Chapter 34: Teasing You - How Come You Have Another Husband?
The tree stopped moving.
Jiang Yu stood motionless in place, but his eyes scanned the tree thoroughly. The more he thought about it, the more he felt that his guess was correct. Otherwise, why would both Shen Jiuxu and Shen Qinggui smell so fragrant?
He had never seen Shen Jiuxu burn incense, and it seemed that Shen Jiuxu could take out a flower and put it on him anytime, anywhere.
Jiang Yu looked on with suspicion. She had clearly been with Shen Jiuxu before. It was impossible that they had separated after being brought here by that monster!
The tree branch seemed to be trying to please, swaying gently a few times.
The petals fell into Jiang Yu's hair, like adding a few hair ornaments to his hair, making his skin look radiant. However, the fragrance of the flowers seemed too strong, intense and flamboyant, unlike the usual restraint it carried, as if it were asserting its dominance.
"Are you really Shen Qinggui?"
Jiang Yu already had a guess in his mind, but he still found it too strange that a properly married Daoist partner who was full of rules and righteousness had turned into a tree.
The disciples Qingfeng led before never mentioned turning people into trees, so how did it happen to him?
But something still doesn't make sense. Could Shen Qinggui actually be a tree? Jiang Yu recalled the first time she met him. Shen Jiuxu was lying on a tree, dressed in blue clothes and with braided pigtails. If he were really a naive and inexperienced young master, would his fingers be so nimble?
So, he was deceived by Shen Jiuxu from the very beginning?
Jiang Yu followed the scent of the flowers to find the boy, who was fast asleep. He was woken up by Jiang Yu's footsteps and was initially a little impatient. He casually picked a flower and threw it at Jiang Yu.
"It looks like it's about to rain, why are you still sleeping here?" Jiang Yu took the flower and tucked it behind his ear. He didn't think much of it, assuming that some young master had come out to play and was in a bad mood because his sleep had been disturbed.
The young man gave a soft "hmm," opened his eyes, and was about to get angry when he saw an extremely handsome face. The man's thin waist was outlined in a plain black outfit, and apart from the flower he had thrown at him, there was not a single extra color on his body.
He was somewhat stunned!
Jiang Yu saw that his eyes were glazed over, and he was clearly still half asleep. She didn't want to disturb him, so she just leaned against the tree next to her and looked at him with a smile.
The boy had probably never been stared at like that before; his ears immediately turned red, and he stammered, "Who are you?"
"Didn't you just throw flowers at me?"
Jiang Yu teased him, "In ancient times, there was a custom of throwing fruit to fill a carriage; nowadays, young people throw flowers. It must mean the same thing—you like me, right?"
"What does 'throwing fruit to fill the carriage' mean?" The boy asked, puzzled, staring at the person opposite him with a pair of innocent and ignorant eyes. Jiang Yu instantly felt his face burning. Did this person really not understand anything?
Was what he just said considered flirting? Jiang Yu took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. The person in front of him was still young; he shouldn't have said those things.
"It's nothing, it's nothing. It's about to rain, and you'll get wet sleeping here," Jiang Yu kindly reminded her. "Hurry up and go home."
"I have no home."
The boy slowly said that he had only been in human form for half a year. Before, when he was still a tree, he often heard the gossip of the family by the lake. He was not unfamiliar with the human world, but he could not understand some of the obscure language.
But Shen Jiuxu's intuition told him that the person in front of him should be a good person.
"No home?"
Jiang Yu looked him up and down, feeling that he was lying to her, but when she met his eyes, she inexplicably softened and said directly, "Then do you want to come home with me?"
"Wait until the rain stops before you go out to look for your family."
"I have no family." Shen Jiu was telling the truth. He was a unique divine tree in the world, nourished by spiritual energy. He had no blood relatives, which were common in the human world.
"Why don't you come with me? My name is Jiang Yu, do you have a name?"
"My surname is Shen, Shen Jiuxu."
He found the name in a book. After he transformed into human form, he followed the villagers who went up the mountain to chop firewood to Yunshui City.
There was a storyteller there, and Shen Jiuxu really enjoyed listening to him tell stories. The man had white hair, and seeing that the young man listened attentively and had come for two months in a row, he thought that the young man wanted to inherit his mantle. He was delighted and generously gave him the rare book he had.
