IVYSCP - Chapter 66
Chapter 66
After turning those young cultivators over to the Dream-Eating Tapir, Ling Qingyue set off with Pei Yin to seek Bai Ze's Tear, her mind at ease.
Right before she left, however, Lu Yao fixed her with a hesitant, conflicted stare that lingered for quite some time.
She was busy instructing the Dream-Eating Tapir, warning her not to shift into her yao form and frighten the children. The Dream-Eating Tapir looked at her aggrieved, twisting the corner of her clothes and huffing, "My yao form is perfectly beautiful. What's so frightening about it?"
Ling Qingyue, unable to comprehend yao aesthetics, insisted she rein it in. The Dream-Eating Tapir reluctantly agreed, just so she could feast on these people's dreams. She liked using her yao form when consuming dreams, touching those people with her nose.
Once she was done with her warnings, Ling Qingyue finally approached Lu Yao and asked her, "What have you been staring at me for? Something on your mind?"
Lu Yao shot a glance at the cold-featured girl standing not far away and said awkwardly, "I know you like this type, senior, but... but you can't just like every single one you meet, you know? The Immortal Venerable is still out there, and besides... besides, Senior Sister Ah Si has just fallen. You... this isn't right."
Ling Qingyue: "..."
Long after they had left, Ling Qingyue could still hear Pei Yin chuckle softly from time to time.
"What's so funny?" Ling Qingyue grumbled, puzzled. "Do I honestly come off as that fickle?"
"Do I?"
Pei Yin looked at her without speaking.
Ling Qingyue stopped in her tracks right then, eyes going wide. "What do you mean by that? You think I do?!"
"When have I ever been fickle? Past and present, you're the only one I've ever liked."
Seeing her get angry, Pei Yin reached for her hand. "No, you don't."
Ling Qingyue evaded her, refusing to let her hold it.
"That's just lip service. I can tell that's exactly what you meant." Ling Qingyue shot forward through the air.
Pei Yin followed, speaking unhurriedly. "Weren't you the one saying you'd go find someone younger and prettier?"
Ling Qingyue glared at her, annoyed. "I was spouting nonsense, and you believed that? And there was a condition—if you kept things from me again, then I'd go looking. But you said there was nothing else you were hiding."
After Ling Qingyue finished, she saw Pei Yin's lashes flutter, her gaze lowered with a hint of guilt.
"Pei Yin." Ling Qingyue narrowed her eyes sharply. "You don't have anything else you're hiding from me, do you?"
Pei Yin's expression was calm. "No."
Ling Qingyue scrutinized her. After turning it over in her mind, she asked, "Earlier, you said there are two ways to resolve Emotion Transference. One is forgetting emotion. What's the other?"
If Emotion Transference were so easy to dissolve, Pei Yin wouldn't have let herself be left with all her acupoints sealed, trapped in a dangerous position—unless the other method of resolution was even more troublesome than full acupoint sealing.
When she saw Pei Yin draw in an almost imperceptible breath, Ling Qingyue knew she had guessed right.
"Pei Yin." Ling Qingyue's voice took on a more serious edge.
Pei Yin sighed and said, unruffled, "It is a bit troublesome, but preparations are already underway."
"Then is your search for Bai Ze's Tear for your inner demons, or...?"
Pei Yin answered honestly, "I made a deal with Gu Huai. Bai Ze's Tear is something she wants."
"And this deal with her—is it related to resolving Emotion Transference?"
"Mm."
"What is it?"
Pei Yin's lashes lowered halfway. "It's nothing much..."
Ling Qingyue used her full name again. "Pei Yin, you promised you wouldn't hide things from me."
Pei Yin pursed her lips and extended her hand to take Ling Qingyue's. This time, Ling Qingyue didn't evade.
"I asked her to refine a pill for reforging meridians."
"Reforging meridians?!" Ling Qingyue was horrified. She instinctively probed with spiritual energy before realizing that this was a duplicate body and she wouldn't be able to detect anything anyway.
Yet when they had been in spiritual communion, aside from the sealed acupoints, she hadn't noticed any issue with Pei Yin's meridians either.
"Why?"
"The second method of resolving Emotion Transference is to destroy one's own meridians, letting emotion melt into flesh and blood."
