Chapter 18 The Ghosts Are So Heartwarming...

"Senior Brother?"

Seeing that he was still in a daze, Xu Qiubai waved to him: "Aren't you awake yet? You haven't eaten for several days. Don't you want to come and eat something to fill your stomach?"

Distracted by his words, Pei Wenjing snapped out of his reverie and pulled a ball of blue flame from his sleeve.

Xu Qiubai looked at the fire in his hand and put down what he was holding: "What is this?"

“I pulled him back from the Bridge of Helplessness, but there was only one person, I…” Pei Wenjing said, then suddenly coughed twice, covering his mouth, but the coughing only got worse.

Blood seeped from between his fingers, but he merely frowned and said coldly, "I'm not in good condition right now. I'll go down and find the others after I recover."

He coughed, and Shen Cangyu couldn't help but get up and walk to his side, intending to help him catch his breath.

"Don't come any closer!" Pei Wenjing suddenly shouted, black energy emanating from beneath him, and his eyes regained their alternating black and white appearance. The aura around him surged violently, clamoring to keep everyone at bay.

"I have some medicine to regulate Qi, senior brother, do you need it?" Xu Qiubai also came over, but dared not move forward.

Pei Wenjing didn't speak, but simply supported himself on the ground with his hair hanging down to his side. His eyes were closed, and the veins on his forehead throbbed.

Shen Cangyu looked at him, his gaze falling on the blue flame beside him, his brows furrowed. He had gone to the underworld to forcibly bring back the ghosts of the dead; doing something so contrary to common sense would come at a price.

This is a major undertaking, a complete reversal of fortune, and it's definitely not as easy as Pei Wenjing makes it sound, something that can be retrieved at will.

Seeing Pei Wenjing bleeding uncontrollably, Shen Cangyu knew that the price he paid was far from simple.

"Do we really have to save them all? You've already saved one person, isn't that enough?" Shen Cangyu couldn't help but ask.

Pei Wenjing suppressed a cough in his throat and swallowed his words. After a long while, he recovered and said in a hoarse voice, "I am the senior brother of Kunlun this year. This is what I should do."

Regardless of whether it's worth it or not, the titles he carries preordained that he should bear these burdens.

He raised his head, sweat dampening his temples, his eyes deep and unfathomable. In that one glance, Shen Cangyu seemed to see his past life reflected in his eyes.

But the next moment, Pei Wenjing closed his eyes and fell to the side again.

Seeing Pei Wenjing's painstaking efforts for Kunlun, and recalling how he was driven to the brink of extinction by those people in his previous life, Shen Cangyu felt that they were unworthy of him.

"Hey!" Xu Qiubai quickly pulled the person back.

"In his current state, how can he possibly bring the person back from the underworld? I'm afraid he'll lose his own life before he even finds the person." Xu Qiubai looked worried and took out a black pill, stuffing it into Pei Wenjing's mouth.

Lu Yuan, who had been leaning on Shen Cangyu's shoulder, patted her shoulder in agreement with Xu Qiubai's words.

Xu Qiubai's gaze fell on the blue flame to the side: "Whose soul is this? It doesn't look familiar to me. Lu Yuan, come and identify it."

Lu Yuan clapped his paws, indicating that he was unable to speak at the moment.

"Never mind, I'll just put it away for now." Xu Qiubai reached out towards the spirit, trying to figure out how to put it into the Sun and Moon Pot. The moment his fingers touched the flame, a thick layer of frost began to condense from the spot where he and the ghost touched, and in an instant, his skin turned purplish-black.

Xu Qiubai shouted, but his hand remained firmly stuck to the flames.

Shen Cangyu quickly stepped forward and pulled them apart. When her hand touched the ghost, her heart skipped a beat.

So heartwarming...

After Xu Qiubai withdrew his hand, he kept shaking it, trying to get rid of the frost that had formed on his fingers. It took a while for the pain in his fingers to subside.

He looked at his fingers, still shaken: "What happened? Can't I touch this thing directly with my hands? How scary, my fingers almost got frostbite."

The blue flame floated in the air, swaying gently, as if it hadn't just hurt anyone.

Shen Cangyu looked at the flames, recalling how Pei Wenjing had just taken them out of his sleeve. She quietly lifted Pei Wenjing's sleeve and looked at his hands, which were covered by the sleeve. His palms were covered with frostbite marks.

He was also frostbitten by the ghost's flames.

She was the only one who wasn't injured. She didn't understand why this had happened to her; could it be related to her having lived a second life?

Shen Cangyu kept this matter to himself and did not make a fuss.

She felt that after being reborn, many strange things happened to her, such as this ghost, and the green frame she had seen in her mind not long ago.

