99 Truth (Part 9)
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The sky suddenly changed, dark clouds gathered, and birds circled in the sky for a long time.
The green-robed immortal stood with his hands behind his back, looked up at the sky, and put his hand on his throbbing eyebrows.
"Brother, what are you planning?"
Immortal Xuande turned his head and saw a man walking towards him with narrowed eyes and a forced smile.
The muscles on his face twitched, and he bowed emotionlessly, "Brother, you're joking. How could I dare to hide anything from you?"
"I don't think so," Yun Ya put his arm around his shoulder, his smile ambiguous. "After all, didn't you hide that incident from me and your deceased senior brother?"
A sudden drop of sweat broke out on Immortal Xuande's forehead. He waved his sleeves to cover it up, saying, "It's been very cold lately. If you have nothing else to do, I'll go back to my room."
Without waiting for an answer, he quickly turned around and walked into the house. When he was about to close the door, a hand suddenly came out and got stuck in the gap.
Immortal Yunya forced the door open and stepped in, no longer smiling as he had just been. "I heard that all the disciples you sent to the demon world died. It seems your miraculous elixirs haven't worked, and you've even learned to fight back."
"Brother, I don't understand what you are talking about..."
"Are you still pretending to be me?" Yun Ya glared at him, his tone rather disdainful. "Besides your loyal disciples, only poor Ming Xin and I know what you did back then. So, why don't you just kill me too?"
He suppressed his smile and simply stopped beating around the bush with the other party: "Brother, if you have something to say, just say it directly. You're beating around the bush like this, and it's making me confused."
"Junior brother, I'm not trying to argue with you," Yun Ya waved his folding fan and laughed again, "but if something goes wrong with the Mirage Mirror, the consequences won't be something you can bear alone."
After saying this, he suddenly folded his folding fan, pointed the handle at his chest, and said threateningly, "Senior Brother will naturally not watch you being judged by the world. Since it is irreversible, why don't you and I join forces to make this mistake even bigger."
Xuande's pupils trembled: "You...what do you mean by that?"
"Back then, you captured so many unarmed people, wasn't it just to use them to refine some kind of elixir?" Yun Ya snorted coldly, his tone rather disdainful. "If people knew that Immortal Xuande, who was so righteous and only wanted to protect the people, had resorted to such means and murdered so many innocent people for his own selfish gain, what would be the consequences?"
Xuande's face suddenly darkened, and his tone became agitated. "Brother, they don't trust me, so don't you trust me either? I'm doing this to better protect the Three Realms. After that war, the Immortal Realm was in great decline. You saw it with your own eyes. Sacrificing a few insignificant trash in exchange for peace for everyone else, is there anything wrong with what I did?!"
"Why are you yelling at me?" Yun Ya frowned and deliberately slapped the place on the sleeve of his robe that he had just touched with his fan. He asked sarcastically, "According to you, Ming Xin is also an insignificant waste?"
Xuande's expression changed again, and his lips began to tremble: "I... I didn't mean to kill him. It was an accident. He wanted to die on his own!"
His tone became increasingly hurried, a hint of fear in his eyes. "I'll do what I want to do. I thought all four of them had perished, but I never imagined... I never imagined that when I went to the demon world that day, I'd actually meet someone I've known."
Yun Ya was also startled when he heard this, and hurriedly pressed his shoulder and asked, "Who did you see?"
"It was his little daughter who had never learned any proper magic," he said tremblingly after a long pause. "I never expected to see her again. I thought she had died in the ruins along with her parents."
"You must have remembered it wrong..."
"Impossible!" Xuande's shoulders trembled, his emotions becoming even more agitated. "I couldn't have remembered it wrongly. I even asked her name, and the book that was with her—that was the one I refined to control the Mirage Mirror. I didn't expect it to escape on its own and betray me."
Yun Ya frowned and pressed on: "What happened next? Did you kill her?"
"Yes, I... I made a foolish decision," he said, covering his face in agony, his soul trembling. "When I saw her, I remembered my tragically deceased senior brother. I also remembered... I also remembered how, when she was very little, she would always smile and call me uncle, asking me to hold her. The moment I ordered her to be tricked into the woods and put to death, I regretted it. She had no recollection of the past, nor of who I was. Why would I kill a little girl? But, but when I arrived at the scene of the attack, I found that she was gone, and lying on the ground were the bodies of my disciples."
Yun Ya released his hand, clearly not believing him. "Xuan De, if you still want me to help you, don't lie to me at this time! How could a mere immortal with such low spiritual power possibly kill your disciples?"
"No, she didn't do it. Someone else did it." Xuande looked at him, the pain in his eyes turning into pleading. "Brother, at this point, what else can I hide from you? You already know everything that happened back then. If I continue to lie to you, wouldn't I be courting death?"
Before he could finish, Immortal Yunya raised his hand and threw the vase beside him, smashing it straight out of the window. "Who is it?!"
The vase flew out but didn't make a landing sound. Xuande Immortal Venerable's face turned pale and he immediately rushed out with his sword, "Who's eavesdropping?"
