Chapter 55#

Meeting#

Several water mirrors stood in the banquet hall, projecting the situation on Kunwu Mountain.

The wind was wild and the snow was chaotic, and white clothes billowed. The youth’s figure was reflected in the water mirror, and in an instant, everyone on and off the mountain was looking at him. The originally bustling banquet hall suddenly went quiet.

The snowy mist blurred his features, but one could still see those gentle eyes and slightly upturned corners of the lips.

—Like the bright moon giving off light, or spring water floating with ice.

Yin Yuheng was looking down the mountain, and Xue Ciling was also gazing at him in a daze.

“I got it, City Lord.”

A simple sentence, yet like spring thunder awakening insects, wind rising and waves surging, disturbing people’s heartstrings. When he uttered the two words “City Lord,” with Yin Yuheng’s soft, joyful, and slightly upturned ending tone, who could not fall for it?

Xue Ciling’s throat tightened, and his fingertips trembled.

Yuheng really… really got the Blue Sky Attraction.

Yin Yuheng himself didn’t care about the Blue Sky Attraction, yet he still went up the mountain. The rugged snowy path on Kunwu Mountain, the ten-thousand-foot abyss that could crush one’s bones at any time, the heart demon hallucinations that disturbed the mind, and the legs and feet that were inherently inconvenient to move… Yin Yuheng had a difficult walk this way, but all these had not stopped his footsteps.

Only because he himself had said “I want it.”

Xue Ciling did want the Blue Sky Attraction. He originally had a plan… but now he actually somewhat didn’t want to continue this plan, and even wanted to rush up to find Yin Yuheng and say, “I don’t want the Blue Sky Attraction anymore, you must come down the mountain safely…”

Xue Ciling suddenly covered his face, hiding his expression that was like both crying and laughing. He felt his heart being filled up bit by bit, only to turn into panic in an instant.

That was just a puppet, just an imperfect substitute. No matter how much he liked the warmth the other brought him, he shouldn’t… shouldn’t control his sanity like this, to the extent of affecting his plan.

He unconsciously reached out his hand, wanting to touch the figure in the water mirror. However, the water mirror was just a projection, and when he touched it, it turned into blurred water waves, and Yin Yuheng became very distant in an instant.

Flowers in a mirror and the moon in water, both beautiful and illusory, within sight but beyond reach.

Xue Ciling pursed his lips and finally said hoarsely: “City Lord of Luxia, Xue Ciling, requests an audience with His Majesty the Demon Emperor.”

*

Yin Yuheng put the Blue Sky Attraction in his bosom, intending to go down the mountain.

“Let’s go.” He turned his head and reached out his hand to the boy behind him, but found the other standing in the snow in a daze. The boy’s gaze was motionless, firmly stuck on Yin Yuheng.

Yin Yuheng suddenly collided with the other’s gaze.

“…Still in a hallucination?” Yin Yuheng hesitated for a moment and simply pulled the boy up, “Forget it, I’ll take you down the mountain.”

The boy’s hand was grabbed by Yin Yuheng, and a tingling itch came over him, and he couldn’t help but start trembling. He was half-asleep and half-awake, appearing to be in a dream, and could only vaguely see the shadow of the person in front of him. He followed Yin Yuheng step by step, gradually clearing a sliver of clarity from his unbelievable daze. His eyes showed intense and inseparable feelings, as well as endless obsession, regret, surprise, and panic.

“Senior… Senior Brother…” The boy’s voice had a hint of crying, and he couldn’t speak clearly, only repeating these two words.

Yin Yuheng sighed helplessly: “I am not your Senior Brother.”

The boy’s face turned deathly pale in an instant. He hurriedly wiped his tears with his sleeve, tried his best to suppress his urge to wail, and said in terror: “I’m sorry, I… I forgot I couldn’t call you that… Your Highness, please don’t be angry, I’ll never do it again.”

Senior Brother, Your Highness?

A fragment of the original plot flashed through Yin Yuheng’s mind, and he suddenly had a guess about this boy’s identity, but felt it was absurd.

Yin Yuheng stopped in his tracks, looked toward him, and experimentally whispered a name: “Zhu Anning?”

“I’m, I’m here.” Zhu Anning said nervously.

Yin Yuheng was silent and reached out to touch his own face. No wonder the other kept calling him Senior Brother.

Zhu Anning’s face turned even paler, thinking that he indeed had made his Senior Brother angry again. He lowered his head with red eyes, his mind in a state of chaos. His eyes were glazed, and he almost fell into a hallucination again.

His posture was so humble that at this moment Yin Yuheng even felt that the other would be willing to die for a single word from him.

But… this shouldn’t be.

Yin Yuheng remembered this part on Kunwu Mountain in the plot: Li Guanghan’s beloved little disciple, Zhu Anning, should have been behind Li Guanghan, being meticulously cared for and protected by him, contrasting with the protagonist’s destitution; rather than stumbling through the wind and snow of Kunwu Mountain, crying for his Senior Brother, being cautious, panicked, and helpless.

Zhu Anning’s appearance was as if he liked his Senior Brother very much.

The feeling of having forgotten something became even stronger. But Zhu Anning was half-submerged in hallucination, and not much could be asked out. Yin Yuheng pursed his lips and finally said: “Let’s go down the mountain first.”

Yin Yuheng let go of Zhu Anning’s hand and turned to walk down the mountain. Zhu Anning’s hand remained stiffly extended, and after a long while, it trembled and hung down.

