When Snow Ends, Green Returns - Chapter 2

【I should be threatening to erase your soul if you refuse your missions, like all my senior Systems do. QAQ】

“Too late. I don’t want to die anymore.”

The System rolled its eyes. 【Of course you don’t. Your beautiful shizun cradles you like his most precious treasure, spoils you rotten, and is gentle even in bed.

The moment you cry, he stops and anxiously asks whether something hurts.】

I said nothing.

Those were tears of pleasure, all right?

Forget it. There was no explaining it to an intelligent machine.

It took me two days to return to the sect.

To keep its disciples from seeing me drenched in blood, I cast cleaning spells on myself several times, changed robes, and tied up my hair again with a jade pin.

In the water mirror I looked as valiant as ever. My face was a little pale, but otherwise nothing seemed amiss.

Only then did I dare enter the sect.

I made my way to Returning Snow Peak, where Shizun and I lived together.

As usual, I pushed open the gate and prepared to cross the courtyard, return to our bedchamber, and sleep off my injuries while hugging Shizun’s pillow.

But beneath the peach tree stood a tall, slender figure.

Black hair fell to his waist.

The wind lifted the snow-white ribbon in his hair.

That face… It was like the first spring sunlight upon the summit of a mountain buried in everlasting snow, melting the white away to reveal the chill of an entire ravine beneath—an exquisite yet solitary painting.

Yet the curve of his lips was always gentle, as though every blade of grass and tree in creation rested beneath his tender compassion.

Normally, I would already have been dizzy with infatuation, rushing over to wrap my arms around his waist and beg for kisses.

But now…

I felt the bones throughout my body that had yet to knit, and the worst of the wounds that still had not healed—

It had been a divine artifact, after all, contested by countless cultivators.

I was merely at Nascent Soul and had fought so many cultivators at my own level or higher.

I might once have reached Great Ascension before losing all my cultivation, and I might have experience in battle, but I was truly only at Nascent Soul now—even after using the pile of artifacts Yu Xuejin had prepared for me…

In short, I was lucky to be alive.

The System gloated, 【Host, you’re finished!】

Cold sweat broke across my back. I laughed stiffly. “Sh-Shizun, w-weren’t you in seclusion?”

After living for more than ten thousand years, Yu Xuejin’s cultivation had reached the natural state in which the Dao and all things became one. His aura blended seamlessly with heaven and earth, exerting no pressure at all.

Were it not for his exceptional beauty and immortal bearing, anyone might mistake him for an ordinary mortal.

Yu Xuejin looked at me. His gaze held no visible emotion, yet it felt as sharp and terrifying as an X-ray.

A gentle—and dreadful—smile slowly appeared.

“Ji Huiqing.”

“Twenty-one broken bones. The meridians in your wrist repeatedly severed. A blade wound at your waist corroded by demonic qi. Your organs shaken and bleeding. Your dantian showing severe depletion from overtaxed spiritual power…”

“Tell your master. Where did you go?”

“!!!”

The moment he used my full name, I knew I was doomed.

Normally, Shizun only called me “Huiqing” in that soft voice of his.

My full name meant…

My scalp prickled as my thoughts raced.

What now? What now?!

Panic raged inside me, but outwardly I arranged my face into a sweet, innocent expression. I bowed slightly and made my voice low and soft, hoping to bluff my way through.

“Shizun, this disciple went down the mountain to gain experience some days ago and strayed into a secret realm.

A group of cultivators were fighting there, and I never expected to be dragged into it. This disciple was no match for them and had to respond in haste, which is why I was injured…”

My voice dwindled as I stole a cautious glance at his face and rounded out the lie. “This disciple knew his cultivation was shallow, yet acted rashly and tried to show off… This disciple knows he was wrong.”

Yu Xuejin quietly watched me invent my story, unmoved.

My heart sank. Now I dared even less to reveal the Calamity-Crossing Ice Lotus Pearl. If he learned I had reduced myself to this state merely for his birthday gift…

I shuddered.

He must not find out!

As I wondered whether to kneel and beg forgiveness, a hand settled lightly on my lower back, pressing with uncanny accuracy against a fractured bone.

Sudden agony made me tremble, though I made no sound.

Icy-blue light gathered in Yu Xuejin’s palm—

And spread from my lower back throughout my body.

The pain of my wounds and the agony of their healing ebbed as swiftly as a retreating tide.

I blinked.

Shizun had used another pain-numbing spell on me?

In the past, Yu Xuejin had not used them often.

In my original modern world, I had been a test subject in an organization that experimented on humans. My body had been injected with every imaginable drug.

More than a decade later, I joined forces with the other subjects to blow the organization apart, but many of those drugs still lingered in me, clinging like maggots to bone.