Chapter 5: Cutting the beams and dropping the jade, three parts of honey and poison mixed with seven parts of coldness, like a seal...
Chapter 5
Even though I'd left the area, my heart was still pounding. The direct encounter with the people from Medicine King Valley, especially Lu Guiyan, was truly overwhelming. From the sudden change to the reunion in just one day, it was truly exhausting.
She looked around and saw that it was noon now. The situation at Baidukou was complicated. It was difficult to deal with Tianji Pavilion, Yaowang Valley, and Diancang Sect. Qinggui tapped the green bamboo with her knuckles and considered finding a place to hide from the storm and rest, and make plans at night.
The nights at this time of year are still a little chilly. As the night deepens, the dew becomes heavier and the ground becomes even wetter. It is really not suitable to camp outdoors.
She looked up at the sky. The area around Yuzhou City was close to the river. Anyone who made a living on the water struggled with the sky and relied on it for food, so it was inevitable that they would worship ghosts and gods.
Therefore, she only walked along the most dangerous part of the riverbank, and walked along the waterside of Baidukou for a while. In the dangerous part of the river beach, she indeed found a dilapidated river temple.
The Jiang Temple is square in size, with most of its eaves collapsed and its tiles covered with moss. In the main hall, there is a statue of the god whose face has long been eroded by water vapor.
He slipped into the side hall and first knocked on the four brick walls with his fingers. The echo was dull, indicating there was no interlayer. So he felt relieved and took off his Mi Li, intending to use it to dust the altar. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he looked up and saw that the main beam of the side hall was very solid.
This was a perfect place, so she looked up, used the Listening to the Rain technique, and landed lightly on the beam. She shook the beam curtain and covered herself.
Qing Guiyu leaned against the dusty beams and curtains, the dull sound of the river water hitting the embankment filling her ears.
She placed the green bamboo across her knees and stroked the raised joints with her fingertips - this was a habit she had developed over the years. Being single made her always find something to play with.
Chen Juansheng likes to use some heart-wrenching gestures to lure her into the game,
This person is used to using his most vulnerable appearance to lay the most deadly net.
Just like the chain of killing people with golden needles in front of her - the unique method of Yaowang Valley, the Chiwen tattoo of Tianji Pavilion, the river drifters of Yufeng Escort Agency, the golden seal poems of Young Master Jinsheng... several strands of crystal silk were twisted into a noose, which was clearly intended to drag her from the comfortable city and back to this bloody world.
"Young Master Jin Sheng..."
Thinking about this title, I just feel that the world is ridiculous.
*
In his mind, Chen Juansheng's excessively handsome face and his heart-wrenching gestures appeared alternately.
That year, the young man, not yet Master Jinsheng, coughed heart-wrenchingly on the steps of her medicine hut. The seventeen-year-old girl froze in front of the hut's wooden door, clutching a medicine basket.
The young man dipped his finger in blood and wrote on the stone brick. His pale wrist was wrapped with crystal silk, and every stroke brought out tiny beads of blood.
"No."
She squatted down, her hair hanging in the pool of blood, and she smelled a strong smell of rust. The young man suddenly jumped up and attacked her throat. The thread brushed past her ear, making her feel slightly cold, and cut off several strands of her black hair.
Thankfully, she wasn't completely without martial arts skills. She quickly inserted her bamboo flute between his fingers, pressing the flute tightly against the thread. She frowned.
"It hasn't rained in the past few days. You're dying here covered in blood, and I'm going to have to brush the stone steps for three days."
The young man laughed breathlessly, and the blood foam in his throat made his cough more violent.
Taking advantage of this gap, she felt his pulse.
The girl's mind went blank and her fingertips trembled - the cold poison had already invaded the twelfth floor, and she could still survive with such a dangerous pulse.
"Let go!" she shouted angrily, trying to pry open the boy's teeth that were biting Jingsi.
"You can use a broken string to kill yourself? Why don't you do something better?"
Unable to break free from him, she had no choice but to hold his pulse with one hand, and use the other hand to press the gold thread with a bamboo flute, trying to use the gold needle held between her two fingers to push against the side of his neck to draw a blood vessel.
The silk thread was wrapped tighter, and the young man was shaking violently, not with a tremor of fear, but with spasms as his meridians had been eroded by the cold poison.
The golden needle finally sank into his acupoint. The boy's pupils suddenly contracted, and the golden thread trembled and fell down.
Qing Guiyu finally breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the blood off his face, only then could she see his features clearly. His pale skin was tinged with a bluish-gray, deathly aura, like a plum blossom about to wither.
"What kind of evil skill are you practicing?" the girl sighed softly.
She used her internal energy and dragged the boy into the medicine house with both hands. She saw the bloody words "No Save" on the ground out of the corner of her eye. The girl's arrogance surged up, she sneered and wiped the blood off with her foot.
"Is it up to you?" she said with a smile.
*
I was a bit too conceited back then, but now I have to be on guard against Shen Ensheng all the time, which is really tiring.
The memory was too vivid, filled with the chilling coldness of blood and poison. Even just recalling it took up too much of her remaining energy.
Just thinking about it, she tightly gripped the green bamboo on her knees. The rough bamboo joints poked her palms, and she tried to use the real pain to pull herself away from the boy's beautiful face.
I'm really tired.
A chill ran down my spine as I leaned against the beam, and my consciousness slowly faded away in extreme exhaustion.
The dull sound of the river waves in my ears seemed to be stretched and crushed, gradually losing its original rhythm and turning into the endless rustling sound of rain in the mountains and forests of Yaowang Valley in my memory.
