Chapter 441 Protagonist, Inner Demons
Dong dong dong—!
Yun Jiujiu’s small wooden clogs made earth-shattering sounds. With every step, she left an indentation on the road bricks in front of the side hall’s corridor, appearing to be in a desperate hurry.
Ye Anping, carried like a sack over her shoulder, felt like he was flying close to the ground.
Those who knew understood that Yun Jiujiu was taking him to comfort Feng Yu Die. Those who didn’t might think Feng Yu Die was on the verge of death and they were rushing to get a quality inspection stamp…
However, Ye Anping didn’t struggle. Instead, based on what Junior Sister had just told him, he imagined what Feng Yu Die had just done, allowing Yun Jiujiu to carry him all the way to the Central Peak’s side hall with lightning speed.
A short while later, Yun Jiujiu, carrying him, had crossed half the mountain. They arrived at a small hall on the Sword Sect’s Central Peak that seemed to be specifically for storing wine. She kicked open the double doors in front of the hall and sent them flying inside:
“Feng Yu Die, I’ve brought the Ye brat here. Stop crying, you hear me!!”
After speaking, Yun Jiujiu looked as if she had seen a ghost. Her previously impatient face suddenly froze, and she stood there with Ye Anping on her shoulder, frozen at the doorway.
Ye Anping, who was in a forward bend on her shoulder, also snapped back to reality. He looked up into the room.
He saw that Feng Yu Die was completely different from the “wailing and crying” state Yun Jiujiu had described.
Feng Yu Die, dressed in white clothes, was sitting cross-legged in front of a desk with three roasted chickens on it. She held a chicken leg in each hand, stuffing them into her mouth. Seeing Yun Jiujiu burst in with Ye Anping, she seemed quite surprised, her eyes full of confusion.
Pop~~
She pulled out a chicken bone from her mouth, swallowed the meat, and looked at Ye Anping, asking:
“Why did you bring Young Master Ye here?”
Yun Jiujiu was a bit dazed. She gently placed Ye Anping on the ground, walked over, and reattached the two door panels she had kicked off. She asked:
“Weren’t you just crying your eyes out? I brought him here to stop you from crying.”
Feng Yu Die, as if not wanting to admit it, pouted slightly:
“When did I cry…”
“Are my eyes playing tricks on me then? You were snot and tears all over my clothes just now, and you were rolling on the ground.”
Feng Yu Die scratched the back of her head and replied, “Are you drunk?”
“Hiss— I only had two jars, how could I be drunk.”
“Then you must have seen wrong…”
Feng Yu Die acted as if she wouldn’t stoop to her level and buried her head in eating the roasted chicken again. But after taking a bite, she tore off another chicken leg, looked at Ye Anping, and asked:
“Young Master Ye… would you like some too?”
Yun Jiujiu was suddenly speechless: “… …”
Ye Anping looked at Yun Jiujiu, then at Feng Yu Die, who was now holding a chicken leg and pointing at him. He vaguely noticed that Feng Yu Die’s eyes were slightly red.
So he thought for a moment, looked at Yun Jiujiu, and asked:
“Second Miss Yun, are you a bit too drunk?”
Feng Yu Die quickly chimed in:
“See? Young Master Ye says the same thing…”
?
Yun Jiujiu felt like she was being tricked by these two. One was stirring up trouble, and the other was feigning ignorance. She was immediately annoyed and wanted to beat both of them up.
But seeing that Feng Yu Die had finally stopped crying, she just cast a glare at each of them and waved her hand:
“Damn it, I’m going to find someone to drink with. I’m not staying with you two little chicks.”
With that, she turned and walked out of the room. With a slight flick of her wooden clogs, the door she had reattached slammed shut.
At this moment, the windows were tightly closed. Once the door was shut, the inside and outside of the room seemed to be separated into two worlds, with not a whisper of wind getting through.
Ye Anping stood at the entrance and watched Feng Yu Die pause for a good while before walking over. He pulled over a cushion, lifted his robes, and sat cross-legged across from Feng Yu Die’s table. He took the roasted chicken she offered and took a bite:
“Mmm… not bad, it’s spicy.”
“Mm, the roasted chickens here at the Sword Sect are all spicy. Jiujiu said the chili makes them a great accompaniment to wine…”
Feng Yu Die lowered her eyes and nodded. She also tore off small pieces of chicken skin from her roasted chicken, and seeing that Ye Anping seemed to like the roasted chicken here, she specifically pushed a plate towards him.
The two of them faced each other, not saying anything else. They ate their roasted chicken. Unknowingly, Ye Anping had also finished more than half of the chicken in front of him. He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and asked:
“So, why did you kiss my junior sister in front of my father’s Danding Crane, which cost eight hundred and eighty thousand spirit stones?”
“Hehe…” Feng Yu Die gave a slightly awkward laugh. “Junior Sister Pei told you ah…”
“She did.”
