My Shijie Seems Intent on Destroying the World – Chapter 45
by Little PandaQuestioning the Heart
The Two Words “Shengxi” Were Never Meant to Be a Curse
Xixue said there was a hollow in Yinsha’s heart.
She had never understood that kind of aching, wistful loss herself — she only knew it hurt too much to bear, so she tried to fill it by any means necessary.
But the hollow in her heart was never hers alone.
Beilu had once believed those years of companionship were nothing more than a duty. It wasn’t until he caught sight of that lonely grave on the mountainside that he realized his private feelings had long since swollen past all restraint — grown so vast that a single person could crumble them with ease.
Yinrong. His wife.
He never even had the chance to see her one last time.
A heart already shattered to pieces — how was anyone supposed to fill that?
But Yinsha never understood. She couldn’t bear to throw it away, yet it ached so terribly, so she simply kept finding new things to stuff inside.
For more than two hundred years, people came and went through Mingyue Villa in their multitudes — and still the ravine of desire1 went unfilled.
The spiritual power radiating from that sword in Qi Zhi’s dream had been so very like the Force of Vitality.
In all the long years since Beilu passed, it was the first time Yinsha had seen spiritual power so close to his on any other object — naturally, she set her mind on it.
What she wanted, she had always gotten.
Only this time, that wicked little rabbit had tricked her…
At that, Xixue curled up around her little wooden puppet and went silent.
Qi Zhi gently stroked her small head, lips pressed thin — she wanted to comfort her, but had no idea where to begin.
Ah Yun spoke up. “If this goes on — you, her, nobody ends up happy. And if it makes no one happy, then it isn’t right. Wrong things should end early. For you and for her both, that’s better!”
Ling Qiansu opened her mouth, then added her voice. “Yes — ending all of this is no bad thing.”
Qi Zhi hurriedly nodded, tilting her head toward Xixue and coaxing softly, “If your master were still here, he’d want you to set all this down too — and live for yourself.”
No one told her that Yinsha had committed evil upon evil, and that betraying her had been an act of justice.
The ones comforting her only said that if things went on like this, no one would ever be happy… that in making this choice, she was merely ending an agony.
Nothing of right or wrong. Nothing of good and evil.
Xixue blinked, motionless. There was no telling whether any of it had reached her.
Ling Qiansu drew one long, deep breath, then let it out again in a slow sigh.
After a long moment, she gathered up her tangled thoughts and asked, low-voiced, “The souls stripped from their bodies could fuse with the puppets — they must be bound by this Tree of Vitality as well.”
She turned it over for a while, then looked to Mu Qingshi and asked in earnest, “If we can destroy the Tree of Vitality, and the puppets’ flesh dissolves — could the souls trapped here enter reincarnation once more?”
“They’re all fragmented souls,” Mu Qingshi said. “I fear they’d scatter the moment they left their vessels.”
Ling Qiansu frowned, unwilling to let it go. “Then perhaps we lay down a formation in advance, and try!”
But a Mingyue Villa this vast, with this many puppet-bound souls — to deliver them all in the very instant their bodies dissolved and their souls began to fray apart? Far easier said than done.
As the Sword Venerable’s direct disciple, Ling Qiansu could certainly manage it. But the cost would not be light.
“Lady Ling, if you do this, it’ll take a real toll on you,” Ah Yun couldn’t help but warn, well-meaning. “These people brought it on themselves. They chose their own road — serves them right to carry it. You still have your master’s orders to fulfill. Why waste your strength on a thing like this?”
Ling Qiansu was silent a long while, then said quietly, “Ah Yun isn’t wrong. Many of them dug their own graves and deserve no pity. But this life is over — the price that had to be paid has already been paid in full.”
Once they entered reincarnation, she said, everything that came before would be wiped clean.
Why go digging through the details of the lives they’d lived?
Besides, these people had done nothing more than choose to drown in a dream. Surely that didn’t warrant their souls scattering on the wind, never to reform.
“The formation will cost me dearly, but I alone should be enough.” Ling Qiansu’s eyes were full of resolve. “As for the Tree of Vitality — Miss Mu, can you handle it?”
Mu Qingshi nodded.
Ling Qiansu let out a slow breath and rose to her feet, glancing toward the window.
The long night had passed. Perhaps it was time she carried these truths to the ones still living — for whether they wished to believe it or not, those beautiful severed dreams of theirs could never go on.
After Ling Qiansu left, Ah Yun looked at Mu Qingshi, then peeked at the pensive Qi Zhi.
She sat up a little straighter, poured herself a cup of tea, downed it in one go — and then, with impeccable tact, scooped up the utterly life-weary little rabbit from the table and carried her off.
Watching Xixue get carted away, Qi Zhi finally came back to herself.
She looked at Mu Qingshi, mouth opening and closing, several times on the verge of speech.
