Feng Aotian And I Are A Match Made In Heaven - Chapter 4

Chen Anqing didn’t quite understand. She looked left at Xiao Moran, then right at Xiao Yun, completely unable to figure out why the two of them had suddenly started having a falling-out.

What Xiao Yun had said sounded rather like she wanted to sever ties. Had her sweetheart witnessed her being bullied, causing her pride to rebound to the extreme?

With that question in mind, Chen Anqing did not linger where she was. She turned and followed Xiao Yun instead.

Judging by the time, if Xiao Yun was heading back to her little wooden hut now, she was definitely going to grab her medicinal herb shovel and head to the Wilderness Forest to dig for spiritual plants. After all, she had only eaten half of her meal in the dining hall again. There was no way she was full, so she would definitely need to find something else to eat.

Chen Anqing had never been to the Wilderness Forest before, but this time she did not plan to follow Xiao Yun every step of the way. Instead, she wanted to wander around inside the forest herself. Since the Wilderness Forest was somewhere Xiao Yun frequently visited, there might be some treasure hidden inside. She could go take a look and broaden her horizons.

Or, if possible, she could take the treasure before Xiao Yun did.

At that thought, the corners of her lips curled into a mischievous smile. But while she was lost in thought, Xiao Yun, who had been walking ahead, suddenly stopped.

The pause came so abruptly that Chen Anqing was caught completely off guard. She had not been far behind Xiao Yun to begin with, and when the girl suddenly stopped, Chen Anqing nearly failed to stop herself in time.

The small, thin figure in front of her did not even reach Chen Anqing’s chest. Looking down, she could see the crown of Xiao Yun’s head. Chen Anqing flailed both hands at her sides twice, her slightly forward-leaning body finally regaining its balance. Seeing that there was less than half a meter between them, she hurriedly took two large steps backward.

After stopping, Xiao Yun looked in another direction. She was hesitating over whether she should go that way, but during that brief hesitation, she inexplicably felt two faint breezes brush past both sides of her body at the same time.

Her nose, wrapped in bandages, twitched slightly. The scent carried on the breeze felt familiar. She could not remember where she had smelled it before, but some inexplicable feeling urged her to suddenly turn around.

The calm in her eyes shattered for an instant, a flicker of moist light appearing and fading within them for a second. But when she looked at the road behind her, there was no one there. Then, as she turned back, that light quietly disappeared.

Xiao Yun merely assumed she had been too tired lately, or perhaps had eaten too little and become so hungry that she was hallucinating. Why would she feel as though someone had been following her?

No one would be idle enough to follow a boring, useless piece of trash like her.

With a bitter smile, she shook her head slightly. Her toes pivoted, and she changed direction after all, leaving the outer disciples’ residential area and heading toward some unknown place.

But Xiao Yun did not know that Chen Anqing, who was following behind her, had been startled by the eyes that had stared back after she turned around. For one instant, Chen Anqing had even felt as though their gazes had met directly.

That was genuinely a little frightening.

Her heartbeat quickened. Only after watching Xiao Yun walk quite some distance away did Chen Anqing dare breathe again, letting out a long exhale.

So sharp. The story had barely begun, and she was already getting a cheat?

It took Chen Anqing quite a while to calm herself before she followed again. This time, she did not dare stay too close to Xiao Yun and maintained a moderate distance. Staring at the girl’s back, she uncontrollably began recalling the script she had originally received, trying to find some clue about Long Aotian’s cheat.

But the problem was that Chen Anqing was not some famous voice actress. Naturally, a character they had hired her to voice could not possibly have had that many scenes. On top of that, the script she had received was an adapted audio-drama version.

Damn it. Why hadn’t she thought to read the original novel?

The more she thought about it, the more miserable Chen Anqing’s expression became. Of course, if she had known the plot direction at all, she would not have needed to personally follow Xiao Yun around in the first place.

With an extra measure of caution, Chen Anqing soon followed Xiao Yun to an open area. Calling it an open area was not entirely accurate, because after walking a few dozen meters farther in, one could see one engraved stone stele after another standing upright in neat rows.

This was unmistakably the Xiao family cemetery.

Chen Anqing’s brow twitched. Looking farther out, she saw that the cemetery was more than twice the size of a football field, packed densely with stone monuments, some old and some new.

Someone was clearly maintaining the place. The areas in front of the graves were all clean, and no weeds grew behind them either. The entire cemetery looked neat and orderly, without any obviously broken tombstones. At most, some showed traces of erosion from rain and weathering from wind.

