Chapter 54

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Su Zhen suddenly heard the sound of her own heartbeat.

How interesting.

It had been so very long since she had felt anything like this.

Confusion, excitement, anticipation—

Like the juice of wild berries flowing across her tongue, leaving her lips, teeth, and gums trembling with a sharp tartness even as sweetness blossomed through it, filling her with buoyant delight.

Her heart seemed to draw tight all at once.

“Senior is lying,” Su Zhen said softly. “I wasn’t using any force at all.”

Xiao Yu looked up at her, his lashes trembling faintly. “My heart aches because you don’t feel sorry for me.”

There he went again.

“Oh.” Su Zhen let go of his face. “Then keep hurting. And let go.”

Xiao Yu was still gripping her wrist. At once he released it and said reflexively, “…Sorry.”

Su Zhen looked at him in amusement. “Why?”

“I don’t know. The moment your tone turns even slightly serious, I get nervous.”

Xiao Yu rubbed his forehead. “I’m afraid you’re really angry. I know you probably aren’t, but I’m still afraid. You understand, right?”

Su Zhen did not particularly want to understand, yet she truly did grasp what he meant. She could only sigh.

It was nothing more than caring too much.

Xiao Yu regarded her thoughtfully. He said nothing, but the amusement in his eyes never faded.

Su Zhen’s thoughts had been in turmoil just moments ago, and they had yet to settle.

The fellow beside her was still staring without blinking, wearing that same utterly focused expression, as though she were the only person left in the entire world.

“Su Zhen.”

He suddenly smiled and spoke in a low voice. “How about I share a few methods for controlling your body and suppressing a flushed face and racing heart?”

This man was truly infuriating.

Su Zhen restrained the urge to slap him across the head. “Senior appears to be quite skilled in this art?”

“Of course.” Xiao Yu answered with complete sincerity. “Otherwise, after spending all these days in front of you, my heart would probably have burst countless times already.”

Su Zhen could not help pressing a hand to her forehead.

His frankness only left her at a loss for words.

“I know how,” Su Zhen said, rolling her eyes at him. “But what would be the point of using it in front of you? Even if my heartbeat calmed down, you’d still be able to tell that I had used a spell. It would only be trying to hide the truth.”

After a moment’s thought, she added jokingly, “Or I could simply tear out my heart. Then there would be no heartbeat.”

Xiao Yu: “?”

He looked thoroughly opposed to the idea. “Wouldn’t that hurt? Why not seal away all five senses? If I can’t hear it, it’s as good as gone.”

Su Zhen stared at him suspiciously. “Even if you seal yourself, your divine sense would still be—”

“I’ll seal that too. Anyway, don’t harm yourself. If anyone has to be harmed, I’ll be the first.”

“…Then neither of us should harm ourselves.”

Su Zhen cast him an admiring glance. “Forget it. I was only speaking casually. I’m going back to suffering.”

Xiao Yu had released a trace of spiritual pressure earlier, causing all the strange beasts in the swamp to shrink back beneath the earth. After she had darted around below and made a full circuit, they soon raised their heads again.

The two sides once more plunged into battle.

While eating flowers, Su Zhen pondered the matter of the sacred sword. “…If we need to obtain the sword, it is still useful to keep those two alive. We can treat them as tools. Once they have found all the pieces, we can kill them.”

“I agree. But their efficiency is so low that I keep feeling the author is deliberately padding the story.”

Xiao Yu considered the matter. “I think you’ll already have entered the Saint Realm before they finish finding them all.”

Before this, Su Zhen would probably have assumed that he merely believed in her blindly. But now, it was genuinely difficult to say.

“…Then we’ll kill them ahead of time and continue searching ourselves,” Su Zhen said casually.

Xiao Yu clearly thought the same. “Yes. But before that, you still have other matters to resolve. Compared with those, killing them will be effortless.”

“The other matter is probably entering the Saint Realm.”

