After I Failed to Reform the Female Lead of a Tragic Novel - Chapter 28

After discussing it for a while, Xie Yu and Gong Dongling agreed to temporarily stay on Wuwang Island, on the condition that the Immortal Lord kept his promise and concealed their whereabouts.

Gong Dongling recalled the plot she knew. It seemed that this legendary Immortal Lord Nandou had never appeared in the book. After all, that novel had gone on hiatus after Xie Yu blackened into a female demon lord and slaughtered everything in her path.

Now, because of Gong Dongling’s arrival, the plot had changed a great deal and even introduced an NPC who had yet to appear.

After all, with his level of strength, even if he were a villain, he would probably only appear in the final battle.

But for now, what could be confirmed was that Immortal Lord Nandou did not intend to harm them. Otherwise, with his cultivation, the two of them would already have died who knew how many times over.

As for what exactly Immortal Lord Nandou had hidden up his sleeve, they would only know after spending time with him.

The Immortal Lord brought the two of them to one of the small rooms in that courtyard and told them to make do there for now. Once he finished dealing with Xu Ruozhen’s matter, he would arrange something else for them. After saying this, he went to the storage room to handle the mess that was Xu Ruozhen.

As soon as Immortal Lord Nandou left, Gong Dongling turned toward Xie Yu and opened her mouth, wanting to ask the doubts in her heart.

But then she saw that Xie Yu was still soaked from head to toe. Her thin clothes were drenched and clung to her skin, faintly revealing the color beneath. Afraid Xie Yu might catch a cold, Gong Dongling took out a set of her own skirt and robes and urged her to hurry and change.

Xie Yu paused.

She could have used a spell to dry the water on her body, but when she saw Senior Sister’s personal clothing, her eyes darkened slightly. She said nothing.

There was a screen in the room. Xie Yu did not refuse either and carried the clothes behind the screen.

In the overly quiet room, the sound of fabric rubbing against skin from Xie Yu’s side was especially clear. Gong Dongling could not help glancing toward the screen, but the instant she turned her head and saw clearly, her cheeks flushed completely red.

The plain gauze on the screen was too thin. The scene behind it could actually show through as a shadow!

From Gong Dongling’s angle, she could just see Xie Yu’s slender, graceful figure. Xie Yu lifted her long hair, and the curves of her body were displayed without concealment.

Gong Dongling belatedly withdrew her gaze and muttered in her heart, When did A-Yu develop this well?!

When Xie Yu came out, Gong Dongling realized that she seemed to have grown taller. The skirt and robes that had been a little too long on her before now fit just right.

Xie Yu saw the pink on Senior Sister’s face at once, as well as the way Gong Dongling’s eyes dodged slightly after meeting hers. From the corner of her eye, she glanced at the screen beside her and suddenly understood something. She walked up to Senior Sister and looked at her with concern. “Senior Sister’s face seems very red. Do you have a fever?”

Meeting A-Yu’s pure gaze, Gong Dongling felt even more ashamed. She covered her cheeks and stammered in denial. “No, no. It’s just… just that this room is too hot. There’s no ventilation.”

“But the window is open.” Xie Yu pointed at the pushed-open window behind them. Her face looked utterly kind and innocent, yet she kept advancing step by step toward Gong Dongling.

Gong Dongling was forced to retreat, but she could not find a suitable excuse to cover up her burning cheeks. Suddenly, she tripped over something and sat directly on the bed, with nowhere left to retreat.

Xie Yu, who was usually as docile as a puppy, now carried the aura of an untamed wolf cub, locking onto her prey.

Xie Yu propped both hands on the soft couch, trapping Gong Dongling inside the narrow space formed by her arms.

Her half-wet, half-dry loose hair fell like silk, brushing against Gong Dongling’s exposed neck and making an itch rise there.

Gong Dongling only felt herself being suppressed by a powerful presence. Her body had gone terribly soft, and she could not move at all. At the same time, after being filled with the other girl’s cool, clean scent, that strange habit of hers, which had not acted up in a long time, surged up again.

She felt Xie Yu’s hand reach over and could not help closing her eyes tightly, while a different sort of anticipation rose in her heart.

But Xie Yu merely placed the back of her hand against Gong Dongling’s forehead to check her temperature, then withdrew and stepped back two paces, releasing Gong Dongling with an innocent expression. “Senior Sister, why were you hiding? I was just checking your temperature to see whether you caught a chill from that water dragon and the wind earlier.”

