Huai Falls for an Old Friend - Chapter 3

The sky was clear, the breeze gentle. It could even be called a fine day.

First bow: to Heaven and Earth.

I sensed the presence of the man who had told Yun Jingchen to “slay his wife to prove the Dao.”

Second bow: to absent parents.

Xie Huai sent me a voice transmission, urging me to cast the spell and switch with the puppet at once. He had sensed an extremely powerful energy fluctuation around Yun Jingchen.

Third bow: husband and wife, together.

“Jingchen, now!”

A dagger plunged into my chest.

Xie Huai appeared and kicked Yun Jingchen away. His hands shook as he held me upright.

“Bai Qingqing, are you an idiot?”

He cursed me while casting healing spell after healing spell. The bleeding stopped, yet his hands would not.

The man who had been hiding nearby rushed out with a peachwood sword raised.

“Demon!”

Yun Jingchen stepped between us.

“Enough, Martial Uncle. I can feel the barrier to my cultivation loosening. The trial has already been passed.”

The man breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. You are the foremost cultivator of our age, blessed with extraordinary fortune since childhood. Nothing can be allowed to go wrong on your road to immortality.”

He turned to me, his tone contemptuous.

“Miss Bai, it was wrong of us to approach you for the sake of Jingchen’s trial. The Qingyang Sect will compensate you for whatever you require. But I hope you won’t use this unfinished wedding to hold Jingchen hostage.”

“Martial Uncle!”

Yun Jingchen’s panic was plain. His eyes reddened as he looked at me.

“No, Qingqing. That isn’t what I meant. I used a substitution spell. You…”

Me?

I had personally severed the spell.

Yun Jingchen had found a loophole in the Heavenly Dao. He’d intended the puppet to take the blow in my place.

“Yun Jingchen, I’ve always felt that we must have known each other in a past life. Perhaps I owed you something. Whatever kindness or grievance lay between us, I’ve repaid it all today.”

Yun Jingchen could sense the barrier to his ascension loosening. I, too, could feel the shackles on my cultivation fall away.

I had long been the strongest of my generation, yet the Heavenly Dao always seemed to suppress me.

The instant Yun Jingchen’s dagger entered my chest, that restraint vanished.

This had been his trial—and mine.

“Qingqing, I never meant to truly hurt you. I was going to take you with me when I ascended.”

Xie Huai leveled his sword at him. “We don’t need your help. Our Qingqing was born with an immortal constitution. However ignorant you people are, surely you’ve heard of Qingqiu!”

When traveling among mortals, I deliberately concealed my immortal power. It was hardly surprising that Yun Jingchen had failed to recognize where I came from.

As for him, the immortal aura around him was growing thicker by the moment.

He did not resemble a newly ascended immortal. He looked more like a mighty god on the verge of returning to his rightful place.

If he was an immortal from the Nine Heavens undergoing a mortal trial, that would explain why I’d sensed none of a cultivator’s aura on him.

Could he be the legendary Child of Destiny?

The Heavenly Dao’s own favored son?

I gathered my spiritual power and slowly healed my wound. “Yun Jingchen, I hid my identity from you, and you gave me a knife to the heart. Today’s farce of a wedding never reached its end. From now on, we owe each other nothing. May we never meet again.”

When I finished, it felt as though a mountain had been lifted from my heart.

I did not know what cause had bound Yun Jingchen and me before this life. But now that this matter was settled, there would be no future between us.

His form grew increasingly unstable. The Nine Heavens were already calling him back.

Judging by the radiance descending to receive him, he must have been a god of considerable rank and strength there.

He stared at me without blinking. “Wait for me, Qingqing. I’ll come back for you.”

Had I not warned Xie Huai through a voice transmission, he would probably have run Yun Jingchen through on the spot.

Only after placing a curse of misfortune on Yun Jingchen’s martial uncle did Xie Huai take me back to Qingqiu.

I did not stop him. He needed some way to vent.

Back home, he plucked the petals from one of my flowers, one after another.

“Why are you bullying my flowers?”

I lounged against a rock, basking in the sun.

“Oh, no reason,” he said. “This one suddenly offended me. It looks stupid. So stupid I can barely stand the sight of it.”

Jealousy and wounded anger rolled off him in waves.

“Yun Jingchen was an immortal undergoing a mortal trial. Do you think he’ll come looking for me again?”

Xie Huai’s hand stopped. “I don’t know. I’m going home. Rest and recover.”

As he turned to leave, I “muttered to myself” just loudly enough for him to hear, “To avoid future trouble, I should arrange another marriage as soon as possible. I wonder whether there are any suitable candidates.”

His whole body went rigid. He looked back cautiously.

“I stand to inherit the entire Southern Sea. Men in my family have adored their wives for generations. I’ll give you half my shell bed and every pearl I own. So… what do you think of me?”