He stumbled to keep up with Yin Yuheng’s footsteps.

The further away from the peak of Kunwu Mountain, the influence of the hallucination gradually faded. But Zhu Anning felt that he was still not clear-headed… there was an unreal feeling of being in a dream. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t say a word.

The person in front was so much like his Senior Brother.

Zhu Anning had a feeling that if he didn’t chase after him, he might regret it for a lifetime.

*

Wind and snow fell on his shoulders all the way.

Yin Yuheng finally stepped onto the hanging platform halfway up the mountain. Different from the bustling scene before he went up the mountain, the surroundings were eerily quiet. Everyone’s gaze gathered from all directions, looking at him, and the Blue Sky Attraction in his hand.

Under the gaze of the crowd, Yin Yuheng lowered his head and slowly brushed off the snow on his body before looking up with a smile. His gaze swept across the faces of people of all descriptions, but he didn’t find Xue Ciling.

Yin Yuheng frowned and stopped, then heard a hoarse voice behind him: “Yuheng?”

Yin Yuheng turned his head and saw a person standing behind him, in white clothes and a jade crown, with a clear and handsome face. At a glance, it was as if he saw a solitary peak of a snowy mountain. But the other’s eyes were extremely black, suppressing churning gloom and madness.

The man moved, lifting his foot to walk toward Yin Yuheng. Yin Yuheng couldn’t perceive the cold, but he saw the frost spreading on the ground. With the other’s movement, in this hanging platform where it shouldn’t be snowing, ice and snow also condensed.

Yin Yuheng suddenly understood the silence of the surrounding guests—

During the time he was coming down the mountain, the entire hanging platform had been shrouded by boundless spiritual pressure that was on the verge of exploding at any moment; no one dared to speak.

“Yuheng, is it you? You’re awake? Why are you here, who brought you?” The man walked toward him in a daze, then suddenly realized something and hurriedly pointed a finger, and the ice and snow on the ground melted one after another.

Yuheng was afraid of the cold and didn’t like snow.

The man stopped a few steps in front of Yin Yuheng, not daring to step forward further, appearing to be intently observing whether the person before him was real or fake. He suddenly turned his head and said angrily: “Get lost!”

This “get lost” was said to Zhu Anning, who had hurriedly chased in.

Zhu Anning’s footsteps were suddenly disordered, and he painfully bent over and coughed. He covered his lips with his sleeve, but bloodstains still seeped out. He coughed miserably, but the gaze he turned toward the man was still full of cold malice and hatred.

“Where can I get lost to,” Zhu Anning suddenly pulled out a cold laugh and emphasized his tone, “Are you throwing me away? Master… cough!”

Zhu Anning hadn’t finished his words before he coughed so much that the world turned dark, and he trembled with pain. Just now when Li Guanghan said the word “get lost,” the invisible Nine Cold Sword Qi rushed into his spiritual meridians to wreak havoc.

Since being captured back to the National Preceptor’s Manor by Li Guanghan, Li Guanghan often tortured Zhu Anning like this. This Sword Sovereign, who had already fallen into madness, used the sharpest sword qi to literally linger Zhu Anning’s spiritual meridians, continuing again and again after he was healed. At that time, Li Guanghan touched Zhu Anning’s face and sneered: “Don’t you want to repair your spiritual meridians very much? I’ll help you treat them a few more times, how about that? Taste more of the flavor Yuheng felt at that time.”

The little disciple once so favored by the Penglai Sword Sovereign eventually became an enemy. In the gaze the two turned toward each other, only pure loathing remained.

Zhu Anning endured the pain, stood up straight, and his gaze was still stubbornly fixed on Yin Yuheng.

Li Guanghan was the same, his voice becoming more and more hoarse: “Yuheng, is it you?”

*

All the surrounding guests secretly exchanged glances.

Yin Yuheng still stood on the spot, thinking, I’m just a puppet…

He guessed the identity of the man before him, his mood was subtle, and his eyes flickered.

Li Guanghan and Zhu Anning, who should have looked on coldly at the protagonist’s suffering in the original plot, now seemed to have turned against each other and were both staring at him seriously, as if he were the focus of their attention.

The protagonist hadn’t even appeared… Yin Yuheng suddenly remembered that the protagonist should have been brought by Lu Yan.

Where was Lu Yan?

This name suddenly surfaced in his heart. In an instant, Li Guanghan, Zhu Anning, and the gazes of the people around all faded away. He turned a blind eye to the scorching gazes of Li Guanghan and Zhu Anning and instinctively looked around.

Everyone else was here… where was Lu Yan?

Yin Yuheng didn’t know why he was looking for Lu Yan. Some memory in his heart was about to come out, but was still separated by a layer.

“No, he’s not the ‘Yuheng’ in the Sword Sovereign’s heart.” Xue Ciling suddenly walked down from the high level of the hanging platform.

Now, with a “buzz,” the people around could no longer stop the urge to whisper.

Li Guanghan’s face changed drastically in an instant, becoming terribly gloomy.

“Not Yuheng?” Li Guanghan’s voice became fierce, “True, this face is indeed a bit unlike… so, what kind of thing are you?”

Chill suddenly surged, and frost formed on Yin Yuheng’s fingertips. His joints began to stiffen, and he stood on the spot unable to move. Demonic energy churned in the depths of Li Guanghan’s pupils, and he almost reached out to grab Yin Yuheng’s neck.

In the next moment, all the ice and snow melted away.

Golden flames landed in front of Yin Yuheng, blocking Li Guanghan’s hand.