Chapter 126#

The Disciple’s Rebirth and Revenge#

“System,” Lin Xiaodong considered seriously, “do you think I should rush in front of Xiao Nian and say to him, ‘Odd changes, even stays the same; signs depend on the quadrant’?”

System: “…A human can’t, or at least shouldn’t.”

And according to the headquarters’ regulations, that would also count as a violation.

The fine revenge script had suddenly turned into a mystery film. One person and one system sat dazed all night, worrying so much their hair was almost falling out.

“Speaking of which, I haven’t gotten a single Good Person card since arriving in this world,” Lin Xiaodong originally thought a trip down the mountain would at least net him his little junior sister’s Good Person card, but he didn’t expect Xiao Nian to mess that up too. “Could he be the one behind it?”

System: “…………”

Although it cautiously refrained from giving a definite answer, given the current situation, it was highly likely.

“You could try to probe him indirectly,” the system suggested. “Aren’t there two more sealed objects in Xiao Nian’s room? It won’t be too late to make a decision after we’ve gathered more intelligence.”

Lin Xiaodong: “You mean, let me unseal the ones in Xiao Nian’s room as well?”

This was indeed a relatively safe approach, but there was one problem:

Xiao Nian didn’t go out.

Except for being summoned by the Sect Master, the man had only gone down the mountain twice in all the days Lin Xiaodong had been at the Cloudsoaring Sect. Although the Xiao Nian of the past also disliked crowded places, he would at least play chess with the elders or accompany the youth to the market in the small town outside the Cloudsoaring Sect.

After the full completion of the Path of Ruthlessness, he not only lost his humanity but lived without even a trace of human flavor.

The system couldn’t help asking: “Have you really not sensed anything at all? I remember in the previous worlds, you recognized Gu Xi very quickly.”

Even if in Lin Pei’s world Lin Xiaodong had been stubborn and insisted on identifying him by his abs, didn’t the two of them eventually end up in the same bed?

“I don’t know how to put it,” Lin Xiaodong said, shaking his head. “I always feel like Xiao Nian is him, yet doesn’t seem to be him.”

His memory was a bit confused, as if someone had used correction fluid to modify it, obscuring the most critical parts. But Lin Xiaodong didn’t tell the system this; not because he didn’t trust it, but because he couldn’t give 100% trust to the headquarters behind the system.

Who modified his memory?

And what purpose did that person have?

He had a sleepless night. Fortunately, dead people didn’t get dark circles under their eyes. After waking up early, Lin Xiaodong silently came to the courtyard and used his spiritual sense to see the white-robed Immortal Venerable standing under the drifting peach blossoms, quietly watching him.

As time passed, the peach tree’s rings had increased by a few more, yet the man remained the familiar image in his memory.

There were many questions, but in the end, Lin Xiaodong decided to take a gamble.

“Can I trust you?” he asked.

He felt he was probably going crazy.

Clearly, he had already gambled once on this man and lost, lost completely.

“You always can,” Xiao Nian answered.

Lin Xiaodong’s brow tightened and then slowly relaxed.

Step by step, he walked in front of Xiao Nian, reached out, and tentatively touched the man’s cheek. His fingertips traced from the brow bone all the way down, following the bridge of the nose, and finally pressed onto those dry, warm, thin lips.

…It was the temperature of a living person.

But a sense of incongruity always circled in his heart, impossible to shake off.

Xiao Nian didn’t dodge his touch. The man looked down with a calm and knowing gaze at his puzzled disciple, and suddenly, he snapped his fingers.

Above Cold Maple Peak, an array spread across the sky like ripples, instantly enveloping the entire peak in an airtight protection.

Feeling the fluctuation of spiritual power, Lin Xiaodong’s fingertips at his side trembled slightly.

Is this… an illusion?

Just as such a thought popped into his head, the world “seen” by his spiritual sense changed accordingly.

The wind blew away the peach blossoms in the courtyard, and long, thin red silks fluttered high on the treetops. Like a black-and-white photograph dipped in red dye, for the first time since coming to this world, Lin Xiaodong “saw” colors.

Everywhere his eyes went was a fiery red.

As if time were flowing backward, the Xiao Nian before him was no longer in those ten-thousand-year-unchanging white robes, but had changed into a large red wedding gown. Gold threads were woven into complex patterns on the red fabric, the wide sleeves almost touching the ground, and the jade pendants and ornaments at his waist jingled—a style Xiao Nian would absolutely never choose under normal circumstances.

He looked down at himself again; he was also in a matching wedding gown, and it wasn’t the first time Lin Xiaodong had seen it.

When he had struggled to crawl out of the coffin back then, this was what he was wearing.

This wedding gown, whose fabric he had personally selected, whose style he had decided on, and which he had spent a large sum of money to entrust to the best weaving workshop in the human realm to make, was eventually burned to ashes by Lin Xiaodong himself.

“What are you doing?”

His voice was hoarse, carrying a trace of almost imperceptible trembling. “Xiao Nian, don’t push your luck.”

But Xiao Nian acted as if he didn’t see the rejection and hatred on Lin Xiaodong’s face, only calmly reaching out to tuck the youth’s sideburns, which had been blown loose by the wind, behind his ear.

For some reason, Lin Xiaodong actually didn’t dodge.

“When did you find out?” he asked in a low voice.

“From the very beginning,” Xiao Nian said.

Heh.

Although Lin Xiaodong indeed hadn’t thought the fake-as-could-be identity of “Wang Ling” could hide from him for long, his good master was, as expected…

“I saw you go to the main hall that night,” the youth looked up at him without flinching or avoiding, the corners of his lips curling into a slight arc. “What, have you all discussed a countermeasure? Planning to use the same trick and let me die one more time, is that it?”

