Qinglian Chronicles Chapter 44

[*slams cards on the table* Read ’em and weep, boys. What do you an I’m not playing right. Of course I’m not playing right I don’t even know what ga this is]

I’ve known for a while that I’m a bit afraid of blood, but being afraid of heights I’m not sure about. I rode roller coasters before and never scread, only laughed.

The wind whistles past my ears. I didn’t have ti to appreciate life’s final process, nor did I have ti to playback any important mories. I simply fainted.

The underlying cause, in the end, is likely a fear of death.

After dying once already, I truly feared it.

Since I’ve fainted, please forgive for having the audience inevitably missing all the good drama. By the ti I woke up again, I was in the sa place I woke up in the first two tis. Even the one at my side is the sa.

The Established Law of Cliffs isn’t ant for .

I’m not getting any exceptional martial arts, rare treasures, handso chaps or beautiful won.

“Am I paralyzed?” I ask.

“No.” Jinzi’s face is quite a bit haggard, an obvious scratch on his left cheek.

“Disfigured?”

“No.”

I moved my body around, finding that there was nothing obstructing my movent, and apart from a bit of soreness in my fingers, I didn’t have any injuries.

“How did you save ?”

“Jumped down, grabbed you.” He says sullenly.

“After that?”

“Grabbed the rock, climbed up.”

“Oh.”

An expert is an expert. An unruly asset, indeed.

I can’t help but ntally sneer.

I don’t talk anymore. Neither does he.

I’m not talking because I don’t want to.

He’s not talking because he didn’t know what to say.

I just close my eyes, letting the silence extend without bounds.

……

“His Majesty escaped and ca to see you in person.” He finally can’t resist speaking up.”

“Ah.”

“The chancellors of the court ca too, including Li Minguo and Gu Yunzhi.”

“Hm.”

“Zhou Zizhu ca twice, and returned Hearth.”

“Oh.”

“Gao Yushu is still in the hall waiting for you to wake up.”

“‘Kay.”

He gave up, returning to silence.

I look outside. It’s nightti already. The moonlight is very gloomy as it weaves through the muslin window screen, its diffused brilliance like a piece of jade that had gradually lost its luster over the ages.

I turn my body on its side, back to him, and close my eyes to doze off.

Jinzi suddenly spoke again. “The books I destroyed that day… apart from Zhang Qinglian’s Jade Spider Arts, there was another one.”

“That wasn’t a good book.”

I opened my eyes.

He recounted calmly. “…It’s crude martial arts passed over from Tianzhu. It didn’t have much use, originally. It explains how to take the martial arts of an expert as one’s own…via bedchamber arts…and I don’t know where Zhang Qinglian ca from. After he caught , he knew that I could speak Sanskrit, and ordered to translate it. I don’t want to teach him and want him to deal with it himself, of course… but he has Jinfeng, so he can threaten to do anything… I was forced to translate it for him, but one or two sentences out of every ten were fake. The thod I fabricated was built off of the martial arts Zhang Qinglian learned, so he naturally couldn’t find out… The initial practice was still effective and he gets more addicted to it with each day, while I count down the days until he dies from his tendons bursting. The initial practice was still effective, and he gets more addicted to it with each day, and I count down the days until he dies from his tendons bursting… That night, he was aware that his martial arts greatly advanced and was very proud of himself, saying that tomorrow, he’d also bring Jinfeng out to play with — it’d usually put him a good mood to see suffering… I was worried, and just when he… made a risky move, it luckily went into effect. He suddenly qi deviated, his whole body turned blue, and he couldn’t breathe…”

I suddenly felt a chill on my back, turning to stare at him. “And then you peacefully slept in the sa bed as a corpse?”

What kind of guy is he?

“No!” Jinzi was sowhat indignant. “I only closed my eyes and thought about what to do next. Then you woke up.”