“If you have something to ask, just ask.”
“Oh…” Qi Zhi blinked, then ventured, curious, “This sword Chunsheng — does it… does it have something to do with Beilu?”
“No.” Mu Qingshi’s answer was crisp.
Qi Zhi nodded and murmured, “Then it’s just a coincidence… When the little rabbit said all that, I thought maybe shijie had some deep history with that Beilu too.”
“I never met the man.” Mu Qingshi rubbed Qi Zhi’s hair, then asked softly, “You’ve been up all night. Aren’t you sleepy?”
The question was her undoing — the moment it left Mu Qingshi’s lips, Qi Zhi couldn’t hold back an enormous yawn.
Sleepy tears welled up and brimmed in her eyes.
Mu Qingshi laughed and tapped her once on the nose. “All right. Go wash up and get to sleep!”
Qi Zhi hummed an answer and drifted, half-dazed, to the window, reaching to ring for a bit of hot water. Only when her fingers found the bronze bell did she remember — the puppets didn’t work anymore.
After a brief, blank moment, she hurried out to the courtyard, gave herself a quick wash with the cool lake water, and burrowed into the covers, yawning the whole way.
Eyes closed. Eyes open — a fresh candle burned in the room, and dusk had already gathered outside.
Qi Zhi sat up and rapped her muddled head. These two days of Yinmeng mischief had nearly blurred day and night together for her; even now her eyes were still glazed with sleep.
The room was empty. She rubbed her belly, threw her outer robe over her shoulders, walked to the table, and — washing it down with tea gone cold — ate the last two lotus pastries left on the plate.
She chewed and thought: shijie wasn’t here, and neither was Ah Yun — the two of them were surely busy with the Tree of Vitality. Once these last two lotus pastries were gone, where exactly was she supposed to go fill her stomach?
But before she could even brush the pastry crumbs from the plate, the firmly shut door behind her swung open.
Qi Zhi jumped. For a heartbeat she stood frozen, finger pressed to her lips, hair a sleep-tousled mess, staring at the doorway.
The sight of her standing there so dumbly made Mu Qingshi laugh despite herself.
She came in, closed the door, and set a steaming bowl of noodle soup gently down in front of Qi Zhi.
“You’re awake. Eat something.”
Qi Zhi breathed the aroma in deep, picked up her chopsticks, and asked curiously, “How did shijie know I was about to wake?”
“How many shichen you like to sleep — you think I don’t know that by now?”
Qi Zhi’s eyes crinkled as she tilted her head. “My sleep’s been all over the place these two days, though. What if I just never woke up? What then — noodles don’t keep.”
Mu Qingshi smiled. “If you didn’t wake up, I’d have eaten them myself.”
Qi Zhi pressed her lips together and muttered, “And what if shijie finished them just as I woke?”
“You won’t starve.” With a flick of spiritual light off her fingertips, a steamer of warm baozi appeared on the table. “If these cool, they can be reheated. Whenever you wake, there’ll always be something to eat.”
Qi Zhi blinked, and a sudden warmth bloomed soft in her chest. Her brows curved into a smile. “Shijie is the best!”
And she buried herself in the noodle soup.
Mu Qingshi shifted her stool over and, seated at her side, began combing out her hair.
By the time the bowl was empty, her bun had been pinned neat and whole.
Mu Qingshi told her Ling Qiansu had finished laying the formation — everyone in the villa still alive, drunk or sober, had been carried off by the carriages summoned from Sui City.
Once the last light of day had drained from the sky, they would destroy the Tree of Vitality.
“If the Tree of Vitality goes, will Mingyue Villa disappear too?”
“The villa was conjured into being around the Tree of Vitality. If the tree goes, the villa goes with it.”
Qi Zhi sighed. “What a shame. It really was rather beautiful.”
Mu Qingshi smiled and asked gently, “Would you like to see the Tree of Vitality?”
Qi Zhi thought about it a moment, then couldn’t help nodding.
When night fell, Mu Qingshi led her into the barrier hidden deep within the villa.
She stared up at the enormous banyan, at the roots plunging toward the floor of the lake, at their far end tethered to Mingyue Villa itself — her eyes brimming with wonder.
She had always assumed a forbidden art that caged human souls would be a sinister, dreadful thing.
But seeing it now, she found the spiritual aura it gave off clean and pure — as though it could bear up the endless flourishing of all living things.
The two words “shengxi” were never meant to be a curse.
The pity was only this: so many things are doomed to bear no fruit from the very start. And yet there will always be someone who knows it full well and still flies straight into the flame.
No one can ever say whether it is love, duty, or debt.
“Is it dark yet?” Xixue lay sprawled on the cold furnace lid, red eyes turned toward the two of them as they came in.
