After the two of them left Xie Ningyun, they did not return to their dwelling at once.
They turned about, and came to another storehouse.
This storehouse was far larger than the one before, and the watch was strict as well.
Going in or out required registering and reporting, and even those keeping the gate were several inner disciples standing shifts in turn.
The items stored in this storehouse were all mid-to-high-grade magic treasures, mid-to-high-rank cultivation methods, and pills, and all counted as principal assets of a great immortal sect.
Just this one stretch of ground had been divided, according to the kind of item stored, into quite a few rooms, watched separately by disciples of Dust Sword Palace.
At present, however, one of the rooms was being used to check and sort the spoils left from wiping out the Immortal King Sect, and this was also the goal of Fang Guyuan and Chi Yujun’s trip.
The moment she crossed the threshold, Chi Yujun looked at that room full of Immortal King Sect things and nearly shed tears.
Most of the things in here she knew well.
Seeing these things was like returning home — yet in fact, these were only the bloody proof that her home had been raided.
Not only were the things placed in completely different positions.
Even the people —
Even the people… were gone……
Her mood darkened all at once.
Head lowered, in the glance she slanted at Fang Guyuan there were several more parts of a sky-covering hatred she could hardly bear.
—It was this man! It was this man! It was this man who destroyed her home! Who killed the father she revered most, longed for most, and loved most!
—Her father had been so good to her. He would take her to look at the stars, patiently explain to her the legend of every star, take her out for spring outings in the countryside, make her delicious dishes……
Hm? Wait?
De… li… cious… dishes……?
The venomous look on Chi Yujun’s face froze there, and she could not help a shock of horror.
Wh-what was going on?! Hadn’t… hadn’t she always eaten people and gu insects?!
What was going on?! What was going on, what was going on?!
Making dishes? What dishes did he make? Who made her dishes?! Why make her dishes?!
Her eyes turned in terror, trembling, the rims splitting, showing a great stretch of dreadful white.
Both hands clutched her head, nails driven deep into that head of eerie, disordered silver hair, sunk into the scalp —
She almost screamed, yet though she wanted to cry out she could make no sound, as if something were blocking her throat.
Aaaaaaah! The things in her mind were such a mess! Her memories were a mess too! Her feelings were a mess too!
She did not understand! She did not understand! She could not understand it?!
The moment she realized something was wrong, every thought she had just had already shattered into countless glittering, tiny points of light, scattering without a trace.
What was left was only that thought which was the most painful and also the most distinct, and as her gaze gradually went unfocused it sank deeper into the marrow.
No matter how great the price, even if it was death, she would take revenge for her father!
Fang Guyuan beside her noticed the stir in her feelings, but did not know specifically what it was for, and could do nothing.
That right hand that wanted to touch her hung in midair.
To let it fall was not right.
To draw it back was not right.
At last he saw clear tears run from Chi Yujun’s eyes.
That expression was both helpless and despairing, and there was also a deep hatred and a loathing of herself, and a thread of being unable to bear it rose in his heart as well.
In Fang Guyuan’s eyes, this child’s nature was certainly hateful, but from another angle, how was she not also pitiable?
— Perhaps she ought not to have been like this to begin with.
She ought to have been like Ye Baizhi, happily and freely enjoying the years of peach and plum that belonged to her, and being a wandering swordswoman at her ease.
The moment he thought of a perfectly good person being turned into this shape that was neither person nor ghost, reduced to someone else’s puppet without knowing it, Fang Guyuan’s heart ached.
He had also, in the quiet of the night, thought about a question, even though this question almost could not happen.
If he had to watch with his own eyes as his own kin became this way, would he feel that ending those heretical cultists with one sword had instead let them off easy?
After all, for them the pain was only an instant, and they had died too easily.
Set beside the pain of body and mind they had brought this child, it did not come to one ten-thousandth.
As a stranger, seeing a Phoenix Body who had been refined into a human gu was already enough to make one angry.
If one saw one’s own family treated this way as her closest kin, one would probably feel that even a thousand cuts and ten thousand slices of the chief culprit could hardly ease the hatred in the heart.
In the end he still reached out a hand, and lightly steadied her shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” Fang Guyuan bent his body slightly, doing his best to bring his line of sight level with Chi Yujun’s, watching her expression as he asked. “Did you remember something bad? If you’re unwell, tell me, all right? I want to help you.”
“I… I want to go home……” Chi Yujun murmured without knowing it.
The desolate look in her eyes gave off a broken powerlessness, like talking in a dream.
“I’m so lonely… I want to go home…… I want my dad… save me… save me…… I’m begging you… I’m begging you……”
“Do you still remember who your dad is? Where your home is?” Fang Guyuan’s thoughts stirred.
He felt he could take this chance to help her find her family.
“The Im… the Immortal King Sect is my home……” By this moment Chi Yujun had already lost the ability to think.
Her eyes were dull, and she answered him on nothing but a faint thread of awareness.
Fang Guyuan blanked.
By the time he reacted, the right hand that had still been idle clenched into a fist at once, by instinct, blue veins standing out along the back of it, shaking with anger.
Even so, the words in his mouth and the look in his eyes grew gentler still, not sparing a glance for the odd looks of the disciples nearby who were keeping watch on the storehouse.
“Did you get it wrong…… How could they be Xiao Xue’s family?”
Fang Guyuan did his best to draw his nerves tight, his smile stiff, not letting the killing intent he showed by instinct frighten this fragile child.
The moment “the Immortal King Sect is my family” came out of her mouth, it meant two frightening possibilities.
First, she truly had been of the Immortal King Sect to begin with, and those deranged villains had laid hands on their own family, and, seeing her talent was outstanding, had taken her as material for refining a human gu.
Did those heretical cultists truly not even spare their own family? Even a vicious tiger does not eat its cubs!
Second, she had not been of the Immortal King Sect to begin with, and had only been brainwashed by the heretical cultists of the Immortal King Sect, wrongly taking them for family, wrongly taking the outrageous things they had done to her as reasonable and correct, as so-called love, and step by step, amid the torment, had also fallen into being their accomplice, becoming an evil person who did not know she was evil.
Whichever possibility it was, the pain behind it was hard to imagine.
Fang Guyuan asked again, and the silver-haired woman no longer responded.
Her mind seemed not yet to have recovered from the enormous shock she had just received.
A wooden, dull gaze stared into the empty air, as if she were numbly waiting for something.
“Save me……”
She repeated this one sentence over and over, in a small voice, like sobbing, and also like pleading.
Fang Guyuan truly could not hold it in.
He pulled Chi Yujun into his arms in one move, his right hand coming up onto her thin back, eyes slightly closed, patting lightly.
“It’s all right… it’s already all right…… I’m here……”
As Fang Guyuan spoke, the tip of his nose went hot, and only when his mind jolted did he discover it.
That, too, was tears.