"Brother Jiang Yu, may I call you that?" Shen Jiuxu asked softly. Jiang Yu was taken aback for a moment, but thinking that he should be a little younger than him, he agreed.
Looking back now, the boy's claim of having no home or family, and his appearance in the desolate wilderness, was so obvious! How could he have been fooled by that innocent-looking face and the repeated calls of "Brother Jiang Yu"?
Jiang Yu had read extensively since childhood, including many stories about plant spirits and monsters. A beautiful girl or handsome young man appearing alone in the mountains and fields—wasn't that obviously a monster?
Jiang Yueyue thought about it more and more and felt that he had been deceived by Shen Jiuxu back then, and actually believed that he was a pitiful young man. So much so that Shen Qinggui, after losing his memory, still lied to himself and said that he had a "clean family background".
He actually believed that nonsense!
Jiang Yu stared at the tree that was cautiously swaying its branches, constantly reassuring himself, "Whatever kind of plant or tree spirit it is, at least the person is good-looking. I was the one who spoke to it first; it's impossible for it to have said I'm a tree. Otherwise, Jiang Yu probably would have just taken his sword and chopped the tree down with me."
But he still couldn't swallow his anger, and deliberately said sarcastically, "Fortunately, Jiuxu is a person."
The once vibrant flowers looked as if they had been battered by a storm all night, and suddenly became somewhat wilted. The trembling flower branches brushed against Jiang Yu's shoulder, and a low voice rang out, "I didn't mean to hide it from you."
Can it change back?
Jiang Yu sighed. As the saying goes, a woman should follow her husband wherever he goes. He and Shen Jiuxu had already been married twice. Even if he was angry, he was only angry that Shen Jiuxu had kept it from him. If something happened, wouldn't he be unable to find anyone?
"The spiritual energy here is too thin, so I can't take human form."
Shen Qinggui explained that when he first woke up, his mind was also a mess. Except when he was extremely weak and seriously injured, he would actively revert to his original form. Otherwise, unless he did it intentionally, he would not reveal any flaws.
“I just asked the person next to me, and he said this place is also called Gurenzhuang. And they haven’t left for decades, they’ve stayed here all this time. So what is Gurenzhuang outside?”
Jiang Yu touched the flowers on the ground, seemingly speaking seriously about important matters, but in fact he was thinking about whether he should water Chen Jiu if he stayed here.
This tree is so big, how many buckets of water should I use?
Shen Qinggui naturally couldn't see through what he was thinking. "I can sense that there is no spiritual energy here. All things need spiritual energy to survive. Even if ordinary people don't have cultivation, plants still need to rely on the spiritual energy of this world to survive."
"Where would there be no spiritual energy at all?"
"Unless this place is full of dead people," Jiang Yu said, which explained why the villagers said they hadn't left for decades and no outsiders had come; perhaps everyone here was already dead.
"But they didn't go to the Netherworld to be reincarnated. Instead, they stayed here. Didn't the judges of the Netherworld discover them?"
“Everyone has their own destiny, and their fate is recorded in the Book of Life and Death. If something really went wrong, how could no one have known for so many years? Perhaps they used some method to keep it a secret.” Jiang Yu felt that things were getting tricky. “I just wonder how Little Bird and the others are doing outside?”
"Brother Jiang, we've found him. Is this your husband?" Huang Pingkuan's voice came from outside. Jiang Yu immediately became alert and raised his hand to set up a barrier, but Shen Jiuxu still heard him.
The wildly swaying branches hinted at his discontent.
"How come you have another husband?"
Shen Qinggui was so angry that all the flowers on the tree shrank back, and he stopped touching Jiang Yu. Jiang Yu knew that these words would cause trouble, but he didn't expect Huang Pingkuan to speak so quickly that he didn't have time to cover Shen Jiuxu's ears.
"You still haven't told me you're a tree," Jiang Yu said, bringing up old grievances. "Alright, we're even now."
"Besides, I thought you were missing, so Brother Huang said he'd ask the villagers to help look for you. I didn't know you'd turned into a tree," Jiang Yu explained quietly. "Could it be that the little birds came in?"
