Chapter 95 Holding Hands It was an ordinary day. ...
In the alchemy room, Su Yi lightly cracked open some melon seeds and asked:
"What have you been up to lately? I haven't seen you anywhere. I heard from Mrs. Mo that you've been bewitched by a vixen, is that true?"
"puff!"
The lamplight made him choke on his tea.
"What nonsense are you talking about? I just have something to take care of!"
"What are you busy with? Men?" Su Yiqing asked immediately afterward.
The city lights look up at the sky, speechless.
Su Yi clicked her tongue twice: "Sigh, beauty. Sigh, human nature."
Hua Deng covered Hua Yuan's ears with her hand: "Don't talk nonsense in front of children."
"Sister, I'm not young anymore!" Hua Yuan struggled.
The streetlights blocked her mouth with a calming pill.
As she walked out of the alchemy room, watching her skillfully summon her immortal sword, Hua Deng suddenly asked, "Do you remember how you started cultivating?"
Hua Yuan exclaimed "Ah!" and looked at her, saying, "Didn't you send that brother named Jin Ze to find me?"
The streetlights fell silent for a moment, then said, "It's nothing, just be careful on your way."
After parting ways with Hua Yuan, she returned to the East China Sea.
Three months have passed since she planted the seed in Shen Zhou's soul. In these three months, she has remembered more and more things, as if she has started to get to know him all over again.
Sometimes, when she transfers her power to Shen Zhou, it touches upon the memories in his soul, but she mostly chooses to avoid it and doesn't deliberately look at them.
Today, she connected with him through her magic, hesitated for a moment, but ultimately did not avoid his memories.
She got to see what she wanted to prove.
Sixteen years ago, on a certain day, Shen Zhou went to the Hua Mansion alone to inquire whether her family intended to cultivate immortality.
Her parents were extremely shocked at the time.
The mother said, "Although I don't understand the matter of cultivating immortality, Deng'er once said that one needs spiritual roots to cultivate immortality. She is the only one in our family who was born with spiritual roots."
Shen Zhou said, "As long as you want, I can make you cultivators. It's better if you have spiritual roots, but it doesn't matter if you don't."
He looked at the two elders' hesitant faces and said, "This method will not harm your bodies. The reason you are allowed to cultivate immortality is for Hua Deng. She has always been concerned about you."
The mother breathed a slight sigh of relief, pondered for a long time, and finally shook her head, saying slowly, "I'm getting old and just want to enjoy my old age. Let you young people handle the matter of cultivating immortality."
The father held the mother's hand and said, "Like Deng'er's mother, I just want to live a peaceful life. I never thought about cultivating immortality. This is not the path we should take."
The two answered in a way that Hua Deng hadn't expected: her parents were just like that, and her open-mindedness and pursuit of her true self came from them.
Just then, a voice came from the side: "Me! Me! Me!"
Hua Yuan jumped up, raising his right hand high, his eyes shining brightly: "Brother-in-law, I want to cultivate immortality!"
Shen Zhou's expression remained unchanged as he raised his hand and pressed her back down: "You're not old enough to make decisions yet."
Hua Yuan pouted, looking extremely aggrieved.
Shen Zhou smiled faintly: "When you turn fourteen, a man named Jin Ze will come to find you. If you haven't changed your mind by then, he will help you fulfill your wish."
After saying that, he left the Washington Mansion, and no one but him knew what had happened that day.
Hua Deng easily understood why he did this.
As he said, she was attached to her family, and she stayed in this world in the first place because of them.
If Hua Yuan could truly cultivate immortality and possess the power to protect herself, then after her parents passed away, she would have no more worries and could leave this world according to her own wishes.
She remained silent, watching as fragments of their past flashed by in the fragments of her soul.
In the deep darkness of night, the supreme deity asked him, "Living causes you pain, why do you not wish to die?"
At first, Hua Deng didn't understand this sentence.
Later, she discovered that Shen Zhou would occasionally soak in the icy pool or go to the side hall of Duan Yun Palace to temper his body with array formations.
Before undergoing the tribulation, his body showed signs of collapse, and after the tribulation, he disappeared.
That wasn't because he was no longer in pain, but because his body was healing faster than the collapse caused by the force. His body was constantly disintegrating and rebuilding, day after day.
For ordinary people, it would be a punishment akin to being slowly sliced to death, but for Shen Zhou, it was his every day.
A fragment suddenly popped into Hua Deng's mind.
I still remember it was a quiet afternoon. The rain was pattering outside Fuxian Palace. Nothing happened all day, and she slept soundly until evening before waking up.
Shen Zhou went out sometime during the day and bought her favorite dishes and pastries. After dinner, they sat together by the window, enjoying the rain, chatting, and drinking tea.
When she laughed, he would watch her and slowly laugh along with her.
On rainy days, the physical pain intensified, feeling like a thousand ants gnawing at her heart. Yet he never stopped the rain from falling; instead, he would reach out and catch a handful of water with her, playing a childish water fight.
What was she thinking at that time?
She probably didn't think about anything; after all, to her, it was just an ordinary rainy day.
Later, Shen Zhou stopped going to the secret chamber to soak in the cold pool because she accidentally discovered this while running around with Lie Tian in her hand, and worried about him for a long time.
He began to walk along the bluestone slabs of Ziyang Palace again and again, trying to relieve the pain in his body.
Sometimes, he would stand at the foot of Tianhan Mountain and use magic to condense clouds and mist into steps, walking alone from dawn to dusk.
