Another fifteen minutes passed before the little sapling finally shifted its roots, expressing disdain for Chen Yixin’s praise. Yet the moment Chen Yixin turned his head toward it again, the sapling immediately pulled its roots back into place.
The corners of Chen Yixin’s lips curved, completely tolerant of the little sapling’s temper. He also knew that he had discovered its weak spot: it was afraid of being kissed, afraid of being touched, and especially afraid of being held in his mouth. Still, Chen Yixin only wanted to be affectionate with it; he had no intention of hurting it.
“Once we enter the Fentian Nether Abode, if we find anything useful to you, don’t stand on ceremony with me.”
As Chen Yixin spoke, he looked around and occasionally ran his hands over the walls. His spiritual sense had already reached outward several times, but some mysterious barrier repeatedly blocked it, preventing him from determining what lay ahead.
At those words, the sapling moved closer to Chen Yixin’s neck and wrapped its roots around him, not as an affectionate gesture but because it had sensed something unusual.
Chen Yixin stopped walking. He had sensed it as well. Turning slightly, he carefully examined the stone wall to his right. “Why are there two entrances…” And neither of them gave him a particularly good feeling.
He lifted a foot, intending to continue ahead, but the sapling on his shoulder pointed one root toward the stone wall. The extraordinarily solid stone immediately dissolved, revealing a black stone door.
“This way?” Chen Yixin remained hesitant. He turned his head toward the sapling, only for it to angle its flower bud farther away from him.
Chen Yixin fell silent for a moment, rather speechless, but ultimately chose to trust the sapling. He placed his hand against the black stone door and tried to push it open, only to discover that the door itself was an illusion. His body pitched forward and was immediately sucked into a pitch-black vortex of flowing light. The world spun violently around him as howling winds, eerily similar to the strange gales of the Xiguang Plains, tore through the darkness.
Chen Yixin grabbed the sapling and protected it within his arms. He raised a spiritual barrier and activated every talisman and defensive artifact he possessed. His sense of danger had not been mistaken; the dark passage, impenetrable even to his spiritual sense, was perilous at every turn.
“Hiss…” A wind blade broke through his defenses and sliced directly through his protective robe. Blood welled from the wound, and Chen Yixin sucked in a sharp breath. As a sword cultivator, he was hardly someone afraid of hardship or pain, but the agony of that wind blade striking his body far exceeded anything he had expected.
The sapling struggled within his arms. Chen Yixin lowered his gaze and sent a thought directly through his soul. “Don’t move.”
In this pitch-black unknown place, if he lost the sapling, there was no telling whether he would ever find it again.
“Don’t blame yourself. For all we know, the other entrance might have been even worse.”
The sapling stopped struggling, but its roots stretched outward and wrapped around Chen Yixin’s injury, drawing out a mass of blackened blood. Once Chen Yixin felt a little better, he gently stroked its flower bud. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.”
Those words were merely meant to reassure the sapling. In truth, Chen Yixin himself had no idea how long he remained inside that passage. By the time he finally emerged, there was hardly a patch of undamaged skin anywhere on him except his face. His clothes were in tatters, blood covered his body in countless streaks, and he looked thoroughly miserable.
The sapling was not much better off. It jumped from Chen Yixin’s arms onto the ground and repeatedly spat out black blood—the toxins it had absorbed from Chen Yixin’s body. Without it, Chen Yixin would never have made it out of that vortex of strange winds.
Chen Yixin’s complexion looked terrible, but he did not immediately sit down to regulate his condition. He waited until the sapling finished expelling the black blood, scooped it back into his arms, and continued onward. After walking a little farther, he abruptly stopped, astonishment filling his face.
“This place…”
He said nothing more, but his expression grew even more solemn. There was something extraordinarily strange about this place: his third-level Foundation Establishment cultivation had disappeared entirely, leaving him no different from a mortal. His body was stronger than that of an ordinary cultivator, but that advantage meant little while he was so badly injured.
The little sapling lay listlessly in Chen Yixin’s arms. Looking down at it, Chen Yixin felt an unexpected pang of heartache.
“Don’t worry, A-Hua. I brought you here, so I’ll make sure I take you back out.”
A lush forest surrounded them, and the roars of wild beasts sounded from varying distances. Chen Yixin kept his head down and pressed onward, carefully avoiding man-eating predators. He chose one direction and continued walking without deviation. By his estimate, he had already traveled for six hours, yet the sky remained bright, exactly as it had been when he first arrived.
He gathered a few medicinal herbs and treated his wounds, only to attract the attention of an enormous python. Misfortune truly came one disaster after another. Chen Yixin managed to avoid being bitten, but tumbled down an earthen slope and twisted his ankle instead.
Yet that accident also sent him into a hidden valley—a sea of flowers, a wooden house. Someone lived here!
Chen Yixin patted the sapling and told it to find the resident, then promptly fainted beside the flower field.
The sapling’s sentience seemed only just to have regained clarity. The first thing it noticed was Chen Yixin lying unconscious. It extended a root and infused him with a little spiritual sap from its true body, then turned toward the sea of flowers. At that moment, a man dressed in black came walking slowly through the flower field.
The little sapling flew upward, transformed into a streak of light, and disappeared into the black-clad man’s brow. A faint, almost imperceptible stiffness immediately appeared on the man’s face as he slowly lowered his gaze toward the bloodstained young man lying unconscious among the flowers.
