The area around her eyes was damp. Someone had wiped away her tears, not letting them run into her hair.
Lian Yin turned her head. Through her blurred vision, she saw the young man lowering his head. A lock of her jet black hair rested in his palm. Apparently bored from waiting, he had idly braided it into a loose plait.
“I want to leave this place,” Lian Yin said.
The Realm Spirit said nothing. He merely conjured a hollow golden leaf hair ornament, clipped it to the end of the braid, and carefully adjusted it until it sat just right.
Lian Yin’s heart grew heavy. Reason told her there was every chance the Realm Spirit would go back on his word, that he had only been deceiving her. Yet everything that had happened inside the illusion left her unable to stop herself from hoping…
He had given the people within the illusion souls of their own, yet he himself had remained only a supporting character… Creating such a vivid illusion must have consumed an enormous amount of his strength.
A Realm Spirit born from the lingering obsession of a deceased cultivator was not immortal. Its existence was like the water inside a bottle. Every drop used was one drop less.
Perhaps… Perhaps the Realm Spirit really would let her leave.
Lian Yin simply could not stop herself from clinging to that hope.
After a brief silence, she spoke again.
“I want to find the place where my parents fell.”
Only then did the Realm Spirit release her hair. Watching her sit up, he finally said, “I don’t want you to see them.”
The air instantly fell silent.
“But since I promised you,” he continued, “I’ll still keep my word. Before that, though, shouldn’t we first figure out what to do with your two friends? And how are we going to deal with the Xie family outside?”
Lian Yin was just about to answer when he added, “No cheating this time.”
Lian Yin: “…”
She really had been about to throw the question back at him again to see what he would do.
There truly were many things to consider after leaving. She could no longer drift through life and death as carelessly as before…
“Once you’re outside, I won’t be there anymore, Yinyin.” Seeing the young woman fall into thought, the Realm Spirit suddenly spoke with unmistakable sadness. “Can’t you really stay here? If you stay, I can solve everything for you. You won’t have to think about anything…”
Lian Yin asked, “Can you still control people now? Can you still alter their memories and perceptions?”
The Realm Spirit: “…”
She ignored his emotions completely. All she could think about was leaving.
He gazed at her resentfully for a while before obediently answering her question anyway.
Lian Yin knew she was far too suspicious. If she wanted to leave safely, the only option was to join forces with the Realm Spirit and resort to a few morally questionable methods.
Flames crawled across the Talisman paper, setting the attic ablaze.
Without another glance, Lian Yin turned and left.
The Realm Spirit stood alone on the top floor of the burning attic, watching countless tongues of fire lick across the vividly colored skirts of the painted girls. As though truly burned, expressions of fear and tears appeared upon their faces.
His body slowly began to fade away.
Though he had always known he would never be chosen, when she truly abandoned him and destroyed those cherished memories without the slightest hesitation, it still hurt.
He had buried his will within those precious memories.
The young woman would never become an ugly vengeful ghost, never stain her hands with blood.
But neither would she ever love him.
The illusion projected the image of the young woman.
…
Time was running out.
Lian Yin first found the heavily injured, unconscious Xie Sui, then encountered Shen Qingle while fighting the evil spirits.
Together, they ran toward the exit.
The staircase leading out of the sea of flames seemed endless.
Every step they descended caused another section of stairs behind them to collapse. The spreading fire chased after them like a relentless monster, scorching waves of heat pressing against their backs and urging them onward.
Run! Keep running.
The attic crumbled little by little. Burning wooden beams rained down from above, followed by half scorched paintings…
The scrolls floated gracefully through the air as they slowly unfurled.
The world resembled an endless polar night into which not even a sliver of light could penetrate. The flames of destruction carried by the paintings fell into that darkness, becoming its only source of light.
Then, all at once, time stopped.
The falling beams, the surging heat, the companions beside her…
Everything froze. Everything except her.
Lian Yin immediately realized something was wrong.
The Realm Spirit suddenly appeared before her.
Instinctively, Lian Yin stepped protectively in front of the other two. Yet when she noticed his body steadily dissolving, she froze.
He really was disappearing.
“Do you think I’d go back on my word?” The Realm Spirit noticed her reaction as he slowly approached, his tone carrying a trace of casual amusement. “Are you afraid I’ll hurt those two behind you? How long have you even known them?”
Lian Yin released their hands.
“No… It’s not because I’m worried…”
The Realm Spirit looked at her quietly.
Under his gaze, she found herself unable to explain any further…
She had only been afraid he would become angry and change his mind. She had wanted to say something nice to placate him.
