11 Drunken Mist
◎One hilt shines bright as the moon, the other stirs the wind and produces a whistling sound. ◎
However, Ying Jianhua quickly recovered and, while tidying up the overturned inkstone, asked casually, "You agreed?"
Du Zhijin returned the handkerchief to him and squatted down to help clean up the mess: "No, how could I possibly agree to that?"
Upon hearing this, Ying Jianhua let out a barely perceptible sigh of relief, but then realized she had been too obvious, so she quickly covered it up with a question: "Why?"
Was Lu Ping's affection one-sided? In reality, she had no feelings for him at all...
Du Zhijin wiped away the last trace of ink, his wrist inevitably stained with black, which looked out of place. The color was so eye-catching that wherever it swayed, Ying Jianhua's gaze followed.
Finally, it dangled to her lips and was captured by a splash of red.
He abruptly looked away, his cheeks slightly flushed.
Du Zhijin licked the ink off his wrist and said casually, "Because the Orchid Bath Festival is next month, and by then I will have recovered and left."
leave......
The heat on her cheeks quickly subsided, and Ying Jianhua pursed her lips: "Yes, you'll definitely be leaving next month."
Why does that tone sound so reluctant?
Du Zhijin tilted her head and looked at him: "Dr. Ying, don't you want me to leave?"
He chuckled and said, "No doctor doesn't want their patients to recover as soon as possible. I'm just worried that you won't be able to raise the consultation fee within a month."
“This is simple.” She summoned Xingyue and performed a beautiful sword flourish in front of him, leaving a meteor-like arc in the air.
"I feel my cultivation has almost recovered. Tomorrow, at the latest tomorrow, I will be able to retrieve Zuilan. Doctor Ying, would you like a bear skin or a tiger skin?"
Ying Jianhua glanced at her, her tone unfriendly: "You talk as if bears and tigers are just rocks, standing there for you to skin and pull out. If you're so powerful, what are tiger skins and bear skins? If I asked for the stars and moon, would you give them to me?"
His words were barbed, originally intended to quiet her down and stop her from constantly talking about hunting tigers and bears. Are ferocious beasts so easy to kill?
She placed Xingyue in his palm and smiled, "I don't have Xingyue, but I have Xingyue."
"Now, it's yours."
————
Du Zhijin said he would go to fetch Zuilan no later than tomorrow, which is tomorrow.
Ying Jianhua was worried that she would faint again by the Tiger Pool, so she unusually did not go to the city to sell medicine.
She asked in surprise, "Dr. Ying, you really don't trust me that much?"
She single-handedly slew the Flame Demon, something many cultivators couldn't do, but she accomplished with just two swords!
Ying Jianhua ignored her and stuffed several more medicine packets containing hemostatic and raw meat into the bamboo basket before stopping. Helpless, Du Zhijin had no choice but to carry the heavy bamboo basket and lead him up the mountain.
Tiger Pool is located deep in the back mountains, and it takes an ordinary person a full hour to walk there. Ying Jianhua is very familiar with this road, and with the addition of a small path he has created, he can shorten the time to half an hour.
But Du Zhijin... Ying Jianhua felt that in the blink of an eye, he had gone from the foot of the mountain to the halfway point, and in the blink of an eye, he had gone from the halfway point to the top of the mountain.
Looking down from the mountaintop, a deep, green pool surrounded by lush trees appeared, more profound and mysterious than he remembered.
Du Zhijin pointed to the middle of Tiger Xue Pool and gestured across the water: "Zui Lan is right there."
What are you going to do?
The experience he had just had was so incredible that he couldn't help but glance at Xingyue at his feet.
Yes, they came up on their swords... no, or rather, they "ridden" their swords.
Floating like aloof from the world, vast as if riding the wind... perhaps that's the feeling.
Sensing his unease, Du Zhijin had a thought, and Xingyue disappeared into thin air again, leaving both of them on the ground.
He couldn't help but stomp his foot, and after confirming that there was real soil beneath his feet, he quietly breathed a sigh of relief.
“My master said that the highest realm of sword cultivation is the unity of man and sword, with the sword following my heart.” She walked to the highest point of the mountain, where there was a cliff just half a step away, as if a gust of wind could lift her into the air.
She was just a step away, with a glimmer of hope, but she suddenly became talkative: "Dr. Ying, would you dare to make another bet with me?"
Ying Jianhua, watching from behind, felt a chill run down her spine and urged her, "Don't stand so far to the side, hurry back..."
However, before he could finish speaking, Du Zhijin's figure suddenly plummeted downwards, leaving only the hem of his white robe in the blink of an eye. He was stunned at first, then quickly reached forward to grab at it, only managing to grasp a faint scent of medicine.