He continued walking. His steps paused beside Chen Yixin, but he seemed prepared to keep going. Before he could lift his foot, however, Chen Yixin suddenly wrapped both arms around his ankle.
“B-Big Brother, I accidentally twisted my ankle. Could you let me stay with you for a while?” Chen Yixin lifted his face with an utterly pitiful expression while tightening his grip on the hem of the man’s robes.
Chen Yixin had learned the form of address “Big Brother” from a younger girl in his clan. Whenever she called her older brothers that way, not one of them ever managed to refuse her.
“I can help you work. I know how to… pick flowers!”
As he spoke, Chen Yixin used the man’s robes to pull himself upright, then wrapped his arms even more firmly around his thigh. He blinked up at him. His storage pouch would not open here, and apart from a few damaged talismans, he had nothing left on him. At a time like this, he could only rely on his looks.
He refused to believe that after a great beauty like himself acted this adorable, the man could possibly remain unmoved.
At the words “pick flowers,” the man’s expression visibly darkened. He looked down at Chen Yixin’s arms wrapped around his thigh, then at the dirt-covered face that currently made it impossible to tell what Chen Yixin actually looked like. After another long silence, he finally bent down, lifted Chen Yixin into his arms, and carried him step by step toward the wooden house.
“Oh, right, my A-Hua too. You have to bring it with us…”
Chen Yixin looked around as he spoke, but his little sapling had disappeared. He craned his neck toward the sea of flowers in search of it, only for the man to brush a hand over his brow and send him unconscious again.
The black-clad man was Wenren Li. As a Demonborn, he possessed not only a human body, but also a yao spirit form and a ghostly soul form. The little sapling in the town was his spirit form, while the black-clad man within the Fentian Nether Abode was his soul form. Cultivating all three forms simultaneously made every advancement especially difficult for him.
“A-Hua…” Wenren Li murmured the name, his expression growing even more awkward. Even so, he carefully placed Chen Yixin on the room’s only bed, then fetched water, removed his damaged clothing, and treated his wounds.
This place had not only stripped Chen Yixin of his cultivation; Wenren Li was much the same. His Soul Transformation cultivation was gone, and the only reason he had managed to put Chen Yixin to sleep earlier was through the power of his soul. For food, clothing, shelter, and everything else, he still had to rely on his own hands.
Still, Wenren Li had lived for an extraordinarily long time and had spent nearly ten thousand years living as an ordinary mortal. A place like this was not enough to leave him completely helpless.
By the time Chen Yixin awakened, his clothes had already been changed, and his wounds had begun healing and no longer bled. A flash of sharpness crossed his eyes as he looked around, only to find that the black-clad man from before was nowhere to be seen.
“Big Brother? Big Brother…” he called again, despite there being not the slightest trace of sweetness or obedience on his face now.
“Big Brother, I’m hungry. Big Brother, did you go find my A-Hua?”
Chen Yixin continued calling for quite some time without receiving an answer. At last, he concluded that the man was not there.
He climbed out of bed and limped toward the door. If that wooden-headed mute would not help him, then he would simply have to search for A-Hua himself.
“A-Hua…” Chen Yixin pulled open the door and shouted loudly. Wenren Li instinctively turned his head at the call. Chen Yixin froze, and Wenren Li froze as well, silently staring at him with an unreadable gaze.
Chen Yixin rubbed his nose, inexplicably guilty. Leaning against the doorframe, he explained, “I’m looking for my A-Hua. It came in here with me. I can’t just abandon it.”
Wenren Li continued toward him. After glancing at Chen Yixin, who was still explaining himself, he crouched and reached out to take Chen Yixin’s injured foot into his palm. Chen Yixin suddenly swallowed nervously and promptly forgot everything he had been about to say.
Wenren Li lowered Chen Yixin’s still swollen foot, stood, and frowned faintly. He continued saying nothing, but once again picked Chen Yixin up and carried him back to the bed.
“Could he be some native who doesn’t understand what I’m saying…?”
Chen Yixin stared at Wenren Li’s profile, his delicate brows furrowing in genuine concern. He pulled himself slightly away from Wenren Li, craned his head toward the outside, and began calling again. “A-Hua…”
Chen Yixin stubbornly continued calling, while Wenren Li silently watched him. Wenren Li disliked the name “A-Hua” intensely, but he was equally unwilling to speak to Chen Yixin.
One called while the other watched until Chen Yixin became tired of shouting and hungry besides. Only then did he turn back toward Wenren Li, his expression becoming pitiful again. “Big Blockhead, I’m hungry…”
Having decided that Wenren Li could not understand him anyway, Chen Yixin replaced the syrupy “Big Brother” with “Big Blockhead.” He rubbed his stomach and tugged at Wenren Li’s clothing, wondering how he might make the man understand that he was hungry…
But as Chen Yixin tugged Wenren Li’s robes open, his sharp eyes caught sight of the clay jar he had given the little sapling.
Wenren Li stood there woodenly, completely unprepared for Chen Yixin to suddenly start putting his hands all over him. An unnatural flush rose across his face, and he tried to retreat, only for Chen Yixin to cling even more tightly, one hand even slipping inside his collar…
“You… shouldn’t do this.”
Wenren Li had lived among mortals and naturally knew that only the most intimate married couples or Dao companions behaved this way with one another. He and Chen Yixin were neither.
“If I do this, you’ll actually talk?”
Ignoring his injured leg, Chen Yixin wrapped all four limbs around Wenren Li, touching him everywhere, sniffing him this way and that, and even appearing tempted to give him a lick…
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