Chapter 48 After all, the river flows eastward; you are not worthy to be the Fragrant Lady.
"Heavenly Snow Lotus?" Xi Bingyi's expression was strange. She lowered her head, her hands trembling as she tucked them into her sleeves. "Isn't that..."
Xi Ling spoke calmly, but a mad smile was suppressed in her eyes: "Heavenly Snow Lotus is a good thing for solving soul problems."
"Ning Hanxue and Ning Hanshuang have two bodies and one soul. In order to solve this predicament, Ning Hanxue did not hesitate to steal the Heavenly Snow Lotus."
"It's just a pity..."
Xi Ling didn't finish speaking, but everyone present understood what he meant.
Unfortunately, the whereabouts of the Heavenly Snow Lotus are unknown. Ning Hanxue not only failed, but also freed Ning Hanshuang and caused Huo Yunfeng to fall into the abyss!
Xi Bingyi's face turned ugly, and she couldn't help but speak sarcastically: "Since the Heavenly Snow Lotus has long since disappeared, why does Father need to say that he has a way to suppress the curse!"
She was trembling with anger and wanted to argue with Xi Ling again, but Zhou Ziheng stopped her.
Zhou Ziheng said calmly, "No matter what, Uncle Xi will definitely give us the prescription, right?"
Xi Ling sneered, but she really didn't intend to make things difficult for Zhou Ziheng and his group in this place.
He seemed to have anticipated this day, and even carried the prescription with him at all times.
Seeing that Zhou Ziheng needed it, Xi Ling took out the prescription from her bosom, slowly unfolded it, placed it on the table, and then gently tapped it.
"The prescription is right here. As for whether it's true or not, that's up to you to believe it or not."
Zhou Ziheng readily released Mei Zhiying's travelogue and chuckled, "Uncle Xi, you're joking. You're my junior sister's father, how could we not believe you?"
Xi Ling smiled enigmatically, took the travelogue, and then did not linger.
Only after Xi Ling's figure had disappeared into the distance did Xi Bingyi say resentfully, "To be old and not die is to be a thief!"
Zhou and Huo: "?"
Zhou Ziheng was shocked: "Junior sister, be careful what you say! That's your biological father!"
Xi Bingyi screamed in a frenzy, "Ahhh! I want to sever all ties with him and cut off all feelings!"
Huo Qin grabbed Xi Bingyi's shoulder and shook her violently while saying to Zhou Ziheng, "Zhou Ziheng, our junior sister is possessed by a ghost!"
Zhou Ziheng missed the point and angrily retorted, "What do you mean 'our junior sister'? This is my junior sister!"
Amidst the chaos, the prescription fluttered off the table. Like a rootless, lonely boat, it drifted away into the dust.
After calming down, Xi Bingyi glanced at the fallen prescription and sighed deeply.
In the end, she resignedly picked it up and turned to Zhou Ziheng, saying:
"Senior brother, I will ask someone to find the Heavenly Snow Lotus, so you don't need to worry."
"But this isn't a cure either..."
She held the prescription in her hand, but then she thought of the "Xiangjun" that Xi Ling had mentioned earlier.
Xi Ling's words were vague, leaving Xi Bingyi completely confused. She murmured, "'Xiangjun'—what exactly is she? Senior brother, why do you seem to have known about this all along?"
Zhou Ziheng was not surprised that Xi Bingyi would ask this question. He took out "One Hundred Antidotes to Poisons from the Western Regions" and said irritably, "I can tell at a glance that you definitely haven't read this properly!"
Xi Bingyi blushed slightly. At that moment, her attention was entirely focused on Zhou Ziheng's unusual behavior. Who cared about this piece of yellow paper?
Huo Qin leaned closer and saw that the last part of "One Hundred Antidotes to Poisons from the Western Regions" read:
"Yizhi asked, what is the most poisonous poison in the world? In her and Que's view, it might be the love that is unrequited and the hatred that is ineffective."
But in my opinion, only the curse of winning the laurel wreath deserves this title.
It's a curse, not poison, but who can say it's not a harmful poison?
...
The harm caused by the "curse of plucking laurels" has been extensively studied in previous books, so I will not go into details here.
The benefits of winning the laurel wreath for the cursed person are actually negligible, and will not be discussed further here.
However, once the curse of winning the laurel wreath was fully formed, its beneficial aspects were avoided and vaguely described in previous books. I suspect that others believed the process was against the natural order and did not want the tragedy to happen.
While browsing through books of anecdotes and strange tales, I happened to hear a legend.
Legend has it that hundreds of years ago, when Emperor Wu's beloved concubine passed away, the emperor was deeply grieved and ordered a search for anyone who could bring her back to life.
He offered her a large sum of money and promised her a noble title and high salary, and finally met her in the Wuying Hall.
A woman on her deathbed.
She claimed to be moved by the greatness of Emperor Wu's love and said she had a way to bring his beloved concubine back to life.
Emperor Wu believed it to be true and treated the woman as an honored guest.
Persistence pays off. Later, Empress Wu's beloved concubine appeared in the royal garden, and rumors of her resurrection began to circulate. However, she soon disappeared again.
If you think that Empress Wu's beloved concubine has truly come back to life, that's not the case.
Empress Wu was radiant for a moment, but soon grew thinner and thinner, and even lost interest in attending the morning court, which showed that her beloved concubine had not been resurrected.
He searched the world for rare medicines and dispatched countless people, still looking for a way to save his beloved concubine.
One of them had traveled to the Kesu Desert eighteen times. In his last words, he said that he had failed the Empress Wu and had not found the fruit that was "shaped like a golden sun and colored like a crimson flame".
...