At night, he had difficulty falling asleep. He lay beside her, and occasionally, if he forgot to control the strength of his grip and held her too tightly, she would wake up groggily, pat his hand, and say, "Did you have another nightmare?"
He released his arms, kissed her forehead, and whispered, "It's okay, go to sleep."
One by one, scene by scene, Hua Deng watched his memories unfold, while even more content surged into his mind.
The final scene freezes on her playing a game while hugging a pillow. She and the pillow fall into the clouds, while he sits by the window, puts down his sword, and smiles broadly.
...
Hua Deng didn't stay in the East China Sea for too long this time.
She cleaved through the heavens and arrived at the foot of Tianhan Mountain.
Looking up, the mountain rises straight into the clouds, its height unknown, perhaps thousands of feet. The majestic Duanyun Palace is nowhere to be seen, nor are the swaying locust trees outside the palace.
With a thought, the clouds condensed at her feet and stretched all the way to the mountain peak.
She lifted her foot and, imitating Chen Zhou, stepped onto the cloud ladder, walking step by step towards the top.
She couldn't be as unhurried as Shen Zhou, sometimes skipping a few steps, sometimes turning her head to look at the cranes soaring in the sky.
She walked from dawn till dusk, and just then she reached the top of the mountain.
As dusk fell, the clouds were dyed a large expanse of orange-red. She sat down at the stone table under the tree, a spot where Shen Zhou often lingered.
He often stayed here, practicing or polishing magical artifacts. When she returned with food, drinks, and toys, he would accept the gifts she gave him and naturally ask her what she had done that day.
When he propped his head up and looked at her, a faint smile played in his eyes. He was so composed and beautiful that she thought he had just finished his work and come back. She would push him down onto the wicker chair and wait with him for night to fall, nestled together counting the stars in the sky.
The stars are shining brightly tonight.
Hua Deng lay back in the wicker chair, her strength drained away these past few days, and thorns began to grow, pricking her soul. She tried to count the stars in the sky, but soon her mind was disturbed, and she couldn't concentrate.
Back then, whenever she asked him how many stars there were, he would give her a detailed number and then ask her to count them herself to see if there were any discrepancies.
Too lazy to count, she falsely accused him of being inaccurate and punished him by making him massage her legs and back.
So he casually waved his hand, and all the stars in the sky went out. He said, "Now there are none left."
She wriggled in his arms, grabbing his face and accusing him of cheating. In the end, he still took on the responsibility of massaging her legs and back.
A cool breeze brushed against my cheek, and the streetlights instinctively searched for people beside them, but the place was empty and deserted.
She paused for a moment, then closed her eyes and quietly curled up.
She thought that even if the memories of those six years returned, they would be blurry, but quite the opposite happened. The next ten years passed by like fleeting shadows in her life, but the six years with him were vivid in her mind and deeply engraved in her soul.
She will never forget it.
No matter where she goes, she can never forget him.
The shackles of the soul could not bind her; she voluntarily entered the world called Shen Zhou.
Did he have the same thoughts during the ten years he spent in the East China Sea?
...
Three months have passed in the blink of an eye.
Hua Deng knew that today was the last day; she was about to completely strip away her power and witness the flower bloom.
For the past few months, she had remained in the East Sea, leaving the affairs of Ziyang Palace entirely to Jinze and the Left Protector. When she woke up, she was sitting in the wooden house, and when she was tired, she would sleep in the coffin with Shen Zhou.
She remembered that back then, when she learned that Shen Zhou was afraid her soul would dissipate, he slept with her in the coffin day and night, and she even laughed and called him a pervert. Now she actually understood his actions.
Thinking of this, Hua Deng smiled slightly. She stood beside the Heavenly Jade, reached out and touched his brow, silently reciting an incantation.
Thorns vanished from her soul, while flowers bloomed in his.
His shattered soul healed little by little, and his power surged, coalescing into everything that could not be coalesced.
Through spiritual communication, Hua Deng saw his last memory: the night before he passed away.
They released river lanterns by the water, and before the lanterns drifted away, he left a note with his wishes.
At that moment, she finally saw what he had written on it.
He wrote: "I am glad that you chose me."
The moment I looked up, it felt as if I had traversed more than a decade to meet her gaze now.
The city lights seemed to freeze, and the next second my heart pounded wildly, as if my blood was boiling.
Yes, if she saw this, wouldn't it prove that she chose him?
Why is this guy always so awful?
"You..."
Hua Deng gritted her teeth, wanting to slap him, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. So she wrote down her feelings and planned to settle the score later.
"When you wake up, I'll never let you get away with this!" She glared at his sleeping face and said fiercely, "In this life, the next life, and the life after that, you'll never get rid of me!"
The person inside the coffin trembled slightly, as if sensing her emotions.
Unaware that the exhaustion of her strength was making it difficult for her to continue, she finally knelt on the ground, leaned against the coffin, and fell into a deep sleep.
The streetlights awaken to the sound of rain.
She rubbed her eyes, feeling dazed for a few moments. For some reason, she found herself lying in bed, in the bed of that wooden cabin.
The shadowy figure that had been constantly lurking in the Qilin Prison was gone, the wooden house returned to its original state, and rain dripped from the eaves, pattering on the window sill and the distinct knuckles of the person by the window.
The wind rustled the bamboo leaves past the window, and the wind chimes outside the eaves tinkled crisply and melodiously.
It was an ordinary day.
The man turned around, gazed at her from the window, leaned down slightly, and extended a hand to her.
"Going home?"
"……go home!"
She placed her hand on it and would never let go.
-End of text-
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