Bao Gu said earnestly, her voice heavy:
“Qingying, there aren’t many people in the world who can take out a Reviving Pill. And even if they have one, they use it to save their own lives.”
Ba instantly exploded, shouting with an indignant face:
“Liar! You saw it yourself, my grandmaster’s pill room is full of them, packed to the brim—”
She cut herself off mid-sentence.
Because she suddenly remembered that all the pills in her grandmaster’s pill room were already in her own pockets, not a single one left.
She guiltily glanced at the Demon Saint, hurriedly changed the subject, and said:
“Uh, cheap master, weren’t you going to find Yu Mi? Let’s go.”
She was afraid her “cheap” grandmaster, this poor victim, would go complain to her master, and then her “cheap” master would get mad and dock her rations again. To keep that “cheap” grandmaster from blackening her name, she even shot the Demon Saint an ingratiating smile.
She thought about it, still not at ease, then whooshed over to stand right in front of the Demon Saint and said:
“Cheap master, your pills are way too good. I accidentally took a few extra. So, I’ll pay you back with this!”
Without giving the Demon Saint a chance to refuse, she pulled out a suit of battle armor forged from divine metal and stuffed it into the Demon Saint’s arms.
“You can’t blame me anymore for taking a few of your pills, okay?”
Out there under the starry sky, there really wasn’t much to do. Mostly, she was worried that one day someone would lock and seal her up again with divine metal. So when she was bored, she just took all that divine metal and refined things: weapons, magic tools, even pots, pans and tableware. She’d made piles of them. Keeping them was useless, throwing them away was a shame—trading them for spiritual treasures and rare pills was an absolute bargain.
Bao Gu knew Ba far too well.
For someone so stingy to suddenly be this generous—combined with Ba’s usual attitude toward food—Bao Gu didn’t even need to think about it to know her Saint Aunt had taken a huge loss this time. The pill room was probably swept completely clean, maybe only the pill furnace was left.
The Demon Saint was holding the divine-metal battle armor Ba had forcefully stuffed into her hands, its surface gleaming with spiritual light. Ba had frightened her so badly her face had gone pale, and now she saw this suit of divine armor was of an absurdly high grade, perfectly suited for Zi Yunshu to use. She was so shocked she couldn’t even form words; in the end she could only silently accept Ba’s “kindness,” her pure, pale face going even whiter as she gave the faintest of nods. When she saw Ba flash her a brilliant smile on top of that, she honestly didn’t even know how she was supposed to react.
Ba, satisfied, bounced back to Bao Gu’s side. She looked at Bao Gu with a beaming, obedient expression and said:
“I didn’t take advantage of cheap grandmaster, and I didn’t bully her.”
Bao Gu cast Ba a sidelong look and said softly:
“A whole room full of pills is only worth one suit of armor? Your business skills have graduated to the master level.”
Ba instantly went quiet.
She blinked, then hurried to change the subject:
“Aren’t you going to find Yu Mi? Weren’t you missing her so badly you were about to die—hit by the Blood Tribulation Heavenly Lightning and still staring at that broken realm gate thinking about her? You don’t miss her anymore?”
Bao Gu really couldn’t listen to that. She quickly flung out a teleportation platform, dragged Ba up onto it, and raised her hand to inscribe coordinates—only to realize she didn’t have any. She turned to ask Yu Jianming for them.
She had just finished inscribing the coordinates and was about to activate the teleportation array when she heard Ba let out an “ah!” of dismay, then saw her wearing a stricken expression as she cried:
“I lost my daddy’s cauldron!”
Bao Gu didn’t react for a moment.
“What cauldron?”
Ba said:
“My daddy’s cauldron! I used it to suppress my lair…”
She trailed off, blinked guiltily again, and skipped over the part about using a sea of blood to nourish the cauldron. Instead she said:
“And then you tricked me away, and now the cauldron is gone.”
The more she thought about it, the more furious she grew. Someone actually dared to take her cauldron. She ground her teeth, snarling:
“I have to get my daddy’s cauldron back. Once I find out who stole my daddy’s cauldron, I’ll… I’ll… I’ll starve him for ten thousand years!”
Bao Gu silently thought:
How vicious.
Ba’s father was the Heavenly Emperor. The Heavenly Emperor’s life-bound artifact wasn’t something an ordinary person could just take. If someone had managed to seize the Heavenly Emperor’s life-bound artifact, there should have been news. It wouldn’t be hard to track down.
Ba said:
“Cheap master, you go find Yu Mi yourself. I’m going to find my daddy’s cauldron.”
As soon as she finished speaking, she vanished from Bao Gu’s side, gone without a trace in an instant.
Bao Gu figured Ba had already run far. She turned to look at the few people around her and asked:
“Who took Ba’s cauldron?”
Zi Yunshu said:
“It was collected by Princess Xueqing with the All-Spirits Cauldron.”
Bao Gu fell silent.
Whoever that cauldron ended up with, they’d be in for a world of bad luck. But if it had fallen into her master’s wife’s hands… then maybe the one in trouble wouldn’t be Ba at all.