The figure below, growing smaller and smaller, was laughing, as if enjoying the moment of falling. Her figure moved freely among the trees and across the lake beneath the clouds, like a breeze that could come and go at will, beyond the reach of ordinary people.
Clad in white like sails, standing on a lake as if it were the sea.
At this moment, Ying Jianhua felt that perhaps this appearance of Du Zhijin was the real her. She was a sword cultivator from Dengxian Mountain, a chivalrous woman who had slain a great demon, her true self unhindered by fleeting clouds, her sword held high and her eyebrows raised.
"Drunken Mist—"
At her command, the once calm lake surface suddenly rippled. A whirlpool formed where she had pointed earlier, its center a bottomless blackness, yet it burst forth with light as she approached.
It blotted out the sky and sun, and sounded like the roar of whales.
After a brief moment of distraction, Ying Jianhua's eyes regained focus on the colors. Among these colors, the most dazzling and eye-catching were those of a man and a sword suspended in mid-air on the cliff edge.
Du Zhijin faced the sudden, strong wind as if it were nothing. The longsword in her hand emitted a faint light, and the silver bells on the tassel jingled wildly in the gale, but could not drown out the clear, melodious sound of the blade cutting through the air.
Awakening moon, drunken mist; the bright moon after waking, the gentle breeze after being drunk.
One halberd shines as brightly as the moon, the other wields a whistling sound in the wind.
Du Zhijin is their owner.
————
"Dr. Ying, have you ever thought about exercising more to improve your physical health?"
Wielding two swords, Du Zhijin was like a wolfhound released into the mountains, and countless souls perished beneath his blade.
Ying Jianhua was no stranger to wielding Xingyue, and with a swift stroke of his sword, the ferocious beast was immediately disemboweled and its head bled profusely.
He didn't bother wiping away the foul-smelling blood from his cheeks and neck; he felt as if he had become a bear or a tiger.
I want to bite her to death.
"I'm satisfied with my own body; I don't need to work out." Another sword strike; it doesn't matter if it hits the tiger's tooth, since it's the tiger's tooth that breaks, not the sword.
Du Zhijin wasn't idle either; the advantage of having two swords became apparent at this moment, allowing him to use both swords simultaneously.
Black bears, with their thick hides and tough flesh, are even harder to handle than tigers, so this arduous task naturally fell to the culprit. Ying Jianhua paused for a moment, looking at the corpse he had only half-finished cleaning, and for the first time in his life, he understood what despair truly meant.
Can someone tell him where she got the energy to kill two in one go?
But he absolutely could not bear to watch the two animals' corpses rot and stink. Tiger bones, bear gallbladders, and bear paws could all be used in medicine, and tiger and bear skins were also valuable items, so he was both desperate and delighted.
Du Zhijin was not one to kill indiscriminately; she had carefully selected these two beasts, both exuding an overwhelming aura of malevolence and having consumed human flesh. According to Ying Jianhua's identification, the Zhou family's three-year-old son had been killed by a tiger, and the Liu family's fourth uncle had been eaten by a black bear while gathering herbs in the mountains. Du Zhijin suggested sending them some tiger and bear meat, and he agreed.
"The mountains are so dangerous, Doctor Ying, do you really not want to learn some martial arts to protect yourself?" She brought up this topic several times, and Ying Jianhua got annoyed, frowning and glaring at her: "What? Do you want me to become like Lu Ping?"
Seeing that she didn't speak, he knew he had guessed correctly. He snorted and said sarcastically, "So what if Lu Ping is like that? He still can't win you over..." He wanted to say "He still can't win your favor," but after thinking it through, he felt it was inappropriate.
What does that mean? If Lu Ping can't win her favor, who can? Besides, he doesn't care what kind of person she likes; whether she likes a piece of charcoal or a stone is none of his business.
"...I still can't get the position of county magistrate." In the end, he brushed it off.
Du Zhijin asked curiously, "I didn't expect you, Doctor Ying, to have such ambition. Do you want to become a county magistrate?"
Ying Jianhua glanced at her: "If I say I want to, what should you do?"
She pondered for a few moments, then hesitated before saying, "To wholeheartedly assist you?"
"Tch, all that wasted effort." He shook his head, his expression nonchalant. "Don't worry, I won't use your kindness as leverage to make you do things beyond your capabilities."
"Besides, I don't care about being a county magistrate or county lieutenant. They're all just a bunch of good-for-nothing dogs."
Du Zhijin blinked. This was the first time she had ever heard such insults from Doctor Ying. Well, the previous insults like "Are you crazy?" didn't count. "Holding a position without doing anything" and "You dog"—the use of two strong words in quick succession showed just how much hatred Ying Jianhua harbored.
So, what caused him to harbor this resentment?
For no apparent reason, she thought of his parents who had died young.
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