The chill of the beams suddenly transformed into the cool, damp stone walls of the mountain temple. Even the air, thick with dust and moisture, seemed to take on the cool fragrance of agarwood and the pungent aroma of medicinal oil.
Her eyelids were too heavy to lift, and she sank into the past, enveloped in the sound of rain and the fragrance of medicine.
In this half-asleep, half-wakeful chaos, a hand suddenly covered her wrist.
The hand was warm and strong, pressing down heavily on her fingers that had subconsciously clenched due to the memory of the cold poison.
"Don't move."
A slightly hoarse boy's voice sounded deep in her mind.
So she slowly "opened her eyes", and what she saw was not the dusty beams of Jiang Temple, but the slightly drooping eyelashes of Lu Guiyan in his youth, illuminated by the moonlight.
A little light filtered through the broken windows of the mountain temple, making them look like two frost-covered crow feathers.
This junior brother, who was always dignified and solemn, was now half-kneeling in front of her, with the corners of his white robe hanging down to his knees. He lowered his head to examine her hands.
He pressed hard three times on the elbow pit, a finger technique to test whether the poison had spread.
"Hiss—it hurts!" The girl instinctively leaned back, her back against the cold corner of the mountain temple.
"Do you feel the pain now?" His voice suddenly dropped. "Where's the courage you had when you picked on the venomous snake?"
Lu Guiyan suddenly let go of his hand, and Qingguiyu's wrist suddenly felt empty, and his heart sank.
"Little Senior Brother, don't be angry." She rubbed her wrist and said embarrassedly, "Don't apply medicine on me. Just use acupuncture. The prick of gold needles is easier to bear."
Lu Guiyan's movements faltered slightly, and he angrily said, "Use a needle while the snake venom is moving. Do you want to be a cripple for the rest of your life?"
His gaze was as cold as if he had just waded through an icy stream. "Even though you've learned the golden needle technique, don't think you can do anything."
But his medicine was so painful that she instinctively struggled. She pushed his shoulder hard, and her palm touched a sweaty shirt. The young man Lu Guiyan suddenly froze, his Adam's apple moved, and he suddenly turned around.
"I was wrong to be so mean to you just now." After a while, he spoke without a clear beginning or end, his eyes fixed on the green traces of grass and moss on the ground beside her, "But if you continue to be stubborn, if you..."
"If there's a next time," Lu Guiyan stuffed her needle bag into her hand, angry for no reason, his tone almost a little annoyed, "I'll let the venomous snake bite you to death."
Qing Guiyu remembered that he nodded hurriedly at that time, and agreed repeatedly, saying yes, yes, yes, I understand, junior brother, okay, okay, and turned his wrist to try to prove that he was okay, no problem.
but--
Wait, aren't her hands already?
*
Outside the Jiang Temple, an owl cried in alarm at night.
The sharp cry tore me out of my dream, and along with it, a very light, unsettling metallic vibration pierced into my mind.
Qing Guiyu jolted awake on the beam, his sweat-soaked back pressed against the rotten wood. The warmth of the dream had barely faded, but the reality of death was already looming.
She turned over and looked down, and heard the beams cracking.
The dark golden thread had wrapped around the main beam at some point, and was now emitting an ominous glow.
She hurriedly tapped her toes and leaped towards the side beam, but the silk thread was faster than her. With a dull crack, the load-bearing wooden tenon was broken.
Suddenly the air was filled with the smell of exploding sawdust and stale dust.
He stretched out his hand hastily, but only managed to grab the falling curtain before his whole body fell straight down along with the collapsed beams.
The moment the feeling of weightlessness accompanied by choking dust hit her heart, she instinctively turned her body and used her internal energy to protect her vital parts.
But instead of the expected severe pain, he fell into a cold and bitter fragrance.
Shen Jiansheng caught her, like picking up a branch of peach blossoms. His left hand gently guided her lower back, and his right hand firmly supported her knee.
The wide black sleeves fell down, revealing the golden threads wrapped from the wrist to the back of the hand, emitting a faint cold light under the moonlight.
The hands were clearly extremely steady, yet they deliberately stumbled half a step as they released the force, landing heavily on the temple pillar. Mi Li had already fallen to who knows where. He lowered his head, his long black hair, streaked with gold threads, cascading down his cheeks, casting a shadow over his face.
The moonlight outlined the contours of his overly delicate face. He was taller than he was seven years ago, having cast off the youthfulness of his youth. Every line on his face seemed to have been tempered by ice, light to the point of being cold.
Looking at her, it was still those same peach blossom eyes, only the mist beneath them was thicker. A faint trace of bright red at the corner of her left eye, in the dim light, looked like the most captivating cinnabar on a phoenix feather.
Young Master Jin Sheng's lips were almost touching her neck. He chuckled softly, his smile mixed with his cold breath, and he said softly,
"one."
"Let go." Qing Guiyu's mind raced, and he pointed his finger at his chest, but the distance was too close and he couldn't exert any force.
"So fierce." The cold fingers touched her waist, and the lips pursed in a smile, gently holding a strand of her scattered hair.
"two."
His Adam's apple slid in front of his eyes, his soft lips rubbed against his eyebrows, and the cold air he exhaled caused a slight tremor on that skin.
"three."
A chill crawled along her hair, reaching the space between their intertwined breaths. Before she could react, his lips had already pressed down on hers. Like the cold marrow technique he practiced, three parts honey poison mixed with seven parts chill, as gorgeous and violent as a seal of gold.
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