The Adventures of a Naive Apprentice 3
Water vapor condensed into frost on the eaves, the rising sun pierced through the clouds, and in the chaotic temple, Onikiri was pacing around Huaiwen with unease.
After a while, Huaiwen gradually regained consciousness. She frowned and looked at the two little ghosts beside her. When the two little ghosts saw that Huaiwen had woken up, they quickly brought her some water to drink.
After a while, Huaiwen finally had the strength to sit up. She leaned against a pillar and looked around, but couldn't see Xuan Ye. So she asked the two little ghosts where Xuan Ye was.
Last night, after Xuan Ye burned the red thread to ashes, he was shocked and terrified to see the black aura emanating from Huai Wen's body. He tried to extract the black aura from Huai Wen's body, but found that he couldn't remove it completely.
Left with no other choice, Xuan Ye could only force the black energy back into Huai Wen's body and cast a sealing spell.
Scenes from the past suddenly flashed through his mind, throwing him into a panic. This person covered in cursed shackles was definitely different. He had to follow this trail.
He transformed the demons back into their original form, wiped away their wounds, and saw that they first collapsed beside Huaiwen and cried, then ran to him and cried.
Onikiri cried out, "Lord Xuanye, you must save my young master Huaiwen! You know, right now, besides Lord Liuxi, he's the only one left in the entire Bureau of Transvestites. If he's gone too, our Bureau of Transvestites will truly be gone."
Demon Slayer also said intermittently, "What's going on? That dark, murky aura... I've never seen it before. How did it become like this after just coming down the mountain?"
Xuan Ye was stunned: "Is this the first time you've seen the black aura on him?"
The two little ghosts nodded, and Xuan Ye became serious again. He looked at Huai Wen, whose face was different from hers, but when he looked through certain things, he could see that the person lying in front of him vaguely revealed the face of someone from the past.
A person who is clearly a woman is dressed as a man; what is hidden behind this? It makes one wonder. Perhaps Xuan Ye thinks that his recent vague unease is related to this person.
He turned to leave, but then he saw a red line coming from afar on the horizon. Curious, he wanted to go and see where it came from. But after following it for a while, he couldn't see the end, and then he heard Huaiwen's struggles and shouts from the temple behind him, so he turned back.
After thinking for a while, Xuan Ye got up, instructed the two little ghosts to take good care of Huai Wen, and then left.
Onikiri tugged at Xuan Ye's clothes, begging him to stay and help Huai Wen rebuild the Demon and Human Bureau. Onikiri also wept, saying that Huai Wen had come down the mountain to find a protector, but because her magic was weak, she couldn't protect the vast Demon and Human Bureau alone…
If the place for humans and demons disappears, they will have no place to return to, no place to go.
Xuan Ye raised his eyebrows and turned to the two little ghosts behind his head, saying, "If you have nowhere to go, come here. As for him, whether he is dead or alive is hard to say. Anyone who wants to become my subordinate, without any real ability, doesn't need to come here to talk."
"I don't like useless people."
Having said that, Xuan Ye disappeared. Huai Wen, after learning this from Gui Mie Gui Qie, felt half aggrieved and half furious. She wasn't a waste! She was merely bound by a curse, preventing her from advancing in cultivation. If she were to break free of this curse, she would surely break through her limitations and attain immortality.
He insisted on saying it that way, and she insisted on making him her bodyguard!
"Shall we go find Lord Xuan Ye?"
“Of course!” Huaiwen clenched his fist.
A demon who knows she is covered in curses, a demon who can seal the dark energy back into her body, a demon revered by Onimusha and Onikiri—their background is already extraordinary. How could anyone not be interested in them?
Without further ado, let's pack our bags and set off!
The route to find Xuan Ye happened to pass by the place where Song Ziheng, the first guard Liu Xi had mentioned, was located. Huaiwen took the opportunity to investigate; having more guards meant a greater chance of survival.
Returning to the story, the scroll records that after Song Ziheng took the treasure, he traveled through three kingdoms and five locations, finally settling in Baidi City of Wei. Fortunately, Huaiwen, with two little ghosts, set off for Baidi City first.
