A Mountain Spirit’s Schemes - Chapter 4

I quickly gathered the herbs I needed, chewed them up, and packed them onto Wang Zhi’s wounds.

They smelled faintly of grass, with a trace of sweetness.

That sweetness was the spirit blood I’d deliberately mixed in.

After a thousand years of cultivation, my blood was no ordinary substance.

If he hadn’t been carrying my spores, I would never have spared him a drop.

I’d come back too quickly, though. So quickly that Wang Zhi was beginning to suspect I wasn’t human.

He asked nothing, merely lowered his eyes and thought.

In retaliation, I pressed hard on his wound as I applied the herbs.

He grunted, a hint of reproach in his eyes.

What was he blaming me for? Without me, he’d be dead. Who was that sour face supposed to impress?

I pressed again. Grinding his teeth, Wang Zhi asked if I was deliberately trying to murder my own husband.

One night together and he thought he was my lawful spouse? Dream on.

Still, complaints were one thing. I had a role to maintain.

“What husband? We haven’t even bowed to Heaven and Earth.

“A man as fine and honorable as you must already be married.

“I’m only a wanton woman. If you hadn’t been poisoned, why would you ever have looked at me?”

Before I could finish, Wang Zhi cut me off with a kiss.

He looked at me. The darkness in his eyes had given way to tenderness.

“I have no wife. Nor any concubines.

“Whatever your background, wherever you come from, if we make it out alive, I will bring an eight-bearer bridal sedan to your door and marry you.”

Oh, listen to him. Marry me, would he?

As if I’d believe that!

He probably just wanted to trick me into killing all those assassins for him.

Before I could reply, a rustling came from outside the cave.

So someone had finally found the two bodies.

Tears in my eyes, I made myself look deeply moved.

“My love, I knew I hadn’t misjudged you.

“They must have found us. I’ll wear your clothes and draw them away. If I live to see you again, I’ll be your wife. If I don’t, let us meet in our next lives.”

Wang Zhi’s expression changed. Perhaps I’d touched him.

He refused, nevertheless.

“You’re a defenseless woman. How could I let you take that risk?”

“To tell you the truth, I’m the Hehuan Sect’s chief disciple. We practice arts of seduction, but I’m also a skilled swordswoman. Those assassins are no trouble. Even if they catch me, they might keep me alive as bait to draw you out. You’re badly wounded. You can’t fight them like this. If they catch you, you’ll certainly die.”

I never needed time to prepare a lie. Wang Zhi looked thoroughly bewildered.

Before he could gather himself, I threw on his robe and rushed out.

As a mountain spirit, I was naturally light on my feet.

I’d also studied illusion. Taking Wang Zhi’s appearance, I drew the assassins toward the lake.

With a blade formed from mycelial threads, I wove among them. Soon their bodies made a little hill.

But they kept appearing, like mushrooms after rain.

I killed one group. Another came.

Pretending to be wounded, I secretly cut off a corner of the robe and dropped it by the water. As an assassin lunged, I moved into his blade, then leaped into the lake.

The icy water swallowed me.

An instant later, I vanished beneath it.

Only a few minutes later, I appeared at Drunken Blossom House in Jinling.

It was one of the city’s best-known pleasure houses. Its women had faces like peach blossoms and waists as supple as willows in the wind. Many a young gentleman from a great clan found it hard to leave.

My friend Yunzhi owned the place.

I was five hundred years older than she was and had sheltered her for a while before she could take human form.

She loved her amusements, though. The moment she could transform, she’d gone to live among humans.

I, following my benefactor’s guidance, had devoted myself to attaining immortality. We lost touch.

Then, a hundred years ago, some wretched Daoist appeared out of nowhere and gravely wounded me. Yunzhi risked her life to save mine. Without her, I would have died.

After that, I abandoned my ambition to become an immortal. We became friends who owed each other our lives.

I went into seclusion to heal. Whenever she had time, she sat outside my cave and told me entertaining stories from the human world.

Mostly sordid affairs and the coldness of human nature. She never tired of them, recording everything like a historian.

In a way, she was a historian.

Just one who specialized in unofficial history.

This time, I emerged from seclusion fully recovered, intending to give her the good news.

I hadn’t expected the rainy season to awaken my spirit nature.