Chapter 48

"Ah."

Xiao Yu feigned the action of pressing the back of his hand, lowering his eyes slightly as his long eyelashes trembled. With a somewhat aggrieved and low voice, he said, "It hurts a little."

Su Zhen was no longer falling for this routine. "Then Senior can hit me back. I promise not to dodge."

Xiao Yu shook his head. "I can't bear to."

Su Zhen: "..."

This fellow's skin seemed to grow thicker by the day, especially becoming more so now that they had bared their feelings to each other.

Su Zhen hesitated for a moment. "Why did I undergo rebirth?"

Hmm?

Su Zhen rubbed her temples. "There's actually no strange reaction. I thought this question wasn't allowed to be asked either."

Xiao Yu watched her silently for a moment. "You can ask, but if I tell you, you might end up like just now again, unable to hear a single word I say."

Su Zhen was slightly startled. "So Senior knows?"

He nodded. "Consider it known, but do not extrapolate any further, otherwise..."

However, this was rather difficult to control.

Su Zhen had originally deduced that he had read that book based on her inferences. Now that he confirmed he knew the reason behind her rebirth, many more possibilities instantly flooded her mind.

That sharp, tearing pain struck once more.

She clutched her head and staggered a step back, her primordial spirit and physical body on the verge of separation, her consciousness no longer able to control her physical form.

"Stop thinking."

Xiao Yu leaned over and supported her shoulders. "When you ascend to the Saint Realm... we can discuss... this topic... it won't be long anyway..."

His voice seemed to come from an extremely distant place, intermittent and somewhat blurred.

Yet, she still understood.

Su Zhen forcibly suppressed those chaotic guesses and inferences, controlling the spiritual energy within her body to gradually calm down.

Then she thought of another matter: in her past life, she had never met him; in her past life, he had ascended. Now that she had been reborn, he had not ascended either. There must be some connection among these events.

As for what the exact connection was, she did not dare to think too deeply, terrified of suffering another soul-separation.

Su Zhen suddenly thought of something else. "Senior once said that the reason you became a disciple under Immortal Lord Jingyang was not because of your talent."

"Because she saw at a glance that I was a soul from another world."

He explained that when he was rescued by that group of Tianyuan Sect cultivators, he already possessed spiritual energy, which was why they looked at him differently.

Moreover, they discovered that he was the one who had buried his own parents and all the dead people in the vicinity, and feeling that the boy had decent character, they brought him back.

It just so happened that among them was also a disciple of the Lingxiao Peak's elder.

Su Zhen understood.

Orphans brought back from the Void Realm were different from those in the mortal realm. If the Sect Master had not been in closed-door cultivation, it was only natural for them to report it to her.

"As for Master,"

Xiao Yu sighed, "She didn't make it explicit at first, but I knew she knew. Especially later when she taught me some mental arcane arts—it was probably because certain auras of my soul were different. She taught me how to conceal them so that I wouldn't give myself away in front of other Immortal Lords..."

Saying this, he let out a laugh. "But in truth, they don't possess her abilities. Even if they could sense a trace of anomaly, they wouldn't necessarily know what it was."

Su Zhen could not help but reveal a look of yearning. "I have always been curious about the world in the eyes of Saint Realm powerhouses."

Xiao Yu said with absolute certainty, "You will know very soon."

"...Senior really has confidence in me."

"This is not without reason. Speaking of talent, this body originally possessed spiritual roots, but they were extremely impure, only slightly better than an ordinary person's. Heavenly spiritual roots are all refined later on. My realm advancement was much slower than yours; you reached the Golden Immortal realm before five hundred, while at five hundred I was still struggling in the Heavenly Immortal realm, acting like good-for-nothing..."

Su Zhen was torn between laughter and tears. "A Heavenly Immortal at five hundred is already rare."

"And you are even stronger, so since I could reach this step, you certainly can too, and you will undoubtedly be much faster than me."

"All right, Senior is going to praise me up to the heavens."

Su Zhen pressed her hand against his shoulder. "Let's go to Qiongdu first."

Xiao Yu stiffened slightly again when she touched him, but upon hearing her words, he immediately mobilized his spiritual energy without another word, and the two of them vanished into the bamboo forest in an instant.

"So what are we coming here for?"

When they stood in a small alley of the immortal city, gazing at the sparsely populated street ahead, he asked with puzzlement.

