Chapter 127.2

Shen Suwei was not insensitive to the ways of the world. In the sect, like in the mortal world, it was not uncommon for youth to fall for someone they admired. Xu Qianyu had reached an age where such things were inevitable.

But he only felt that it was too sudden for such a thing to happen right under his nose. He hadn’t even adapted, and it was hard for him to react.
One day, he said, “He is not a good person.”
Xu Qianyu paused, still wearing the youthful, delicate rouge on her face, and quickly brushed past him.

Shen Suwei lowered his gaze and left the courtyard, walking in the opposite direction.
Xu Qianyu’s choice had nothing to do with him.
Originally, everyone in the sect had been nothing more than fleeting shadows in his eyes. He never interfered with others nor allowed anyone to intrude into his domain, all for the sake of being unburdened, traveling day and night. What he sought was liberation, waiting ahead.
Once he attained the Great Dao, he would repay the world. That would fulfill his mother’s wish and complete his own life.

Moreover, given their relationship, what right did he have to meddle in her private affairs?
Xu Qianyu was no longer his only junior sister.

But from that day onward, his cultivation stagnated. Whenever he wielded his sword, the wind would always swirl around it. He held the sword blade up before his eyes, staring at it as if gazing at a knot that could not be untied.

…
Lu You, bearing the fate of the world and possessing a natural sword bone, shone brightly within the sect. Lu You repeatedly defeated Xu Qianyu, each time more thoroughly than the last.
During the disciple tournament, she knocked Xu Qianyu off the stage with a single strike. He caught Xu Qianyu and carried her back to her pavilion, placing her on her bed. Xu Qianyu covered her face with his outer robe, her emotions running high as she choked out, “Leave.”

He pulled the curtain down, blocking her from view, and moments later, he stepped outside. The autumn wind had risen, rustling the lotus leaves. He found it hard to settle his heart.

Shen Suwei should have been relieved that Wuzhen was only pretending to be the Demon King and that everyone had worked together to expel him from the sect. Life could return to its previous course.
But seeing Xu Qianyu fallen and defeated, he knew that nothing would ever return to how it was. 

He once led her past the sky lanterns of Nanling again. Xu Qianyu lowered her eyes, walking quietly, not making a sound. He really wanted to ask Xu Qianyu if she still remembered the prayer plaque she hung at the highest point.

Back then, there was no Xie Yuzhen. She had said that having a senior brother and a junior brother Ruan, was already enough.

Why, then, had she completely forgotten now?
Shen Suwei need not ask. He already knew that this junior sister was overly proud, and that’s why, when he heard her shattered voice, he felt so unsettled.

Fortunately, Xie Yuzhen’s demonic bone was in his body. The demon king had only one path: death with no burial.

But he hadn’t expected that Xu Qianyu would like Xie Yuzhen so much that she would disregard the fact that he was the demon king. She would rather betray the sect and be with him.

When the two faced each other with weapons drawn, Xu Qianyu took the demonic bone from him. He stared at her and said, “Next time we meet, I will kill you.”

When he said this, he truly felt a deep hatred, which soon transformed into an overwhelming murderous intent.
Half of it was for the sect, and half was for personal reasons.

This hatred terrified him, making him realize that if Xu Qianyu did not die, she would forever be a burden to him. As long as Xu Qianyu existed, he could never ascend.

When Xu Qianyu fled, she used the fragrance of empty to trap him in an illusion.
His cultivation had shattered in the battle in the Demon Realm, and his internal injuries were severe. But if he wanted to force himself to wake up from the illusion, he could still do it.
But he did not.

He was resolute; once he made up his mind, he would act on it. If he woke up and pursued her, he would truly kill Xu Qianyu.

If he did not wake up, the sect master would send others to pursue Xu Qianyu, and she would live.

He thought for a moment, then allowed himself to sink deeper into the illusion.
In the illusion, the scene was also within the sect, in the bright sunlight of day. There, Xu Qianyu sat at a dressing table, holding a flower petal from the vase, frowning as she said, “Senior Brother, why haven’t you come to help me with my hair? Why did you make me wake up so early?”
Shen Suwei walked over and picked up a comb.

In the mirror, Xu Qianyu looked at him, pursing her lips into a smile that melted like sugar.
Shen Suwei silently combed her hair, his fingers brushing the back of Xu Qianyu’s neck. He slightly tightened his grip as he gathered her hair in his hand. He thought to himself that Xu Qianyu truly understood him—if she wanted him to snap the neck of the person in front of him to end the illusion, he would be unable to do it.

Just like every morning, he carefully styled the hair of the Xu Qianyu in the illusion, securing the flowers in place.

Xu Qianyu looked in the mirror, very satisfied, then jumped up, grabbed the sword from the table, and ran out the window first, calling, “Senior Brother, hurry; the training ground is waiting for you.”

Shen Suwei stood in the Zhaoyue Palace, watching her figure disappear.
When he stepped outside, he suddenly caught the scent of lilac in the air. The fragrance flowed like a stream, brushing his face and refreshing his heart.
His steps stopped, and his pupils constricted.

He thought Xu Qianyu had used the empty fragrance on him and that the contents of the illusion were arranged by whoever drugged him. But only in an illusion caused by psychedelic fragrance would there be the mist of lilacs.