“Mm.” Mu Qingshi answered softly.
The little rabbit’s mouth worked, but she said nothing more — only turned her head for one last look at the enormous banyan behind her.
Ah Yun, who had been sitting against the trunk a long while, now stood and clapped her hands clean. “Night’s fallen — shall we begin?”
Mu Qingshi gave a small nod. Spiritual light flashed in her palm, and Chunsheng appeared.
The smile slid from Ah Yun’s face. Her hands wove seals, gathering the spiritual power of everything around her into her glabella — and moments later, Chunsheng drank in every last thread of it.
Xixue shut her eyes and ducked her head on instinct.
When she opened them again, the banyan had dissolved, and the jade-green lake had collapsed in on itself.
A single small seed dropped into Mu Qingshi’s palm.
Mingyue Villa was no more. Only a desolate mountain remained, a wash of moonlight, and a few faint… broken yet familiar wisps of spiritual light.
Like a spring breeze, like firefly glow — no telling when they would fade away entirely.
The human-seeming servants of the villa stared blankly at the moonlight. Their bodies dissolved into spiritual light and drifted off on the wind, until at last they settled to the earth and turned back into small wooden puppets, one after another.
Strand by broken strand, the fragmented souls fled out of them — instinctive, agonized, struggling every inch of the way.
High above, a vast formation quietly unfurled.
Bearing pure white spiritual light, it gathered every one of them beneath its canopy before they could scatter into nothing.
Xixue’s head tipped back, and she stared, transfixed, at it all.
Ah Yun poked the back of her head, and when Xixue turned to blink at her, pointed at the Dream Furnace beneath her feet.
“This thing probably shouldn’t stay, right?”
At that, Xixue’s ears drooped, and she hopped down off the furnace lid.
Her little head hung low. She didn’t dare say a word.
After a long silence, a jade cup, a soft lunar halo, drifted gently down before her eyes.
She looked up at Ah Yun, gaze full of astonishment.
“Ever drunk this before?”
Xixue shook her head.
Ah Yun clicked her tongue. “Poor thing — and now you never will. Want one last dream?”
“…” was all Xixue had to say.
Ah Yun’s eyes curved, and she grinned, head tilted. “Don’t worry — we’ll wake you up!”
The little rabbit hesitated a long, long while. Then she gathered the jade cup in her paws and drank it down in one.
A moment of stillness — then her gaze grew hazy, and before long she had flopped, boneless, onto the ground.
Qi Zhi crouched down, gathered her into her arms, and gave her a gentle rub or two.
“What do you think she’ll dream about?” she asked, looking at Mu Qingshi, eyes brimming with curiosity.
“Would you like to see?” Mu Qingshi asked in return.
She would — very much. But dreams… was that really the sort of thing you could simply walk in and watch?
“N-no, that wouldn’t be right…”
Before the words had even left her lips, the world before Qi Zhi’s eyes changed entirely.
…
A little rabbit lay at the water’s edge, tail swaying, basking in the gentle moonlight.
Mount Han, so long unvisited by outsiders, suddenly had a new disciple.
The little boat she’d come on had churned a whole lake of stars and moonlight to pieces.
Her name was Yinrong, and the master had brought her back to the mountain.
No one knew what the master had actually said to the Mountain Lord — only that it was somehow enough to make the Mountain Lord take a new disciple for the very first time ever.
The youngest shimei on the mountain chased after the Mountain Lord for half the day, protesting at the top of her lungs: “Master, Master! Wasn’t I the closed-door disciple?!”
“Go ask your shixiong.”
The little rabbit watched her master turn it over and over in his mind, until all he managed, thoroughly cornered, was: “A door… is only a door when it opens and closes…” — and she rolled onto her back hugging her belly, laughing herself sideways.
The little shimei was easy to placate, though. A few pastries from the mortal world, and she accepted the new shimei with delight.
The little rabbit liked the new shimei too.
She was pretty, and easy to get along with, and she even sewed little clothes for her to wear.
Within a few years of coming up the mountain, the new shimei and the master became Daoist partners.
And later still, the mountain gained one especially mischievous little girl!
Every single day she’d grab the rabbit, poke her in the belly, and demand she blow bubbles for her to watch.
But the rabbit wasn’t afraid of her — not one bit!
In this life she had followed her master to so many places, and met every manner of person there was.
Whatever the girl wanted to see, the rabbit could show her.
And if that wasn’t enough — once the little girl grew up, it wouldn’t be above taking her out to see the world beyond the mountain.
By then, surely, she would have cultivated a human form of her own. Even without her master at her side, she’d be able to keep that little girl safe… wouldn’t she?
…
Let it end here, Xixue thought.
This knot of karma began with a single talisman, and it ends with a single dream.
Her master had returned her freedom long ago.
It was time, at last, for her to live for herself.
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