Along the way, Huaiwen tried to fill her stomach by telling fortunes and selling small props, but no matter what she sold, her business was dismal.
Fortunately, Onikiri is a minor demon and doesn't need human food to satisfy his hunger. Otherwise, Huaiwen really wouldn't have been able to feed three people who needed to eat.
Not only that, she kept asking Onikiri about Genye, hoping to learn from the two little demons how they could defeat him. But all she heard was the two little demons praising how good Genye was to them.
Later, Demon Slayer mentioned a name called Ruan Shiyun.
Huaiwen asked, "Who is that?"
Demon Slayer said, "That's Lord A-Gun."
Huaiwen scratched his forehead and said helplessly, "Then why do you still call me Young Master Huaiwen? I was asking if she works at the transvestite institute?"
Demon Slayer chuckled sheepishly: "Yes, she's incredibly powerful."
Immediately afterwards, Huaiwen heard Onimushagi sharing stories of how they cared for Ruan Shiyun from a five or six-year-old child until she became successful. Huaiwen sighed, "You guys are like nannies."
Guimyo glared at Huaiwen and said that he didn't understand how good A-Yun was.
Demon Slayer and Onikiri suddenly became interested and began to put on a show. One of them played A-Gun, and the other played a demon, fighting each other with withered branches. They recited lines from a storybook: "I am a celestial priest descended to earth..."
Huaiwen looked at the two of them, recalling their time at the transvestite center. When they were bored, they would put on a show like a theatrical troupe. Some shows were entertaining, while others were incomprehensible, but Huaiwen never interrupted them; he simply watched from the sidelines for a while.
Huaiwen had initially thought the two little ghosts would reenact the scenes from those old storybooks, but today they weren't. Instead, they were telling the story of a woman named A-Jun, with a connection to the demon king.
How did they end up hugging each other while acting? And what's with that dialogue?
"Ah Ling, you promised me you wouldn't wander off."
"I wasn't wandering around, I was just walking around you."
...
This play is a bit intimate and ambiguous.
Suddenly, Huaiwen had a flash of inspiration. Could it be that this senior and the Demon King were lovers? Could she use this to make the Demon King submit to her?
This excitement didn't last long before Huaiwen suddenly felt a sense of loss.
The sorrow seemed to come from nowhere, yet it filled the heartstrings. Such a bright and beautiful character, how could one see sadness in her? When the story ended, Huaiwen remained lost in thought for a long time.
If a few cherry blossoms hadn't fallen in front of her, she might have been captivated by them. Huaiwen picked up the cherry blossoms from the ground and looked around. Where were there cherry trees, where did these cherry blossoms come from?
"Let's go, young master Huaiwen, or it will get dark." Onikiri interrupted Huaiwen's thoughts.
The cherry blossoms vanished in Huaiwen's hands in that instant. She paused, then slowly nodded in agreement, suppressing the inexplicable melancholy that had welled up inside her. She quickened her pace, leading the two little devils, and hurried into the city.
Once inside the city, he inquired around. However, Huaiwen seemed to be unlucky; no one in Baidi City had ever heard of Song Ziheng.
Huaiwen shook her head, worried that the people here didn't know Song Ziheng because he was dead. But one shouldn't give up easily. Just as Huaiwen was about to go to another place to inquire, her stomach started growling.
A little demon named Onimusha took out half a steamed bun and handed it to her, saying, "Young Master Huaiwen, have something to eat first."
This was their last food. Huaiwen held it in his hand, listened to his stomach growling, sighed, broke the half-eaten bun in half again, and muttered, "Watered-down bun, we can still get by."
Seeing this, Onikiri was both moved and pitied. They had lived among humans and demons for over a hundred years, and all the hardships that their ancestors had never endured had been suffered by Huaiwen alone.
That's terrible. I'd just finished my steamed bun when I heard someone shouting, "Thief! Thief!" But soon another person shouted, "Not thief! Catch the demon! Catch the demon!"
The evil must be eliminated!
Huaiwen thought that these were just ordinary people, and there might not be any immortal cultivators who could slay demons and monsters. Although her immortal techniques were weaker, she was still better than them. So she turned to Oni-slayer and said, "Follow me," and chased after them.