Gong Dongling opened her eyes and looked at Xie Yu in a daze, still carrying a bit of disbelief.

Why was it only a brief touch to her forehead?

No, wait! What… what had she been expecting?!

At this thought, she abruptly sobered up and sat upright like a carp flipping itself up, pretending to be proper. “Thank you for your concern, Junior Sister, but I’m fine. Junior Sister should also care more about your own body.”

Looking at Senior Sister’s flustered appearance as she clearly had stray thoughts but forced herself to stay calm, Xie Yu could not help curving her lips. She dismissed the idea of teasing her further.

Gong Dongling was also afraid that A-Yu would keep circling this topic. The moment she met those clear, innocent eyes, even she despised the trash filling her own mind.

So she seized the chance to change the topic, finally stammering out her original doubt. “A-Yu, why did you come here today?”

Xie Yu still could not suppress the smile at the corner of her eyes.

“The day Senior Sister secretly gave me the Xuanji Grass, I already felt something was wrong. Senior Sister definitely wasn’t staying in Zhenren’s hall every day of your own free will, so I had been planning how to save you. Acting in Buzhou Mountain was too risky. After hearing that you would come to Wuwang Island for travel, I secretly followed as well. Luckily, I didn’t miss Senior Sister.”

Although Xu Ruozhen had confiscated Gong Dongling’s Recording Stone and cut off her connection to the outside world, he could not withstand the fact that the two of them had thought of the same thing, which was how they had managed to meet.

But Xie Yu was clearly much better prepared than Gong Dongling, whose personal freedom had been restricted. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for her to nearly take Gong Dongling away so openly right in front of two great powers.

“What about the giant python from the Ruoxu Illusion Realm? And the illusion the Immortal Lord mentioned? What was that about?” Gong Dongling was very curious.

“Senior Sister may not know this, but aside from treating illnesses caused by cold energy, the Xuanji Grass has another use: creating illusions.

“Just as it creates illusions to disguise itself when buried in the soil, if you take an appropriate amount of Xuanji Grass, grind it into powder, and mix it with something, it can create an illusion related to that thing. If people and spirit beasts are not on guard, they cannot recognize it at all.

“I mixed the giant python’s scales into the Xuanji Grass powder, slipped into the water, and scattered it around the jiao dragon. That was why the scene you saw of the jiao dragon fighting the giant python appeared. When the Immortal Lord and Xu Ruozhen came out to investigate, they entered the area it covered. After inhaling the powder, they fell into the illusion we experienced before.”

After Xie Yu explained in detail, Gong Dongling finally understood why Xu Ruozhen had suddenly fainted earlier and could not come down to chase them.

Combined with what the Immortal Lord had said, it must have been that Xie Yu, in order to save more of the Xuanji Grass to treat the cold energy in Gong Dongling’s body, had only used a small amount to grind into powder. Xu Ruozhen’s cultivation was comparatively shallow, so he fell for it, but it had not been enough to trick Immortal Lord Nandou.

“If the Immortal Lord had not stopped us, where were you planning to take me?” Gong Dongling suddenly asked, her bright eyes looking at Xie Yu.

She knew that Xie Yu had come out to save her with the determination to break away from Buzhou Mountain. Xie Yu must have already thought of a destination where she could take her and flee.

Xie Yu only felt that the heavy boulder hanging in her heart had finally dropped. When she had made these preparations, she had kept thinking about what she would do if Senior Sister did not want to leave with her. Would Senior Sister blame her for acting on her own? Would Senior Sister even abandon her and return to Buzhou Mountain alone?

But even so, Xie Yu had wanted to do everything in her power to rescue Senior Sister.

Before she knew it, she seemed to have returned to that foolish person from before who so easily trusted others. Fortunately, Senior Sister would not fail her.

“To a hidden paradise I once discovered by accident after falling off a cliff during training in the mortal realm. No one knows there is such a livable place on that sheer cliff. Whenever I was injured during training, I would go there and stay for a while to recover. No one ever found it.

“But it is in the wilderness after all… If only I had more money, I could have taken Senior Sister somewhere better.”

At this point, Xie Yu’s expression dimmed somewhat. If she wanted to live a better life and not be restricted by anyone, she had to stand higher.

Gong Dongling had not expected that Xie Yu had been preparing to take her to her secret base, and she froze.

In the original novel, that had been a private space belonging only to Xie Yu, where she healed her wounds. The tragic yet resilient Xie Yu in the book had hidden there alone after each injury and licked her wounds. Even the male lead Ji Yuran had never been there.

