Chapter 98

Chapter 98

So her name was Feng Lishu.

“All right, Ah Li-no, Ah Shu.” Fox Lord bent down and lifted her into his arms. “Even if no one else believes you, I do. Be good. Let me check your injuries first.”

Hu Yulin carried Feng Lishu toward Qilin Temple.

Feng Lishu wrapped her arms around his neck, her pointed chin resting on his shoulder, and shot me a smug smile.

It was the smile of a victor.

So that was how it was.

What a perfect little white lotus.

But I did not care about any of that. I turned and looked toward the sky.

There, a white figure rolled through the clouds. The number of black crows had already dropped sharply. It looked like Liu Junyan would be back soon.

I silently let out a breath of relief, then turned to look at the villagers and children lying all over the ground.

The children were innocent.

I walked over, bent down, and checked the children’s bodies.

Sure enough, many of them had burn marks on them, but some had already improved after drinking the medicine Feng Lishu had given them.

Could Feng Lishu really have come here to save people and accumulate Merit?

But that black shadow had clearly been summoned from Qilin Temple. Was there some hidden connection between Feng Lishu and Qilin Temple?

“Xiao Jiu.”

After settling Feng Lishu down, Hu Yulin came over to me.

I stood up and met his eyes. “Fox Lord.”

Hu Yulin smiled at me and said earnestly, “Xiao Jiu, Ah Li is back.”

I said nothing.

He continued, “I know you were dragged into this mess for no reason, and it was very unfair to you. I also mistook you for her. But instead of waiting until Junyan comes to his senses one day and grows to resent you, wouldn’t it be better for you to pull yourself out cleanly now and leave him with a good impression?

“If I remember correctly, you haven’t finished university yet. You can go back and live your own normal life.”

I gave a helpless laugh. “Fox Lord, you’re twisting the issue.”

Hu Yulin froze. “What?”

“From the very beginning, you were the ones who treated me as Ah Li,” I said. “I never took the initiative to impersonate Ah Li. No matter when you look at it, the mistake was yours, not mine. Wasn’t it?”

Fox Lord had saved my life. I owed him for that.

But that did not mean he could twist right and wrong and trample all over me for Feng Lishu’s sake.

Hu Yulin’s brows furrowed again and again. In the end, he only said, “Xiao Jiu, I’m doing this for your own good.”

I returned his smile. “Then thank you for your kindness, Fox Lord.”

“Ah Lin.” Feng Lishu’s voice rang out. “I brought out some incense ash. Come help me save these children. They’re so pitiful.”

Hu Yulin threw me a look that told me to know what was good for me, then went to help Feng Lishu.

As they used the incense ash from Qilin Temple to save people, I watched from a distance.

They smeared the incense ash over the burn marks. The lighter ones faded quickly. For the more severe cases, they dissolved the incense ash in water and fed it to the children, and before long, those children began to improve as well.

So the medicinal catalyst for treating the burns was the incense ash from Qilin Temple.

The villagers woke up one after another, and most of the children were saved.

Everyone gathered around Feng Lishu, praising her and bowing to her, reverently worshiping her as a Bodhisattva-like savior.

Taking advantage of the chaos, I secretly took a little incense ash as well.

Liu Junyan returned very soon. I hurriedly checked him over and found that he was not injured.

Liu Junyan patted my head and said, “I’m not hurt. Don’t worry.”

I hummed in acknowledgment.

By then, the villagers had gradually dispersed. Hu Yulin and Feng Lishu both looked toward Liu Junyan at the same time.

The instant Liu Junyan met Feng Lishu’s eyes, his gaze turned cold and sinister. He lifted his foot, as if he still wanted to go over and do something, and Feng Lishu immediately hid behind Hu Yulin.

Hu Yulin snapped open his folding fan and shielded the person behind him with one hand, taking up a defensive stance.

I tugged Liu Junyan and shook my head at him.
Hu Yulin was his childhood friend. I didn’t want the two of them coming to blows again because of this-they had only just fought.