Xiao Nian’s movement paused.

“Did I hit the mark?”

Lin Xiaodong’s smile deepened, but his gaze was as cold as a knife, and every word he spoke was heart-piercing: “Immortal Venerable Xiao is truly selfless and has the world at heart. For the sake of the common people, you didn’t hesitate to personally sacrifice your only disciple twice, even coming up with this…” He turned his head to look at the festive decorations in the courtyard, feeling only a desire to burn it all down, “…bloodless method.”

“Xiaodong,” Xiao Nian sighed, “it was my fault back then.”

“I laid down this illusion with no other intention but the hope that you could remember—”

Lin Xiaodong interrupted him impatiently: “Save it, Great Immortal Venerable. Do I need your reminder of what happened that day? I won’t forget what you did to me for the rest of my life!”

Hearing this, Xiao Nian stopped speaking, only staring at him with a gaze that made Lin Xiaodong feel restless and confused.

“Xiao Nian, you practice the Path of Ruthlessness,” Lin Xiaodong said through gritted teeth, word by word, as if warning the other and also reminding himself. “Since that’s the case, why do you provoke me again and again?”

If Xiao Nian hadn’t taken him as a disciple back then, hadn’t given him hope, and had treated him with the cold attitude appropriate for a sacrifice from beginning to end, Lin Xiaodong wouldn’t have hated the man to the bone!

“I don’t practice the Path of Ruthlessness,” Xiao Nian said. “At least, not now.”

“Ha,” the youth opened his eyes wide and let out a disdainful sneer, “are you kidding a ghost? Thirty years ago, you killed the inner-demon ghost that had smuggled in from the demon realm at the Cloudsoaring Sect’s gate; thousands of disciples and elders saw it clearly! Tell me, besides a cultivator of the Path of Ruthlessness, who else could face the demonic energy of an inner-demon ghost without wavering even a tiny bit?”

“There is,” Xiao Nian took a deep breath and took another step forward. “There are also cultivators of the Path of Absolute Emotion.”

Now, his distance from Lin Xiaodong was less than a fist’s length away.

Lin Xiaodong instinctively took half a step back, but then didn’t want to show cowardice before his enemy. After realizing it, he immediately retracted his foot and stood with his neck stiffened, meeting Xiao Nian’s gaze.

“Are you saying you love me?” He began to laugh coldly, as if mentioning the word “love” before Xiao Nian was incredibly ridiculous. “Master, after years of parting, I didn’t know you had become this base.”

He examined Xiao Nian’s expression meticulously. Even when being insulted to his face, the man’s facial muscles didn’t change at all, like a stiff piece of dead meat. This further strengthened Lin Xiaodong’s belief that Xiao Nian was talking nonsense. He lowered his eyes, staring at the man’s chest, and said coldly: “Xiao Nian, I suspect you have no heart at all.”

After reaching the end of the Path of Ruthlessness, what was actually gained?

Xiao Nian, however, seemed not to have noticed the indifference in his tone. After hearing Lin Xiaodong’s words, his always locked brows suddenly relaxed, and he even proactively showed a slightly stiff smile to the youth: “No, I have a heart now, and I can smile. See.”

Lin Xiaodong: “…………”

He suspected Xiao Nian was crazy.

“Xiaodong, you have to believe me,” Xiao Nian said helplessly. Although his expression looked no different from when discussing the weather, Lin Xiaodong still managed to see that trace of urgent longing in his eyes. “There are some things I can’t tell you for the time being. My current… body has also developed some problems and might not be so easy to use.”

Lin Xiaodong suspected his hearing had failed.

Otherwise, how could he hear Xiao Nian use “easy to use” to describe his own body?

“But I promise you,” Xiao Nian sighed and said in a low voice, “I won’t let you experience anything like what happened before again.”

That day, after saying those words, Xiao Nian withdrew the protective barrier and the illusion, leaving Lin Xiaodong alone in the courtyard in a daze.

“I always feel,” he said slowly, “that we don’t seem to need to ask Xiao Nian if he knows about the headquarters.”

The things this man understood were likely far more than they imagined.

The system was dejected: “Unfortunately, I’m just a worker system and can’t unlock higher databases, otherwise I might be able to know Xiao Nian’s origin.”

“You think he’s also a transmigrator?” Lin Xiaodong frowned and thought carefully for a while, then shook his head. “It’s indeed possible, but I always feel it doesn’t quite seem like it because he’s too familiar with this world.”

If he weren’t a native of the immortal cultivation world, given Xiao Nian’s current status as an Immortal Venerable, wanting to not show any flaws before the high-level officials of the Cloudsoaring Sect… Lin Xiaodong could only marvel that the other party must be a heavyweight figure.

“But Xiao Nian has left,” the system suddenly said. “Aren’t you going to check his room? You might find clues!”

Only then did Lin Xiaodong realize that Xiao Nian had been gone from Cold Maple Peak for a long time.

He hesitated on the spot for a moment, but in the end, curiosity won out. Having the system keep a constant eye on Xiao Nian’s location, he tiptoed and pushed open the door to the man’s room.

—The scene was almost identical to what he had seen in his spiritual sense before.

He had slept in this room for countless nights, sharing a bed with the man, their fingers intertwined. Recalling the past, Lin Xiaodong couldn’t help but feel a bit melancholy, but he quickly slapped his head hard, forcing himself to wake up and not let memories affect his emotions.

Business first!

“Right,” he looked around with his spiritual sense, “those two energy sources you mentioned, where are they?”

The system paused for a moment.

“The small one is in the drawer,” it said. “As for the large one, it’s right in front of you to the left; the entire wardrobe is full.”