“Mm… my master said, if you kiss in front of a celestial crane, the crane will bring a child.”
Ye Anping raised his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose and shook his head, feeling a little helpless. He retorted:
“Didn’t Yunluo tell you where children come from?”
“She did.”
“Then why are you still thinking…”
Feng Yu Die interrupted him firmly:
“But, this is what my master said. My master told me there are thousands of paths to enlightenment, and none of them are absolutely wrong. Senior Sister Xiao told me that men and women can conceive offspring through dual cultivation. So why can’t kissing in front of a celestial crane do the same?”
This caught Ye Anping off guard. He couldn’t help but ask himself: Right, why not?
But he quickly understood. This question was like the one about whether the chicken or the egg came first.
Why do humans reproduce sexually?
There was no answer to this question, and the answer didn’t even matter.
What mattered was the obsession in Feng Yu Die’s heart.
Ye Anping could tell that Feng Yu Die actually knew how things worked, but she would rather deceive herself than believe that the Grand Void True Person had lied to her, even if it was just such a trivial, inconsequential lie.
The Grand Void True Person held too important a position in Feng Yu Die’s heart, to the point where it had merged with her Dao heart.
Feng Yu Die’s purpose for cultivating was still the same as it was from the beginning: she cultivated because the Grand Void True Person told her to.
Once the image of the Grand Void True Person in her heart shattered, she would lose her way on the path of immortality. Therefore, she would rather lie to herself than believe her master was deceiving her.
The so-called inner demon was born from confusion.
Ye Anping couldn’t help but recall Feng Yu Die in the game.
In the game, Feng Yu Die was also like this, following the Grand Void True Person on the path of immortality and cultivating diligently. However, after meeting Xiao Yunluo, sharing life and death with her, and experiencing countless life-threatening crises, she eventually forged her own path, distinct from the one the Grand Void True Person had laid out for her in her youth.
Just like him, the reason he was walking the path of immortality now was to protect the Hundred Lotus Sect and Pei Lianxue.
In the game, Feng Yu Die was protecting Xiao Yunluo and the girls she had wronged…
Ye Anping pondered for a moment and replied directly:
“But the fact is, celestial cranes don’t bring children.”
“…Maybe the way of kissing is wrong? Or perhaps it wasn’t a bald-headed celestial crane. I heard that in the Southern Domain, there are ones that are completely white…”
**Slam—**
Ye Anping simply slapped the table with a bit more force and sternly interrupted:
“It won’t, it won’t!”
“… …” Feng Yu Die flinched, pursed her lips, and said, “I know, why are you so fierce…”
“Senior Sister Feng, if you continue like this, you will eventually develop inner demons because of your master.”
“So, my master lied to me?”
“Mm, at least in this matter, she lied to you.”
Feng Yu Die sniffled slightly, and two large tears welled up in her eyes. Sobbing, she asked:
“Then what else did she lie to me about?”
“There are two types of lies in the world: one is well-intentioned, and the other is malicious. Your master is the former. She just didn’t want you to suffer like she did at the hands of some scummy men.”
Feng Yu Die lightly wiped away the tears from the corners of her eyes with her index finger and nodded slightly:
“Mm…”
“Don’t cry anymore. You’re already in your twenties, why are you still like a little girl?”
“Mm… *sniff*—” Feng Yu Die sniffed loudly. “Then are you a scummy man or… a not-scummy man?”
?
Who asks a question like that?
Ye Anping was silent for a moment, then reached out:
“…How about you smell me?”
He intended it as a joke, but unexpectedly, Feng Yu Die looked at his outstretched hand and then moved the tip of her nose closer and nodded:
“Smells like roasted chicken.”
“…Isn’t that obvious?”
Ye Anping rolled his eyes at her.
However, he suddenly saw Feng Yu Die squint her eyes at him, her slightly oily lips curving into two shallow dimples. Her gentle smile seemed to draw a very large arc on the strings of his heart.
Dong—
Ye Anping felt his chest jolt violently. His gaze was so captivated by Feng Yu Die’s bright smile that he could hardly look away.
“Smells good, hee—”
A warm current slowly flowed down from his chest, condensing in his long spear…
“Feels like I wanna… her.” The words “Feels like I wanna her” stirred ripples deep in Ye Anping’s heart.
But as a wisp of saliva, mingled with chicken oil, dripped from the corner of his mouth, the ripples quickly subsided.
Feng Yu Die sucked back the drool from the corner of her mouth and giggled. Seeing Ye Anping’s face suddenly turn red, she seemed a little puzzled and asked:
“Slurp… Young Master Ye, why is your face red?”
Ye Anping hurriedly came back to his senses, raised his hand to cover his face, and his eyes revealed a hint of complexity, but soon a wry smile surfaced.
He inexplicably felt that the dog-like heavenly dao’s red thread connecting them wasn’t too bad. He looked up at Feng Yu Die’s already peerlessly beautiful face and sighed softly:
“Sigh…”
“What’s wrong?”