After thinking it over, Liu Junyan finally took me down the mountain with him.

With Feng Lishu and Hu Yulin in Tafeng Village, that whole farce shouldn’t spiral out of control again.

Liu Junyan drove us back, while I sat in the passenger seat, weighed down by my thoughts.

What exactly was that dark shadow with enormous wings that had flown out of Qilin Temple?

Could it be the Qilin Deity that Tafeng Village had worshiped all this time?

And was the Qilin Deity truly a god? Or… a demon?

Seeing that I hadn’t said a word, Liu Junyan asked with concern, “Xiao Jiu, what are you spacing out for? Did it scare you?”

“No. There are just some things I can’t figure out.” Then I turned to ask him, “Liu Junyan, if Feng Lishu really is the true Ah Li, will you grow tired of me one day?”

“Feng Lishu?” Liu Junyan asked. “That woman’s name is Feng Lishu?”

I nodded.

He said, “Xiao Jiu, don’t overthink it. A fake is a fake. Even if she stole your spiritual bones and memories and can imitate you perfectly, she’s still nothing but a poor copy. It won’t hold up under scrutiny.”

“Spiritual bones?”

I pressed both hands to the lowest two ribs on my body. A dull pain immediately flared there, and I sucked in a sharp breath, forcing myself to ask, “Are they here?”

Liu Junyan froze, then immediately pulled the car over to the side of the road. He pried my hands away and scolded me, “Do you have a death wish? Can’t you feel pain?”

“So you’ve known all along, haven’t you?”

It was when I had the CT scan at the hospital that I’d discovered something was wrong with those two ribs.

I never imagined they should have been my spiritual bones.

I asked, “My spiritual bones are very, very important to me, aren’t they?”

Liu Junyan nodded and touched the space between my brows. “With your spiritual bones, your spiritual root remains. The mark that symbolizes your identity remains as well. Once your spiritual bones were lost, you lost everything.”

Hu Yulin had recognized Feng Lishu because of the feather mark between her brows.

So that feather mark had hidden so many secrets behind it.

“Liu Junyan,” I asked, “can my spiritual bones grow back?”

Liu Junyan shook his head. “Spiritual bones are hard to come by even in a thousand years. How could they grow back that easily? Xiao Jiu, trust me. Sooner or later, I’ll retrieve the spiritual bones you lost.”

For some reason, I felt a little dejected. “Can they really be taken back?”

“They can,” Liu Junyan said with certainty. “Feng Lishu kept emphasizing to me that her Nirvana failed and her spiritual bones were damaged, so I tested her. Sure enough, when her life was truly threatened, the spiritual nature of the bones inside her body became unstable, and the feather mark between her brows changed along with it.”

So when he had choked Feng Lishu so hard, it really had been to test her.

I nodded, then said, “Ah Yan, I want to go to Huicheng as soon as possible. I keep feeling that I might be able to find some clues there.”

After that, I carefully told Liu Junyan everything: how the names of the two children in Song Ruoqing’s drawing were exactly the same as the names of the pair of Dragon-Phoenix twins in Tafeng Village, and about that Qilin Statue.

After hearing me out, Liu Junyan immediately seized on the key point. “You mean the Song Family and Tafeng Village may very likely be controlled by the same group of people behind the scenes?”

I considered my words before saying, “Maybe it would be more accurate to say that Tafeng Village and Wangting Mountain are the same.”

Sure enough, the moment I said that, Liu Junyan’s expression changed.

The Snake Clan of Wangting Mountain was a very special existence to Liu Junyan.

He hated them, yet he could not truly sever himself from them.

After all, he had been born on Wangting Mountain and had lived there for a period of time.

“If there really is someone controlling things behind Wangting Mountain, then that person is definitely not to be underestimated.” Liu Junyan warned me, “Xiao Jiu, leave Wangting Mountain to me. Don’t get involved for now. You can’t fight them…”