just call for it.”
Qi Zhi froze. When she looked up again, Mu Qingshi was no longer at her side.
What did that mean — whenever you meet danger, just call for it?
Lowering her eyes, Qi Zhi gazed at the sword Chunsheng in her hand for a long, long time before finally coming back to herself — and, carrying the puppet, left the dream.
Moonlight fell into the window frame and melted into a thread of candlelight.
Tonight, Mingyue Villa was far more silent than it had ever been.
With Yinsha dead, the servants of the villa had become puppets with their strings cut — masterless, frozen blank where they stood.
Out on the lake the lamps still burned bright; the guests, drunk or sober, had no idea what had happened inside the villa.
An incense stick’s time3 ago, Ah Yun — wearing a conjured human shape — had hauled Xixue back to this guest room by the scruff the whole way.
Curled into a tiny ball, it sat on the table, staring at the exquisite puppet before it, the corners of its eyes wet.
Every gaze in the room had settled on it, as if waiting for it to volunteer some kind of confession.
The incense warming the room had burned to its end. Ah Yun frowned, reached over, and poked its head; when it flinched, she flattened her mouth. “Not asleep, then. Start talking, honestly — what exactly is going on in this villa?”
“The great banyan tree. The Dream Furnace. And your master’s death.” Ah Yun rubbed its ears, brows bent sweetly, smiling with utmost kindness. “Explain everything, and we’ll let you go.”
Xixue kept its silence. The candlelight wavering at the table’s edge flickered in its eyes.
Then, suddenly, it closed its eyes.
“What do you mean by this? Playing dead?!” Ah Yun gritted her teeth, on the verge of erupting — only to be stopped by a single glance from Mu Qingshi.
After a long stillness, the little rabbit’s belly swelled, little by little.
Qi Zhi’s eyes went wide with curiosity as Xixue opened its mouth and blew out an enormous bubble.
It gazed at the bubble with something like attachment. Then it rose upright on its hind legs, reached out a paw, and gently broke it.
Countless memories, in an instant, wrapped themselves in a halo of candlelight.
Like a light stone dropping into water, they sent ripples of years spreading outward.
Qi Zhi reached out to touch them without thinking — and everything before her eyes slowly changed shape.
…
In Xixue’s memory, there was once a frozen plain that stretched beyond sight, cold enough to pierce the bone.
Beilu had pulled it from deep snow — its bloodied fur frozen stiff, its body split by a frost-blackened gash, some fierce beast’s claw mark it couldn’t name, so weak that only a last thread of breath remained.
A demon beast as small and weak as it was could never have survived wounds that grave — not unless someone had bound it as Beilu did that year, with a master-servant spiritual contract anchoring its scattering life-soul.
Beilu didn’t scorn it for its weakness. He carried it back to Mount Han, healed its wounds, taught it to cultivate.
The Master of Mount Han was kind, and the other disciples on the mountain looked after it well.
Now and then, it would follow Beilu down the mountain to root out the wicked and cut down demons.
It was a timid rabbit. But it knew that whatever happened, so long as it stayed at Beilu’s side, no danger could touch it.
Xixue had thought the simple days would go on like that forever.
Until one year, passing through a village in Yun Province at Beilu’s side, they came upon an earthbound spirit who had died wrongfully.
She had seethed there for decades, gathering yin energy until she cultivated into a vengeful ghost, slipping into dreams by night to steal lives.
Beilu dispersed her obsession and sent her into reincarnation. Before departing, the earthbound spirit told them there was a demon pulling strings behind it all.
The demon was cunning, its trail impossible to find. What was needed, perhaps, was bait.
The villagers looked at one another. Then one girl volunteered to carry the keepsake the earthbound spirit had left behind, and climbed the desolate mountain alone at night.
Sixteen years old — terrified out of her wits, plainly — yet she disregarded the danger all the same, made her own body the bait, and lured the demon out for him.
The moment the demon fell, she sank down into a pool of blood, her frightened eyes red from weeping.
Only when the moonlight slanted west did she slowly come back to herself.
On the road down the mountain, Beilu praised her courage.
Cheeks faintly flushed, hands clasped behind her back, the girl skipped and bounced along ahead of him.
Blood-stained skirts dancing in the night wind, she suddenly spun around and called out at the top of her voice: “Immortal! My name is Yinrong — the rong in banyan!”
Away from Mount Han, the Mortal Realm held too much suffering; Beilu never lingered long in any one place.
The next morning, Yinrong, clutching a small embroidered pouch, blocked his path, a bright light sparkling in her eyes. “Do immortals come so quickly and leave just as quickly? Can’t you stay a few more days?”
Beilu smiled and said nothing — and in that silence, the answer was already given.
Yinrong held the pouch out to him. “Then take this, as my thanks!”
Beilu didn’t take it. Instead he gave her a talisman, smiling lightly, with a wish that the rest of her life be healthy and free of care.
“Is this one powerful?” Yinrong asked, head tipped up.
“Keep it with you always, and common demons will have no way to harm you.”