“Suddenly I think you’re quite beautiful.”
“?” Feng Yu Die shrank her head and frowned slightly. “I don’t fall for that. But… hehe~ As a fairy, I am naturally beautiful, of course I’m pretty.”
“Heh heh… go eat your f***ing food.”
“Mm…” Feng Yu Die lowered her eyes and thought for a moment, then looked at Ye Anping’s face again and asked, “Young Master Ye, you don’t seem to have lied to me…”
Ye Anping pondered for a while and answered ambiguously:
“I can’t remember. Perhaps I have lied.”
“When?”
“Who knows…”
Yes, who knows…
Feng Yu Die secretly added in her heart. The golden light in her eyes returned to its usual brilliance. She grabbed the roasted chicken in front of her and began to eat it with large bites, saying as she ate:
“Oh right, Junior Sister Pei’s face is so tender… it feels like chicken skin when you kiss it.”
?
It’s not like I haven’t kissed before… No, I almost got sidetracked by her.
Ye Anping’s eye twitched: “You’re telling me this?”
“Hee—”
Seeing Feng Yu Die’s playful smile, Ye Anping reached out and twisted her cheek, turning it 180 degrees vigorously. But this time, Feng Yu Die retaliated and twisted his cheek.
“Hiss—”
“Young Master Ye, you let go first.”
“You first…”
And whether it was because Feng Yu Die had twisted some strange switch or something, Xiao Tian suddenly poked her head out from Ye Anping’s forehead, looking like she had just woken up:
“Mm? Anping, what’s wrong…”
But upon seeing them twisting each other’s faces, Xiao Tian paused slightly and immediately covered her mouth, chuckling:
“Hehe, Anping, Yu Die, you guys…”
“Shut up!” “Xiao Tian, shut up.”
“Oh…”
… …
The night sky was filled with clouds rolling and unfurling. Unknowingly, a sliver of dawn illuminated the snow-covered mountains of the Sword Sect.
Yun Jiujiu had found a few Sword Sect disciples to drink with her all night. In the morning, she peeked in and saw the two of them sleeping “peacefully” on the ground. She breathed a sigh of relief and didn’t wake them. She quietly had the maidservants of the Sword Sect come in to tidy up, cover them with blankets, and then returned to her own Jian Jiu Peak to sleep.
… …
— —
Two days passed in the blink of an eye.
Dong—!!
A distant bell chime awakened a new day on Yi Shui Peak.
The casement window was half open. The sunrise and dawn, accompanied by birdsong, sprinkled onto the window lattice of the rear hall, nestled in a corner of the Yun Yi residence.
Yun Yiyi changed into a new outfit, gently pushed open the door, walked to the bedside, and gently shook the shoulders of the little dragon who was still lying on the bed.
“Young Master Xiao? Young Master Xiao…”
Xiao Yunluo slowly woke up, feeling extremely groggy. She slowly sat up and looked at Yun Yiyi by the bedside, sucking the drool from the corner of her mouth:
“Sniff— Miss Yun, it’s morning?”
Yun Yiyi wore a slightly apologetic look. The day before, when she accompanied Xiao Yunluo for drinks, she hadn’t expected Xiao Yunluo to have such a low tolerance for alcohol. After just a pot of wine, she had slept until now.
Although, the wine was indeed potent. It was a spirit wine that she had specially retrieved from the Sword Sect’s treasure vault. It was said to be brewed by Grandpa Yun when he was young and had been sealed until now.
“Mm, it’s morning. Young Master Ye asked me to call you, saying they’re departing soon. Fu Xuan Shangxian and the others have also finished getting ready.”
“Ah?” Xiao Yunluo sat up blankly. “Didn’t Anping say he wanted to rest for three days at the Sword Sect? And that he’d go with us to visit the Sword Sect marketplace to buy things…”
Yun Yiyi pursed her lips, thought for a moment, and asked:
“Uh… Young Master Xiao, don’t you remember? We went there yesterday, didn’t we? We bought quite a few things.”
“?”
“Look at this…” Yun Yiyi took out a pair of bracelets from her storage bag. “This is what Anping gave me when we went shopping at the marketplace yesterday.”
“… …”
Xiao Yunluo looked at the pair of bracelets, completely bewildered. She only remembered drinking with Yun Yiyi for a while, and then it was now. Could it be that she had amnesia?
“Like this… I don’t have any recollection.”
“Junior Sister Pei and I drank a bit with you yesterday, okay~ Anping asked me to call you. I’ll go get some water for you to wash your face, and we’ll prepare for departure.”
Although Xiao Yunluo didn’t know what was going on, she felt it wasn’t a big deal. She nodded, moved her legs off the bed, stretched, and with Yun Yiyi’s help, tidied up her face and bound her dragon horns. Then she went to the Central Peak to meet Ye Anping and the others.
… …