Ling Qingyue's face went pale, and her body staggered. If Pei Yin hadn't been gripping her, she might well have plummeted from the sky.
Seeing her so dazed, Pei Yin gently kneaded her palm and murmured reassurance, "This was my own decision. Naturally, I'll bear the consequences."
She had chosen Emotion Transference to destroy her inner demons and weather the fated tribulation, wanting to forget Ling Qingyue along with everything else. It was too late for regret now. Meridian reforging was a price that could already be considered light.
Ling Qingyue's eyes went red with pent-up distress. Her mind and spirit unsteady, she simply withdrew her spiritual energy and let Pei Yin hold her as they flew.
She lifted a hand and thumped the woman on the shoulder, sniffling as she gritted out, "And you said you weren't hiding things from me."
Pei Yin brought them down beside a waterfall, the moist spray rushing at their faces. She reached out and carefully wiped the tears from the corners of Ling Qingyue's eyes, coaxing softly, "This time, there truly is nothing left. Are you still going to look for someone younger and prettier?"
Ling Qingyue wanted to both laugh and rage. She threw herself into Pei Yin's arms and held tight, biting her on the shoulder before muttering, "You're still bringing that up!"
Pei Yin held her, feeling a spot on her shoulder quickly grow damp. Her heart turned impossibly soft as she stroked the long, slender braid hanging down Ling Qingyue's back, over and over. "It's all right. How come I never noticed before how much you cry?"
Before, she had always seen Ling Qingyue smiling—smiling at other people. She didn't think she'd ever seen her with red-rimmed eyes, tears streaming down her face.
But since coming back to life, she'd seen Ling Qingyue smile at her, shed tears for her, and grind her teeth in anger at her.
Ling Qingyue wiped her tears on Pei Yin's clothes. "No, I'm not crying. Reforging meridians hurts you. What... what do I have to cry about?"
That was what she said, but the last sentence had already broken into jagged sobs, so choked with anguish it sounded as though Ling Qingyue really were the one in pain.
"All right. You're not crying." Pei Yin indulged her.
They held each other for a long while before Ling Qingyue slowly steadied. She withdrew from Pei Yin's embrace, the rims of her eyes still red, and raised her gaze to glare.
Pei Yin smiled at her.
"Let's go. We need to find Bai Ze's Tear."
The two of them set out again, passing through deep forest and marsh that stretched as far as the eye could see.
"Bai Ze has long been extinct. Where do we even look for Bai Ze's Tear?"
After asking, Ling Qingyue suddenly turned and glanced behind them.
Pei Yin sensed something amiss and sent out her divine sense, but detected no cultivator auras behind them.
"What is it?"
Ling Qingyue brushed aside the odd feeling in her heart and shook her head.
Maybe she was overthinking it. She kept feeling as though something was following them.
Pei Yin raised her hand, and a pale golden little carp leaped from her fingertips. It swam several loops in midair, then turned its head and pointed in a direction.
"Gu Huai let it get a whiff of Bai Ze's Tear's scent. It knows where Bai Ze's Tear is."
Ling Qingyue nodded, reaching out to touch the little fish. Perhaps because it was formed from Pei Yin's spiritual energy, the little fish was very affectionate toward her, flicking its tail and swimming right up to Ling Qingyue's eyes, even nudging the tip of her nose.
Pei Yin swept a glance over. The little fish swam back to Ling Qingyue's hand and finally coiled around her wrist, settling on the inside of her wrist as a golden little fish-shaped sigil.
Ling Qingyue touched it, and the corner of her lips curved up, though she said nothing.
Following the direction the little fish indicated, they arrived at a bone burial ground, littered with skeletons as far as the eye could see. It seemed a massive yao beast brawl had once taken place here. Judging from the skeletal remains, many were ancient yao beasts, unidentifiable. Cultivator figures could be glimpsed here and there among the burial ground. Even in death, the corpses of ancient yao beasts were of great use. Their flesh and blood had already been consumed by other yao beasts in this place, but their bones were excellent materials for crafting artifacts.
"Is there really Bai Ze's Tear here?" Ling Qingyue was very skeptical.
Pei Yin said flatly, "Bai Ze's Tear is an object that dispels evil. It holds no benefit for yao beasts."
Ling Qingyue nodded.
That made sense.
