Chapter 89 Is it her? Has she returned?
“Truly, their love is deeply rooted,” Elder Hongyu said. “Entwined and inseparable, life after life, it is truly a tragic fate.”
Pei Wenjing's red thread reached towards Shen Cangyu, but under the same causal line of Daoist magic, there was not a trace of causality on Shen Cangyu's body.
Elder Hongyu was stunned when she saw this scene. She had been cultivating the causal lines for decades, and this was the first time she had ever seen such a situation.
Shen Cangyu has no causal threads on her body, which means that in this world, she has no one she cares about and no relatives.
Even those who are lonely and have few relatives will have at least two karmic threads on their bodies, one from their biological father and one from their biological mother, but Shen Cangyu has none of these.
How did Shen Cangyu come to be? She couldn't have just popped out of a rock, could she?
"So you were all in cahoots all along. You deliberately stole the Kunlun Sword and the inheritance of the Kunlun Immortal Lord." Shen Yingda suddenly realized the truth when he saw the red thread.
At this moment, Master Huang's judgment of good and evil landed on Pei Wenjing's head, and a thick, blood-red character for "evil" appeared on Pei Wenjing's head.
"How is this possible..." Qiu Sheng, who was sitting in the audience, stood up and looked at the figure in the distance.
Pei Wenjing was a child Qiu Sheng had watched grow up. Qiu Sheng thought she knew him well. He was often stubborn, taciturn, and somewhat foolishly kind. She had spent a lot of time trying to reason with him when they were young. She knew he was a kind-hearted person who always thought of others.
Qiu Sheng felt that anyone could be a bad person, but Pei Wenjing couldn't be. If Pei Wenjing was also a bad person, then who in this world could be considered a good person?
Everything that happened today felt like an absurd dream, with every step taking an unexpected turn.
"Men, seize them!" Shen Yingda shouted.
"Dig out Shen Cangyu's inner core and reclaim the Kunlun Sword!" His eyes were bloodshot, and he was like a madman.
Upon hearing the commotion, the disciples of the Discipline Hall stepped forward and unleashed their Immortal Binding Locks to entangle them.
Shen Cangyu flipped her hand and made a hand seal, about to summon the earth dragon to block her side, when suddenly, Pei Wenjing grabbed her hand.
"Heaven covers and Earth sustains."
The next moment, she felt dizzy and disoriented. She saw the scene in front of her suddenly turn dark, as if she were sinking into water.
“You could have lied to them and said that the place you came from is called Penglai. There’s more than one Penglai in this world. That way, they wouldn’t blame you and would let you stay in Kunlun.” She heard Pei Wenjing’s voice in her ear. The next moment, the darkness in front of her disappeared, and she was standing on an unknown mountain peak. Pei Wenjing was standing in front of her, his hand still tightly holding her wrist, as if afraid that she would run away.
"Aren't you always the best at lying? Why didn't you deceive them this time? That would have been in your best interest." Pei Wenjing stared intently at her. Knowing her as he did, he knew she had a million ways to avoid getting into trouble. She was a master at manipulating other people's emotions to her advantage; she would never allow herself to be wronged.
He never imagined she would expose his lie so directly. This wasn't like her, not like the woman he remembered.
"What are you talking about? You're being ridiculous." Shen Cangyu shook her hands, trying to break free from his grasp. She hated the way Pei Wenjing looked at her, hated his self-righteous air of understanding her. For some reason, hearing these hurtful words from Pei Wenjing's mouth made her feel a tightness in her chest.
Pei Wenjing's gaze traced Shen Cangyu's face, realizing that although the person in front of him had the same face as Shen Cangyu, their personality was different.
He thought she had returned, but it turned out to be just wishful thinking.
Pei Wenjing squinted and suddenly let go of his hand.
Yes, if Shen Qingyan could have his body possessed by a transmigrator, why couldn't she? He should have realized sooner that it might not be that she had returned, but rather that the person who returned looked like her.
He searched through countless lifetimes, across the four seas and eight wastelands, looking for people who looked very much like Shen Cangyu, but even if their appearances were similar, they were not her.