It turned out that Xu Qianyu had not used empty fragrance to trick him, but psychedelic fragrance. Lilacs were the flower of sleep, and psychedelic fragrance would make someone sink into their most desired dream.

The content of the illusion was not something Xu Qianyu deliberately designed, but rather his own thoughts, desires, and wishes.

And he had not dreamed of ascending to immortality or seeing the kingdom of heaven. What he most wanted was actually an ordinary day within the Penglai.

In that moment, Shen Suwei suddenly recalled his senior brother’s words. After he and Fu Shuangshuang became Dao companions, they would rather stay together and live as an ordinary couple. His senior brother had said that the best moment was now; he wished time could stay frozen at this very moment.

Shen Suwei wanted to laugh. It turned out that he harbored such thoughts toward his junior sister, whom he had spent every day with.

Realizing this, he spat out a mouthful of blood, ruthlessly breaking through his own feelings!
He woke from the illusion, and his other junior sisters were beside him, their faces uneasy. “Senior Brother, are you better? The sect master said you should rest and not get up.”

Shen Suwei avoided them and rose, heading straight for the sect leader’s pavilion.
From behind the door, he overheard Hua Qingyu reporting in a panic, “The demonic bone has been taken by the demon king, Xu Qianyu… she’s gone.”
Xu Binglai leaned forward. “Gone, what do you mean?”

“It means… She’s most likely not alive,” Hua Qingyu said in a guilty voice. “I saw her struggling with the demon king by the Wufu Cliff, but when the demon king left, only one person was there. If I had acted sooner, I could have caught up with her.”

Xu Binglai’s expression changed. He pushed the screen open and immediately said, “Suwei, I will handle this matter. You stay in the sect.”
“I will go and find Xu Qianyu,” Shen Suwei raised his eyes and said. “She can’t be gone. If she’s alive, I want to see her. If she’s dead, I want to see the body.”
With that, his figure flickered, and he vanished with his sword.

Shen Suwei, standing by the stream, saw two broken spring apricot flowers floating downstream. They were the ones he had pinned in Xu Qianyu’s hair that very morning.
When he pinned them, they had not yet wilted.

He scooped the flowers up and, wedged between the rocks, saw a small shoe stuck in the crevice. The shoe had a jade ring knot, still tied in a crisscross pattern.
Expressionless, he put the shoe into his mustard seed golden pearl.

At the Wufu Cliff, the cold was biting, and the snow was thick, with no footprints or traces of light.

Shen Suwei used his sword to scrape the surface snow, revealing dry bloodstains underneath, which made him feel dizzy. For a moment, he froze.

A ghostly figure appeared by the cliff—a bent old man and a girl with a basket on her back. They said, “Immortal, do you need our help to retrieve the body?”
Wufu Cliff was a place where cultivators often fell, and many corpses could be found. But since many strong cultivators avoided the place, the demons and ghosts below had turned it into a business of corpse retrieval.

Shen Suwei stood at the edge of the cliff, silent for a long time, before handing them many spirit stones. His fingers trembled slightly. The two demons thanked him repeatedly and were about to descend.

But just then, a gust of wind blew overhead. The figure of the white-robed sword master, like snow, soared past them and leaped into the bottom of the cliff.

Withered grass rustled, and crows took flight. The flesh and blood of cultivators were the best nourishment. Only some clean white bones remained on the ground, silent and without sorrow or hatred.

Shen Su took off his outer robe and, holding his sword, approached the skull. The skull silently stared back at him, as though it had been waiting for a long time, almost resentfully. He counted each piece, carefully placing the more than two hundred broken fragments of bones on the outer robe, neither more nor less, gathering them all back.

Xu Qianyu died at the age of seventeen.
The last time she smiled at him, she said it was a shame that the butterfly-shaped clasp on her collar had fallen off. She had only worn it three times in total.

…
The white light faded. Shen Suwei’s body staggered slightly as a wave of blood rushed upward, surging through his meridians. A violent and destructive force built up, and he quickly froze his own blood vessels, halting the chaotic spread of the energy.

He opened his eyes.

Xu Qianyu hadn’t been killed by him. She had died at the hands of Xie Yuzhen.
And yet, Xie Yuzhen had returned in this life, entangling with Xu Qianyu once more. How unjust the will of Heaven was!

Shen Suwei’s gaze fell on his own hand, his fingers trembling involuntarily. In the illusions he had once seen, the bones he had gathered and placed in the room were indeed Xu Qianyu’s.
When he saw the memories once again under the influence of the power of the broken fragments of the heavenly ladder, he completely recalled that after becoming the Lingsu Daojun, he had placed the bones in the corner of the room, setting up a water mirror in front of them, so that through the mirror, he could see the shadow of his junior sister.

In the previous life, Xu Qianyu had long perished. That shadow could only be a manifestation of his inner demons.

At first, the inner demon only appeared within the mirror, but later, it could move around the room, as if it were a real person.

The Daojun had been nourishing his inner demon with his own cultivation.
“You clearly have feelings, yet you cultivate the path of detachment, going against the heavens,” he murmured, stroking the water mirror, speaking to his former self in the mirror. “As Daojun, you’ve already fallen into the realm of nightmares.”

Lingsu Daojun smirked. “We were once one. You would make the same choice. Besides, if I hadn’t fallen into nightmares, where would you have come from?”
Shen Suwei’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”