Everything was like a dream, yet that Witch brand on her wrist truly existed.
As long as Chi Yujun moved her mind, the power contained in that hidden pattern would unfold in her mind, slowly gathering into a picture.
Yet she quickly could not laugh anymore.
Apart from one extra “Prepare Medicine,” there were no other usable, effective means at all!
Blank!
Blank!
Blank!
Under ordinary circumstances, if one wanted to perceive other abilities, one first had to raise the Sequence of one’s own Destiny Path…
So Chi Yujun tried again to sense the Destiny Path tasks that needed to be completed for advancement.
This time it was not merely that she could not laugh.
Anger and venom appeared by turns on her face.
She finally understood what that thing that had exchanged with her meant at the moment she recovered consciousness, when it told her to “play it well, and beware feminine corruption.”
—It wanted her, in front of the person she hated most, to play the person who loved him most?!
What kind of joke was this?!
Did this have anything to do with cultivation and advancement?
Did this have anything to do with her current state of mind?!
Clearly it did not?!
Wasn’t it said that this kind of goal would all be closely linked to one’s present psychological state?!
The feeling she had toward Fang Guyuan’s existence could only be hate, could only be hate!
How could there be even a scrap of favorable impression!
In almost only two breaths, Chi Yujun reached a conclusion: most likely she had been tampered with by that “It” just now, otherwise why would she have to complete such a nauseating trial?!
Chi Yujun could imagine Fang Guyuan stabbed to death by her sword, Fang Guyuan’s expression of despair when facing her revenge, Fang Guyuan’s twisted, ugly state under her gu poison…
Yet she alone could not imagine the circumstances in which she “loved” him most.
What was that?
A blank in her knowledge.
Several rather serious questions that now, thinking back, were also quite ridiculous, gradually floated to the surface.
—What is called “love”?
—What kind of feeling is “love”?
—What does one have to do to count as “loving” other people?
Her head itched so much, and her bones itched too, as if something strange were about to grow out.
Chi Yujun could not figure it out.
She did not even know the answers to these few most core questions, did not even know how to act, so where did “playing a role” come from?
Right now, a huge, obvious pit had been set before her eyes, and she still had to jump.
Because all the roads around her had already been blocked dead.
If she did not want to mark time in place, if she wanted a chance and the strength to take revenge, she could only jump into the pit first and endure for a while.
Fortunately, Chi Yujun had plenty of confidence that she could struggle out of the pit herself.
Feminine corruption?
What was that?
What did it have to do with her?
She was a grown man.
How could she truly fall into a woman’s way of thinking?
Still more, Fang Guyuan was the enemy who had killed her father.
How could she truly produce toward this kind of scum any feeling other than hate?
Although she was not very clear on how to play a person who had fallen in love with Fang Guyuan, that was only showing another appearance before his eyes, wasn’t it.
It was only pretending.
As long as she learned how to act and obtained powerful strength, then turning around and killing her target with a reverse hand would be an easy matter, wouldn’t it?
So Chi Yujun began to reflect, reflecting on the feelings she had come into contact with.
She hated Fang Guyuan, hated him vividly, hated him fiercely.
This was beyond doubt.
But “love”… what exactly was it?
Was it like what she had toward her father, unconditional trust, unconditional obedience?
If you hated a person, you would want to kill him.
Then if you loved a person, what would you want to do to him?
Chi Yujun suddenly saw the light.
Simple.
Very simple.
Quite simple.
She only needed to learn how other people went about “loving,” then perform it one by one in front of Fang Guyuan, do all the things “love” could do once through, and then she could kill him, right?
Wonderful.
Too wonderful.
Too exciting.
Wasn’t this much simpler than what Fang Guyuan had said, learning the sword arts he taught and then killing him with her own hands?
—But, to be on the safe side, it was better to walk both paths at once.
Anyway, as long as she could take revenge on Fang Guyuan, no matter how much her body was ravaged again, she could endure it.
