He Zhuoming replied, “Of course it’s true, I…”
Halfway through her answer, she suddenly realized something was wrong, and stared blankly down into the earthen pit: the corpse, which had been mostly buried by various wild flowers and grasses, suddenly raised its arm on its own and pushed aside the green leaves and purple flowers covering its face.
He Zhuoming froze, and a moment later let out a delayed, piercing scream: “Ghost—ahhhhhhh—”
As she screamed, she leaped up.
The soil at the edge of the earthen pit, which was already loose, was suddenly kicked away by He Zhuoming. She lost her footing, tumbled down, and landed squarely on top of Lin Qingyun’s corpse. She was rattled with dizziness, taking a long time to recover before slowly propping herself up on Lin Qingyun’s chest with her hands.
Once He Zhuoming sat up, the first thing she saw upon lowering her head was Lin Qingyun’s smiling face.
The dim, segmented rays of the setting sun shone upon his clean and fair face. There were still smeared drops of blood and mud from the roots of the wild flowers and plants on his face, but his complexion was very good, flushed with a healthy glow. When he smiled, his symmetrical dimples still appeared—he looked as healthy and vibrant as could be.
He Zhuoming was dumbfounded, saying incredulously, “You… you… aren’t dead?”
She was so frightened that she couldn’t speak properly, stammering as she stared unblinkingly at Lin Qingyun with her red, swollen eyes, the messy tear tracks still lingering on her face.
Lin Qingyun grabbed her hand and pressed it against his cheek, blowing a puff of warm air into her palm just like when they first met, smiling warmly: “Then go ahead and touch me—do I look like a living person or a dead one?”
His hand was a bit cool, but not with the chill of a dead person. His warm breath swirled between He Zhuoming’s fingers as he spoke.
Clearly, this was the breath belonging only to the living.
He Zhuoming still wore a dazed expression: “But, but just now—just that person—”
Lin Qingyun: “My cultivation is actually quite high. Even if he cut off my head, I might not necessarily die, let alone just stabbing my neck and heart.”
He Zhuoming: “Then, then why—didn’t you fight back?”
Lin Qingyun blinked, using a tone of voice as gentle and kind as could be: “He was no match for me at all. If I had fought back, wouldn’t he have been beaten to death by me? Anyway, he couldn’t kill me, so it was better to pretend to be killed by him so he’d think he’d finally gotten his revenge, which saved a lot of trouble.”
He Zhuoming froze, because Lin Qingyun’s words sounded quite reasonable at first glance, and even rather kind.
Yet she was still dazed, unable to comprehend the current situation, and instinctively followed Lin Qingyun’s topic of conversation, asking, “Do you have a grudge against that person?”
Lin Qingyun thought about it, having little impression of the man, and replied, “I suppose there’s a grudge, otherwise why would he keep chasing me to kill me? Before I met you, he had already ambushed and assassinated me five times…”
He Zhuoming was very shocked: “He assassinated you five times and didn’t succeed? What kind of grudge is it that makes him hate you this much?”
Lin Qingyun also looked troubled and said, “I pretend to be dead every single time; I don’t know how he manages to spot the flaws. As for what kind of grudge it is… haha, I don’t know either! I forgot to ask him. The next time we happen to cross paths, I’ll ask him again.”
Recalling the cold eyes of that black-clad youth, He Zhuoming felt her heart give a sudden, trembling jolt, and muttered to herself, “Next time? With someone that terrifying, it’s best we never meet again…”
In truth, despite the black-clad youth’s fierce behavior and demeanor, no matter how one looked at it, Lin Qingyun—who was still bouncing around alive after being killed five times—was far more terrifying. Yet He Zhuoming did not realize this.
Lin Qingyun’s appearance was too deceptive, and he was her good friend. Moreover, she was truly not a detail-oriented, sensitive person who could read the atmosphere.
Lin Qingyun reached out and patted her waist, saying, “Let’s stop talking about that person for now and discuss something more important. Xiao He, how much longer are you planning to sit on me?”
He Zhuoming: “Ah… I’ll get up right away.”
She scrambled clumsily in a panic from atop Lin Qingyun—the earthen pit was simply dug much too narrow, and during the process of climbing out, He Zhuoming kept stepping on Lin Qingyun’s liver one moment and his hand the next.
