“Hiss~”
“Where am I?”
Ye Shu sucked in a cold breath from the pain, then opened his eyes groggily.
What came into view was a dark brown rock wall.
It was the Lion King’s cave.
It seems Little Beast brought him back.
His arms, thighs, chest, abdomen, and neck were all covered in bandages; he was practically a mummy.
Not far from his side, the xiongyuan sword, also wrapped in bandages, lay on his right.
It was clear at a glance that Lin Qingxue had picked up the fragments piece by piece and barely pieced them back together.
“Broken sword, broken man.”
“And wearing the same style of hospital gown.”
Ye Shu’s mouth twitched.
In a way, he and this sword were fellow sufferers.
But that wasn’t what Ye Shu found hardest to keep a straight face about.
What was hardest was…
When he struggled to lift his head, he realized that Xiao Bai was wedged between his legs, his left arm was being held in Lin Qingxue’s embrace, and Little Beast was lying on his chest.
They were all sound asleep, sleeping very sweetly.
Drool was leaking from the corner of Xiao Bai’s mouth, Little Beast’s tail was swaying back and forth, and Lin Qingxue was mumbling incoherently in her sleep.
None of them cared whether he, the patient, was sleeping comfortably.
“Are you awake?”
At that moment, a faint voice came from mid-air.
Following that, Danxia’s stunning figure quietly appeared.
She hovered in the air, looking at Ye Shu with complex eyes.
“Shu’er, why did you know Sect Master Feng Mengli would appear?”
In the quiet night, Danxia finally asked the question that had been puzzling her.
Even though she had an answer long ago, she still hoped to hear a “no” from Ye Shu’s mouth.
Hearing this, Ye Shu said:
“I have memories of your past lives.”
Not a single word of defense, not a single stammer.
He just said it out bluntly like that.
It left Danxia stunned.
It was like this again, this same attitude of frankness.
“Then why are you only saying it now?”
“Then why didn’t you ask?”
“…”
“Then were you…
acting before?”
“Does it matter?”
Danxia froze.
She hurriedly began to defend herself:
“How is it not important?
If you really are Rebirth, if you actually failed me, if you were just pretending, if you were only doing it to make me feel guilty, if you were just…”
But halfway through, her voice grew quieter and quieter, until it disappeared completely.
Because she suddenly realized that Ye Shu was right.
Under the premise that their relationship would end once they left the Magical Beast Mountain Range, whether Ye Shu was Rebirth…
actually…
had no meaning.
Danxia fell silent again.
Only this time, she was silent for much longer.
If there was anything she had learned from Ye Shu over these many years, it was that if you set up an answer before asking a question, you would definitely lose miserably.
Ye Shu didn’t look at Danxia again.
He wouldn’t explain things like “your memories are all fake,” because trust is a very fragile thing.
If you believe, you believe; there is no need for explanation.
If you don’t believe, you don’t believe; even if you explain, there will be a next time, so he never cared about a person’s personality.
He only looked at what people did, not what they thought.
“Judge by actions, not by intentions; if you judge by intentions, there is no perfect person in the world.”
“Judge by intentions, not by actions; if you judge by actions, there are no filial sons in poor families.”
He softly whispered this famous saying from the ancients, unable to help but sigh at the wisdom of the older generation; they really saw things clearly.
“Judge by actions, not by intentions…”
Danxia murmured these words softly, her heart tangled in conflict.
“Then, all the things from the past life…
do they count as actions or intentions?”
She couldn’t figure it out.
But looking at Ye Shu’s cold gaze, she suddenly realized that everything seemed to have returned to how it was at the beginning.
The most familiar…
strangers.
Seeing that Ye Shu didn’t want to say more, she silently returned to the ring.
She needed time to think about what she was actually thinking.
Ye Shu lay silently on the stone slab, looking up at the stalactites on the cave ceiling.
Just then, a dull thumping sound rang out.
Ye Shu instinctively looked up.
The mighty Lion King was returning to the cave in the moonlight, carrying a Yao Beast in its mouth that looked like a cow with four horns on its head, looking very delicious.
This must be tonight’s dinner.
Hmph…
The Lion King gently placed the cow-like beast on the ground, then let out a low snort towards Ye Shu, nodding its head towards the depths of the cave.
“Are…
are you asking me to go with you?”