Passing one tombstone after another, Xiao Yun eventually stopped in front of a very ordinary grave. Inscribed on the stone were the words: Grave of Xiao Mingxi and Xiao Zheng of the Xiao Family.

Xiao Yun took out a handkerchief and carefully wiped the dust from the grave, brushing away the fallen leaves resting on it. Then she sat down before the tombstone and stared at it without moving.

Seeing this, Chen Anqing did not need to think to know whose grave it was.

Keeping more than ten meters away, she casually found a rock and sat down. Her gaze moved over the words carved on the grave of Xiao Yun’s parents, then toward Xiao Yun herself, who remained quietly seated there, staring blankly at the tombstone.

Sometimes Chen Anqing genuinely wondered whether Xiao Yun had already gone stupid. This child seemed completely devoid of emotion. She was only eleven years old. What should a normal eleven-year-old boy be doing?

Chen Anqing thought about it for a moment, then curled her lip and rolled her eyes. Turning back to look at the quiet Xiao Yun again, she inexplicably found her much more pleasing to the eye.

This was pretty good too. At least she wasn’t annoying.

Still, Chen Anqing remained curious. Ever since she began monitoring Xiao Yun, this was the first time the girl had come here. Then, remembering that Xiao Yun had ordered a serving of meat in the dining hall earlier, Chen Anqing became increasingly certain that today was definitely some kind of special day. She just did not know what.

The anniversary of her parents’ deaths?

No, that couldn’t be right. On their death anniversary, she wouldn’t have eaten meat herself and then come here empty-handed.

Then… was it Xiao Yun’s birthday?

That did not seem right either. After all, she had only just seen Xiao Moran. For something like the protagonist’s birthday, there was no way Xiao Moran, her childhood friend, would not know. Yet she had not mentioned it at all earlier.

Then what could it be?

Couldn’t figure it out. Forget it.

After operating for all of five seconds, Chen Anqing’s brain quickly went on strike. She was not the sort of person who made life difficult for herself. No matter how special the day was, it had nothing to do with her anyway.

She had just thought that when, in the next second, the faint sound of sobbing suddenly reached her ears. Chen Anqing immediately stretched her neck and looked around in other directions. A gust of wind swept through the empty space before she abruptly realized that the sobbing was coming from Xiao Yun.

The girl who had originally been sitting perfectly straight had now lowered her head and bent forward. Tears fell with soft plops onto the stone slab before the grave. She suppressed her crying in her throat, allowing only a little sound to escape when she truly could no longer hold it back.

The restrained crying lasted only briefly. After less than half a minute, Xiao Yun hurriedly wiped her tears away and took two deep breaths. Then, with the faint remnants of a sob still lingering in her voice, she murmured to herself.

“It’s okay, Mother, Father. Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. It’s just that the meat today was so delicious, and I was so happy. From now on, I’ll definitely buy myself meat more often.”

One second Chen Anqing was still shocked by Xiao Yun crying, and the next, those murmured words reached her ears, making something catch painfully in her chest as well.

Just like in the dining hall, an inexplicable irritation surged inside her. This time, however, it did not quickly fade. Chen Anqing found herself unable to stay there any longer and simply turned around and left the cemetery to get some fresh air outside.

But the moment she stepped out of the cemetery, she saw two boys approaching from the other direction. “That useless Xiao Yun actually dared pull a dirty trick on Brother Yu. This time, we absolutely have to teach her a serious lesson.”

“Exactly. Luckily, Physician Lin said there’s nothing seriously wrong with Brother Yu, just that his qi is in disorder. Xiao Yun runs to the Wilderness Forest every day and secretly refines medicine in her room. It was definitely her doing. Who knows what kind of evil medicine she found? We have to be careful when we deal with her later.”

“What are you afraid of? She’s just a Jia One piece of trash. We can beat her however we want.”

They were the two even lower-ranking lackeys who had followed behind Xiao Yu. The moment Chen Anqing saw them, the irritation that had only just faded halfway immediately surged back.

Back in the dining hall, she had not gone too hard on Xiao Yu. After all, he was still a child, so there was no need to kill him outright. She had merely created a few tiny tears in his meridians, the kind an ordinary physician would not be able to detect.

Those little tears were not fatal. Given enough time, they would naturally heal. But while they were healing, it would become increasingly difficult for him to absorb qi. His cultivation speed would grow slower and slower, and his cultivation level might even stagnate entirely.

Chen Anqing remembered that Xiao Yu seemed to be Jia Realm Level Five. If he seized every moment and cultivated diligently every single day, he could still make it to Jia Six before turning twelve. Otherwise, he would be thrown out too when the time came.

And if the obviously slowing cultivation speed affected his mentality, then he would amount to even less.