"have no idea."
Jiang Yu could only respond to Huang Pingkuan's words with a hint of frustration. Then, she casually picked a flower and kissed the bud a few times. "Alright, I'll explain it to him. You're the only one I can call my husband."
“There was another one before.”
"Now it's just you alone. Alright, I'm leaving." Jiang Yu said helplessly, and was about to leave when Hua Zhi grabbed his clothes. "I want to follow you."
"How can I carry this burden? I can't carry a tree on my back." Jiang Yu began to consider the possibility of this. If he really did this, wouldn't Huang Pingkuan's words just now be fulfilled?
"It's alright, I'm attached to the flower. As long as you don't drop the flower, I can talk to you," Shen Jiuxu whispered. Jiang Yu was relieved. When he went out of the courtyard, he saw that Huang Pingkuan and the others had actually found the west window.
"West Window, what are you doing here?"
Upon seeing that they knew each other, Huang Pingkuan immediately burst into laughter, "So you really are a couple! I knew this village was so small, it would be quick to find someone."
"No, no, Young Master Jiang is an elder, I am just an ordinary disciple." Upon hearing this, Xichuang immediately panicked.
After a long explanation, Huang Pingkuan finally understood, slapped his forehead, and said, "Oh dear, I was overthinking it. I'm really sorry. It's just that this young master looks somewhat familiar to me."
Upon hearing this, Jiang Yu glanced towards the west window a few times. He was still wearing the same clothes from the Star Palace, which was not surprising, probably because some disciples from the Star Palace had visited a few years ago.
"Brother Huang, why is this Old Friend Manor called that?" Jiang Yu wanted to find out the truth. When he first heard the name, he felt something was wrong. Now that he thought about it, if it really was a group of dead people living in this place, wouldn't that be called Old Friend Manor?
The village is a gathering place for the deceased, but it's unclear whether the name was given by the dead or the living. Also, is the village of the deceased outside the village the same one?
Huang Pingkuan invited them to sit in the courtyard and drink tea. Hearing this, he laughed and said, "Legend has it that an immortal came from here. When he ascended to heaven, his parents were still alive. But when he returned many years later, he found that the people in the village were gone and it had become a wasteland. The immortal missed his old friends, so he made many paper figures to replace them and named the place 'Old Friends Village'."
Paper figures were used to represent a group of dead people.
Jiang Yu observed the expression on the person in front of him. He hadn't looked closely before, but now he saw that Huang Pingkuan's eye sockets were dark and the two red patches on his face were obviously abnormal. He originally thought it was from the sun, but now he wondered if it was wax on a paper doll's face.
"Big brother, Mom said she made some pastries and invited you to eat them."
The little girl came running over, her face covered in sweat from her anxiety. Jiang Yu took a handkerchief and wiped her sweat. "Thank you, you eat too."
The pale yellow handkerchief was soaked with sweat and stained red. Jiang Yu calmly folded it and put it away. He watched as the girl's face became blurred, her bright red lips opening and closing, the sound of chewing pastries echoing over and over again, too regular and orderly.
"So you suspect they aren't dead, but a group of paper figures?" Shen Qinggui whispered in Jiang Yu's ear, and the other nodded. "Paper figures don't need spiritual energy to live."
"What paper figure? What are you talking about, Brother Jiang?"
The door to the house was pushed open, and Huang Pingkuan, his wife, and daughter walked in with identical smiles on their faces.
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Author's Note: I've started to think about why the male lead in almost every book isn't human. For example, in my previous book, "The Cold Immortal Lord Only Wants to Fall in Love," the male lead was a dragon. In this book, the male lead is a tree. In my next book, "After I Died, I Became Daoist Partners with My Natal Sword," the male lead is a sword. I also have two more books up for pre-order: "The Carefree Little Immortal," where the male lead is a mythical beast from the Classic of Mountains and Seas, and "After I Fell Asleep, I Fished in the Hospital Disinfectant," where the male lead is a fish. If they were all together, they could open a zoo! [Lemon]
But the main reason is that such a top should be able to do a lot of different things [winking emoji], what do you guys think?
Finally, I managed to post at the right time, restoring a regular posting schedule. As someone with OCD, I'm very happy.
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