Zanxing frowned: “You want me to escape?”
“The merfolk scale won’t hold out much longer,” Gu Baiying said, continuing on his own: “I have no Yuanli and cannot leave this place. Zhu Yan carries my aura—after you escape, the sect leader and the others will quickly find you and bring people to rescue Mendong and the others.”
Zanxing shoved the hair ribbon back into his hands: “I won’t leave.”
“Don’t be willful,” Gu Baiying scolded.
Zanxing looked back at him: “Activated with soul power—the mirage woman made it very clear just now that your spiritual meridians are severely damaged. Once you circulate your cultivation, your Yuanli will become even more chaotic.” She looked toward that vermilion hair ribbon, which in the dim secret chamber was as gorgeous as a beautiful dream: “This is a high-grade spiritual artifact. In your current condition, trying to activate it would be a dead end. If I leave, what will happen to you?”
Gu Baiying smiled indifferently: “That dead demon wants me as her lover. I’ll temporarily play along with her. After you find people, it won’t be too late to rescue me.”
Hearing this, Zanxing lowered her head and laughed.
“What are you laughing at?”
The gentle blue light and shadow in the secret chamber seemed to temporarily drive away some of the cold. Zanxing said, “Martial uncle, I stayed at Gufeng Mountain for quite a while, and we’ve also traveled together for no short time. You’re not good at lying, nor at comforting people. Even less are you the type to play along with others. With your personality, you’d rather die than say a single soft word in front of her. I’m afraid the moment I leave, you’d perish together with the mirage woman.”
Gu Baiying said nothing.
Mimi looked at Zanxing, then at the young man sitting against the wall. After hesitating, she still moved to Zanxing’s feet.
Who knows how long passed before Gu Baiying finally hummed: “You do understand me.”
Zanxing sighed inwardly. Gu Baiying was exceptionally strong-willed, never easily showing vulnerability to others. When he was in Li’er Kingdom, because he was dissatisfied with the royal family’s hypocrisy, he smashed the seaside statue with one spear strike. Here, the outcome would be the same.
“You don’t need to pity me.” The young man sat quietly in the corner of the secret chamber, the blood flowers blooming on his snow-white robes brightening the dark room somewhat. His hair ribbon had been removed and was clutched in his palm. His lustrous black hair hung straight to his waist, looking as soft as black satin. His complexion was paler than usual, his lip color not as rosy red as before, but those beautiful eyes remained as bright as ever.
“I was born with damaged spiritual meridians,” he said calmly. “I was never meant to live past twenty. Such is fate.”
Even though Shaoyang Zhenren had searched all of Duzhou to find him the qin insect seeds, in this nineteenth year of his life, through a twist of fate, the seeds would also be taken by someone else.
The Heavenly Way was something very mysterious. Cultivators spent their entire lives contending against fate, but those who could truly defy heaven and change destiny were few and far between.
“Even without saving you, I wouldn’t live much longer. Didn’t you once say that in a person’s life, apart from meetings, there are only partings—there are more times of separation than encounters, and living is always like this.” He raised his eyebrows slightly: “Could it be that you can’t bear to leave me?”
Zanxing silently watched him.
“Take it,” he said, lowering his eyes to look at the vermilion hair ribbon in his hand. “When you get out, quickly find the sect leader and the others…” His voice stopped.
Zanxing took “Zhu Yan” from his hand. The hair ribbon was cool and soft, its red color bright and clear, like the color of the Biyi flower tree. She raised her hand, grasped Gu Baiying’s hair, and wound the ribbon back around it.
Gu Baiying was startled: “What are you doing?”
“The separation I spoke of is the kind where one faces it calmly because fate has run its course—not the kind where you’re chased like stray dogs and one person has to sacrifice themselves for another to escape.” The hair ribbon was retied. She didn’t tie it well—the hair bundle wasn’t as high as Gu Baiying had it before, making the young man’s expression appear much softer and gentler.
And she was also gentle.
Zanxing said, “I will not leave.”
Gu Baiying furrowed his brow: “Misplaced kindness.”
“I’m not as noble as you think,” Zanxing said, winding the final loop and releasing her hand. The soft strands of hair slipped through her fingers, cool as water. “I’m staying because it’s you.”
She and Gu Baiying—two people who seemed to have no connection at all in the original story—had, through a twist of fate, traveled together all this way. Gu Baiying had once unhesitatingly grasped her hand when she fell into a dark abyss, and she had once returned to a collapsing building for Gu Baiying’s sake, just to retrieve the relic left by his birth mother. They had busily searched for truth in Li’er Kingdom’s palace and Tianlu Pavilion, had encountered the blooming Biyi tree together in secret realms and thatched huts, had watched night rain in caves on Wudong Mountain, and had listened to people sing in the desert of Wu Fan City.
He had seen her in wretched states, and she had seen his vulnerable moments.
But just as Gu Baiying had not abandoned her back then, Zanxing would not leave alone either.
The plot of “Nine Heaven Summit” had already collapsed beyond knowing which direction the ending would take. Perhaps Mu Cengxiao, as the protagonist, still had “fortune” protecting him and would live to the end, but supporting characters might not necessarily avoid departing midway.
Zanxing looked at Gu Baiying and murmured: “You’re a supporting character, I’m cannon fodder. Our fates were written from the beginning. But I refuse to accept it.”
“What did you say?”
“I said,” Zanxing stared at him seriously, speaking word by word: “Gu Baiying, I want to change my fate, and I want to change yours too.”
As soon as she finished speaking, a tremendous crash came from behind them.
That silver merfolk scale, as if it could no longer hold out, turned to powder in the air and completely disappeared. A violent gust of wind charged straight toward them. Zanxing grabbed the Panhua Stick and struggled to resist. With a sharp crack, her entire body flew out, heavily striking the stone wall. That sturdy Panhua Stick broke into two pieces and fell to the ground, both laughable and pitiful.
In the rising dust, the mirage woman’s face had a kind of sinister, enchanting beauty. She curved her red lips and spoke disdainfully: “I told you long ago—the end of a spent arrow is just asking for suffering.”
She reached her hand toward Gu Baiying. The next moment, a streak of azure light shot toward her eyes, forcing the mirage woman to retreat a step.
The disheveled woman stood up again. She still held the two broken pieces of the Panhua Stick in her hand, blocking in front of the person behind her. Her expression was calm as she said to the person behind her: “We’ll only know after trying.”
Gu Baiying was stunned.
The woman’s figure was not tall, even somewhat delicate, but her standing posture was very upright. Her dark, long hair had been made less smooth by all the tribulations along the way, messy yet full of vitality. The lake-green hair ribbon was like newly sprouted willow branches, bright in the spring sun.
A soft sound came from beside him.
This sound was very faint, clear and pleasant, like snow that had accumulated through an entire winter being melted by warm sunlight and dripping into the clear soil of Gufeng Mountain’s Chuhong Terrace; or like a stone thrown into an ice pool that had been untouched by humans for thousands of years amid complete silence, stirring beautiful ripples that then spread outward layer by layer, gently.
Soft and intermittent, earth-shaking.
The young man instinctively lowered his head.
That azure bell that never made a sound, that seemed like it would remain silent until the end of time, just like that, it suddenly rang.