Chapter 10

Xu Yizhuo said gloomily from within Jun Yu’s arms, “I was just curious and came here to take a look… There was no other reason.”

Jun Yu’s voice was as gentle as always, but no matter how Xu Yizhuo listened, she felt as if Jun Yu was holding back laughter. “Mm, I know.”

It must be an illusion. Immortal Masters would not laugh at people.

Jun Yu supported Xu Yizhuo and helped her stand steady.

Without realizing it, many of the people around them had dispersed, and Xu Yizhuo no longer felt as crowded as before. Nothing else on her body had been squeezed off, but it was a pity about her skirt…

Xu Yizhuo looked sadly at the black footprints on the hem of her skirt.

Jun Yu noticed and asked her, “Shall I go buy another one with you later?”

Xu Yizhuo kind of wanted to cover her face. You’re really too easy to talk to like this. If this were online, a whole crowd of people would chase after you calling you wife.

Xu Yizhuo shook her head. “It’s fine. I have a lot of clothes.”

Every outfit that had ever been released in the game existed in her inventory, one hundred million pieces of each style. Xu Yizhuo really did not understand why the programmers had ​stolen content​adjusted such strange and meaningless data into the test account.

Xu Yizhuo asked, “Why did Miss Jun come here?”

Jun Yu answered gently, “A disciple discovered traces of residual demonic energy here. The culprit who has been harming the townspeople very likely stayed here.”

Xu Yizhuo nodded. Suddenly, she thought of something and said to Jun Yu, “Miss Yang also came here.”

“That Miss Yang?” Jun Yu looked thoughtful.

Xu Yizhuo said a little dejectedly, “But I lost her.”

Jun Yu said, “She can always be found.”

Xu Yizhuo was fairly optimistic too. After all, Willow Alley was only so big. With the current chaos, finding someone was much more convenient than before. Just as Jun Yu had said, she could always be found.

“I suddenly thought of something just now.” Xu Yizhuo’s expression was somewhat conflicted. “I was thinking, could Miss Yang know about the culprit’s existence? After all, everyone who died had offended her. Maybe she knows about this?”

Perhaps that day when the sedan chair had suddenly appeared and blocked her path, it had also been intentional on Miss Yang’s part.

If that were the case, Miss Yang was not innocent. She was the blood-robed person’s accomplice.

Jun Yu said, “You don’t seem very happy. Do you mind this guess?”

Xu Yizhuo thought for a while, then said, “Having only one culprit sounds better than there actually being two culprits.”

Her impression of Miss Yang was not bad. Perhaps because of Miss Yang’s physical defect and the difficulties others gave her, Xu Yizhuo subconsciously felt sympathy for her.

But the truth was the truth. It would not change because of what she hoped.

“Let’s go take a look at the corpse.” Xu Yizhuo naturally took Jun Yu’s hand and led her toward the place where the incident had happened.

And Jun Yu did not refuse at all.

A dried corpse was surrounded by many people.

Some people looked terrified, while others boldly stepped forward to examine the corpse. The bold ones were naturally the people from Shiwai Tower. Their examination was not like that of ordinary people. They were checking the residual demonic energy on the corpse.

Seeing Jun Yu, the young girl who had stayed in the same room as Xu Yizhuo earlier quickly walked over. She wanted to say something, but when she saw Xu Yizhuo holding Jun Yu’s hand, her face showed surprise, and the words she had wanted to say stopped.

Jun Yu said, “There is no need to avoid her.”

As soon as she finished speaking, Xu Yizhuo let go of her hand because they had already arrived.

For some reason, Jun Yu felt a little regretful.

“Oh, oh.” The young girl nodded and stopped looking at Xu Yizhuo. She said to Jun Yu, “Tower Master, the demonic energy is exactly the same as before. It was done by the same demonic cultivator.”

She added, “And because he only just killed someone, the demonic energy has not had time to dissipate yet. We can roughly determine his location.”

Jun Yu nodded. “Just follow your own judgment.”

Encouraged, the young girl clenched her fists with fighting spirit and went back to find her fellow disciples.

Xu Yizhuo quietly asked Jun Yu, “You don’t need to follow them?”

Jun Yu replied softly, “Since I intend to train them, it would not be good for me to keep following them.”

She asked, “Do you want to follow?”

Xu Yizhuo nodded.

“Come with me,” Jun Yu said. “We’ll take another route.”

Since Jun Yu was going to lead the way, naturally, they had to hold hands.