"Master, it's me—"
Qu Lingfei raised his hands and closed his eyes tightly when his master's sword stabbed at him, but he did not intend to block it.
"You?" Immortal Xuande put down his sword and looked at the two suspiciously. "Why are you here? Have you done everything I asked? Also, what did you hear just now?"
"Master, my junior sister and I were originally going to report to you, but we didn't expect our senior uncle to be here too. We're sorry to bother you two. But we have no intention of offending you, and we dare not eavesdrop on your conversation." He bowed deeply, his face full of guilt, and said, "That demon is truly difficult to deal with. My junior sister and I couldn't trap him even with our combined strength. Even the treasure you ordered us to retrieve..."
"Master, here's the treasure," Qiu Yan said, holding up the black jade in both hands. She shouted, drowning out his words, and under his shocked gaze, she said, "I told you I'd ask for your permission before coming here, but Senior Brother is impatient. As soon as he got the treasure, he couldn't wait to come looking for you. He said he was worried it wouldn't be safe in our hands, and it would be terrible if we lost it. And now, right after arriving, he's received the vase that Senior Uncle gave him as a reward."
After these words were spoken, Immortal Yunya coughed twice and turned his head away slightly embarrassedly.
Immortal Master Xuande frowned slightly, took the black jade and looked at it for a long time. Probably after confirming that there was no problem, he put it into his sleeve.
"Did you really not hear anything?" he asked again worriedly.
"Master, we..."
Qiuyan quickly stepped on his foot, signaling him to shut up, then said with a smile, "Master, it's all thanks to your wise teachings. Even if we were given a hundred times the courage, we would never dare to do such a thing."
After she said that, she lowered her head and waited calmly for her master's decision. When she heard the order "You go down first", she pulled Qu Lingfei up and left without hesitation.
After the two men walked away, Immortal Yunya turned around and said in disbelief, "You just let them go like that? What if they hear you?"
"Brother, rest assured," Xuande said with a smile, looking at the Xuanyu in his hand. "From what I know about these two disciples, they hate evil with all their might, and even I can't make them give up their so-called sense of justice. So if they really heard it, they wouldn't return the Xuanyu to me."
Qu Lingfei was truly bewildered this time. After she walked away, he let go of her hand and said anxiously, "Junior Sister, why... why is this different from what we agreed on? Besides, you heard what Master said, so why are you still handing it over?"
Qiuyan stopped, put her hands on her hips, and looked at him calmly: "Brother, didn't you just say you wouldn't listen?"
His face flushed: "I...you..."
"Okay, I won't tease you anymore," Qiuyan chuckled and said, "Think about it, if you were the master and I said I didn't hear it, would you believe me?"
Qu Lingfei thought seriously for a long time and finally shook his head.
"That's it, isn't it?" She smiled playfully and said proudly, "Based on my understanding of Master, if we give him the treasure, it will show that we still trust him as always. Then won't he be willing to let us go?"
After hearing this, he slapped his head in sudden realization: "So that's how it is! Junior Sister is really smart. It was me who was too impatient and almost made a big mistake."
"However, I don't know what that thing actually does, and what exactly did Master and the others mean by 'what happened back then'." Qiu Yan raised his head and gazed into the distance, saying, "Brother, I'm just now realizing that the most difficult problem is no longer the Demon Realm."
"As for what it is—" She turned to look at him and said with a smile, "Brother, are you willing to go back to the demon world with me to investigate?"
Qu Lingfei smiled knowingly: "Junior sister, if you invite me, I will naturally not refuse."
*
The days after returning seemed to pass much faster than before. Li Jintang leaned against the window with his hands on his chin, gazing at the green meadow not far away, and buried his head in the pages of a book, writing a few words:
"After being home for a few days, I still feel it's not real. Xie An said I just went down the mountain to collect herbs, but I know he must be lying. I remember that I was transported into a book. Now I should have walked out of the book with him and returned home safely, right? I told my sister that I was away for so long because I accidentally entered a book, but she didn't believe me and said I was sleep deaf...
Xie An hasn't come to see me for three days. Daddy won't let me go down the mountain, and I don't know where he is. Will he come today? Can I see him?
After writing the last word, she heard someone calling her softly from behind. She turned around and saw her elder sister smiling at her.
"Silly sister, why are you wearing a bell on your foot?" Li Baiwei walked forward, looked at the bell, and couldn't help laughing. "If Dad knew you bought this thing when you came down the mountain, he would definitely scold you."
Li Jintang became anxious when he heard this, and quickly squatted down to try to pull the bell off, but after some effort, there was no other change except that the bell kept ringing.
"Sister, what should I do? You know I'm most afraid of being scolded by my father."
Li Baiwei didn't answer this, and then pointed out the window and said, "I don't have a solution, but the young man who sent you back that day might have a solution."
She turned around upon hearing that and saw the young man in white who had just appeared in her mind standing under a tree covered with fallen flowers.
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