Amidst He Zhuoming’s overlapping chorus of “I’m sorry,” she finally managed to climb out of the pit. On her final kick to pull herself up, she even dislodged a large clump of mud from the pit’s edge, which fell squarely onto Lin Qingyun.
Lin Qingyun glanced at his clothes, which were now covered in blood stains, mud, and wild flower juices, his emotions transitioning gradually from a subtle sense of disgust to complete, accepting numbness.
Forget it, what was there for him to bicker about with Xiao He?
He easily leaped out of the shallow pit, took out a shovel, and began filling the pit back in, while He Zhuoming stood off to the side, lowering her head to pluck fragments of wild flowers stuck to her clothes.
As she plucked them, He Zhuoming remembered something and said to Lin Qingyun, “Your horse ran away.”
Lin Qingyun showed no particular reaction to this, continuing to focus intently on filling the pit, answering without even raising his head: “It’s fine, let it run if it wants to.”
He Zhuoming asked, “Will it run back?”
Lin Qingyun shrugged, saying indifferently, “Who knows? After all, it’s a wild beast by nature, and wild beasts haven’t been to school, so they do things purely on whim—whereas someone like me with brains and reason finds it hard to understand what a horse is thinking.”
As dull-witted as He Zhuoming was, she could still sense that Lin Qingyun’s words sounded somewhat like self-praise. Aside from picking up on a hint of Lin Qingyun’s subtext, He Zhuoming felt a stinging pain in her palms with a considerable delay.
She stopped tidying her clothes, opened both hands to look at her palms, and saw redness, peeling skin, and threads of blood seeping into the lines of her skin.
This was only normal; after all, before traveling through, the most strenuous work He Zhuoming’s hands had ever done was holding a mechanical pencil to write homework and exam papers. Now that she had spent an entire afternoon digging dirt with a wooden sword, it would be a miracle if she hadn’t gotten injured.
Over by the pit, Lin Qingyun was still talking away to himself: “Xiao He, the pit you dug was far too shallow. Good thing I didn’t actually die—if someone used this pit to bury my corpse, wild beasts would have dug it up and eaten it before long.”
He Zhuoming: “So you were just pretending to be dead the whole time?”
Lin Qingyun leaned on his shovel, raising his head to flash a brilliant smile at her: “That’s right, how about that? Did I act convincingly? I told you before, I know all sorts of little tricks for escaping, and playing dead is one of them.”
He Zhuoming: “So while I was digging your grave, picking flowers, and reciting a eulogy, you were also pretending to be dead, right?”
Lin Qingyun finally sensed that something was amiss, because He Zhuoming’s current tone could hardly be called friendly. Aside from crying, He Zhuoming’s expression of other emotions tended to be somewhat sluggish, and anger was no exception.
First her face went expressionless; a second or two later, her brows slowly furrowed. By the time she finished speaking, her eyes had slowly rounded out, her mouth turned down into a pout as she stared at Lin Qingyun.
Lin Qingyun choked for a moment, his smile receding slightly as he locked eyes with He Zhuoming—He Zhuoming said, “Why aren’t you speaking?”
Lin Qingyun: “Are you mad? I was just joking with you.”
He dropped the shovel, leaned in close to He Zhuoming, and slightly stooped to accommodate her height: “Woah~ why make such a fierce expression? Staring at me like that, I’m terrified!”
He Zhuoming abruptly stepped back two or three paces, putting distance between herself and Lin Qingyun.
Not understanding, Lin Qingyun assumed this fit of anger was just like the last time, so he took a few steps forward to follow, sticking close to her once more with his long-lashed eyes curved in a smile.
He Zhuoming put on a straight face and said, “I want to break off our friendship with you.”
The smile froze on Lin Qingyun’s face, and he almost doubted if his ears were playing tricks on him: “What does breaking off relations mean?”
He Zhuoming: “It means I’m not going to be friends with you anymore—you don’t respect me, you tease me, I’m not going to talk to you!”
Having blurted it all out in one breath, she forcefully shoved Lin Qingyun away. Lin Qingyun was still pondering what He Zhuoming had just said, caught completely off guard as he was pushed straight back, though his feet didn’t budge.