She was just about to activate the teleportation platform again when she noticed the Demon Saint’s face looked terrible, clearly still shaken by Ba. Bao Gu stepped back to her side and said:
“Saint Aunt, Qingying’s spiritual intelligence has fully awakened. She’s actually just a simple, honest, very well-behaved child. During all those years she was sealed, she starved so many times she’s terrified of starving and of being sealed again. She cares especially about rations. And she has no resistance at all to spirit pills and treasures that can suppress the death aura in her body so her fangs don’t come out and she doesn’t turn ugly. If you coax her with that kind of pill, it works every time.
“She’s never gone back on something she’s promised. When she gives her word, she follows through. If I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t hurt you, I wouldn’t have brought her back.
“Qingying has a good temper. When she gets upset, she likes to hide off by herself. If she gets really mad, she’ll use those sharp claws of hers to poke a string of holes in something made of Da Luo Crimson Gold. If she’s furious, she’ll scratch words all over the courtyard walls cursing me as a bad Bao Gu. When she cools down, she’ll use her claws to scrape all the words off again. The walls always end up full of pits and grooves like a dog’s been digging at them.
“There are only two things that can make her angry. One, I ignore her. Two, I let her go hungry. Qingying’s a little mischievous sometimes, but she isn’t bad. She knows where the lines are.”
Bao Gu’s rambling actually made the Demon Saint laugh.
Listening to her, and thinking back on Ba’s earlier behavior and reactions, the Demon Saint couldn’t help but half-believe her. The fear in her heart faded a little—only a little, though.
Ba carried the aura of the Hellbreaking Blood Lotus. The two of them had been twin seeds born in the same shell; that aura and the inborn sense of connection couldn’t be ignored. Facing Ba felt like half her body had already been chewed away. Even so, she nodded lightly and said:
“I understand what you mean. Don’t worry about me. Go find Yu Mi.”
She paused, thought for a moment, then added:
“After you left, Yu Mi’s cultivation became almost impossible to advance. To keep herself from wasting away completely, she had no choice but to ask Princess Xueqing to seal her memories. She doesn’t remember the past anymore.
“But she does know you. She knows about you, and about what used to be between you—she just learned all of that through others.”
Bao Gu’s heart clenched in a sharp pain.
She had known her leaving would hurt Yu Mi, but she hadn’t expected she’d drive Yu Mi to the point of sealing her own memories. Then she thought about it again and realized: perhaps it was better this way. With her memories sealed, Yu Mi wouldn’t have to endure the same near-despair Bao Gu had, clinging stubbornly to a sliver of hope and suffering for it.
She had risked her life and gone all out for Yu Mi. She could easily imagine how much pressure and guilt Yu Mi had been bearing.
Softly, she said:
“It’s me who wronged her.”
Then she stepped onto the teleportation platform and set off for Forget-Worry City to find Yu Mi.
Following the coordinates Yu Jianming had given her, she emerged from the formation into the void and immediately sensed a faint energy ripple not far away. Thinking it was Yu Mi, she rushed toward it, divine sense sweeping out—only to discover it was two late-stage Void Tearing cultivators, covered in blood, supporting each other as they staggered out of a thick bramble of thorny vines.
Those thorns were called Poisonthorn Needles—thin, razor-sharp, hard as iron and laced with venom. Getting stuck by them hurt so bad you went numb and burned at the same time. Low-level cultivators often harvested them to use as hidden weapons.
To force their way through a Poisonthorn Needle thicket and come out looking like a pair of porcupines… that had to hurt.
Bao Gu also keenly noticed there was a concealment array hidden among the Poisonthorn Needles.
The two men’s hair and eyebrows had been burned clean off. Their clothes had melted and fused to their skin. Their bodies were covered in crisscrossing sword wounds. Late-stage Void Tearing experts should have been able to circulate their spiritual power once and at least stop the bleeding—so long as their qi seas weren’t injured, their internal and external trauma would start to mend automatically. At worst they’d be weak for a while.
But these two couldn’t even stop the blood oozing from their wounds. And from those wounds, a fiery energy aura and fierce sword intent were still leaking out. The more she looked, the more familiar it felt to Bao Gu.
She watched them nervously scan their surroundings as soon as they emerged, fear still written all over their faces. Sensing from their baleful aura that they were anything but good people, she silently sank her presence and merged herself with the environment.
The two men supported each other and managed to stumble over ten miles before finally finding a cave. They dragged themselves inside, laid down a concealment array, and only then collapsed against the wall, breathing hard with relief.
After they’d rested a while, one of them finally burst out angrily:
“Getting mixed up with that Fire Tyrant Dragon was eight lifetimes of bad luck! Brother, when you picked your target, couldn’t you have used your eyes? You actually dared lay hands on the Fire Tyrant Dragon’s disciple’s disciple, and then you dragged all the trouble over to me. Thirty years of work in this place, ruined by you!”
The other man, looking utterly wretched, sighed.