After killing the demonic cultivator, the green frame in her mind, along with the text, disappeared, and she tried many methods to retrieve it but could not.

After her continuous investigation, she remembered that she first saw that green frame after the appearance of the Heavenly Fragrance Goddess.

The Taoist magic behind the Heavenly Fragrance Goddess is the ability to see the secrets of heaven, to perceive the essence of things and the rules governing the operation of the heavenly way.

Could it be that she was able to see the green frame because of the Heavenly Fragrance Goddess, who granted her some of the power to glimpse the secrets of heaven, allowing her to see the "essence" of this world?

She recalled the scenes she saw after her death in her previous life. She knew this world was just a storybook. Could the words she saw in the green frame be the essence of this world? She saw past stories and current events through the green frame. Wasn't this also a kind of glimpse into the secrets of heaven?

If she weren't vying with a group of people for the Kunlun Immortal Lord's Daoist powers, and if she didn't possess that damned copper coin eye, she would have truly wanted to worship the Heavenly Fragrance Goddess and gain the ability to read stories from her. With that ability, how could Shen Qingyan possibly contend with her?

However, she did not inherit the Taoist magic of the Heavenly Fragrance Goddess. When the Heavenly Fragrance Goddess appeared, she could also see the plot of the storybook. Does this mean that as long as she gets closer to the disciples of the Incense Hall and benefits from their influence, she can also unlock the story?

Shen Cangyu stroked her chin, feeling that her guess made a lot of sense. It seemed she needed to go to Kunlun as soon as possible to unlock all the stories that hadn't yet unfolded.

Remembering that she still had the corpses of the Kunlun disciples in her pot, she said, "The corpses of the Kunlun disciples are still with me, so I'll put them away."

She took out her small teapot, made a hand seal, and remotely collected the ghost into the teapot.

Shen Cangyu tentatively asked, "Now that the ghost has been found and the body is here, does Kunlun have a way to piece them together and bring someone back to life?"

Xu Qiubai hesitated: "To be honest, I've never heard of anyone with such ability. Even my senior brother retrieving a ghost from the underworld seems unbelievable to me. This kind of thing defies common sense and goes against the rules. Righteous cultivators wouldn't do it, except..."

Demonic cultivator.

He swallowed back what he was about to say, but Shen Cangyu understood the meaning behind his words.

She didn't understand why Kunlun insisted that her senior brother was a demonic cultivator. Could it be that this was where she began to glimpse the truth?

Although Shen Cangyu had been cultivating immortality for several years, she had always been involved in worldly affairs. Unlike other disciples of Kunlun, she had seen far too many people.

Initially influenced by Kunlun, she also disliked demonic cultivators. But as she gained more experience in the world, she realized that some demonic cultivators, despite being called demonic cultivators, were far better in nature than ordinary people and some righteous cultivators. However, it seemed that by choosing the path of demonic cultivation, they were destined to never achieve good results in their lives and were destined to bear the prejudice of everyone.

Perhaps she had read fewer scriptures and sacred texts than the people of Kunlun, and didn't understand why demonic cultivators had to die. She only knew that someone like her senior brother, even if he really became a demonic cultivator, would not harm anyone.

Unfortunately, the people of Kunlun could not see clearly and insisted that he came to Kunlun to seek revenge.

“It’s because you haven’t read enough,” Shen Cangyu said righteously. “The Daoist method that Senior Brother inherited is the Taiji Daoist method, which is a proper Daoist method recorded in ancient books. It is the root of all laws returning to oneness. This kind of Daoist method is so powerful that it is not surprising that it can do anything. The reason why Kunlun cannot bring people back to life is because the people of Kunlun are incompetent. If Senior Brother can do it, it can only mean that Senior Brother is more powerful than you.”

Xu Qiubai, after being led astray by her words, suddenly realized that what she said made a lot of sense: "As expected of the senior brother, it turns out that the senior brother has not inherited the Daoist arts all these years because he was waiting for this. He is amazing."

He sighed, then suddenly realized something: "Why do you also call him Senior Brother?"

After he said that, Shen Cangyu realized that in her haste, she had subconsciously addressed Pei Wenjing as her senior brother, forgetting that she was not yet a disciple of Kunlun.

“We’ll have to go to Kunlun eventually,” she smiled. “Besides, don’t you all call him Senior Brother?”

Xu Qiubai was stunned by her smile.

Lu Yuan leaned on Shen Cangyu's shoulder, pacing anxiously. If she had a way to speak, she would have grabbed Shen Cangyu's shoulder and said to her, "Don't be so nice to Xu Qiubai. You don't know, everyone in Kunlun hates him."

A note from the author:

Xu Qiubai (Evil Fleece Version)