“Then I’ll never let it leave my side my whole life!” Yinrong took it in her hands, eyes curving, smiling bright as day.
In his life, Beilu had seen too many people to remember any one of them too deeply.
Xixue, too, had thought that girl was nothing more than one unremarkable face among thousands.
Many years later, in the depths of a harsh winter, Beilu — far away in the frozen lands at the world’s edge — heard that a demon calamity had struck distant Yun Province.
By the time word arrived, the calamity had already been quelled by Tiandao Sect.
“Yun Province…”
That day, Beilu suddenly remembered a certain young girl he had once met in Yun Province.
As if guided by some unseen hand, he made a trip there.
Of Yun Province’s eleven cities, the one destroyed was the one he knew best. The villages that had once stood beside it lay drowned in demon miasma after that calamity — not a soul survived.
Having witnessed such horror, the people of the other cities were shaken to their cores, and grateful beyond measure for Tiandao Sect’s timely rescue.
The people of Yun Province’s faith in Tiandao Sect reached its very peak that year.
Power of Faith, thread upon thread, gathered and streamed toward Mount Qiongju.
Yet Tiandao Sect had been so close to Yun Province.
How could it have let a demon calamity destroy an entire city?
Doubt took root in Beilu’s heart, and he stayed in Yun Province to investigate.
The one who had led his sect’s disciples to quell the chaos that year was the Daoist Venerable’s Fourth Disciple of Tiandao Sect — Ye Wuju.
The moment he saw Beilu, his face filled to the brim with fawning courtesy.
But whenever Beilu pressed for details of the calamity, Ye Wuju would only wander off to other subjects — and in the end would put on a show of sighs and regret, stuffing the conversation shut every time.
Beilu turned it over and over and could make no sense of it. So he sent word of the matter back to Mount Han by spirit butterfly, to ask his Master’s counsel.
The Master of Mount Han was silent a long while before saying, flatly, one line: “Digging deeper into this will bring you no benefit.”
With that, the spirit butterfly scattered, and no further word came.
One matter still sat unresolved in his heart, its answer never given — and then another struck his eyes like a bolt of lightning.
Playful Xixue, flapping urgently in through a window frame, led Beilu to a place.
There he saw, once more, the girl from all those years ago.
Her clothes were rags. She slumped against a deserted street corner, eyes shut tight, and in a hand covered in festering sores she clutched half of a torn, blood-stained talisman.
A layer of snow lay over her, but it couldn’t hide the fine, spiderwebbing demon veins beneath her festering skin.
The people there said she was the only survivor of the city the demon calamity had destroyed.
But “survive” was all she had done. In a single night she had lost everything; riddled with demon venom, she had crawled out through ice and frost — only for Tiandao Sect’s cultivators to bring her here.
She was too horrifying to look at. Everyone feared catching her demon qi.
Countless people passed by each day. Not one dared step forward and take her in.
Everyone around said that with the demon qi having eaten her this far, even Tiandao Sect’s cultivators could do nothing — they could only leave her to live or die on her own.
And so, these past days, she had lain there — neither person nor ghost. Even breathing had become a struggle for her, yet all those days without food or water, she still had not died.
The demon venom corroded her internal organs — and yet it also kept stringing along her dying breath.
Suffering like this — she would have been better off dying in that city.
“That talisman in her hand saved her — and ruined her too.” The old woman said her piece, shook her head, and as she left, murmured over and over: Such a sin, such a sin…4
The snow and wind that year — so cold.
Beilu looked at Yinrong.
And in the depths of his heart, guilt rose like a tide, heaving up a soundless tsunami.
…
The candle had burned all night, pooling a smear of wax.
The wick had grown long, no one to trim it, flaring and guttering.
A faint, acrid smell of scorch hung in the air.
Xixue curled its small body tighter.
And said, softly —
That one moment of self-blame was to be its master’s tribulation for the rest of his life.
The author has something to say:
Qi Zhi: Don’t tell me Tiandao Sect is mixed up in this too?!
Ling Qiansu: Seems like I’ve just bitten into some seriously juicy gossip!
Footnotes
- 倒反天罡 | daofan tiangang | Literally 'overturning the Tiangang,' the celestial order of rank; Chinese internet slang for flagrant insubordination, a junior flipping the hierarchy upside down. Qi Zhi's comic horror at stealing her senior's natal sword.
- 三魂七魄 | sanhun qipo | Daoist soul doctrine: every person carries three hun souls, ethereal and heavenly, and seven po spirits, corporeal and earthly; together they make up the complete human soul, so to saturate all ten is to freeze a person entire.
- 一炷香 | yi zhu xiang | Literally 'one stick of incense' — a traditional Chinese measure of time, the span a single incense stick takes to burn down, roughly thirty minutes; a standard unit of pre-modern daily life.
- 造孽 | zaonie | Literally 'making karma' — a folk exclamation of pity and moral horror, sighed by elders at sights of undeserved suffering; it laments that a sin has been committed against heaven, whether by man or by fate.
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