Xu Yizhuo felt nothing strange about it. She jogged a few steps to catch up with Jun Yu. “Don’t we need to examine the demonic energy?”

Jun Yu said lightly, “I have already confirmed the demonic cultivator’s location.”

Xu Yizhuo: “…”

As expected of the number one person in the cultivation world.

If everyone’s combat strength were converted into numerical values, Xu Yizhuo was definitely the person with the highest numbers in this world. She had once tested it using her game inventory. After transmigrating, the items in each slot still could not break past the upper limit of one hundred million. Xu Yizhuo reasonably speculated that one hundred million was still the upper limit of people’s cultivation in this world.

The only way to break through this limit was to ascend to immortality. According to legend, ascending here meant going to a place called the Upper Realm.

In this world, if compared by numbers, someone could be as strong as Xu Yizhuo, but no one could be stronger than her. In fact, because no one could lock their cultivation exactly at the limit the way Xu Yizhuo could, when it came only to cultivation, Xu Yizhuo was the true number one person in the cultivation world right now.

But Xu Yizhuo did not feel that she could beat Jun Yu.

She had an entire body full of cultivation but did not know how to use it. She could not even use demonic energy to locate the corresponding demonic cultivator.

This was truly… wonderful!

She had not betrayed the salted fish class!

Xu Yizhuo did not feel embarrassed at all. Happily, she let Jun Yu, this cheat-like helper, take her straight to the culprit.

Jun Yu walked slowly to accommodate her, but because they were taking shortcuts, they still arrived at the culprit’s location very quickly.

When Xu Yizhuo saw the familiar building, she froze. “The culprit is here?”

Before them was the Yang residence.

“It should be said that he will return here very soon.” Jun Yu paused, then said to Xu Yizhuo, “Pay attention later. Don’t make any sound.”

“Hm?” Xu Yizhuo looked confused.

She felt Jun Yu let go of her hand, but immediately afterward, Jun Yu picked her up in her arms—

“…!”

Xu Yizhuo tightly covered her mouth to keep herself from crying out in surprise.

She was not very light. Because she had developed late, at this age, she was around seventy-something jin. For a woman, seventy-something jin was not a small weight. But Jun Yu held her as if she were holding a cat, without the slightest difficulty. She even landed lightly on top of the surrounding wall while carrying her like that.

The Yang residence’s surrounding wall was very high.

Xu Yizhuo glanced down once and immediately closed her eyes.

Jun Yu’s voice sounded by her ear. “Afraid of heights?”

“…A little.”

Xu Yizhuo was not actually afraid of heights, but while Jun Yu was holding her, there was empty space beneath her body, giving her no sense of support at all. Anyone would panic if they were suspended three or four meters above the ground.

Jun Yu’s response was to hold her a little tighter.

Xu Yizhuo mentally prepared herself for quite a while before carefully opening her eyes.

Jun Yu walked through the air.

There was clearly nowhere to step, yet she drifted toward a certain place like a gust of wind.

Jun Yu comforted her, “We’ll arrive soon.”

Xu Yizhuo sat on her arm and held onto her shoulder. Only then did the fear in her heart lessen somewhat.

Jun Yu carried her all the way to an attic. They went straight to the second floor, and Jun Yu set Xu Yizhuo down in the open corridor.

When her feet touched solid ground, it felt unreal, as if what lay beneath her feet was not wooden flooring but cotton. Xu Yizhuo felt that her legs were a little weak.

Jun Yu held her hand and stepped into the attic. “We only need to wait for them to return.”

“Them?” Xu Yizhuo immediately noticed this unusual word.

“Shh.” Jun Yu placed her index finger against Xu Yizhuo’s lips, signaling her to stay quiet. Then she held Xu Yizhuo beneath the arms and brought her floating up onto the ceiling beam.

“They’ll be back soon,” Jun Yu said.

The beam was very narrow. Xu Yizhuo was a little afraid she would fall, so she pressed closely against Jun Yu. Jun Yu also crouched down and stretched out a hand to protect her. Xu Yizhuo’s heart soon settled down, and she began looking around the room they had entered.

This was clearly a woman’s room.

A faint fragrance drifted in the air, and pearl curtains hung down. From her angle, she could clearly see the dressing table, where all kinds of rouge and powder sat scattered across the surface in carved wooden boxes.

Perhaps because the furnishings were arranged closely together, after entering the room, one felt that it was not as large as it had seemed from outside. But precisely because of this, it gave people a considerable sense of security.