Only now did Gong Dongling know that Xie Yu had originally planned to take her there.

A warm current flowed through Gong Dongling’s heart. Wuwuwu, in my daughter’s heart, I’m already more important than that stinky man!

Everything she had done had borne fruit, invisibly changing that sensitive, insecure young girl from the beginning.

“A-Yu, I like that place. Once Immortal Lord Nandou lets us go, we’ll go there and live in seclusion together. Just the two of us.” Seeing Xie Yu’s low mood, Gong Dongling grabbed her hand and spoke with complete sincerity.

The gloom on Xie Yu’s face finally cleared. She held Senior Sister’s hand in return. “Okay.”

…

Immortal Lord Nandou walked toward the storage room and saw Xu Ruozhen lying on the floor. He seemed trapped in a dream, his expression pained. Large tears were even flowing from the corners of his eyes.

Just as the Immortal Lord was about to wake him, he suddenly heard Xu Ruozhen cry out, “Yueniang! Don’t go! Why did you choose him and not me?!”

Immortal Lord Nandou frowned when he heard this. He did not have the habit of eavesdropping on other people’s sleep talk. With a sweep of his left sleeve, several silver needles instantly appeared between his fingers. He inserted the needles one by one into several of Xu Ruozhen’s acupoints.

After the full set, the painful expression on Xu Ruozhen’s face instantly eased quite a bit. Before long, he woke up.

The instant he opened his eyes, Xu Ruozhen saw Immortal Lord Nandou sitting upright in a nearby armchair. His whole body shook. He remembered how he had just been trapped in a dream, and there seemed to be tear tracks on his face that had not yet dried.

Had Immortal Lord Nandou witnessed his loss of composure just now?

Thinking of the contents of the dream… Xu Ruozhen felt a chill down his spine, and a trace of killing intent uncontrollably flashed through his eyes.

“Awake? Someone invaded Wuwang Island earlier. I was careless and got trapped in the Xuanji Grass illusion. When I woke, I saw you lying here with a pained expression, so I guessed you had fallen for it too.” Immortal Lord Nandou sensed the movement on his side and only glanced at him casually.

He probably hadn’t exposed anything, Xu Ruozhen silently told himself. He sat up and looked at Immortal Lord Nandou. Thinking of Gong Dongling and Xie Yu escaping, his expression turned terribly dark. “Immortal Lord, did you see my disciples?”

“When I woke, the young friend had already run off with that thief without a trace.”

Hearing this, Xu Ruozhen narrowed his eyes suspiciously. It made sense that he himself had been trapped in the dream, but the Immortal Lord’s cultivation was unfathomable, and he was proficient in alchemy and pharmacology. How could he be so easily trapped by Xie Yu’s little low-grade trick?

He even suspected that Immortal Lord Nandou had deliberately let Gong Dongling and Xie Yu go.

“Immortal Lord truly knows how to joke. The thief who invaded was my youngest disciple. Her talent is extremely poor, and she is only at Foundation Establishment now. How could someone as powerful as the Immortal Lord also be trapped by the illusion?” Although Xu Ruozhen’s words were still relatively respectful, every word displayed his suspicion toward the Immortal Lord.

After hearing this, the faint smile that had always floated on good-tempered Immortal Lord Nandou’s face vanished. He stood and sneered at Xu Ruozhen. “What does Zhenren mean by that? Are you suggesting that I am lying to you?”

“That is not what I meant…”

In the past, Xu Ruozhen was always the one who used the power of his sea of consciousness to pressure others. Yet he had never expected that there was always someone beyond the mountain. There would be a day when he too would be suppressed by someone’s domineering presence until he could not lift his head.

“You want to know? Then I will tell you. Zhenren saw the scene of the black giant python fighting the jiao dragon earlier, did you not? The reason I was so agitated that I broke through the window was indeed because the last person who brought a spirit beast here to make trouble with my jiao dragon was my good disciple, who died more than ten years ago!”

Immortal Lord Nandou only had one disciple. Everyone knew this. On the day he heard of his disciple’s death, the Immortal Lord’s hair turned white overnight, and from then on, he no longer involved himself in worldly affairs.

Xu Ruozhen instantly understood why the Immortal Lord had fallen for the illusion. He must have seen the figure of his own disciple in that extremely similar scene. It was all because he missed someone from the past, just like how Xu Ruozhen had fallen into the illusion earlier.

