Chapter 2

I shut the door in his face and said coldly, “I won’t treat him.”

Auntie stared at me, bewildered. I was never normally like this.

Zhao Yunzhi had his pride. From beyond the wall, he said icily, “You are unworthy of being a healer.”

That made me angry.

He was the one unworthy of being human.

I opened the door, ready to curse him out, only to see Zhao Yunzhi forming a spell seal with his fingers.

“Your three beasts attacked a man,” he said coldly. “I will dispose of them.”

Horror seized me, and I threw myself in front of him.

But nothing happened.

His spell did not work. Not a shred of magic came from his fingertips.

Overjoyed, I planted a foot in his chest and sent him flying.

“Who do you think you are, threatening anything in my home? Get out of my way.”

Auntie had apparently decided something was wrong with Zhao Yunzhi too. She left muttering curses.

“Looks like a proper person, but hasn’t got a lick of sense.”

Zhao Yunzhi struggled for a long while and failed to rise.

He lay sprawled on the ground in a daze. It seemed to take him that long to realize he was no longer an immortal lord, but a mortal man.

Mortal life held no spell seals or magic—only the toil of trading honest sweat for food.

The village chief could not let Zhao Yunzhi die where he lay. He ordered some men to carry him to the village’s ruined temple, then came to my door to ask what had happened.

“Susu, why won’t you save him? Did that man offend you somehow?”

I did not answer. I merely said calmly, “He’ll be fine.”

“How do you know?”

“A scourge lives a thousand years.”

The chief laughed. “What a thing to say.”

Zhao Yunzhi did not die. His junior sect sister, Wei Shuang, brought him an immortal pill from their sect.

But Zhao Yunzhi was mortal now, and a mortal who swallowed an immortal pill would explode.

All she could do was swish the pill through water and give him the water to drink.

Zhao Yunzhi drank it and got a nosebleed. He slowly began to recover, but the medicine was fundamentally wrong for him. Even as it healed him, it seemed to leave him frailer than before.

Wei Shuang helped Zhao Yunzhi to my house, kicked open my door, and leveled a cold, gleaming sword at my throat.

“Li Sujun, if you weren’t my senior sect brother’s trial of love, I would take your life this instant.”

“Look after my senior brother, or else… Hmph!”

Her fierceness was all for show.

I had long known that immortals could not kill mortals on a whim. Something about incurring karmic consequences and then getting struck by lightning during ascension—just like Zhao Yunzhi, who had been blasted out of the sky by heavenly lightning, failing his tribulation and losing every scrap of his cultivation.

I had been a little frightened when Wei Shuang kicked in my door. But the moment she said I was Zhao Yunzhi’s trial of love, I straightened at once.

I was his trial of love?

Then what in the world did she have to be so arrogant about?