Before Xu Yizhuo could look over all the furnishings in the room, she heard footsteps outside.

Xu Yizhuo instinctively held her breath.

The door was opened, and Miss Yang’s face appeared behind it.

The ceiling beam was rather high. Unless one raised their head, they would not see Xu Yizhuo and Jun Yu on the beam. Miss Yang, like ordinary people, did not look up at the beam for no reason after entering the room.

She came to the dressing table.

Xu Yizhuo frowned.

She smelled a faint trace of blood, almost there and almost not, covered by the fragrance of cosmetics… It seemed like she smelled it, but after a while, it also seemed like she had not. Xu Yizhuo even suspected it might be an illusion caused by her own imagination.

Miss Yang sat down in front of the dressing table. She did not remove the pearl hairpins all over her head. Instead, she took off her outer garment.

Xu Yizhuo widened her eyes.

Seeing the scene before her, she even forgot to breathe for an instant.

Behind Miss Yang, there was actually another person!

Xu Yizhuo froze. That face was so familiar. He, along with his upper body, grew out of Miss Yang’s back.

It was the blood-robed person’s face!

Beneath Miss Yang’s outer garment was a set of blood-red clothes.

The fragrance of rouge and powder hid the smell of blood, but once they were close enough, the bloody scent could not be completely concealed. This was even more true after she took off her outer garment.

Miss Yang was the blood-robed person.

The blood-robed person was Miss Yang.

He was not some admirer. They were the same person to begin with. When Miss Yang appeared, the blood-robed person would curl up and hide inside her clothes, making it seem as if Miss Yang was a hunchback. When the blood-robed person appeared, he would wear a hood and hide Miss Yang behind him.

After a brief daze, Xu Yizhuo quickly thought of a term.

Conjoined twins.

The head belonging to the blood-robed person twisted its neck, as if hiding inside the clothes for too long had made his neck sore. His eyes rolled around, then stopped when they landed on the ceiling beam.

Xu Yizhuo happened to meet the blood-robed person’s gaze.

Miss Yang stopped the hand that had been about to pull out her hairpin, while the blood-robed person suddenly opened his mouth. A blood arrow shot straight toward Xu Yizhuo’s face—

Jun Yu had already raised her hand.

But Xu Yizhuo, who was still in a daze, moved even faster. She had not even realized what had just happened, but her body had already reacted.

The round fan shifted lightly, brushing past Jun Yu’s hand and blocking in front of her.

The silk fan surface easily blocked the blood arrow.

Xu Yizhuo came back to her senses, and only one thought remained in her mind.

…It’s over.

She heard a soft sigh sound behind her. “So Miss Xu is also a cultivator.”

Xu Yizhuo opened her mouth and discovered that she could not say anything in rebuttal.

She had not wanted to create unnecessary complications, so she had pretended to be an ordinary person in front of Jun Yu. But she had not even managed to keep up the act for a few days before it overturned.

Xu Yizhuo did not quite dare to look behind her, while sword light suddenly rose beside her.

It was like a strand of moonlight, clear, gentle, and merciless.

The blood-robed person let out a pained roar. He saw that sword strike, but he discovered in horror that he had nowhere to dodge. That sword, which did not look especially fast, had sealed off all his paths of retreat.

The white jade sword was like bone as it pierced into the blood-robed person’s chest.

Miss Yang lowered her head and looked at the sword tip protruding from her lower abdomen.

Fresh blood dripped along the blade.

Xu Yizhuo jumped down from the ceiling beam.

There was no longer anything to hide now. Although she was not used to it, going up and down from a beam was not difficult for her. She could even do what Jun Yu had done earlier, walking through the air.

It was just that because she had been an ordinary person for too many years, her mindset had not changed for a while, so she did not quite dare to do it.

Jun Yu held her sword in one hand. Although there was still a faint smile at the corner of her lips, the bloodstained blade made a chill run through one’s entire body.

Xu Yizhuo kept feeling that Jun Yu might give her a sword strike too.

“I’m sorry…”

“There is no need to apologize,” Jun Yu gently interrupted her. “Miss Xu had your own considerations. I can understand.”

She added, “Rather, it was truly abrupt of me to invite Miss Xu to enter my sect.”

The gentler Jun Yu was, the stronger the guilt in Xu Yizhuo’s heart became.

If she had met someone with a slightly worse temper, they might have thought her previous concealment was deliberately playing with them.