"Does Senior remember what I said before about treating you to a meal?"

Su Zhen said slowly, "As it turned out, it became you treating me to wontons. This time I have to make it up to you, and once those earlier matters spread, I'm going to be busy. I might as well relax while I have some leisure time now."

"Oh."

Xiao Yu clearly still remembered this promise. "Alright. Where are we eating? Langgui Zhai?"

Su Zhen was full of astonishment. "How do you—"

On second thought, this fellow had worn out the pages in the book related to her, and moreover, he had been to Qiongdu before and had even conversed with her relatives.

Su Zhen couldn't help glaring at him. "It seems Senior also knows that place. Well, do you like it? I know many human cultivators find it hard to get used to the food."

Xiao Yu blinked. "I like it, I've eaten there, and besides, I am not human."

"...Then let's go."

Ever since achieving penury of mortal food through innuendo, her interest in eating had diminished greatly. Although she hadn't completely cut it off, there were times when she hadn't touched a single pastry for decades.

Occasionally, when she went out to play with her cousin, older male cousin, or other fellow disciples, she would casually buy a few snacks, and even if someone hosted a banquet, she would only taste a mouthful or two.

But ever since she met Xiao Yu, she seemed to have truly recovered a tiny bit of "appetite."

They walked through a long street and turned into a small alley, surrounded on all sides by high and low courtyard walls.

Many rogue cultivators bought houses here, planting pine, bamboo, and emerald cypress inside and outside the courtyards. Interlacing waterways wound between the dwellings, with weeping willows swaying by the banks, and lush tree shadows enveloping a radius of several miles.

Between the white walls and black tiles, many shops were also hidden, mostly refining pills and selling medicine, while others sold casting materials and cultivation techniques.

Su Zhen walked unhurriedly for a stretch, finally arriving at the end of a long alley where an exquisite two-story treehouse stood, with a plaque hanging in front of the door bearing the characters "Langgui Zhai."

The treehouse was built inside a dead giant tree; the bark was grayish-white in color, and the interior rooms, tables, pillars, and rafters were all carved from the trunk, with doors and windows being openings hollowed out of the tree itself.

Su Zhen paused at the doorway and glanced inside. The person behind the counter happened to be looking out as well.

Their gazes met.

The proprietor stood up. "Zhenzhen? You've come home? I didn't see you even at your uncle's birthday banquet."

He wore a brocade-padded jacket and looked like a middle-aged man. His figure was lean, and though he was handsome, there were many wrinkles on his face, with silver threads mixed into his black hair.

The proprietor looked at her happily, his hands clasped in front of him. The parts of his wrists exposed at the cuffs had skin that was dry and even cracked into blocks.

If one observed closely, they would find that the color was exactly the same as the tree bark outside the house.

"Mm."

Su Zhen smiled as she looked at him. "Aunt went into winter hibernation again?"

"She's already woken up. She just went out and will be back shortly."

Su Zhen nodded, preparing to introduce him. "Right, this is someone from my sect—"

Before the word "Senior" could leave her lips, the proprietor had already looked past her. "Little Xiao?"

Su Zhen: "..."

As expected.

Xiao Yu took a step forward, standing beside her. "Uncle, your memory is truly great. You still recognize me after three hundred years."

Su Zhen: "?"

"Hahaha, as someone from out of town who chatted with two old folks for so long, of course we remember you."

The proprietor rambled on with a few sentences. "Oh, I almost forgot. Zhenzhen, take your friend to find a seat. It's the usual few items, right? Just wait a moment..."

Xiao Yu listened with a smile all along, and in the end even waved. "Thank you, Uncle."

Su Zhen could bear it no longer, grabbed his sleeve, and dragged him toward the seat by the window.

"What is wrong with you?!"

Xiao Yu obediently let himself be pulled, allowing her to push him into the innermost seat, submitting entirely to her actions from beginning to end.

His gaze flickered, landing on the fair, slender fingers pressing against his shoulder, which were as delicate and slender as willow branches, carrying a hint of coolness.

Su Zhen silently withdrew her hand. "What are you doing?"

"Ah?"

Xiao Yu tilted his head. "What?"

Su Zhen stood beside him, managing to be slightly taller than him and barely able to put on a condescending posture. "Why did you call him uncle?"

