Chapter 57: A Brief Introduction to Spiritual Energy, A Romantic Encounter at the Beginning of Spring...
That night, at Xichun Inn.
In front of Qin Tianshu and Zhang Xuan's room.
A light tapping sound rang out, but only the sound of snoring could be heard inside the room.
The boy smiled and gently pushed open the door. Amidst the rustling of pages turning, Qin Tianshu leaned against the bed, a storybook in his hand. He didn't even look at who it was, but simply yawned, "So late at night, aren't you going to sleep?"
Wen Chuan raised his eyes, his tone indifferent, "Didn't you say we'd talk all night?"
Zhang Xuan's snoring began from the inside of the bed. Qin Tianshu clicked his tongue, his voice lazy and tired, "You came at just the right time, I almost fell asleep."
"Little Zhang is still so young, look how well he's sleeping."
Wen Chuan tilted his head and glanced at the strange, automatic book turning on Zhang Xuan's pillow. The boy smiled and raised an eyebrow: "Alright, I came at the perfect time. Let's go to my room."
"Alright," Qin Tianshu closed the book in his hand, and the boy got out of bed nimbly.
Amid snoring and the eerie rustling of pages, Qin Tianshu and Wen Chuan turned and left side by side.
Under the cover of darkness, dressed in white nightgowns, arm in arm, they entered a room together. A faint chuckle drifted from the scholar's lips, "Tsk, Chuan'er, tell me, isn't this a bit too ambiguous..."
"……roll."
...
Early the next morning.
The sunrise bathed the boys in its light. Zhang Xuan, sitting in the driver's seat, called out, "Is everything ready? If it is, let's go!"
Qin Tianshu lay sprawled on the daybed, while the scholar, feigning sleep, waved his hand, saying, "It's all here, it's all here."
Wen Chuan, lying on the recliner next to the bookshelf, also said, "Let's go."
This recliner was something Qin Tianshu bought in Jizhou these past couple of days. He placed it between the bookshelf and the medicine cabinet, right in front of the left-hand window. In the scholar's words, with autumn and winter approaching, he would recline in the recliner to listen to the snow, watch the wind, brew tea, and enjoy his books.
A refined and comfortable life, the epitome of a scholar's elegance.
They've made some minor modifications to the carriage interior these past couple of days. The left side is fine; they just added a reclining chair by the window. The right side has undergone more significant changes.
The items in the storage cabinet were moved to a hidden compartment under the daybed, freeing up space in the storage cabinet. The daybed and long couch were pushed in halfway, leaving a space between the long couch and the car door for a swing chair, swaying gently.
The main reason was that Qin Tianshu kept saying how comfortable the recliner he bought was. Qingyu and Wenchuan murmured about it for a while. Wenchuan thought about it and simply bought the materials from the city and made a beautiful and practical swing rattan chair. He also added soft cushions and pillows, making it even more comfortable than the scholar's recliner.
"Okay."
Zhang Xuan spoke, and the carriage swayed and wobbled as it headed out of Jizhou City.
Qingyu and Fanxiang sat together behind the medicine table. Fanxiang was looking at the star chart on the table, while Qingyu looked forward at Qin Tianshu, who was sitting on the daybed pretending to be asleep, and then looked to the side at Wen Chuan, who was lying on the recliner with his eyes closed. "You two... what did you do last night?"
"Oh, I had a long talk with Xiao Zhangxuan last night, and I'm exhausted."
Qin Tianshu squinted and mumbled sleepily, while Zhang Xuan from the vehicle control department curled his lip, "Nonsense! I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow last night!"
Qin Tianshu chuckled, "Alright, I was saving the Nine Provinces last night."
Wen Chuan opened his eyes. The boy was swaying back and forth in the recliner, his eyes lazy but with a smile in them. "That's how it is."
Zhang Xuan: "...You guys didn't even take me?!"
Qingyu/Lin Fanxiang: "..."
Suddenly, I was completely taken aback by this bizarre, juvenile savior complex.
...
Lin Fanxiang carefully looked at the star chart on the table. The nine stars were aligned and distributed in all directions. Many small stars gathered near the main star and were connected to each other. It was impossible to tell.
She watched for the entire morning, seeing Wen Chuan return the bloodstained sword tassel, seeing Zhang Xuan and Wen Chuan "switch shifts," and seeing Qing Yu and Qin Tianshu finish their lunch (the pastries they had carefully selected together in Jizhou City) —
The girl finally gave up in frustration, saying, "I can't figure it out. No matter how hard I try, I can't figure it out."
The time was not yet right; it was fate that prevented her.