Most cultivators at the Quasi-Saint Realm failed catastrophically when attempting to advance. The same was true when Golden Immortals attempted to enter the Quasi-Saint Realm. In the end, the higher one’s realm, the easier it was to die.

“Not only that.” Xiao Yu nodded, then shook his head. “Once you reach the Golden Immortal Realm, you’ll have other troubles as well. You’ll understand when the time comes. I’ve already thought of several solutions. Then we’ll see what you choose—or perhaps you’ll come up with something better.”

All sorts of conjectures immediately arose in Su Zhen’s mind. But since he could not speak plainly at present, there was no point in discussing them.

She devoted herself to the battle instead.

For the next several months, Su Zhen struggled in a state between life and death.

Like most spirit plants of the Void Realm, Soul-Refining Flowers had almost no flavor when eaten. Yet once they took effect within the body, they could only be described as exquisitely agonizing.

At first, the discomfort was faint. After several days, it became increasingly pronounced. Her primordial spirit seemed to have been placed over a fire and roasted.

The more flowers she ate, the fiercer the flames appeared to burn.

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The strange condition spread from within outward, soon reaching her physical body and transforming into indescribable pain.

Her body, which had already healed completely, was periodically injured in battle, while she also had to endure the dreadful consequences brought on by the fluctuations of her primordial spirit.

It was an experience she had not known for a very long time.

Su Zhen thought about it numbly.

After only a few days, there was nowhere on her body that did not hurt. Even uninjured places burned with inexplicable pain, her blood seeming to boil and her bones seeming to melt.

At times, she even imagined that she had already become firewood, burned down to nothing but ash in the raging flames.

One strange beast after another died in the mire, only to revive because of the Void Realm’s bizarre laws. Their bodies reassembled in the filthy, turbid water, and their shattered souls returned as well.

These phenomena were not unfamiliar to her. In both her former and present lives, she had witnessed them countless times.

Aside from the beasts that revived, even more lurked throughout the swamp.

They had originally been far away, but the battle here gradually roused them. They converged from every direction.

By now, they had gathered underground, watching the battle in the forest above with barely restrained eagerness and occasionally emerging to launch a sneak attack.

In a sense, she had almost no time to rest.

Thus, for most of the time, Su Zhen was merely clinging to life among the trees, fleeing in every direction in a miserable state.

Whenever she had barely recovered a little spiritual power, she would send out an illusory body as bait while the true body collapsed against a tree to rest for a while.

Xiao Yu sat opposite her, reading a book.

If she stared at him for too long, he would silently raise the book to cover his face and pretend that he did not exist.

“…If you keep looking at me like that, I won’t be able to stop myself from helping you.”

Su Zhen picked up a stone and threw it beside him, smashing a depression into the sturdy, broad branch.

“What kind of joke is Senior making? You think covering yourself will make you invisible? Your divine sense has been active the entire time!”

Xiao Yu gave a long sigh. “Can’t you let me deceive myself a little? Being tormented by you all day is already painful enough…”

Su Zhen: “?”

Who, exactly, was the one suffering?

Unable to restrain herself, Su Zhen tossed a clump of mud upward.

Xiao Yu neither dodged nor evaded. His sleeve was splattered with patches of filth, yet not the slightest trace of anger appeared on his face. Instead, his gaze grew even brighter.

“You know, doing that will only make me think you’re adorable.”

Su Zhen: “…I know, actually.”

Xiao Yu raised an eyebrow.

“I just forgot for a moment! I didn’t do it on purpose!”

Xiao Yu raised the book again and covered his face.

Su Zhen casually swept her sword sideways, severing a bone blade that lunged at her from beside her.

“Senior?”

Xiao Yu still held the book aloft. “Hmm?”

In the shadowy, densely wooded forest, a strange burst of spiritual pressure suddenly erupted.

Su Zhen thrust Startling Insects into the tree root beside her feet. The bones throughout her body cracked sharply, green markings flashed across her cheeks, and dazzling light shone from her emerald eyes.