When the two arrived, the cultivators harvesting bones all tensed up. Once they saw it wasn't people from Shangtianqiong, they relaxed, paid them no further attention, and went back to harvesting bones.
Pei Yin glanced around and said quietly, "Do you want to take a piece of yao bone to forge a sword?"
Ling Qingyue looked at her, puzzled. "Why would I? I have Jiuge. Why would I need to forge a sword from yao bone?"
"Isn't Jiuge..." Pei Yin didn't finish.
Ling Qingyue snorted. "I'll get Jiuge back. It's only two months. If Jiuge saw me with another sword, it would get angry."
That sword was incredibly temperamental, harder to soothe than a person.
Pei Yin curved her eyes. "All right."
Neither of them knew exactly what Bai Ze's Tear looked like. Ling Qingyue touched the little fish on the side of her wrist, wanting it to search. The little fish swam out, but it only knew to nuzzle Ling Qingyue affectionately, swimming around in dizzy confusion.
Pei Yin pressed it back down and said softly, "Bai Ze's Tear should be somewhere around here."
"Fine." Ling Qingyue surveyed the scattering of white bones around them. "Let's look."
Beneath the white bones was yellow sand, the only patch of dry ground in this deep forest.
The flesh and blood of these dead yao beasts had been gnawed clean, so few yao beasts would come here. They had little interest in hard, stiff bones.
Ling Qingyue approached a skeleton and thought it somewhat resembled the dragon skeleton from Crouching Dragon Valley. Perhaps it was the same bloodline?
Passing by the dragon's head, Ling Qingyue spotted a cultivator harvesting the final piece of dragon horn. The dragon horn was so sturdy that the cultivator was drenched in sweat but hadn't even scraped off a layer.
Ling Qingyue kindly advised, "You can't take that with you. Go harvest a different yao bone."
Dragon bone was the hardest substance. Without a high-grade artifact, cutting through it was near impossible. And the ritual sword in this person's hand looked far from being a high-grade ritual sword; all that hacking had achieved nothing.
Hearing her words, that cultivator blushed and nodded, leaping down. She bowed in salute. "Mu Xiaoyao of the Wushi Sect."
From the Wushi Sect?
Ling Qingyue raised an eyebrow and replied, "Guest Elder of Piaomiao Sect. Ah Xi."
Mu Xiaoyao's eyes lit up. "I know you!"
Who hadn't heard about Piaomiao Sect's Elder Ah Xi blocking Shangtianqiong's Cui Heng outside a barrier and demanding tolls? Word had spread throughout all Seventy-Two Sects. There were even rumors that Elder Ah Xi had outright suppressed Cui Heng in swordsmanship.
Ling Qingyue gave a polite smile, then headed elsewhere to search for Bai Ze's Tear.
As she searched, a fiercely sharp sword qi suddenly shot straight at her without warning.
At the same moment—
"Elder Ah Xi!"
"Watch out!"
Two figures rushed toward her from opposite sides, but in the end, a pale golden formation blocked the sword qi for her.
Pei Yin appeared beside Ling Qingyue in an instant, her gaze darkening as she looked toward the direction the sword qi had come from.
The moment she saw them, Pei Yin froze.
Four Shangtianqiong disciples were charging over, bodies surging with demonic qi, murderous and ferocious.
Ling Qingyue was even more stunned. "Them! Weren't they already dead?!"
These four were the very same four she had killed before.
Pei Yin looked over and saw fatal sword wounds on each of their throats and hearts. As Ling Qingyue said, they were indeed already dead.
So why would they suddenly undergo demonization?
On the other side, Mu Xiaoyao was dumbstruck by the sight.
They were from Shangtianqiong. No—they were demons.
The four's pupils glowed an eerie red. They stared fixedly at Ling Qingyue, their mouths and jaws twitching uncontrollably as drool trickled out.
This was nothing like the Dream-Eating Tapir's gluttonous manner. The Dream-Eating Tapir stared at people with vacant foolishness, wanting only to devour dreams. The look in these people's eyes was as if they meant to rip a person apart and swallow them alive.
Ling Qingyue felt chills crawl across her scalp, and in an instant, she realized the sensation was terribly familiar.
In a flash of understanding, she remembered those greedy, frenzied eyes.
In Linshui Town. That wood carving. Liu Qingtang.
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