Falling petals and rain startled my heart in spring.
Chapter Forty-Eight
"What can you do to me?" Yu Tingting tilted her head back, revealing the hickeys on her neck, and said provocatively with a smirk, "Go ahead and report me, tell the elders."
Qu Suiwan knew this person was trying to provoke her, so she quickly stepped forward and held Zhou Yulin's hand, signaling her not to get too excited.
"From the Hehuan Sect?" To everyone's surprise, Zhou Yulin simply asked this question calmly.
Yu Tingting seemed to have been touched on something, and her expression suddenly changed. "I don't understand what you're talking about. Zhou Yulin, if you want to sue, then go ahead and sue."
Zhou Yulin glanced at the two of them, then left the dormitory without looking back. Qu Suiwan cursed under her breath and followed her.
"Are we just going to leave them like this? What if it happens next time?"
Zhou Yulin chuckled, "Then let's observe it in person, what else can we do?"
Upon hearing this, Qu Suiwan's face turned ashen. "That's too cruel. My eyes can't withstand such torture."
"No, the Qingyun Sect doesn't allow dual cultivation, so just use that as an excuse to change dormitories."
Qu Suiwan's eyes lit up when she heard this, and she chased after him.
"How do you know that the Qingyu Sect doesn't allow dual cultivation?"
Zhou Yulin recalled for a moment, and it seemed that Quan Jin had told her this himself. She simply said casually, "Just a guess."
Zhou Yulin leisurely went to the Elders' Court to complain. Qu Suiwan also wanted to go with her, but unexpectedly, a handsome guy suddenly appeared halfway there. This girl instantly betrayed her and busied herself flirting with the man.
Just as Zhou Yulin arrived at the Elders' Council, a fierce argument erupted from inside, accompanied by pushing, shoving, and breaking sounds. A man with a dark face walked out from inside.
It was late spring, and a long wind blew, causing thousands of pear trees to shed their blossoms, the snow-white petals fluttering in the air. Everything came to a standstill the moment Zhou Yulin saw the other person's face clearly.
Her breathing suddenly stopped, and she didn't even realize when it had started to drizzle.
The man stood under the eaves, his hand reaching out to touch the raindrops, before he looked up at the person staring at him.
"It's you?"
The man was wearing a blue and white Taoist robe, with his hair tied up with a crown. His meticulous and disciplined appearance was completely different from the second senior brother she remembered.
An oil-paper umbrella appeared in his hand without his noticing. "It's drizzling, and I think you need this umbrella more than I do."
Zhou Yulin held the oil-paper umbrella and watched the other person's dashing departing figure.
He wanted to say something, but the words caught in his throat.
What are you saying? Are you asking if you know Linghu Miao?
The slight resemblance was enough to make Zhou Yulin lose her composure.
The second senior brother's name is Linghu Miao. He was a child that Master picked up when he was only six years old. He couldn't remember his own name, so Master gave him a name.
The year he disappeared was the year before the Battle of Jinyang.
The second senior brother had a big argument with his master in the main hall, and the two parted on bad terms.
Later, the second senior brother took on the most difficult sect mission of the Xuanling Sect at that time, and went to Guyao Mountain by his own will. He was gone for a year and then disappeared without a trace.
Back then, Zhou Yulin went to the Talisman Academy to ask the elders to write many tracking talismans, but all of them ended in failure. Later, she went to the Divination Academy to find someone to tell her fortune. She only found out that the person was still alive, but his traces had been deliberately erased and could not be calculated.
If it were in the Qingyun Sect, then everything would be traceable.
The Qingyun Sect has a barrier that can conceal all means of tracking from the outside world.
This is also a form of protection that the Qingyun Sect provides for its disciples.
The rain intensified, and Zhou Yulin walked under the eaves, looking at the umbrella in her hand, tightening her grip little by little, feeling an indescribable unease.
From Jiangning onwards, it seemed as if there was a rope pushing her little by little from behind.
Jiangning is where her rebirth began, Jinling is where she returned to save her senior brother who had fallen into demonic possession, so does Chang'an also mean something?
She steadied herself and decided to start by inquiring about the person she had just met.
When she returned from the Elders' Court, the rain intensified, pattering against the eaves and green tiles. She stood in the downpour, opening her oil-paper umbrella, on which was painted a picture of a peach tree with a girl wielding a sword beneath it, and a figure standing not far away gazing into the distance.
As Zhou Yulin stepped into the rain, someone called out to her from behind.
"Zhou Yulin".
She turned around, and the person who came was standing in the rain without an umbrella. She had been in the Qingyun Sect for almost a month, and this was the first time she had met Chen Muyao in the Qingyun Sect.
"Oh, you didn't bring an umbrella?" Zhou Yulin smiled at the other person.
Chen Muyao seemed unconcerned about the rain. He stepped forward and stood outside the edge of the umbrella. Strangely enough, the oil-paper umbrella seemed to separate the two people.
"I need to talk to you."
This is quite unusual.
Zhou Yulin looked at Chen Muyao, who was soaked by the rain, his hair sticking to his face, his dark eyes looking at her quietly, like a puppy waiting to be taken in during a downpour. Zhou Yulin was startled by this sudden thought that popped into her head.
Where should we talk?
Zhou Yulin's gaze towards Chen Muyao held no extra emotion whatsoever.
He stood in the rain, but she was oblivious, even complaining that the rain wasn't heavy enough.
Where would you like to talk?
Zhou Yulin thought for a few seconds, her gaze falling on the hem of her skirt, which was wet with raindrops. Today she was wearing her newly issued disciple's robe. "There is a pavilion not far away."