He secretly looked at Immortal Lord Nandou’s furious expression and realized he had misspoken. He immediately apologized to the Immortal Lord.

“Immortal Lord, I was too concerned about my own disciple and spoke without thinking, suspecting even the Immortal Lord. I truly should not have done so. I ask Immortal Lord to forgive my offense. When I find my two unfilial disciples another day, I will bring them here to offer a formal apology.”

Only then did Immortal Lord Nandou’s expression ease somewhat. But just as Xu Ruozhen was about to leave, he suddenly said, “That disciple of yours named Gong Dongling—is she Murong Yue’s daughter? In the blink of an eye, she has grown so much and become such a graceful young lady. She no longer resembles her mother as much as she did when she was a child.”

Xu Ruozhen’s breath caught. He turned back to look at Immortal Lord Nandou in disbelief, almost stumbling away in flight.

He definitely knew something!

As Xu Ruozhen thought this, he used his Recording Stone to summon his retainers, ordering them to immediately set out and search for traces of Gong Dongling and Xie Yu.

It would not be good to involve Buzhou Mountain in this matter. Xu Ruozhen did not use Buzhou Mountain’s power. Instead, he flew straight to Gong Dongling’s residence in Buzhou Mountain.

But the inside had already been searched through. All the important things had been taken away, and not a single clue was left behind.

This was something Xie Yu had deliberately arranged before leaving. Even the alchemy furnace and herbs Gong Dongling had forgotten to put away had been carefully collected by Xie Yu.

Xie Yu’s room was the same. There had not been many things to begin with, and now it was so empty that it seemed no one had ever lived there.

All this clearly showed that Gong Dongling and Xie Yu had long since prepared to escape. Only Xu Ruozhen had been kept in the dark. Not until now did he realize that everything had already left traces.

The moment he thought of Xie Yu holding Gong Dongling and raising her brow at him with that malicious expression, he trembled with rage.

Xu Ruozhen looked at the crude furnishings in the house before him, as if he saw Xie Yu herself inside. No longer able to restrain his manic emotions, he summoned a ball of flame in his palm and threw it into every corner. Tongues of fire licked at the wooden furniture and decorations, burning brighter and brighter. Before long, Xie Yu’s residence had become a sea of fire.

The news that Xu Ruozhen had returned from his travels in less than a day quickly spread through Buzhou Mountain. Many disciples heard that the moment he returned, he rushed straight to Xie Yu’s residence. Finding it strange, they all came up to watch what had happened.

They never expected that once they arrived, they would see Xu Ruozhen burning Xie Yu’s house with his bare hands. All of them froze in disbelief.

Ever since Xie Yu had won first place and her popularity improved, Buzhou Mountain’s disciples had all begun regarding hardworking Xie Yu as their example. Unconsciously, they had already stood on Xie Yu’s side.

“It was already bad enough that Daofa Zhenren never cared about Xie Yu. Now that she finally broke through her bottleneck with great difficulty, he even burned down her already-simple house?! What kind of thing is this?!”

“What will Senior Sister Xie Yu do when she comes back and has nowhere to live? I think Zhenren is using Senior Sister as a punching bag. I’ve seen Senior Sister being abused by him more than once…”

“Have you noticed? Zhenren came back from traveling outside, but Senior Sister Gong, who went with him, didn’t return! Could the two of them have argued on the way? Zhenren can’t do anything to his precious darling, so he wanted to come torment Xie Yu instead. But she just happened not to be here, so in his anger, he took it out on her house?”

Hearing this disciple’s reasoning, the expressions of the others changed. Although they all thought the reasoning was credible, they still quietly reminded him, “Say less about Senior Sister Gong. That’s Xie Yu’s reverse scale…”

Xu Ruozhen never expected that his act of setting the house on fire in a fit of anger would stir up a wave of disgust toward him throughout Buzhou Mountain. Everyone began recalling what he had done to Xie Yu in the past and then doubted his so-called gentlemanly character.

At this moment, he knew nothing of these rumors. Because he had gained nothing, he walked alone toward the confinement room beside his hall.

The confinement room still kept the appearance it had when Xie Yu was whipped last time. Xu Ruozhen walked all the way to the deepest part of the confinement room and lit a ball of light to shine ahead. It illuminated the huge relief carving before him and also the uneven grooves on it.

Xu Ruozhen drew his sword and slashed his arm, letting blood drip into the grooves. At that moment, the mechanism sounded. With several creaks, the wall actually loosened.