“…At first I thought he hadn’t died, and that his qi only got temporarily blocked. I’m anxious about whether he’d see right through … but sothing was off. When you told you lost your mory, I half believed it, half didn’t… I thought that it was so kind of ruse… After that I felt more and more that sothing was off. Even if there’s mory loss, how can soone not even rember how to put on clothes? The character’s changed, the artistic talent’s suddenly surged, the preferences and temperant are completely different… there’s ancient theories about reincarnating into soone else’s corpse, as well as a lot of legends. I don’t normally believe in the supernatural, but there isn’t any other explanation…”

“When were you sure that I wasn’t Zhang Qinglian?” I ask frostily.

“…I can’t rember, but I knew three or four days after you ca to.”

I’m sorely disappointed and enraged, anger burning from my chest to the crown of my head.

So he was well aware of everything early on! Looking at indifferently on the sidelines while I took great pains to cover it up! I was played the fool.

The sharp pain from my wounded pride is intolerable.

I sat up and laughed bitterly. “Well then, did you have a lot of fun ssing with ? Did it make you feel giddy inside?” The more I talk the more I’m unable to control my fury, my primal instinct throwing out the thorns in my side that I’ve had for a long ti. I pull open the front of my robes, exposing chest and shoulders as white as jade, and point at them. “This body is really beautiful, even more gorgeous than my original one…in fact, you’ve lusted after it for a long ti, right? What a sha that it’s your greatest enemy that you can’t even live under the sa sky with… love and hate are intertwining, alas! Makes your heart hurt a lot, yeah? It’s great now that this body’s changed owners! I could have been any random shmuck, but the point is that I’m not Zhang Qinglian… now there aren’t any problems for you! You can do what you want with a clear conscience… how very lucky you are, Yao Jinzi!”

I raised my head to look at him provocatively, but uncontrollably jumped a little in fright. Jinzi still had no expression, but what’s rising in his eyes… isn’t just rage.

My mouth is open but nothing cos out.

“You…” He’s speechless from anger, voice hoarse, fists clenched tightly, constantly trembling…

There’s many things in his eyes, seeming like he’s deeply hurt, and despairing, and suffering, and aggrieved, all heavily interwoven, wanting to retort but unable to speak. I was still staring there when he turned and walked out.

There’s only left in the room.

I smiled sarcastically, falling to the bed in dissatisfaction. How I loathe for my abilities and personality to be like this. I love to thoroughly analyze everyone’s hidden ntal layers, including my own: all the greedy, petty, filthy, cagey, ugly, real things. It’s why I always like face-to-face confrontations.

What can this bring , apart from pain?

It was this way before, and it’s still this way now.

It’d be better if I didn’t go looking.

It’d be better if I didn’t want to.

There was soone who said to before that seeing things too clearly is agonizing, unless you already have a conception that matches that insight. Yet, even if you can be lenient, there’s nothing to be done about it…

I couldn’t contain myself. Every ti Jinzi focuses on my face, my mood plumts; I’m unable to convince myself that it’s only my soul that he loves…

This is my first ti falling asleep alone since I’ve been sleeping with Jinzi. It’s early sumr already, yet I can’t stop feeling somber, my body cold and dry heat in my heart.

Unable to sleep, I get up and take off all my clothes, resuming my habit of sleeping naked.

I lay flat on my bed. The moon’s light shines clearly through the clouds and the latticed window, enveloping .

I deeply wished for a mont that this moonlight was so kind of acidic solvent that could painlessly dissolve my current body and preferably re-mold it into my original form.

This is the first ti in this era that I’ve had a sense of world-weariness, exhausted in both body and mind.

It doesn’t matter, though. I know that I’ll get up and go to Court tomorrow as I usually do, regardless of how worn-out I am ntally.

Tomorrow, I’ll think of who the main employer of the assassins is, and find the continuous energy to deal with a violent hurricane.

I’ve been like this since forever, able to prop myself up solely through the force of habit.