After telling the legend, I will not judge its truthfulness.
Naturally, I didn't want such a 'poison' to be incurable, so I also researched how to completely remove the curse. The method was not complicated, but the difficulty lay in the contradictions.
In earlier rumors, winning the laurel wreath was not a curse, but rather the name of a person.
One day, while practicing swordsmanship, he went mad and killed his wife, Xiangjun. However, when Xiangjun's blood and flesh splashed on his face, he suddenly realized the truth and overcame his inner demons.
However, Xiangjun was already dead, and there was no way to bring her back. Zhegui was heartbroken and cursed himself to never have a good end, then committed suicide out of love.
Clearly, since Zhegui killed Xiangjun with his own hands, the poison could naturally be cured!
How ironic, my original intention was to save Zhegui and reduce evil in the world—
In the end, however, one person must be killed to save another, Xiangjun must be killed to save Zhegui, thus perpetuating the cycle of evil!
"Killing and taking bones—the path to depravity and the path to redemption are both contained within!"
...
Darkness, endless darkness.
Consciousness sank into darkness, losing all perception. There was neither sadness nor joy. Emotions and humanity were stripped away in the darkness, leaving behind a walking corpse.
He is like a nucleus trapped inside a shell, the "outer shell" being a narrow and crowded digestive tract that breaks down prey with digestive juices, and the "branch" being the insect's mouthparts that pierce the shell to lick and suck his soul.
Zhou Ziheng opened his eyes and heard a soft breathing sound in the thick darkness.
"You're awake," Huo Qin's voice rang out.
Zhou Ziheng smiled and turned his head toward the direction of the voice: "Why do you always come in the middle of the night?"
Huo Qin ignored him, looked at Zhou Ziheng's dull eyes, and said with certainty, "You've lost your sight again."
Zhou Ziheng still smiled: "So concerned about me?"
Huo Qin could no longer contain himself. He clenched his fist tightly, took a deep breath, and said, "...I came to see you because I have something important to discuss."
"Xiangjun is me, isn't she?"
As soon as he finished speaking, Zhou Ziheng, who had been laughing and joking, suddenly turned serious.
"You're far too narcissistic, Xiangjun. Do you even deserve it?"
His words were sharp, and with a cold laugh, he turned his head away and closed his eyes, as if he didn't want to look at Huo Qin anymore.
“If you were Xiangjun, I would have taken your life first to break the curse for me. Why did you have to wait until today, until you came running like a madman in the cold night, and shamelessly said, ‘I am Xiangjun’?”
These words passed by Huo Qin like the wind, quickly fading into his ears without even causing a ripple.
He maintained his composure and continued, "Zhou Ziheng, my father is dead."
"Xi Bingyi told me that she met my parents before going to the city."
She said my father passed away peacefully, and my mother, though grief-stricken, still possessed a strong will.
“Zhou Ziheng… my father is dead…”
Zhou Ziheng was furious; his empty eyes widened slightly in his rage.
He suppressed his voice, but still couldn't hide the anger in his chest: "So what?! Your father is dead, so you're going to die too?!"
"I'm telling you, Huo Qin, you can't be Xiang Jun, and you'll never die!!"
Stimulated by Zhou Ziheng's excited emotions, Huo Qin's voice involuntarily rose as well:
"It's not that I want to die!"
"It's because I want you to live!!"
"My father was killed by Zhegui, and I don't want my friends to be killed too, that's all!"
Zhou Ziheng sneered, sat up from the bed, dressed haphazardly, shoved Huo Qin aside, and walked out of the house.
The vicious words dissipated in the night wind:
"I can live just fine without Xiangjun."
"If you insist on dying for me, then you will no longer be my friend."
The door closed behind me, cutting off the last bit of warmth.
The night wind was like a knife, scraping against his thin clothes, making people shiver.
Zhou Ziheng groped his way to the courtyard and casually found a place to sit down.
The cold air, like a maggot clinging to the bone, burrows straight into the crevices of the bone.
The breath I had mustered during the argument has dissipated, leaving only a bone-chilling cold and weariness.
He sat there alone, his figure swallowed by the night, as if he were the only one left in the world, with the endless, bone-chilling cold.
Xi Ling appeared behind Zhou Ziheng at some point and stood silently for a while without saying a word.
Hearing the commotion behind him, Zhou Ziheng guessed it couldn't be Huo Qin and Xi Bingyi, so he said in a cold voice, "Uncle Xi, eavesdropping is not the behavior of a gentleman."
Xi Ling watched his retreating figure, no longer intending to feign a gentle demeanor.
"Eavesdropping? The two of you are arguing so loudly, there's really no need to eavesdrop."
"What, haven't you found your 'Xiangjun' yet?"
Zhou Ziheng jumped to his feet, facing the source of the voice, and sneered, "Whether you find it or not is none of your business."
Xi Ling didn't even bother with a smile. He stared coldly at the other person and said, "Of course I'm concerned about your life or death, my good nephew."
Zhou Ziheng was disgusted and turned to leave, but Xi Ling's words made him stay in place:
"I'm curious, Xiao Zhou, why do you insist on using the pseudonym 'Zhou Ziheng' when you're traveling the world?"
Zhou Ziheng stopped and asked sarcastically, "I'm also curious, Uncle Xi, how could you just watch Huo Yunfeng die right before your eyes?"
"Aren't you sworn brothers?"
Xi Ling suddenly smiled, as if looking at a shallow junior. He slowly said, "He died, but he died as a human being."
"And what about you? Zhaixinglou says you won't live past twenty. How do you plan to die?"
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Author's Note: Looks like I made it onto a good ranking list, I'll see if I can update more this week [sound of rabbit head emoji]
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