"I've been here before, so I consider myself acquainted with them."

Xiao Yu looked at her with a smile, propping his chin with one hand resting on the table. "Didn't I say before that I've eaten the food here?"

Su Zhen narrowed her eyes. "Does this have half a copper coin's relation to my question? Do all returning customers call the proprietor uncle?"

Xiao Yu was very calm. "Then why do you call him that?"

Su Zhen glanced at him, just about to say it was because they truly shared blood ties, when she suddenly felt that this guy would seize the opportunity to push further.

"If I say it's because I grew up in Qiongdu since I was a child, am close with them, my mother had a good relationship with them as peers, and both husband and wife took care of me, treating me like a daughter?"

Xiao Yu blinked innocently. "Then I would say I am the same. When I came last time, I was in a somewhat bad mood, and the two elders enlightened me, making it feel as if they treated me like a son..."

"Stop."

Su Zhen could not bear to listen any longer. "You're not much younger than them by a few years."

Xiao Yu aggrievedly said, "I'm younger by more than two hundred years. That age gap is more than enough to be parents."

Su Zhen gave a light, mocking snort. "Then I am two thousand years younger than Senior. What should Senior be to me? How many 'greats' need to be added before grandfather to make it appropriate?"

Xiao Yu frowned. "How is it two thousand years? Aren't you five hundred years old?"

Su Zhen looked up at the sky. "One thousand five hundred and two thousand are just a few 'greats' short. Oh right, the moment you saw me, you knew I was reborn, so Senior actually watched me act all this time while pretending not to know?"

"I didn't really pretend much."

Xiao Yu said without hesitation, "When I saw you then, I knew you must have just been reborn, because you knocked over that pot of grass. You didn't do such a thing in your past life, and besides, if you had come earlier, you wouldn't have ended up carrying that thing to your master's doorstep."

Su Zhen walked over and sat down opposite him. "Although the proprietor is over two thousand years old, he addresses my six-hundred-year-old uncle as a sworn brother. If you call him uncle..."

Xiao Yu looked at her with some surprise. "Don't you dislike your family? You're still planning to let me meet your uncle?"

Su Zhen: "..."

She had no such intention.

Su Zhen: "But we might run into him by chance. I just felt that Senior perhaps ought to change how you address him."

"No big deal."

Xiao Yu said airily, "Then I'll just call him uncle too."

The hand Su Zhen placed on the table suddenly tightened.

"Just kidding, just kidding."

Xiao Yu waved his hand. "Lord Su, Patriarch Su, Immortal Su—however I addressed your mother back then, that is how I will address your uncle now."

Su Zhen's fingers relaxed. "You've met my mother?"

"A passing acquaintance, just exchanged a greeting. She looked very busy."

"I know, she was always like that."

Su Zhen sighed softly. "How many times has Senior been to Qiongdu?"

Xiao Yu thought seriously for a moment. "...I want to give you a number, but I don't seem to remember. There was a period of time when I would come over almost whenever I had free time. Whenever I got tired of fighting with people in the Demon Realm, I would come here to rest, sitting by the river in the city in a daze, or gazing at your family's estate from the peak of Shuiyun Mountain. It might sound a bit abnormal, but I really never disturbed your family. Ninety-nine percent of the time I spent here was just looking at the scenery, looking at various unfamiliar strangers, and fantasizing about the scenario of meeting you."

Su Zhen shook her head. "I don't know what 'abnormal' means, but I believe what Senior says. My mother spent her entire childhood and youth in cultivation; I heard my grandfather was the same, only occasionally stepping out once in a while. Outsiders couldn't see her anyway."

Xiao Yu nodded. "Therefore, I only saw your mother once, three hundred years ago. After that, I couldn't come again, and even though I thought of saving her, I couldn't succeed."

Having said this, as if afraid she might misunderstand, he added, "I am definitely not..."

In his past life, he had ascended two hundred years ago.

"I understand Senior's meaning."

Su Zhen mused, "Senior must have been in a state where things were beyond your control for a period of time. I can understand that; otherwise, given Senior's temperament, if you had been able to return to the Tianyuan Sect earlier, you would have at least found a way to snatch me as a disciple."

Therefore, at that point in time, he was absolutely not free.

Su Zhen could not imagine what on earth had happened.