After teaching him a lesson like that, Chen Anqing had assumed he would not come looking for trouble with Xiao Yun again anytime soon. But she had never expected Xiao Yun to have accumulated so much hatred that even the lackeys of the lackeys of the lackeys wanted to bully her. One after another, without end.

Chen Anqing stood at the cemetery entrance with a slight headache. The two half-grown boys drew closer and closer, still discussing how they would deal with Xiao Yun, how they would make her suffer, and even how they would smash apart her wooden hut so she could no longer hide inside every day refining evil medicine to harm people.

Chen Anqing frowned and pinched the bridge of her nose. There was still a trace of hesitation in her heart, but at that very instant, the pitiful figure crying sadly before her parents’ grave flashed through her mind.

Tsk.

Annoying.

In the next instant, just as the two small figures passing by her stepped into the cemetery, both boys’ expressions suddenly changed. It was as though they had seen something utterly terrifying. They froze in place for several seconds before suddenly screaming at the same time, hurriedly turning around and fleeing in abject terror.

The surroundings quickly became quiet again. About ten minutes later, Xiao Yun’s figure slowly emerged from the cemetery.

Clearly, she had no idea what had happened. As usual, she returned to her little wooden hut, grabbed her shovel, slung a basket over her back, and ran out of the Xiao family estate toward the Wilderness Forest.

Xiao Yun’s luck today was still fairly good. She successfully dug up two spiritual plants, and on her way back, she took them to an apothecary in the city and sold them for a decent price.

The moment she received the money, Xiao Yun went straight to a nearby food stall and bought some provisions. With the remaining money tucked away, she turned and went to the auction house, spending her entire remaining fortune on a single high-quality mid-grade Water-type qi crystal.

Qi crystals were crystals formed on the earth’s surface from highly concentrated qi. The qi inside could be absorbed directly. Its purity was much higher than the qi in the air, and it could also be absorbed far more quickly, making qi crystals the cultivation resource most commonly used by cultivators.

Among the monthly provisions distributed by the Xiao family, every descendant in the Jia Realm could receive two high-quality low-grade qi crystals.

Although low-grade qi crystals were the worst kind of qi crystals and could essentially be called scraps left over from proper ones, the qi they contained was still slightly more concentrated than that in the surrounding air. At the very least, they still counted as a precious resource.

Xiao Yun had never wasted any of these qi crystals. In truth, she worked extremely hard at cultivation. After all, no one genuinely wanted to be useless, forever remaining a Jia Realm Level One cultivator.

But strangely enough, no matter how painstakingly she absorbed qi every day, she simply could not retain it inside her body. A Jia Realm Level One cultivator could sense qi, while the sign of advancing from Jia One to Jia Two was becoming capable of drawing qi through the meridians and storing it in the dantian.

Yet every time Xiao Yun drew qi into her meridians and guided it toward her dantian, the qi would suddenly disperse, refusing to remain there at all.

This was also why Xiao Hao and the others were always stealing Xiao Yun’s provisions. They constantly claimed that if Xiao Yun could use so many qi crystals yet still fail to advance even a single level, then the crystals might as well go to people who actually needed them.

There had once been people who could not stand Xiao Hao’s behavior and stepped in to help Xiao Yun. But day after day, year after year, Xiao Yun remained at Jia Realm Level One. She continued living in poverty and hardship, while those who helped her received little in return for their efforts. Eventually, no one helped anymore.

After spending the whole day rushing about, Xiao Yun finally made it back through the Xiao family gates just before curfew and returned to her little wooden hut.

She had already eaten some of the dry provisions she bought while on the road. In autumn, the fruit trees in the Wilderness Forest also bore fruit, so she had picked some along the way as well, barely managing to fill her stomach.

The first thing she did after returning to the wooden hut was put down her basket and shovel. After washing up briefly, she sat cross-legged inside and took out the qi crystal.

As night fell, Chen Anqing entered the hut once again. This was her second time inside. She cast her concealment technique over and over, only sitting down in a corner of the wooden hut after making absolutely certain there were no flaws.

This was not some whim. This time, Chen Anqing wanted to figure out exactly what was unusual about Xiao Yun’s body.

As a Long Aotian, there was absolutely no way Xiao Yun was genuinely useless. Either she possessed some once-in-ten-thousand-years special constitution, or some remnant soul from a high-level expert was secretly causing trouble, or she had some other kind of fortuitous opportunity.

Chen Anqing had a feeling that tonight might be the beginning of the turning point in Xiao Yun’s life. Naturally, she had to watch carefully and find out exactly what was going on.