Transmigrating as the Heart Demon of the Ruthless Sword Venerable – Chapter 62

Interlude (4)

Illusion

Yu Zhaoming lowered her head. Tang Wenchun’s pupils went wide, trembling faintly—she looked thoroughly stunned. Yu Zhaoming pressed her lips together briefly before speaking. “I think this is a good thing.”

            

“How could you possibly think that?!” Tang Wenchun sucked in several deep breaths before she managed to calm herself down at all. Back then, Xuanjiu had assumed Yu Zhaoming’s ascension to Nascent Soul came from cultivation plundering Tang Wenchun, and had even said Yu Zhaoming ought to take responsibility for it. But that was all long past, and as far as Tang Wenchun was concerned, nothing more ever came of it…

Could it be that her dear Shizun had asked something of Yu Zhaoming before entering seclusion?

“Is… this Shizun’s idea?” Tang Wenchun asked.

            

Yu Zhaoming shook her head. She glanced left and right, took hold of Tang Wenchun, and set off on sword flight. The two of them came to the summit of Wangjian Peak. The place was utterly bare except for a single enormous cloud cherry tree—bald as the earth it stood on, without one leaf. This was where the Sword Sect’s founding ancestors had once comprehended the sword. No one came here ordinarily. Yu Zhaoming walked over to a rock, patted the spot beside her, and tilted her head up.

Tang Wenchun sat down at her side. In the very next instant, a full tea set appeared before them, looking quite elegant.

Tang Wenchun blinked. “You actually prepared something like this?”

            

Yu Zhaoming pressed her lips together. “You don’t like it? Before, whenever Yunzhongjun met you, she would have tea laid out. You looked very happy then—you even muttered that when Yunzhongjun left, she took the tea away with her too…”

“…Okay, okay, enough.” Tang Wenchun hastily cut her off. Something about it felt a little strange—that her own tiny, offhand habits had been memorized so firmly by another person, and then acted upon, purely so that she would be happier.

It gave her the illusion of being loved—and pursued. Tang Wenchun glanced at the composed Yu Zhaoming and thought: it has to be an illusion.

            

Yu Zhaoming said nothing more, only poured a cup of tea and pressed it into Tang Wenchun’s hand. “I don’t know the tea arts; I bought these at random. Whatever you like in the future, tell me, and I’ll have it ready.”

She claimed no expertise, but the cup was smooth in the hand, like jade to the touch—a good cup—and the tea’s fragrance lingered long—good leaves. Tang Wenchun wrapped her fingers around it, warmth seeping through the cup into her palms, and felt her heart settle quiet along with it.

She lowered her head and took a light sniff. “It’s not that I especially like it. It’s just—when you’re talking, you always want something to sip.”

            

No milk tea, and no happy water—cola, that is. She had to settle for second best and take up with tea, the one thing she still vaguely knew anything about. Yu Zhaoming gave a low “Mm” and sat there without moving.

The two of them sat in silence for a while, watching the distance.

Wangjian Peak was the tallest mountain of the Sword Sect. At the cliff’s edge a sea of clouds churned, burying everything below the summit from view. Beside them, the cloud cherry stretched out its enormous branches, reaching forward as if trying, in vain, to hold on to something. But the tree was withered, and the mountain stones were utterly silent—so silent you could hear the faint sound of the wind stirring the cloud sea.

            

It gave rise to an ungrounded illusion: that the world held only Tang Wenchun and Yu Zhaoming.

“The matter of heart demons—now that the first signs have surfaced, the sects cannot afford not to take it seriously. They will certainly be screening their disciples in secret.” Yu Zhaoming spoke. “And your advancement to Nascent Soul without a Nascent Soul Tribulation may draw attention from others as well.”

Tang Wenchun turned to look at her. Yu Zhaoming was looking down at her in return, her pace unhurried, as if she had turned all of this over in her mind countless times already.