The person before him was the one who resembled Shen Cangyu the most in all of Pei Wenjing's hundreds of lifetimes, but she was not Shen Cangyu either.
Shen Cangyu was hypocritical, cunning, cold, and ruthless. She plotted to make Pei Wenjing fall in love with her, but in the end, she pierced his heart with a sword, telling him that she had never loved him and that it was all just her mission. She used him to become a god, but at the moment of her ascension, she chose to self-immolate.
At that time, Pei Wenjing didn't understand what Shen Cangyu was thinking. It seemed that she treated the whole world as a game and never cared about anyone.
He was left alone in this world, tormented endlessly.
He searched through countless scriptures and ancient texts, and looked for all the wandering cultivators in the world, trying to find a way to bring her back, but in the end, he could not find her anywhere. Finally, he heard a rumor in some remote corner of the world: there was a fairy mountain called Penglai in the sea, and on Penglai, he could find the person he could never find.
Pei Wenjing had been to Penglai, but the person he was looking for wasn't there. He figured the legendary Penglai Mountain was probably not the same place as Penglai itself. The final clue to the Penglai Mountain pointed to Blind Mountain, so he continued his search there.
He killed those who stood in his way, and time and again faced death and were reborn from the brink of despair.
Shen Cangyu was his inner demon. Without her, he might have already achieved great cultivation and become an immortal.
"Who exactly are you? Where is Shen Cangyu?" Pei Wenjing asked, grabbing her by the neck.
Shen Cangyu pried his hand off tightly, pressing it against his, her angry gaze making him feel disoriented, as if he could see the Shen Cangyu he remembered through the eyes of the person before him: "Why you..."
Shen Cangyu kicked him in the knee, skillfully countering, and crossed his arms to lock his neck: "You're all talking nonsense and spouting nonsense. I really don't understand what you're thinking."
With Shen Cangyu's arm around his throat, he was forced to tilt his head back. His throat bobbed, and he thought, "This move is so familiar." Just now, he felt that the person in front of him had a different personality from Shen Cangyu; she couldn't possibly be Shen Cangyu. But now, with this familiar move that belonged only to her, he suddenly felt confused again.
Could this person really be her? Has she finally decided to come back?
Shen Cangyu's voice rang in his ear: "I don't care who you're looking for, I am Shen Cangyu. I've had this name since I was born, and it has nothing to do with anyone else."
She felt his throat bob and vibrate as their arms touched: "Since you are Shen Cangyu, why don't you remember everything from the past? Didn't you become a god? Where is your divine power?"
*
"What...what just happened?" Mingzhao looked at the chaotic and agitated crowd, somewhat bewildered. The crowd was in a state of panic; some were searching for someone, some were discussing the situation, and some were running towards their Taoist headquarters.
She looked at the empty seat beside her and felt a little flustered.
Shen Cangyu disappeared.
She caught two words in the murmur of conversation around her: "demonic cultivator." The word was particularly jarring, and even though they were speaking in hushed tones, Mingzhao still heard it.
Shen Cangyu is a demonic cultivator? How is that possible!
How could someone like her be a demonic cultivator?
But another voice in her heart said, "Why is it impossible? Even Sister Dongtang is a demonic cultivator, so why can't she be one?" You can't judge a book by its cover. How could a demonic cultivator let others know that she is a demonic cultivator?
But Shen Cangyu has always been someone she admires, her North Star. Is her star about to fall?
Suddenly, she felt someone grab her arm. She turned around and saw Lu Yuan holding her hand. Lu Yuan's hand was cold and trembling slightly. Her face no longer showed the stubbornness she had when arguing with Shen Cangyu, but was filled with confusion and panic.
"Why did she leave? Why did she say those things? I did want to beat her, but I didn't want to win this way. If it weren't for me, would she not have said those things and wouldn't she have left Kunlun?" Her words were incoherent, and her eyes darted around aimlessly.
Seeing that she was not in a good state, Mingzhao was afraid that she would do something impulsive and cause the people of Kunlun to drive her away, so he kept quiet and forcibly pulled her to run outside.