Rather, she hoped even more that Fang Guyuan would not pity her, so that her hatred toward him could breed even worse.
Chi Yujun decided to fight a quick battle and settle it quickly, and to start moving the next day.
Expectation and fanatic light flashed in the silver-haired woman’s eyes.
Before long, the sense of exhaustion after passion gradually surged up.
So, by the window, on the floor where moonlight spilled, she sank into heavy sleep.
In the midst of Chi Yujun’s hazy drowsiness, a sigh from who-knew-whom quietly sounded.
……
The night gradually deepened.
Fang Guyuan had originally wanted to take his disciple to the storehouse that very day and collect everything that ought to be collected, but he truly could not split himself, busy until his head burned and his brow was scorched, and after looking after the little girl through the meal he had gone to handle official business.
By rights, Chi Yujun’s charming figure, curved before and behind, could not be counted as small, yet Fang Guyuan always regarded her as a junior.
From the standpoint of psychological seniority, calling her “little girl” was not wrong either.
When Fang Guyuan finished handling the official business that had piled up for nearly two days and filled the desk, the color of the sky was already faintly turning white.
The clear chirping of dawn birds was already the tail end of the deep night.
Next he still had to carry out his morning sword practice and comprehend the sword dao.
Reckoned this way, he had no time to close his eyes at all.
Fang Guyuan spat out a mouthful of accumulated turbid air, rubbed his sore, astringent eyes, drained in one swallow the tea on the desk that had already gone cold to the bottom, and stood up from the heavy, solid pearwood chair, leaving only withered, limp tea leaves stuck to the bottom of the cup.
So tired.
It was not merely physical weariness, but also spiritual exhaustion—the things experienced these two days were truly too many.
He had to give consideration to human relations and manage connections, and also think of ways to deal with the Nine Heavens and the elders of the Penglai Fang family, who had just received news of the Phoenix Body and kept pressing with questions without stop.
He also had to arrange for disciples within the sect to follow up on hunting down remnant members of the fleeing Immortal King Sect and recovering materials related to gu arts, gu items…
Yet these were still not what made Fang Guyuan’s head ache the most, because these he could still be said to handle.
He walked out of his study and stood before the door of Chi Yujun’s room.
The beauty sleeping inside was what left him most at a loss.
He both wanted her to be able to be less constrained, to live a little more easily, a little more like a person, and feared that giving her too much freedom would let her not know restraint and find it hard to change her bad habits.
If he treated her too well, she would climb from the nose onto the face.
If he treated her badly… yet if he so much as recalled the inhuman torment she had once suffered, Fang Guyuan could not harden his heart, because he could not help associating her with that younger brother of his who had fallen into the hands of the heretical cult.
He wondered whether Xuewu had slept well…
After hesitating a moment, Fang Guyuan still decided to look at her situation.
Pushing the door and entering, he saw at a glance the silver-haired woman sleeping on the floor.
Clear, bright moonlight gently patted her face, as if covering this sleeping beauty under the moonlight with a veil like water.
That suffocating sense of stunning beauty swept over him, and in an instant Fang Guyuan produced the illusion that he was admiring a work of art.
That work of art was so beautiful, and so fragile, that it actually made him sigh helplessly.
A woman this wonderful originally ought to have possessed a brilliant, glorious life, become a pearl of the immortal dao whose every frown and smile toppled all living beings, become the focus held up by a crowd of stars like the moon.
Yet now she lay on the icy floor, hating everything she had encountered, still without the common sense ordinary people ought to have, and had become, in most people’s eyes, a monster whose inner heart was deformed.
Beautiful things were always easy to desecrate and destroy, yet wanting to repair them was hard upon hard.
The heretical cult truly deserved to die.
Fang Guyuan approached without making a single sound, covered Chi Yujun with a quilt, took out a coral pearl that faintly gave off warmth and placed it by her pillow, silently said good night to her in his heart, and then left.