            

“If you and I become Dao Companions, we can say our lives are bound as one—lifespan shared, cultivation as a single body…”

Tang Wenchun’s brow creased. “You want to announce to the world that you signed a Slave Seal with me?”

Yu Zhaoming paused, a not-quite-smile on her face. “You don’t remember much from the proper texts, but you remember the trashy books clearly enough.”

            

Tang Wenchun rubbed the tip of her nose, a little embarrassed. The Slave Seal’s original name was the Same-Life Seal, created long ago by a great cultivator for her Dao Companion. The two of them had stepped onto the immortal path together for a love the world would not tolerate. They had believed they would walk hand in hand from then on—except one of them had mediocre aptitude, and the other happened to be heaven-sent genius.

Even with the immortal road open and lifespans stretched long, the mediocre one could exhaust herself utterly and still only watch the other walk farther and farther away.

Soul Emergence granted a lifespan of up to a thousand years; Mahayana, three thousand; and Crossing Tribulation beyond Mahayana, a full eight thousand. In the end they would part, and time would grind away the brief years they had shared until they became complete strangers.

            

What no one expected was that the heaven-sent one ran with everything she had—solely to give her beloved a longer future. She created the Same-Life Seal, sharing her own lifespan and cultivation with her lover.

In the end, the two did not live and die together. Because the mediocre one had shared in that cultivation, the pair was ambushed and killed.

Afterward, the Same-Life Seal was passed down from that great cultivator—but because of how its creator had died, the seal seemed to carry a stain of misfortune about it.

            

Ordinary people would not use the Same-Life Seal. Instead, those with crooked hearts deliberately sought out the young and gifted, sweet-talking them into signing it, to stretch out their own Dao paths already run to a dead end. So people took to calling the Same-Life Seal, in mockery, the “Slave Seal,” and in time it came to be treated as a forbidden art, barred from transmission.

Many small sects had never even heard of it—but the Sword Sect, with its deep foundations, had kept it.

Thinking it over, it had something in common with heart demons, and yet was not the same. If you asked Tang Wenchun, the ones who coaxed people into Same-Life Seals were the more disgusting of the two.

            

But then again—Tang Wenchun scratched her head, a troubled look on her face. “Then when you want to break through later, won’t that play right into what people call slaying your spouse to prove the Dao?”

Yu Zhaoming froze. She hadn’t expected Tang Wenchun to bring that up. She turned to look at her. Tang Wenchun rested her chin in her hand, a faint smile on her lips. “Would you kill me again?”

Yu Zhaoming fell silent. A bitter smile surfaced on Tang Wenchun’s face—she’d been thinking too much of it, always feeling that Yu Zhaoming was no longer the same as before. Asking like that, and getting this reaction in return… it was like suddenly confessing to someone and being rejected on the spot.

            

It felt a little humiliating.

Tang Wenchun was just about to crack a joke and turn the page on all of it.

“I won’t.” Yu Zhaoming spoke abruptly, head bowed, eyes on her own palm. “I cultivate the Emotionless Dao. The Emotionless Dao advances quickly, and I was born with Innate Sword Bone—faster than others besides. I’ve calculated it. Add in trials, more ventures into the Secret Realms. I should be able to make up both our shares. It won’t… cost too much time.”

            

Tang Wenchun stood frozen in place, unable to answer for a long while. She didn’t dare look at Yu Zhaoming. She could hear her own heart hammering away. This body was woven from Illusion Wood, and yet—and yet it was entirely too real, leaving her shy and restless all over, as if, as if… she had the heart of a girl in the spring of first love¹.

No, no, no. How could she possibly have thoughts like that? She—she was just moved! That’s right! She was just a little moved!!

But, but… hearing it from the always-cold, always-distant Yu Zhaoming, words like that were unbearably charming. Damn it all—she hated this kind of person most: the kind who flirts without ever knowing it!