Seeing that she couldn’t push him, He Zhuoming simply retreated on her own, widening the distance between them once again. She stopped looking at Lin Qingyun with sparkling eyes, nor did she face him with the soft expression of trusting dependence waiting to be helped.
She maintained an angry expression directed at Lin Qingyun’s face, laced with a deliberate coldness and alienation.
At this point, Lin Qingyun finally figured it out: breaking off relations meant breaking off relations, meaning He Zhuoming was refusing to talk to him anymore—just because he had played dead for a bit while He Zhuoming was digging that useless dirt pit, while she was picking those messy wild flowers, while she was delivering those unfulfillable eulogy lines?
He could have walked away long ago, but he had chosen to come back, and instead of being moved to tears over his resurrection, Xiao He was actually breaking off relations with him?
Lin Qingyun laughed in exasperation.
Lin Qingyun: “You want to break off relations with me just because of this boring little matter?”
He Zhuoming furrowed her face, arguing on grounds of reason: “This is not a boring little matter at all! You didn’t treat me as a good friend from the start! You lied to me by playing dead, making me dig a grave all afternoon, and I even planned to put avenging you ahead of going home—turn out you didn’t die at all, you liar!”
Lin Qingyun pointed at the wooden sword in her hand, putting on an equally cold expression as he said, “Fine, let’s break it off. That sword was carved by me, give it back.”
He Zhuoming: “I’ll give it back to you then!”
She raised her hand and tossed the wooden sword over to Lin Qingyun.
Lin Qingyun then pointed at the clothes on her body: “The clothes you’re wearing are mine too, give them back.”
He Zhuoming resolutely refused: “No! If I give them back to you I won’t have anything to wear. I’ll return them to you once I get down the mountain and buy new ones—and as for saving my life, once I’ve finished cultivating, I’ll pay you back for that too!”
Lin Qingyun spun the wooden sword in his hand, his mind buzzing with anger as he sneered, “Talk is cheap. Once we get down the mountain, the world is vast; if you just wander off anywhere and renege on your debt, what can I possibly do to you?”
This was a lie.
In truth, no matter where Xiao He went, he could find her. It was simply that Lin Qingyun was feeling out of sorts right now, so he had to say something to block He Zhuoming’s words—looking at her righteous expression, looking at the tone of her voice.
He had merely told a few white lies, so what right did Xiao He have to be fierce with him!
He Zhuoming said with a cold face, “I’m not you; I won’t renege on my debts. If you don’t believe me, then until I finish repaying this favor, you can just follow me around.”
Lin Qingyun: “Follow you around? I’m not that idle, and I wasn’t born to revolve around you. I have plenty of my own things to do…”
Before he could finish speaking, He Zhuoming had already turned and walked away.
Furious, Lin Qingyun caught up in two or three strides and interrogated: “Why are you like this? I hadn’t even finished talking!”
He Zhuoming covered her ears and quickened her pace—Lin Qingyun reached out and grabbed the back of her collar, causing He Zhuoming to lean backward and bump into his chest.
The scratched skin on her palm scraped against the fabric as she was pulled, and He Zhuoming let out a “hisss” of pain. Lin Qingyun lowered his gaze, catching sight of the wound on her hand.
His brows furrowed, and he directly reached out to grab He Zhuoming’s wrist: “What’s wrong with your hand… did you hurt it while digging the pit?”
He Zhuoming: “Let go of me, I don’t want to talk to you!”
Lin Qingyun: “You…”
He Zhuoming turned her head back, being dead serious as she grew angry with him: “If you don’t let go right now, I’m going to bite you.”
Lin Qingyun glanced at his own arm; the sleeve layer on his arm was covered in blood and mud, looking horrifyingly dirty.
He hesitated for a moment, saying, “Can you really bring yourself to bite that?”
He Zhuoming: “I don’t discuss such private topics with life-savers of ordinary standing.”
In the end, Lin Qingyun let go of her wrist, but he also returned the wooden sword. He Zhuoming didn’t take it, only looking back at Lin Qingyun with a gaze full of suspicion and vigilance.
Lin Qingyun pouted: “The wooden sword was a gift for you. Taking back something given to someone else is not a classy thing to do.”
He Zhuoming reminded him: “You just told me to take off my clothes and return them to you.”
Lin Qingyun: “…”