After chasing for a mile, the demon suddenly disappeared in front of two mountains. Huaiwen stood still and looked around. Suddenly, an upside-down human head met his eyes. Huaiwen was so frightened that he froze on the spot. After realizing what had happened, he hurriedly retreated.
The upside-down head slowly turned around, its tightly closed eyes bearing an eerie smile. It materialized into a body, its feet touching the ground, and softly uttered, "I've been waiting for you for a long time."
Huaiwen had never seen this "person" before; he should probably be called a monster. Huaiwen asked who the other person was.
The monster sneered: "Me? You dare to forget?"
"?" Huaiwen asked, puzzled. "No, please explain more clearly."
The monster was displeased. It slowly opened its eyes, looked Huaiwen over, and then snorted, "You people from the transvestite institute actually dare to show up here."
Hearing the monster say this, Huaiwen felt uneasy—this might be the enemy that Liuxi had mentioned before, the one the human and the demon had made outside.
Sure enough, Huaiwen was struck by the monster the next moment. If it weren't for Onikiri's ability to burrow underground and dig a hole to pull her down, Huaiwen would probably be meeting her ancestors by now.
However, they couldn't stay hidden in the burrow forever, and with the monster jumping in and chasing them, their chances of death would increase. Left with no other choice, Onikiri dug upwards, throwing Huaiwen out first. Emerging from the ground, Huaiwen took a deep breath of fresh air and pulled a white talisman from his pocket.
He wrote a spell by hand and threw it at the monster behind Demon Slayer. With a "thud," the monster froze in mid-air. Huaiwen dared not relax his guard and took out another white talisman to strengthen the suppression.
The scene then showed a monster exploding continuously, like firecrackers crackling and popping incessantly. The monster was also in pain from the explosions and could only scream incessantly.
Soon, Huaiwen realized that she was running out of white talismans. She quickly winked at Onimusha, and the two little monsters understood her signal. After Huaiwen used her last white talisman to temporarily turn the monster into a giant sweet potato, she hurriedly fled.
Although they hadn't yet figured out the grudge and conflict between the monster and the transvestite, the monster was proving to be incredibly troublesome, so running away was the best option. They ran for a while, and unintentionally found themselves between the two mountains, where they glimpsed stone steps piled with fallen leaves.
Thinking about it this way, there might be a temple or Taoist monastery on this small hill between two big mountains. Let's go up there and ask for protection.
The monster was about to climb the steps when it was suddenly engulfed in flames after only a few steps. Behind the fire, on a large tree, stood a person—Xuan Ye.
He never actually left Huaiwen.
How could he so easily leave this person who reminded him of his past?
Xuan Ye was helpless; Huai Wen couldn't even defeat a small monster, which was far inferior to even a fraction of what his predecessors had achieved. For the past three hundred years, whenever a new life was born or a new person arrived at the Human-Demon Alliance, he would come to test them.
He cannot miss anyone who might be the reincarnation of A-Jun.
Xuan Ye remembered how excited he was when the Liu clan of the human-demon lineage had a newborn child. He came over with unease, watched the child grow up, but couldn't see any trace of A-Jun's reincarnation.
Regret swept through, and pain tormented, repeating itself for three hundred years.
For three hundred years, he kept trying and searching, but never saw A-Jun's reincarnation. Perhaps, as some have said, it takes millions of years for a person to be reincarnated.
Xuan Ye's eyes reddened slightly. He chuckled self-deprecatingly. How many people in the past were like Huai Wen, seemingly resembling A-Jun, but never actually being her?
The fact that the dead cannot be brought back to life has been repeatedly verified by the outside world over the past three hundred years.
He didn't believe it, but time was eroding the indestructible foundation he had built.
Could it be that Huaiwen is just like those people before him, merely a passing cloud?
The desolate mountain path, the tattered fallen leaves, the withered willow branches, a single cherry blossom falling, everything returning to its original state. The vengeful spirit hidden on the mountain path, however, loves this scene. In this game, she is both an observer and a participant.
If that's the case, then let's add some spice to the game to make it more fun and unforgettable.
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