            

Tang Wenchun shot to her feet. She turned; Yu Zhaoming was looking up at her, her upturned face carrying a faint bewilderment—rather cute, actually. So Tang Wenchun put on an air of easy grace, smiled, reached out, and lightly patted Yu Zhaoming on the head. The hair slid soft across her palm, just as she had imagined it would.

Exactly as nice to touch as she’d imagined!

“Ahem… no need. You don’t have to look after me like Shizun instructed. The cart will find its way around the mountain when it gets there²—I’ll figure something out.”

            

With that, Tang Wenchun turned with feigned panache, summoned her sword, leapt onto it, and plunged headlong into the sea of clouds, like a white crane diving into the mortal dust. Yu Zhaoming could only stare after her retreating figure. She said quietly, “It wasn’t Shizun’s instruction.”

She lowered her head. She had only wanted to leave something behind. Her heart demon was neither extreme nor obsessive—bright and cheerful as a little sun. By comparison, she herself seemed rather more like the heart demon.

So little had ever stayed within her grasp. Parents and family gone early; even the time Shizun spent with her fell far short of the decades or even a century that other masters and disciples in the cultivation world shared. If she had never possessed anything at all, then so be it—but she had been given things, and then lost them. And the time lost stretched far longer than the time gained.

            

Now, the only one left at Yu Zhaoming’s side was her heart demon. Thankfully, her heart demon lived and died together with her; they shared everything that could be spoken of to others, and everything that could not.

Yu Zhaoming thought: she only wanted to take this small light she had finally held in her hands and stretch it out a little longer. And even this one small wish, Tang Wenchun had refused.

Yu Zhaoming sat in silence. There was no one else around her now—even Tang Wenchun had bolted clean away—as if the world would, in the end, always leave her the only one remaining. On the empty Wangjian Peak, white snow began to drift down. Cultivators stood untouched by heat and cold—and besides, this snow was born of Yu Zhaoming’s own thoughts.

            

She tilted her head back slightly. Snow settled on the space between her brows and in her hair, making her look colder still, like an ice sculpture. Her eyes gradually went remote; the Emotionless Dao turned within her, and a chill and indifference unlike anything human spread over her whole body, as if she were a divine statue with every human feeling drained out of it.

In her dantian, the cultivation method revolved; her Nascent Soul unfurled, and the deeply hidden cracks slowly stitched themselves closed, making that little Nascent Soul more perfect still.

Suddenly, from her sea of consciousness came Tang Wenchun’s chagrined voice: “Ah! I forgot there’s a distance limit on how far I can leave!”

            

The indifference drained slowly out of Yu Zhaoming’s eyes. Right. No matter where her heart demon wanted to go, no matter how far she wanted to travel, she could only ever remain at her side.

She would not do as Nüluo and Yunzhongjun had—slipping away the moment Yunzhongjun wasn’t watching. She would always, only, be at her side.

Yu Zhaoming pressed a hand to her chest and let out a sudden, low laugh. The Nascent Soul in her dantian stopped turning, gradually returning to its original form. Tang Wenchun appeared abruptly before her, staring at her: “Ah, you laughed… are you laughing at me for being dumb?”

            

“No, I’m not.” Yu Zhaoming shook her head, gazing at Tang Wenchun deeply. “I’m just a little happy.”

Under that deep gaze, Tang Wenchun abruptly felt awkward. She turned away and covered her face. Her cheeks burned, as if to remind her how out of place this all was.

“What…” Tang Wenchun said in a small voice. “Really—honestly… I…”

            

Was something wrong with her? No good—she’d have to get her own cultivation onto the schedule, and soon.

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The author has something to say:

Sect Master: …I say, have certain people forgotten something?!

            

Elder: Mm… a disciple sent word that Zhaoming took someone up to Wangjian Peak.

The Sect Master puffed his boyish face round with anger: …Young people these days! No respect for their elders at all!!

The next dungeon³ opens right away.

            

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