Lu Yuan let her pull him along, but he kept talking: "She's definitely saying that out of anger. She wants to stop the competition this way. That's for sure. She can't possibly be a demonic cultivator!"
As Lu Yuan spoke, seeing that Ming Zhao did not respond, she looked at Ming Zhao intently and said, "Do you also believe that she is a demonic cultivator?"
"If Shen Cangyu is a demonic cultivator, then I am also a demonic cultivator. I am the one who is utterly wicked and deserves my fate..."
Finally away from the crowd, Mingzhao breathed a sigh of relief. She noticed that Lu Yuan's eyes were unfocused and was about to say a few words of comfort when she raised her hand and caught a tear that had fallen from Lu Yuan's eye.
She heard Lu Yuan say, "I'm clearly much worse than her, but she's always been accommodating me. In this entire Kunlun region, besides my elder sister, she's the only one who's ever been kind to me."
Yes, why did Shen Cangyu become a demonic cultivator?
If she can be considered a demonic cultivator, then what about righteous cultivators?
What is considered bad? What is considered good? What is considered black? What is considered white?
Mingzhao had come all the way from outside the mountain. At first, she could still make sense of things, but as she continued to cultivate, she suddenly began to feel lost. Was all the knowledge she had acquired useful? Could she help more people? She was even inferior to Shen Cangyu, who could spread the art of mind and allow more people to master power.
But she stayed in Wenxin Diaolong, immersing herself in books every day and studying words, yet it seemed that in the end she could not pass on what she had learned to others.
She's the useless one.
If cultivating immortality means becoming a useless person focused on oneself, should she continue cultivating immortality?
Suddenly, Mingzhao's name tag beeped. She took it off, and a voice came from inside: "Mingzhao, are you in Kunlun?"
"I'm here, what's wrong?"
The person who sent her the message was an old friend of hers from Little Kunlun. Disciples of Little Kunlun shouldn't have communication name tags, but Mingzhao thought they were useful and wanted more people to use them. So she secretly studied the Taoist magic on the name tags, replicated the magic on them using her own abilities, attached them to the name tags she made, and gave them to her friends in Little Kunlun.
The techniques of the Kunlun inner sect are not allowed to be spread outside. She was terrified when she did these things, fearing that she would be found out by the elders and punished.
But Shen Cangyu said to her, "What's there to be afraid of? I will not only pass on the nameplate to Xiao Kunlun, but also to the mortals outside the mountains."
Mingzhao was both amused and exasperated.
“I picked up a child outside Little Kunlun. She said she wanted to come to Kunlun to become an apprentice and cultivate immortality. She said an immortal promised to teach her immortal arts…”
Mingzhao was taken aback. Many people came to Kunlun to become disciples, but everyone had to endure a long life in Little Kunlun before they could gain the opportunity to enter Kunlun. The so-called immortals teaching immortal arts was just a means for them to lure people into Kunlun. Mingzhao had stayed in Kunlun for so long before he truly understood what they were saying.
“Let her stay in Little Kunlun. The elders of Kunlun don’t just take on disciples. That’s just a lie to her, you know that…” Mingzhao said, then cursed himself inwardly.
Look, she has now become the kind of hypocritical Kunlun inner disciple that she used to hate the most. Now she has crushed the wish of a child who had aspirations for cultivating immortality and thrown her into the quagmire of Kunlun.
A rustling sound came from the other end of the line. The old friend spoke again, saying, "The child said yes, but she also said she brought a gift for that immortal to become his disciple."
"What?"
"A jar of wine."
Mingzhao smiled wryly. Sure enough, this was something those children from outside the mountains would do. But the immortals in Kunlun had long enjoyed all sorts of good things, so why would they care about this ordinary jar of wine?
"She said the immortal who summoned her is named Shen Cangyu. You should know him, right? Please give the wine to her."
"What?" Mingzhao thought he had misheard.
"Shen Cangyu, don't you know her?"
Mingzhao closed her eyes, and after a long while, she exhaled.
Shen Cangyu, when you sent that child to cultivate immortality, you probably never imagined that the cultivation world would become what it is today...
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