She threw off her mud-soaked clothes, revealing a lean, well-defined body. Layer upon layer of bark sprouted from within her flesh.

At the same time, howl after howl rang out from the swamp. Dozens of vines burst from the ground, dragging the strange beasts out of the depths of the mire and binding them in midair before crushing them outright.

Pale bone fragments filled the sky, falling like rain.

Su Zhen opened her hands, sharp claws gleaming between her fingers.

“Show me a few moves?”

Xiao Yu slowly closed his book and lowered his gaze toward her.

Amid the bone dust drifting through the wind, the two stared at each other from afar.

“…There are many things I want to say, but you know I can never refuse you.”

Xiao Yu put away the book and, with solemn dignity, removed his outer robe, revealing a powerful body wrapped in fitted combat clothes.

He stared fixedly at her and said with some distress, “It’s just that imitating those creatures and beating you half to death is rather difficult.”

Su Zhen folded her arms. “Just suppress your spiritual power. I’m not trying to get myself killed.”

Xiao Yu neither agreed nor disagreed. “That isn’t the difficult part.”

Before his voice had even faded, his figure vanished from where he stood.

The two became locked in combat.

The purpose was to expend spiritual power through battle, keeping her primordial spirit in a state of damage from which it could not recover, thereby allowing the Soul-Refining Flowers to display their greatest effect.

Seen in that light, the identity of her opponent did not seem particularly important.

Yet once they began fighting, Su Zhen had no leisure to compare the similarities and differences.

Neither used a weapon. Xiao Yu kept his spiritual power suppressed so that she could withstand his attacks without having her soul blasted apart by a single punch. Even so—

He was unquestionably the most difficult opponent she had ever encountered.

And she was far from her peak condition.

That man also knew exactly how to make things painful for her.

Amid his tempestuous assault, she scarcely had a chance to breathe. She could only maintain her protective spiritual power while dodging.

The metal element granted extraordinary penetrating force. Even when cultivators of equal realms fought one another, breaking through protective spiritual power was no difficult feat.

Under such circumstances, the instant her defenses faltered—even if only a gust of force from his finger brushed her—terrifying, searing pain would bore through her skin, explode and burn along her veins as though thunder and fire had erupted together.

Su Zhen’s breathing was ragged. Her bangs were soaked through, and blood and sweat slid down her neck. Every muscle and bone in her body trembled, while her heart pounded with wild exhilaration.

Xiao Yu paused mid-motion. “How about I defend for a while?”

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“…No need.” Su Zhen wiped the mud from the corner of her lips. “Keep going, Senior. I’ll find an opening.”

Xiao Yu watched her for a moment, then silently turned his head away. “All right.”

The next instant, shadows writhed along Su Zhen’s ribs and spine. Dozens of vines extended from them, like a hissing mass of serpents twisting and swaying through the forest, striking at her opponent from countless devious angles.

Xiao Yu shifted his body, evading the vines aimed at the vital points along his back. With a turn of his wrist, he swept out his palm, severing several vines in an instant.

“Are you sure?”

“…Yes. A cultivator of the Earth Immortal Realm who specializes in body cultivation should be able to cut them.”

Su Zhen did not bother arguing over whether he was a body cultivator.

The severed vines fell into the mire, glowing with verdant light.

They rapidly absorbed the spiritual power around them. In the blink of an eye, they surged upward, splitting from one into two, two into four, multiplying and dividing until they became a vast mass of swaying branches.

Faint light flickered across the newborn vines. Threads of radiance intertwined to form golden-green sigils, densely covering the dim forest within a radius of several hundred yards.

During this time, the two once again became locked in battle.

Su Zhen attempted to counterattack, but she failed to seize the right moment several times. What appeared to be an opening was in fact deliberately offered by her opponent.

The battle had lasted less than fifteen minutes when several of her bones had already broken.

Although they healed with remarkable speed and caused little pain in her demonized state, the process still consumed spiritual power.

And yet—

Injury and exhaustion only kindled more fighting spirit.

