Chapter 39
Chapter 39
Water was still dripping from the rocks without pause. After listening to it for long enough, the sound actually seemed to settle into a fixed rhythm, almost like music.
Once Qiao Ying recovered, she pulled herself out of the young man’s arms and carefully surveyed her surroundings. “How did I suddenly end up here?”
“Naturally, because you’re foolish and stepped into a trap.”
Qiao Ying had no reply to that.
This hidden realm had been created by Mu Yunshu and changed according to her will. If she wanted Qiao Ying to step into a trap, she had plenty of ways to make it happen.
Qiao Ying had merely been transported away and was not injured. She said, “It seems like Mu Yunshu doesn’t intend to kill me.”
Shen Qingyu smiled. “That’s right. Which means she was smart enough to save her own life.”
Qiao Ying gave an “oh,” then asked, “Is she really a Yaoguai?”
Shen Qingyu said, “No.”
“Then is she a ghost?”
Shen Qingyu said again, “No.”
Qiao Ying was completely confused. If Mu Yunshu was neither a Yaoguai nor a ghost, then what kind of existence was she?
But thinking about it again, Old Master Zhao and Xue Heting were no pushovers. If Mu Yunshu truly were some demon, monster, or ghost, there was no way they would have failed to notice.
They had been “thrown out,” and she had no idea what was happening over there now.
Qiao Ying looked back at the stone wall. “I was curious before. What are these glowing patterns?”
Shen Qingyu smiled and played along. “Yes, what could they be?”
Qiao Ying looked up at him again, expressionless.
Shen Qingyu tilted his head, his face pure and innocent.
Unable to suppress her curiosity, Qiao Ying said, “Shen Qingyu, you’re so powerful. You must know what this is, right?”
Shen Qingyu seemed rather curious. “Am I powerful?”
Qiao Ying said, “Back in Phoenix Town, you killed that Chang Ghost in just a couple of moves. Later, when I was taken by the Water Yaoguai and hanging by a thread, you appeared right on time, like a god descending from the heavens, and killed all those Water Yaoguai. You’re practically the most powerful person in the whole world!”
Shen Qingyu could not help the curve of his lips. “So I am that powerful.”
In the past, he had only ever heard people say that he killed like a monster. This was the first time he had heard someone say he looked like a god when he killed.
As expected, she was very strange.
Qiao Ying’s curiosity burned bright. “So, Shen Qingyu, the most, most powerful person in the world, just tell me. What are these glowing things?”
Shen Qingyu rather wanted to put on an act and pretend to think for a while longer, but then he remembered that he was the most, most powerful person in the world. If he spent too long thinking, it would be far too lacking in style.
So he smiled and said, “It’s spiritual power holding these broken stones together so they don’t fall apart.”
Qiao Ying understood at once.
This cave had collapsed right before their eyes. It was Mu Yunshu who had pieced it back together again like a puzzle.
Qiao Ying could not guess why Mu Yunshu would expend so much effort to restore the cave to its original appearance. She only remembered that before the cave collapsed, the same blue spiritual power had filled the stone walls.
Could it be that this cave should have collapsed many years ago?
Qiao Ying thought again of the skeleton that had already scattered into the heavens and earth. “Could Mu Yunshu have something to do with that corpse that was trapped in the cave for so many years? Or maybe… she is that corpse, and she’s here for revenge?”
Qiao Ying knew this guess was absurd, but this world was already absurd beyond anything she understood. In that case, no matter how absurd something was, it was still possible for it to happen absurdly.
Perhaps her irresponsible guess really was that ridiculous, because Shen Qingyu let out a soft laugh. “Qiao Ying, you really are so silly.”
Qiao Ying felt as though her intelligence had been looked down on. She pressed her lips together. “Forget it. I’m not talking to you anymore. I’m going to find a way out.”
Since the owner of the cave had deliberately sent Qiao Ying far away, she naturally would not let her find the way out so easily.
The tunnels extended in every direction. No matter which way they went, there would be a fork, and no matter which fork they chose, they ultimately seemed to return to where they had started.
This would not do. She had to leave markers.
Qiao Ying lowered her head and began searching around. Shen Qingyu followed behind her, letting out a soft chuckle from time to time, as though he found it very amusing to watch her make useless efforts.
She could not take it anymore. She grabbed his hand and pulled him over to stand by the stone wall. “You stay right here. Don’t move.”
Leaning on his Blind Staff, Shen Qingyu obediently answered, “All right.”
Qiao Ying finally found some small stones and stacked them at the entrance to the fork on the left. “This way, if we come back here again, I’ll know whether we’re really going in circles and which path we’ve already taken.”
Shen Qingyu responded with a smile, as though he were still mocking her stupidity.
Qiao Ying did not want to bother with him. While she was working hard to pick up stones, she turned over something different from a pile of rubble. It was a black Talisman.
She had picked up the same kind of black Talisman in the cave before it collapsed. At the time, she had worried that something might happen, and Shen Qingyu had teasingly said that if something were going to happen, it would have happened to her already.
But gradually, she felt the black Talisman in her hand growing hot, and the runes on it began to faintly glow. She hurriedly threw the thing away.