He understood all of it.
Such a clumsy lie.
“You’ve misunderstood me more than once already. One or two more hardly matter.” Lowering his head to hide the disappointment flashing through his eyes, he tied a storage pouch around her waist. “Yinyin was always afraid of me before. You were always worried I’d kill you…”
Lian Yin’s lowered lashes trembled slightly.
“So you knew.”
“I did.” He smiled slowly as half his body dissolved into light. “But you’re not worried about that anymore, are you? Deep down… you believe me now… don’t you?”
Lian Yin remained silent.
After fastening the storage pouch, his gaze settled on her face.
In the end, he merely reached out and gently touched her cheek.
“Yinyin… I’m the person in this world who likes you the most… and understands you the best.”
“After you leave…”
“Don’t fall for anyone else.”
“Remember me forever…”
“Will you?”
…
No answer ever came.
The frozen flow of time resumed.
Shen Qingle recovered from her frozen state without noticing anything unusual. She hurriedly grabbed Lian Yin.
“Quick! Get out! This place is about to collapse!”
Outside the secret realm, the Xie family’s cultivators had established camp nearby.
The moment they saw their young master being carried out covered in blood, the Xie cultivators rushed forward in panic, urgently summoning medical cultivators.
The scene quickly descended into chaos.
Shen Qingle had exhausted herself inside the illusion. After recounting everything that had happened in the secret realm, she immediately went to rest.
As for the suspicious Lian Yin, she was temporarily placed under the watch of the Xie cultivators until Xie Sui woke up and made a decision.
Everything seemed to have finally settled.
While waiting, Lian Yin opened the storage pouch the Realm Spirit had left her.
There was very little inside.
At a glance, she could see everything it contained.
Several sets of clothes.
Every color and style was exactly to her liking.
A sword. Its name was Sui’an.
Her father had forged it for her when she was little.
It meant peace year after year.
There were also several magical treasures, all gifts from her parents while they were still alive. Some were priceless, while others had simply been given because she liked them.
Finally…
There was a paper crane.
Lian Yin stared blankly at it for a long time.
Lu Ying had returned everything he considered precious to her.
He hadn’t left behind a single thing that belonged to himself.
Only a paper crane.
Something felt very wrong.
Lian Yin immediately began examining her body. Until now, she had never had the chance to investigate what exactly had happened to her.
Sure enough, her body was incredibly strange…
Despite suffering such severe injuries, there wasn’t the slightest trace of healing.
It was as though she had been reborn.
Her spiritual sea had not shrunk, yet her cultivation had dropped by two major realms.
Normally, a cultivator’s spiritual sea was directly linked to their cultivation realm. If one’s cultivation regressed, the spiritual sea would shrink as well, preventing the use of many techniques.
In other words…
On the surface, she appeared much weaker, but in reality, her true strength hadn’t declined nearly as much?
Her thoughts became increasingly chaotic as she continued examining herself.
There also seemed to be something strange hidden deep within her sea of consciousness…
It was buried extremely deep…
Its presence was incredibly faint…
Had Lian Yin not been inspecting herself so carefully, she might easily have overlooked it.
She quickly pinpointed its exact location within her sea of consciousness and reached toward it…
The instant she discovered what it truly was, her heart began pounding wildly.
The Xie family had mobilized everyone in search of the divine artifact.
The Realm Spirit had said there wasn’t one in his possession.
He hadn’t lied.
Because…
The divine artifact was inside her.
If that secret ever got out, Lian Yin would immediately become the target of endless pursuit.
The divine artifact had clearly already acknowledged her as its master. Once a divine artifact recognized its owner, it could never leave unless its master died.
If anyone learned the truth…
The only fate awaiting her was death.
The Xie cultivator guarding the door seemed to notice the unusual anxiety on her face, quietly studying her expression.
Suppressing the frantic beating of her heart, Lian Yin reopened the storage pouch.
She took out the paper crane.
Placing it gently in her palm, she raised it into the path of the sunlight.
Beneath the sun, the white wings of the paper crane became faintly translucent, as though crushed golden light had scattered across pristine white paper. Before long, its paper body grew pleasantly warm.
The classroom from her memories had always been filled with such warm, brilliant sunlight.
That was where she had once told Lu Ying the story of wizards.
She had read it in a book from her previous world.
Back then, she had spent years confined to a hospital room. Reading novels had been her favorite pastime, especially those filled with boundless imagination.