Jun Yu said softly, “For now, let us resolve their matter first.”

Xu Yizhuo raised her head and looked at the blood-robed person and Miss Yang, who were sealed in place by Jun Yu’s aura. The blood-robed person’s face was full of unwillingness, while when Xu Yizhuo looked at Miss Yang’s face in the mirror, she only saw slight dazedness and… relief.

Miss Yang lowered her bloodstained hand. The long sword had pierced through her body. For a brief instant, she wondered whether this blood was hers or his.

However, they were originally one body, so naturally, there was no distinction between their blood.

Miss Yang closed her eyes.

She said quietly, “My elder brother killed people for my sake. All blame and guilt are because of me alone.”

The blood-robed person roared, “Zishuang!”

Miss Yang gripped the tip of the long sword. The sharp blade immediately cut open her hand.

Once the sword energy entered her body, it wreaked havoc, instantly shredding her meridians.

The blood-robed person cried out in grief, “Zishuang!”

Xu Yizhuo widened her eyes in disbelief.

She saw the bodies of Miss Yang and the blood-robed person suddenly twist before her eyes. The place where their bodies connected was being pulled apart—the blood-robed person was frantically trying to detach himself from Miss Yang’s back.

“I killed them all!” The blood-robed person stared fixedly at Jun Yu. Before, Xu Yizhuo had only ever seen ferocity in his eyes. But at this moment, his eyes were filled with pleading. He repeated again and again, “I killed them all!”

The woman in the mirror shed tears.

Tears rolled uncontrollably from Miss Yang’s eyes. They fell and mixed together with the blood.

“Elder Brother.”

Miss Yang called softly and held the blood-robed person’s hand.

Time seemed to stop. The blood-robed person’s movements froze.

Miss Yang said softly, “We were born together, and we will die together.”

She tightly held the blood-robed person’s hand, yet at the same time, she shattered both their heart meridians.

Xu Yizhuo watched helplessly as the two people connected by one body collapsed before her. A dense series of footsteps sounded outside the door. Someone knocked the door open. The foolish young girl Xu Yizhuo had met in Willow Alley was shocked by the scene inside the room and shouted, “Tower Master!”

After that—after that, Xu Yizhuo knew nothing more.

Her vision suddenly went black without warning. When her sight returned, she found that she had arrived in an unfamiliar place.

“What is this place?”

Xu Yizhuo stretched out a hand in confusion and caught a withered leaf that had fallen from a tree.

Not only were the buildings around her unfamiliar, even the season had suddenly changed to autumn.

A gust of wind passed. The branches shook, and all the leaves that had already been on the verge of falling suddenly broke away from the branches, fluttering down like dancing dead-leaf butterflies.

Xu Yizhuo raised her hand and brushed the fallen leaves off her shoulders.

She was already standing on a small path, with walls on both sides. Since that was the case, she simply walked forward. Xu Yizhuo stepped over the ground covered with withered yellow leaves, and the crisp sound of leaves breaking rang beneath her feet.

The cold autumn wind passed through the path. As she walked, her hair and skirt swayed faintly.

At the end of the path was a courtyard.

There were three trees in the courtyard. It was late autumn now, and like the trees elsewhere, most of the leaves on these three trees had already fallen. Beneath the steps of the building sat a little girl, propping up her chin as she watched the leaves be blown down by the wind. She could quietly watch the entire process of a leaf being tugged by the autumn wind from its branch, then detaching, spinning as it drifted down, and finally blending into the withered yellow carpet of leaves on the ground.

Xu Yizhuo had a feeling that even if there were nothing else to do all day, this little girl could watch like this for an entire day and not feel bored.

So quiet.

Xu Yizhuo stopped in front of the little girl and crouched down so that the two of them could look at each other.

Xu Yizhuo asked, “Who are you?”

The little girl did not answer.

Xu Yizhuo asked again, “Where is this?”

The little girl still did not answer.

Xu Yizhuo stretched out a hand and waved it in front of the little girl. The little girl did not even blink.

Xu Yizhuo finally accepted her fate. This little girl could not see her.

“Tsk, what exactly is this place?”

Xu Yizhuo braced her hands on her knees and stood up.

She had already been very close to the little girl, and now that she stood up, she directly saw the little girl’s back.

Xu Yizhuo froze.

The little girl’s back arched high. It was obvious that she was a hunchback.

…No.

Xu Yizhuo frowned.

This was Miss Yang.