After the soundproof talisman was placed down, Zhou Yulin turned to look at the silent Chen Muyao.
The man was sitting on the stone bench when Zhou Yulin noticed that his complexion was off. His usually pale skin was now flushed. Even though it was raining heavily outside, he shouldn't be soaking wet. He looked more like he had just been pulled out of the river than someone who had been caught in the rain.
"Just say what you have to say." The attitude wasn't exactly friendly.
"Xu Zuiyue drugged me," he said expressionlessly.
"..." Zhou Yulin blinked and asked the crucial question, "Then why did you come to me? I'm not a medicine cultivator?"
She said there was no cure for this medicine and that she wanted to force a fait accompli between us.
Zhou Yulin listened with great interest, propped her head up with her hand, and chimed in, "That's very good."
He called out her name, "Zhou Yulin, I'm not joking."
Zhou Yulin looked the man up and down and concluded, "They're quite a good match, a handsome man and a beautiful woman. So you want me to help you find Xu Zuiyue, right?"
She was turning to leave when a hot hand grabbed her slender wrist.
Are you still angry?
Zhou Yulin held her breath, unsure whether to retaliate or not, and immediately retorted, "What do I have to be angry about?"
"..." Chen Muyao seemed to realize something as well, and her back stiffened.
"It's your freedom to like whomever you want, why should I be angry?"
Zhou Yulin spoke very casually, "My jumping off the cliff was my own choice, it has nothing to do with you, and it has even less to do with your choice of the person you like."
"I do think Yin Xinglu's methods are despicable, but I won't blame her for it. There's a cause for every crime, and I can tell the difference."
"The rain is heavy and the wind is strong. If Young Master Chen has nothing else to say, I must go." She looked at Chen Muyao, who was holding her hand, and reminded him softly.
"Zhou Yulin, I don't like being used, no one is an exception. There is only one person who can make me wholeheartedly and willingly let him use me without any regrets." After saying the last words she wanted to say, Chen Muyao slowly loosened her grip, as if she had lost all her strength and means.
As Zhou Yulin opened her oil-paper umbrella, preparing to leave, she paused, but didn't turn around. "So, you came to find me just to say these things?"
Her predecessors in her mind had been itching to get back to work.
"Sis, although I don't know what happened to you before that caused you to break through to the Golden Core stage in one go, you have ready-made cultivation materials right in front of you. You can try it out!"
"Think about it, this kid was drugged and ran out to find you. He didn't say it, but his intentions couldn't be clearer, right?"
Zhou Yulin was completely unaffected by the voice in her mind.
I walked into the rain with an umbrella.
Raindrops fell beneath the pavilion, leaving only the lonely figure of the boy sitting there, desolate and forlorn.
In this doomed relationship, he kept taking the gamble.
After all that scheming, he still couldn't tell whether it was genuine affection or feigned.
He sat there for a long time.
"Chen Muyao." A voice suddenly came from behind.
The woman, panting, leaned against a pillar of the pavilion. "I've booked a room at Laifu Inn. Come on, I'll take you to see a healer."
It turned out that the rain had stopped long ago.
*
Actually, this kind of thing has happened before.
Zhou Yulin had seen it more than three or four times.
Having achieved fame at a young age, the two inevitably share many similarities in their destinies.
For example, drugging is something that is almost impossible to prevent.
She and Chen Muyao held high positions on the Hehuan Sect's bounty list over the years. Ever since she turned eighteen, she had to carefully inspect all the food she handled before daring to eat it.
Once, she and Chen Muyao happened to meet in a desolate wilderness. At that time, neither of them had brought any food, and it would take at least three days to fly to the nearest town on their swords.
At this moment, she remembered that she had rescued a rogue cultivator on the way. The cultivator was extremely grateful and gave her some things. Zhou Yulin took them out and found two sesame seed cakes inside.
Although she was very reluctant, she still gave Chen Muyao a piece.
Then... both of them were given the medicine.
That's a really sad story.
If she hadn't dodged quickly, Chen Muyao would have been the first to stab her.
Zhou Yulin snapped out of her reverie and looked at the herbalist she had found—the same herbalist who had cured her and Chen Muyao of their drug years ago. "How is it?"
This man came from the Valley of Divine Medicines, and he muttered to himself, "The medicine is not in your body, the key is in your heart! Mental illness is hard to cure, and knots in the heart are hard to untie. It is by no means easy to cure the disease."
Zhou Yulin said coldly, "Speak like a human being."
"I've never seen this medicine before, so I'm not sure if it can be an antidote."
Zhou Yulin nodded, "Try the old method first, and we'll talk about it if it doesn't work."
The herbalist casually rummaged through the medicine box a couple of times, then asked, "What's your relationship with him?"
It sounded like a casual question.
Zhou Yulin glanced at the other person and said, "What, can't I come to see a doctor if I don't have any connections?"
The herbalist replied very sincerely, "No, it's just that I'm worried about my medicine. It would be best if you two could handle it yourselves."
"Why don't you two get together? Seriously."
Zhou Yulin resisted the urge to strangle the medicine cultivator who was spouting nonsense with a straight face.
"Why don't you reconsider?" The herbalist tilted his head and said seriously, "I remember, I saw you a few years ago."
“It was a snowy day. He carried you in and only said two sentences to me.”
"I'll save you first."
"We must save you first, no matter what."
The words touched Zhou Yulin's ears, and her heart suddenly felt extremely heavy.
Although they were only separated by a door, she suddenly realized that the distance between them was greater than a thousand doors.
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