And at the very instant she tossed it out, the black Talisman hovered in midair and burst with the radiance of lightning.
Qiao Ying turned back and said, “Didn’t you say this thing was fine?!”
Shen Qingyu smiled where he stood. “I never said every single one of them was fine.”
It was like a dud shell: forty years ago it didn’t explode, and forty years later, it suddenly did.
Terrifying lightning struck all around them. Stones and rubble fell, and the danger of the whole mountain shaking violently returned.
Qiao Ying dodged the flying pebbles and looked back at Shen Qingyu. Amid the crashing debris, he still hadn’t moved an inch, as if he couldn’t feel pain at all. He was calm to the point of being eerie.
More rocks were tumbling down. Qiao Ying shouted, “Shen Qingyu!”
The corners of Shen Qingyu’s lips lifted, and he tilted his head slightly.
Just then, a sharp pebble grazed his cheek, leaving a long streak of blood across his skin as white as snow.
As larger chunks of stone came crashing down, Qiao Ying had already reached him. She shoved him to the ground, and the next second, with a thunderous crash, the rock that had fallen where he had been standing smashed heavily into place.
Qiao Ying was sprawled on top of him. She looked up in anger. “You just stood there without moving. Are you stupid?”
The boy didn’t understand where her anger came from. He only lifted one hand to shield Qiao Ying’s back, and the next moment, a fragment of rock dropped down and struck his arm squarely.
She heard a crisp crack with perfect clarity: the sound of a bone breaking.
Shen Qingyu’s arm hung at an unnatural angle over her body, yet he still seemed not to know what pain was. He smiled as if nothing had happened. “I promised you I would stand still.”
It was as if, a long, long time ago, a rain had come all of a sudden.
When Qiao Ying was slowly making her way back, she saw the person outside who had been getting rained on for most of the day.
He was soaked through, one hand resting on the Blind Staff laid across his knees. No one knew how long he had sat there in silence. Only when she ran over with an umbrella did he lift his face, misted with rain, and smile softly.
Just like now.
The boy’s expression was gentle, and there was a trace of childlike innocence in his eyes. “If you promise something, you should do it. That’s how a person ought to be, isn’t it?”
Blue spiritual energy quickly surged back into existence. The collapse stopped. As if the scene were being rewound, the stones that had fallen to the ground slowly flew back along the exact path they had come from, returning to where they had originally been.
This was a world full of absurdity.
And in this absurd world, the even more absurd boy lowered his broken, twisted arm. He lay on the dusty ground, white hair stained with dirt, green robes smeared with grime, yet the corners of his lips still held that naive smile, soft to an almost unbelievable degree.
“I did what I promised you, Qiao Ying. Aren’t you happy?”
For some reason, an odd impulse rose in Qiao Ying’s chest. “If I told you not to move, then you shouldn’t have moved. Why did you still shield me from the falling rocks?”
He said, “You’re afraid of pain. If you got hurt, you’d be yelling and shrieking again, wouldn’t you?”
The boy seemed to realize this only belatedly. He moved the arm with the broken bone and gently turned his face, brushing against his long white hair as he muttered with a faint note of disappointment, “Ah, right. I moved. So I didn’t do what I promised you after all. I failed at being a person today.”
Then he asked softly, “Qiao Ying, will you still tie bows for me in the future?”
Qiao Ying pressed her lips together. “Shen Qingyu.”
The boy turned to face her, but she didn’t continue. He said, “Your heartbeat is fast again. Suspension Bridge Effect?”
Qiao Ying replied, “No.”
He thought about it for a moment, then said, “Qiao Ying, your heart is sick.”
Qiao Ying couldn’t explain all the random nonsense to him. She asked, “If I take liberties with you, would you kill me?”
After a moment of thought, Shen Qingyu said, “I don’t know.”
“Then forget it if you don’t know. I’ll take liberties first and worry about the rest later.” She lowered her face, but just as she was about to lean in, she stopped.
Shen Qingyu could feel her breath very close. He also seemed to sense what she was about to do, but she backed out halfway. His lips moved slightly. “Why did you stop?”
“On second thought, I’d rather keep my life,” Qiao Ying said, her rationality returning. She struggled to sit up, using both hands and feet, when her arm was suddenly grabbed and her body was yanked back.
That broken arm pressed against the back of her head, and their lips met for the second time.
In this world that could be endlessly rewound, this strange thing that could be called a “kiss” had instead become something perfectly natural.
The sound of dripping water, “tick, tick, tick,” returned once more.
Shen Qingyu looked dazed. “Qiao Ying.”
“What?”
“Why did you kiss me?”
The girl’s voice shot up. “Shen Qingyu, stop trying to turn this around on me. You’re the one who clearly kissed me!”
He was silent for a moment. “Why did you tempt me into kissing you?”
She snapped, unable to hold back any longer, “If you keep making trouble, believe it or not, I’ll break up with you today!”
He asked, “What does ‘break up’ mean?”
She fell silent again. She couldn’t remember, so she could only say, “I don’t know either.”
So he discussed it with her. “If we can’t figure it out, then can we just not break up today?”
She thought what he said made sense, and nodded. “Fine. Then we won’t break up today.”