In that wizard’s tale, there was a spell that allowed people to send messages through paper cranes.
After hearing the story, Lu Ying had casually folded one for her.
The Xie cultivator outside finally looked away.
Lian Yin unfolded the paper crane.
“Yinyin, I wish you a boundless future and everlasting brilliance.”
The ink on the paper slowly shifted, rearranging itself into new words.
“I’d really like to leave it at that, but if you’re doing well, you’ll probably forget me very soon, won’t you? Then you won’t have time to miss all the good things about me…”
So that was why he had hidden the divine artifact inside her?
Growing increasingly irritated, Lian Yin waited for the writing to continue.
She wanted to know what this divine artifact was.
How was she supposed to use it?
Yet Lu Ying never mentioned the artifact again.
“If Yinyin ends up living a miserable life, I’d be heartbroken too. It would feel like I’d failed in my job. T T”
“There have been far too many misunderstandings between us. If I left you anything directly, you’d probably either throw it away or sell it.”
“So I left those things somewhere else. You can come get them whenever you want. Next comes the map.”
The ink separated into fine lines, gradually forming the image of a map.
Beneath it was another crying face, followed by a tiny line of text.
“Since it still has some value, please keep it.”
Lian Yin stopped reading.
Annoyed, she tossed the paper back into the storage pouch.
Then, remembering that the Xie cultivators would likely inspect her storage pouch later, she took it back out and patiently refolded it into the shape of a paper crane along its original creases.
At first, Lian Yin had wondered how the Realm Spirit could disappear so easily.
Now it seemed the secret realm where she had awakened was not Lu Ying’s true resting place.
The location marked on the map…
That was where he had truly fallen.
She didn’t have a single spirit stone in her storage pouch.
Without money, life would be impossible.
Everything inside the pouch had been left to her by her parents.
She would never sell a single item. If she wanted to earn spirit stones, she would have to…
The meaning of the letter was obvious.
If she ever found herself unable to survive in the outside world…
If she started remembering the good things about him…
Then she should go find him.
How devious! She absolutely would not go looking for him!
Just as Lian Yin tossed the folded paper crane back into the storage pouch, a shout suddenly came from outside.
“He’s awake! The young master is awake!”
A burst of commotion erupted from the neighboring room.
It seemed Xie Sui had regained consciousness.
Not long afterward, Lian Yin was summoned inside.
No one else was in the room.
Xie Sui sat upright on the bed as sunlight streamed through the window, falling across his deathly pale face.
“Sit,” he said weakly.
When Lian Yin had found him, he had already been at death’s door, surviving only by sheer force of will.
Had the Xie cultivators not been stationed just outside the secret realm, he likely wouldn’t even have made it back to the city alive.
For someone so gravely injured, waking up and immediately being able to sit up and speak…
His vitality was truly astonishing.
Lian Yin sighed inwardly.
Remembering that she was supposed to be an inexperienced rogue cultivator, she was just about to politely decline when Xie Sui spoke again.
“Stop wasting time. Sit down already. I don’t like looking up at people.”
His expression wasn’t particularly pleasant.
When he woke up, the first thing he had seen was a crowd of Xie cultivators surrounding his bed, all those faces squeezed right in front of him.
He had wanted to sit up, only for everyone to pin him back down, leaving him lying there like an invalid.
How was he supposed to face anyone like that?
So he had insisted on sitting up before ordering someone to bring Lian Yin over.
Watching her finally take a seat, Xie Sui said,
“I know you were the one who saved me. I saw you before I lost consciousness…”
His expression grew somewhat awkward.
Lian Yin guessed that he had always regarded her as an amateur. He had probably never imagined that, at the critical moment, the very amateur he looked down on would be the one to drag him to safety.
His confidence had clearly taken quite a blow.
Especially since he had ultimately been carried out of the secret realm unconscious.
Lian Yin quickly steered the conversation back to the secret realm.
“You were unconscious before, so you probably don’t know everything that happened inside. Have they already told you?”
Xie Sui nodded.
“They have. Thanks to you and Daoist Shen…”
As he spoke, his gaze suddenly settled on the storage pouch hanging at Lian Yin’s waist.
Lian Yin instinctively tensed.
The Realm Spirit had only returned this storage pouch to her at the very end.
She hadn’t possessed it before.
Since Xie Sui had been with her from the moment she woke up, there was a good chance he would ask where it had come from and begin suspecting her…
As she hurriedly thought of an explanation, she interrupted his train of thought.
“What is it?”
Xie Sui asked, “Do you have the divine artifact?”