He only pushed lightly, and a staircase leading downward appeared.

Following the spiral staircase all the way to the bottom, he entered a narrow secret chamber. Precious night pearls embedded in the walls illuminated everything inside.

Surrounded like the moon among stars, a woman lay on an ice bed.

She seemed merely to have fallen asleep. Her gently closed eyes looked as if they might open in the next second. Even the skin of her face had a faint blood-red flush from the cold. Her hands were crossed over her chest, her posture guarded yet sacred.

If Immortal Lord Nandou saw this woman, he would certainly recognize her. Was this not Murong Yue, who had died in that war more than ten years ago? But how had this body, which should have been buried in the Murong family tomb, appeared inside Xu Ruozhen’s confinement room?

The instant Xu Ruozhen saw this woman, his furious and manic expression softened for a moment.

He dropped to his knees before the ice bed and reached out with trembling hands to touch the woman’s pale face.

“Yueniang… I am useless. Even now, I still have not made a move. In the end, the two of them ran away together!”

He kept speaking, as if begging Murong Yue for forgiveness.

“Today, I saw you in the dream again. I saw you heartlessly leave me again. Yueniang, if you had not taken that step back then, you would not be lying in this cold place now!”

At this point, Xu Ruozhen seemed to go mad with jealousy again. His hands clamped around Murong Yue’s slender neck, tightening and tightening. But even so, the corpse would not come back to life and struggle.

Thinking of this result, Xu Ruozhen seemed to have his soul pulled from his body and collapsed.

“I will return this life to you…”

…

After sending Daofa Zhenren away, the first thing Immortal Lord Nandou did was summon Xie Yu alone to his room.

Xie Yu’s thoughts were heavier than Gong Dongling’s. She still kept a trace of wariness toward Immortal Lord Nandou. By habit, she touched her sword hilt before walking in.

Seeing her enter, Immortal Lord Nandou turned around and gave Xie Yu a kind smile, his gaze resting between her brows and eyes.

That small movement also did not escape the Immortal Lord’s eyes. He was not angry, only spread his hands and smiled. “If I wanted to kill you, I would have done so long ago. Are you still afraid I’ll launch a sneak attack?”

“Why did Immortal Lord call me here?” Xie Yu had no interest in guessing riddles with an old man here, so she asked directly.

A kind smile remained at the corner of Immortal Lord Nandou’s mouth, his tone unhurried. “Young friend is named Xie Yu? That name is well chosen. It carries the meaning of beautiful jade. As it happens, I also have a piece of beautiful jade here. Young friend, help me take a look.”

As he spoke, he lightly tapped his finger, and a brocade box on the table flew out, gently landing in Xie Yu’s open palm.

A trace of confusion flashed across Xie Yu’s brow. She opened the brocade box and saw a shattered jade pendant inside. Every broken fragment lay in its proper place, barely forming a whole piece. It was entirely white without the slightest impurity. On the front was carved the image of a jiao dragon, one that looked exactly like the Wujian Qingfeng Jiao in Wuwang Sea.

“What is this?” Xie Yu looked at it for a moment but could not see any clue, so she held the box and asked Immortal Lord Nandou.

“I wonder whether you have heard a mortal saying. If a piece of jade worn close to the body shatters, it means it shielded its owner from disaster. Tell me, for whom did this broken jade block calamity?”

Immortal Lord Nandou also stared at the jade, lost in thought, a trace of longing flowing through his eyes.

Xie Yu thought of the cultivation world’s rumors about Immortal Lord Nandou’s dead disciple. Afraid of touching the Immortal Lord’s grief, she hesitated before saying, “Could this jade pendant have belonged to Immortal Lord Nandou’s disciple?”

Hearing this form of address, the Immortal Lord did not show any unusual emotion. Instead, he looked deeply into Xie Yu’s eyes. “Correct. This jade was indeed his, but it did not block calamity for him.”

Without waiting for Xie Yu to ask, he revealed the answer himself.

“This jade blocked calamity for you.”

Hearing this, Xie Yu’s wrist trembled where she held the brocade box. A sense of familiarity rose in her heart. Many years ago, it seemed someone had also said this sentence to her.

“You must remember, this jade blocked calamity for you!”

“Do not come back again. I will kill you with my own hands…”

Author’s Note:
Senior Sister: Wuwuwuwu, am I not cute anymore? Why did A-Yu only press her forehead to mine?!