“You didn’t see it. That was the rarest kind of extreme yin constitution, a child born after the mother died—conceived and delivered through ghost power out of pure maternal instinct. Don’t tell me you could’ve ignored that if you’d seen it.”
“Heh. Better think about how you’re going to survive the Fire Tyrant Dragon’s pursuit first.”
“Come on, it can’t be that bad. It’s just a disciple’s disciple. And besides, didn’t she already save the girl? It’s not like I killed her. Is she really going to chase me forever over that?”
“If she wasn’t dead set on chasing you down, would she have chased you over ten thousand miles to my territory? You’ve brought nothing but misfortune. She’s going to get me killed! Whatever, forget it. We’ll find a place, hide for a hundred years or so, and maybe this tribulation will pass. We were lucky enough today anyway. I don’t know who contacted her just then, but she actually stopped to stare at her messaging jade slip and forgot to kill us…”
“So that’s why she suddenly stopped her attack! If you saw she was distracted, why didn’t you take the chance to strike back? Maybe we could’ve…”
He didn’t finish.
His companion was just staring at him with a cold smile.
He muttered awkwardly:
“I was only saying. With the Fire Tyrant Dragon’s battle power, add ten more of us and we’d still just be lining up to get chopped.”
Bao Gu figured these must be the demonic cultivators Yu Jianming had mentioned, the ones Yu Mi had been chasing down.
She had no interest in personally dealing with two cultivators so badly injured they could barely move. As a rule, if she could avoid killing, she would. But these two were clearly not good people, and others wouldn’t be safe if she let them go.
So she took out formation materials and laid down a sealing array over their little hideout, locking the two of them inside the cave.
Then she released her divine sense to search the surroundings.
About twenty miles away, she sensed a figure and an aura so familiar it made her heart tremble.
She rushed over at her fastest speed, but when she actually arrived beside that figure, she suddenly didn’t dare go forward. She shrank behind a large boulder, pressing herself against it, and stared unblinking at Yu Mi.
Yu Mi was sitting under a green pine beside a cliff, holding a transmission jade slip in one hand and staring at it in a daze.
Suddenly, Yu Mi’s brows drew together. Her cold voice rang out:
“Come out.”
Bao Gu didn’t move.
Yu Mi flicked her sleeve.
A sharp blast of force shot out from her cuff, slammed into the boulder Bao Gu was hiding behind, and with a thunderous boom blew it to powder, exposing Bao Gu standing behind it.
Bao Gu remembered what her Saint Aunt had said about Yu Mi having sealed her memories, about not recognizing her anymore. She’d come back so abruptly, and Yu Mi’s expression clearly wasn’t good. Bao Gu was afraid of scaring Yu Mi, and she didn’t know how she was supposed to make Yu Mi accept the fact that she, who’d left in a way that made return almost impossible, had suddenly appeared again.
So she blurted out:
“Uh… um, I… I was just passing by.”
The words left her mouth and she realized with dismay that after spending so long around Qingying, she’d actually picked up her way of speaking.
Yu Mi turned her head and looked over.
The white figure standing there was reflected in her eyes, framed by blue sky, green pine, and sparse yellowed grass. The woman’s figure and features were both excellent, though she carried a faint air of nervous restraint.
Very few cultivators ever managed to remain calm and relaxed in front of Yu Mi. Many hardly dared to breathe or walked the long way around her. Others admired her from afar, too intimidated to approach and speak, only daring to secretly follow at a distance.
Yu Mi couldn’t sense any hostility from this white-clad woman, so at first she hadn’t cared. But as she looked, her heart suddenly tightened for no reason, struck by a blunt, dull ache she couldn’t describe.
Along with that pain came a deep, sour sadness, so strong it made her nose sting—and then, without warning, tears she had never once shed in her life slid down her cheeks.
Yu Mi touched her face, staring in disbelief at the dampness on her palm. Then she turned, stunned, to stare at the woman standing not far away.
That slender figure stirred up a storm of emotion inside her, waves crashing wildly against her heart. The surge came too fast and too fierce, wrenching her mind in a spike of agony.
She gave a muffled groan and clutched at her head, which felt like it was about to explode.
Then she felt herself being pulled into a soft embrace. A pair of slightly cool hands came to rest gently at her temples, fingers moving lightly as pure spiritual power poured in—like a ribbon of cool water slicing through her mind. The pain vanished in an instant, replaced by a sense of safety…and an even stronger urge to cry, like a child who’d suffered some enormous grievance.
It amused Yu Mi, in a way.
When had she ever suffered a grievance?
She was the Fire Tyrant Dragon, who roamed the world unhindered. Who would dare make her feel wronged?
Tears slid down regardless, while the person behind her hugged her tightly, tighter and tighter, as if wanting to crush her into their own body.
After a long moment, Yu Mi finally steadied her emotions and said:
“Miss, keep your hands to yourself. As far as I know, we don’t know each other.”
Bao Gu’s arms loosened slightly around her.
“I saw you crying,” she said, “so… I wanted to comfort you.”
As she spoke, she tightened her grip on Yu Mi’s hand, tears already filling her eyes.