Seeing the Lion King’s gentle movements, clearly not wanting to disturb the resting Little Beast and Lin Qingxue, Ye Shu opened his mouth somewhat unsurely, asking silently with his lips.
The Lion King nodded.
Calling him alone?
Ye Shu couldn’t help but feel strange and confused, unsure of what the Lion King wanted to do, but it certainly wouldn’t harm him.
So he carefully pulled his hand out of Lin Qingxue’s grip.
“Don’t…
don’t go…”
“Heartless Man…
big liar…
playboy…
it’s all your fault…
it’s all because of you…
I’m sorry…”
Lin Qingxue muttered uneasily in her sleep, her hands clutching Ye Shu’s left arm tightly, as if afraid he would run away.
Damn, this won’t work.
Ye Shu frowned; if he pulled his hand out by force, Lin Qingxue would definitely wake up.
Don’t misunderstand; he wasn’t being chivalrous.
It was just that the Lion King had only called him, and this matter was clearly some secret of the Lion King that wasn’t suitable for Lin Qingxue to know.
If she woke up and insisted on following, it would be very troublesome.
It was even possible they might be silenced.
But the Lion King was still waiting and couldn’t wait too long.
After thinking for a moment, a flash of inspiration struck Ye Shu, and he tucked the xiongyuan sword—which was also wrapped up like a mummy—into Lin Qingxue’s arms.
This actually worked.
Lin Qingxue instinctively hugged the long sword tightly, and her mumbling changed from “Heartless Man” to, “Mom and Dad…
I’m sorry…
Qingxue broke the sword…
wuu…”
“Poor child.”
Ye Shu shook his head, then used a hand chop to make the already soundly sleeping Little Beast sleep even more sweetly.
With that, he finally climbed up.
As for Xiao Bai?
Irrelevant.
Whether she woke up or not didn’t matter; the Lion King wouldn’t see anyway.
“Wuu oh!”
Xiao Bai, knocked over by Ye Shu getting up, fell hard to the ground and let out a scream like an opera singer.
She rubbed her butt, baring her teeth and grimacing.
“You…
you abominable guy, don’t you know how to be chivalrous at all?”
“Where is the ‘chivalry’?
I only see a little idiot.”
Ye Shu smiled faintly, then strode forward, following the Lion King’s pace, slowly walking towards a certain rock wall in the cave.
The Lion King stopped here.
Then, it sat down and used its claw to draw and write on the hard ground.
Before long, a vivid picture took shape on the ground.
Ye Shu looked closely.
On the drawing, there was an old scholar with a beard, holding a scroll, standing in front of a podium, and below him was a little girl writing and drawing.
The Lion King raised its claw, pointed at Ye Shu, and then pointed at Little Beast, who was sleeping soundly on the stone platform.
“You mean…”
“You want me to teach it to read?”
Ye Shu thought for a moment before bursting out these words in disbelief.
It wasn’t because he couldn’t understand the drawing, but because he understood the drawing and couldn’t understand what the Lion King was thinking, hence his disbelief.
“Hmph…”
The Lion King snorted and nodded.
“But what are you hoping to gain?
Even if your Yao Beast clan learns to read, you can’t speak, so what is the point?”
Ye Shu asked, frowning.
The next second, the Lion King answered his confusion.
It slowly turned to the side, and Ye Shu then discovered a small crevice between the rock walls behind the Lion King, and inside that crevice was a fruit radiating brilliant light.
“That is!”
Xiao Bai exclaimed.
“A Shape-Shifting Fruit?!”
Letting Little Beast shift its shape was, of course, excellent.
But Ye Shu frowned slightly, because teaching Little Beast would inevitably mean staying here…
and he had said four chapters ago that he would not stay for anything.
“Roar…”
The Lion King seemed to see his hesitation and stretched its claw towards the storage rings all over the cave, the meaning very clear: “As long as you teach my daughter, all of these will be yours.”
“Damn, what do you take me for?”
Ye Shu’s expression was ugly.
Then he reached out and grabbed the Lion King’s claw.
“Deal.”
“Hey, didn’t you say you wouldn’t stay for anyone?”
Xiao Bai was a bit indignant.
Ye Shu replied with a straight face,
“She is not a person; she is a Demonic Beast.”
It might not seem tempting right now but who knows what the future holds?
“And If you’re enjoying it, drop a Power Stone for me!”