Qingyu looked at the picture with Fanxiang, leaning intimately on Fanxiang's shoulder, and muttered as she looked, "This picture... actually looks a bit like some kind of formation... but it's not... I can't really tell, it feels like an ordinary star map."
Qin Tianshu was peeling chestnuts across from him. "I watched it last night too," he said.
His pause was so subtle that, apart from Wen Chuan who was driving, the other three people looked up at him. The scholar casually peeled a chestnut, tossing the shell aside as he finished speaking—
"I couldn't see anything."
"Tch." Zhang Xuan spoke from the other side of the daybed, casually picking up a chestnut that the scholar had peeled on the table and eating it.
"Pa!"
Qin Tianshu slapped his hand away impatiently, "What are you doing? Don't ruin my formation."
The scholar peeled each chestnut perfectly, then arranged them neatly on a handkerchief.
The "peel first, then eat slowly" eating method.
Zhang Xuan: "Fine, I won't eat it then—hey, I'll just take one and see!"
Qin Tianshu clicked his tongue and watched as Zhang Xuan quickly took a chestnut from him and chewed it in the blink of an eye.
Qin Tianshu: "..."
Seeing that he was eating with satisfaction, the scholar casually picked up another chestnut from the table and tossed it to Zhang Xuan, saying, "Alright, eat up!"
Qingyu watched them playfully bickering speechlessly, then said to the star map, "Wenchuan said this star map is for attracting and gathering spirits. If that's the case, this map actually feels a bit like a spirit-absorbing formation... the kind Liu Nian used."
Lin Fanxiang: "Absorbing spirits?"
Qingyu nodded. When a demon dies, its spirit will automatically surface and be absorbed by other demons. Qingyu knows formations, so she created a formation just to absorb demon spirits more quickly. The focus is on absorbing them; it has no other use.
However, the formation used by Liu Nian in the Jizhou Governor's Mansion was capable of forcibly absorbing spiritual energy from living people. It was a genuine energy-draining formation, a sinister and evil formation that violated morality.
Zhang Xuan also said, "After all this talk, I'm a little confused. What's the difference between attracting spirits and absorbing spirits?"
Qin Tianshu clapped his hands and said, "You, all you ever do is practice your sword... Today, I'll teach you—"
"Between heaven and earth, there is spiritual energy. Whether it is human or demon, everyone needs to rely on this spiritual energy to cultivate. It's just that the way it is expressed is different. Cultivators call it spiritual energy, while demons call it demonic energy. This is mainly because of the different races and the different names used to distinguish them. In fact, they are the same... To give an analogy, it's like dialects. People from different regions speak different words, but what they are actually expressing is the same."
"The art of spirit attraction starts from inanimate objects, transferring the spiritual energy from one object to another. These are usually ownerless objects, without any emotional or blood ties. Spirit absorption, on the other hand, starts from living objects. The spiritual energy absorbed is essential for the survival of the human or demon body and is useful for cultivation."
Zhang Xuan pondered for a moment, "One is an object, the other is a living being."
Qingyu chuckled, "One doesn't draw blood, the other does."
She pondered for a few moments, then stood up and continued, "That spirit-absorbing array of Liu Nian is actually quite interesting. The demon absorbs the human spirit to stabilize the human skin on the demon bones. In the end, he was even able to be killed by an arrow from a mortal—in the end, he really did get a mortal heart through these things."
As Qingyu walked towards the car door, she touched Cai Cai's head as she passed the bookshelf. The chick fluttered and jumped off the bookshelf following her hand.
Cai Cai: "Gurgle gurgle gurgle!"
Qingyu smiled, then walked over and sat on the swing chair next to the car door. Sunlight streamed through the window into the carriage, and the girl gazed at the shimmering light and sighed softly.
"That star chart is really boring. It just shows nine bright stars and some less bright ones—attracting spirits to gather and absorbing spirits to draw blood."
Qin Tianshu: "It seems that creating a god comes at a considerable price."
"After all this talk, it seems we still don't know anything."
Zhang Xuan shrugged, and the boy felt overwhelmed and somewhat discouraged. After a while, he straightened up again—Zhang Xuan was never one to dwell on things and sigh. The boy nimbly jumped off the daybed.
"What kind of lousy star chart is this? I don't believe it! I'll see how it's debunked!"
The boy picked up the star map on the medicine table, unfolded it wide, and walked around looking at it, looking up and down—he couldn't see anything, just a bunch of ink dots.
Zhang Xuan snorted inwardly. If he couldn't figure it out in a day, he would look at it for a day; if he couldn't figure it out in a day, he would look at it for ten days. It was just a star map, a bunch of ink dots. What was he afraid of?