Perhaps he had been trapped in some realm, some place where the laws of time and space were chaotic, and by the time he emerged, vicissitudes had transformed the world.

Thinking about it, she added, "Were you about to say just now that you didn't deliberately allow my mother to perish—or rather, you were afraid that if my mother lived, I wouldn't have gone to the Tianyuan Sect to apprentice?"

Su Zhen smiled as she spoke. "My mother dreamed of me apprenticing under some sword-cultivating Immortal Lord. If Senior wanted to approach me, having my mother alive would have been even better. As long as you came over, wandered around for a bit, and showed the slightest intention, even if I disagreed, my mother would have tried her best to persuade me to agree."

Of course, she wouldn't have disagreed back then either.

Xiao Yu was startled, the corners of his lips lifting and then falling, his smile somewhat bitter. "Indeed so."

He said in a low voice, "When we met three hundred years ago, I did think about warning your mother regarding her impending demise, but I was still constrained by the rules of this world and unable to speak of it."

As Xiao Yu spoke, remorse appeared in his eyes. "I am sorry, I really wanted to help you."

Su Zhen gently drew in a breath, a sourness unprovokedly welling up in her nose, though she had no idea what exactly she was feeling upset about.

"Senior has no need to apologize to me..."

"No, I just feel apologetic from the bottom of my heart. Your mother passing away was one thing, and you being injured by that demonic cultivator was another..."

Not much time separated these two events, and Su Zhen immediately understood what he was referring to.

When Patriarch Su Che failed his realm advancement and perished, the death of a Golden Immortal was no small commotion. The news could not be kept hidden in the Hanhua Prefecture territory and quickly spread out.

Most of the enemies she had in life had been slaughtered by her, but ultimately there were still some relatives who harbored deep grudges against her.

Most of these people possessed mediocre cultivation, or at least insufficient strength to contend with Su Che, hence they could only swallow their anger while she was alive.

Once she died, these people chose to take revenge on her family.

Her younger siblings and her daughter.

Because of this, Su Zhen was injured by one of the demonic cultivators.

In fact, her uncles and aunts, even in different locations, had all fallen victim to ambushes, but they were all high-realm experts with more means to protect themselves.

That demonic cultivator left her with a severe wound, but was quickly killed by the family members who rushed to her rescue.

However, the wounds on Su Zhen's body refused to heal. Su Xun contacted an elder from the Qihuang Palace, but that person was extremely busy and only provided a prescription, in which one type of spiritual plant was a specialty of the Eastern Region's spiritual veins and was extremely rare.

Therefore, he took his niece to the Tianyuan Sect to pay respects to the Sect Master, bringing a massive amount of spiritual stones and offering many gifts, which in any case had been her elder sister's belongings, and using them to save her elder sister's daughter was only right and proper.

"It's not really worth mentioning."

Su Zhen said softly, "It was only a matter of a few days, and I also killed that murderer's disciple, which made me feel much more at ease..."

"But it hurt you very much; you said so when you killed her."

Xiao Yu's expression was dejected. "You even expressed regret that her master had died too early, saying you wished you could cut her into a thousand pieces. I thought to myself, you must have been in great pain back then, and you were still so young. After transmigrating, I thought about many things, and one of them was this matter. I wanted to find that demonic cultivator and kill him as soon as possible, or at the very least save your mother, or even just guard by your side. Unfortunately, I managed to do none of it. In the years before Immortal Lord Su Che perished, back when I was still free, I indeed slaughtered many of her enemies, but in the end, I didn't kill the right person. I'm sorry."

Su Zhen frowned. "Running into his disciple was just a coincidence. I wasn't originally the protagonist, and the book didn't write about my past in sufficient detail. It neither mentioned that person's name nor clarified what medicine I was searching for. You had no way to deduce their identity, so failing to find them is only normal. Senior merely likes me, you don't owe me anything, you really don't need to be like this."

As she spoke, she reached out and grasped his hand.

Xiao Yu stiffened once more.

Cold, slender fingers brushed across the side of his palm, intertwining like vines, with her fingertips landing in the center of his palm while simultaneously catching his slightly curved index finger.

"There is no need to speak of these things. I should be thanking Senior instead..."

"Even though you feel you don't owe me anything, if not for you, I would definitely not have lasted until today."

Xiao Yu said word by word, "You never, ever need to say thank you to me."