They continued to entangle and pursue each other through the dim, shadowed forest and across the swamp where white bones floated. Thunder and blazing light rang out together, while watery reflections and twisting vines flashed through the gloom.

Su Zhen was seized by the back of her neck and driven into the mud. At the same time, the person behind her stiffened.

“Mm…” Xiao Yu gave a low murmur. “If I were an Earth Immortal cultivator, I wouldn’t be able to move right now.”

Su Zhen’s entire body was racked with pain. She struggled free of his grasp and returned to human form. Then, using the last of her spiritual power, she washed the mud from her face so that she would not be unable to open her eyes.

Afterward, she grabbed his arm as though it were a railing and tried to pull herself upright.

Xiao Yu looked at her helplessly. “I’m not actually unable to move.”

With that, he bent down, slipped one arm around her waist, and lifted her entirely off the ground. He then carried her horizontally in his arms.

“You win. The curse on those vine doubles of yours is formidable.”

“Mm.” Su Zhen looked at him wearily. “…I’m quite happy, but I don’t have the strength to smile.”

Xiao Yu’s expression grew complicated. “I wanted to say earlier that with you exhausting your spiritual power like this, you’ll inevitably be in terrible pain afterward. So is this over?”

Su Zhen closed her eyes briefly. “It’s over—unless you still want to fight.”

Xiao Yu lowered his gaze slightly. “Since it’s over, I’ll lift the hypnosis.”

“What hypnosis?”

The two looked at each other.

Su Zhen: “…You hypnotized yourself because you were afraid you wouldn’t be able to bring yourself to attack me?”

Xiao Yu looked up at the sky. “If we were simply exchanging moves in a friendly spar, there would be no problem. But if we were truly trying to beat each other half to death, there would be a very serious problem.”

Su Zhen raised her face in confusion. “The way you looked at me just now didn’t seem like the gaze of someone under hypnosis.”

Xiao Yu lowered his head. “What kind of gaze?”

A teasing glint appeared in Su Zhen’s eyes. “The gaze of someone with a peculiar fondness for getting excited at the sight of a tree demon?”

Xiao Yu looked as though he had been struck by lightning. “What?”

His entire body stiffened.

“No, that’s not it. I’ve seen plenty of tree demons, and I’ve killed several. It’s only because you are the one—”

Su Zhen burst out laughing. “Hahahaha, Senior, you really are still—”

Before she could finish laughing, the world suddenly spun around her.

Su Zhen was pressed against the trunk of a nearby tree.

The young man before her bent down, his handsome, heroic face abruptly drawing close. His blue eyes were filled with grievance.

“All you ever do is bully me.”

Su Zhen arched her brows slightly. “Is that so?”

Xiao Yu braced one hand behind her, holding back the intertwined vines and keeping them away from her bare back. Her spine had already touched his knuckles.

With his other arm, he lifted her again. Su Zhen sat upon it, her weight resting on his other forearm. The limb beneath her was powerfully muscled, every line of it perfectly defined—unyielding, solid, and filled with explosive strength.

Su Zhen tilted her head. “Then what does Senior plan to do? Bully me in return?”

The two were already close enough to touch, their temples brushing, their breaths mingling.

Su Zhen leaned back slightly against the tree and raised a hand to poke his cheek, leaving another line of mud behind with her fingertip.

“Are you stupid, Senior?”

Xiao Yu stared at her with complete concentration. The hand behind her slowly moved upward, his fingers passing through her thick black hair, wet with mud and water, before gently closing around the back of her neck.

He pressed forward slightly.

The final trace of distance between them was about to disappear. The tips of their noses already touched.

Xiao Yu blinked. His long lashes trembled faintly, and the emotions shifting through his deep blue eyes were impossible to read. At last, helplessness settled over them once more.

“…I really can’t bring myself to do something like this.”

He sighed. “In front of you, I seem to lose my nerve after all. And I always feel that—”

Before he could finish, Su Zhen reached up and seized his hair, stopping him from retreating. Then she leaned forward and kissed him.