Thinking this, Zhang Xuan naturally sat down next to Lin Fanxiang. Lin Fanxiang raised her eyebrows slightly, but only saw Zhang Xuan's very obedient and focused appearance.
Lin Fanxiang: "..."
Not far away, Qin Tianshu leaned back with a smile. The scholar watched them while eating chestnuts, looking utterly lazy. But somehow, Cai Cai had caught a whiff of the chestnut aroma and ran over to the scholar with her little chicken claws, as if she was also interested in the chestnuts.
Cai Cai: "Gurgle gurgle~"
Scholar: "Well, another freeloader has arrived."
Lin Fanxiang finally shook her head with a helpless smile. The sun was shining brightly, and time was leisurely. The gentle girl got up and opened the medicine cabinet box. Listening to the crowing of the roosters behind her, she carefully and slowly counted the newly purchased medicinal herbs.
For a moment, the slightly bitter aroma of Chinese medicinal herbs wafted out, even reaching the car door.
The wind chimes rang softly as Qingyu chatted with Wenchuan by the car door.
Qingyu sat on the swing chair, dressed in a light red dress, her hair adorned with a silver hairpin and her peach blossom-like hair swaying gently, like a touch of spring in a desolate autumn day.
Spring's colors smile as it quietly approaches the young.
"What exactly did you and Brother Tianshu talk about last night?"
Wen Chuan leaned against the car door, admiring the spring scenery. The young man's posture was somewhat casual, but his eyes couldn't help but reveal a gentle smile. "I just asked him to look at the star map and talked about some old things."
Qingyu sat in a chair, the girl leaning against a cushion, hugging another one to her stomach, her legs swinging. She tilted her head and squinted slightly, "It's not about my past, is it?"
"That's nothing old news,"
Wen Chuan spoke calmly and gently, "How much can you tell from a meal? If you really let Tian Shu say it, I'm afraid it's all his own opinion."
“You were so young then, and you met the wrong person. The more I hear about these things, the more my heart aches for you.”
Qingyu was stunned for a moment. She looked at him and their eyes met for a split second.
Wen Chuan's eyes are light in color, often clear and gentle. Because of this, his temperament is even more refined and gentle, even a little cold. Those beautiful eyes always make people feel that he can see through many things and understand many people.
At that moment, he looked at Qingyu with those beautiful eyes and said, "I don't want to see you clearly, I don't need to understand you. I just feel sorry for you, purely and simply."
Qingyu lowered her head instantly, avoiding his eyes. The girl smiled and casually replied, "I suddenly remembered that time when I was caught in your fishing net and fainted as soon as I got on the boat. When I woke up, I was still swollen."
"Yes, I'm so lucky,"
Qingyu: "Lucky what?"
“I think I forgot to tell you…” Wen Chuan paused, and the boy smiled unconsciously, his eyes filled with tender and moving affection.
"The day you grabbed my fishing net was the first time I went out to sea that year."
Qingyu frowned slightly, somewhat puzzled. It was her first time at sea...
As the autumn wind blows and the sun shines warmly, the fallen leaves seem to return to the branches in an instant, turning into delicate pink flowers, and even the wind feels slightly salty and damp.
"You want to take me out to sea tomorrow? Why?"
"Hmm, don't you always go out to sea to watch people fish?"
"Sure, tomorrow morning?"
"Um."
In the sixteenth year of Tianchen, at the time of the Beginning of Spring, the sea breeze was gentle, and the blue sea stretched to the horizon.
"Wow, I told you to take me out to sea! Why did you have to wait until today!"
"It's too cold in winter, I don't like going out to sea."
"But it's quite cold today... Today is the beginning of spring... so you went out to sea?"
"Yes, every year on the day of Lichun (the beginning of spring), it is the time when I go out to sea for the first time."
"This is wonderful! I love spring the most, it's the beginning of spring! Wow! Hey Cai Cai, don't run towards me... Wow, this wind! It's amazing!"
"Coo coo coo!"
...
"Did you eat something so good tonight? Wen Chuan, what's up with you today? You seem to be in such a good mood."
"nothing."
"Oh, it's nothing... Ta-da! Happy Birthday!"
"...How did you know?"
"Cai Cai told me."
"The flowers...were they bought from a florist?"
"Of course not, I don't have time to go to the city. These flowers... I just picked them randomly!"
"No wonder."
"Um?"
"So beautiful."
-----------------------
Author's note: Ding ding ding, we have arrived at Jizhou City. Passengers who need to get off or transfer, please take note. Thank you for your support and cooperation. We wish you a safe journey.
Auction extravaganzas attract all sorts of people.
New passengers and passengers who have not yet reached their destination, please take care of your luggage and wallets.
Next stop, Yunzhou.
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