Crossing the Incessant Wind had only that one ordeal, but Yan Xun felt like she was sitting on pins and needles for the rest of the journey. She always sensed a gaze fixed on her, as if it wanted to pluck all the feathers from her wings.
There were only a few people on Little Fatty Chirp’s back, so it couldn’t be some invisible ghost staring at her, right? Yet every time she turned around, that eerie gaze vanished, as if her suspicion was unnecessary and the prickling sensation on her back was just an illusion born from fatigue.
It wasn’t until they entered Tiandu that Yan Xun secretly let out a sigh of relief. She wiped away a cold sweat and, after exchanging name seals on the Tianyan Mirror with Li Ruoshui and Lian Rusu, forced a smile. “I live in Wuyi Alley. If Fellow Daoist Li has any matters, you can come find me.” Afraid that Li Ruoshui would think her useless and mock her with a smirk, she hurriedly added, “Even if I can’t resolve it myself, I’ll find familiar fellow Daoists to help.”
“Thank you, Fellow Daoist.” As they were about to part, Li Ruoshui had no intention of needling Yan Xun. She took out some Spirit Jade Pills and asked, “Fellow Daoist Yan carried us two sisters along the way. How shall we settle the fee?”
“No need for Spirit Jade Pills.” Yan Xun quickly shook her head. With such a major mishap on the road, without these two’s help, she might have met with disaster. How could she accept Li Ruoshui’s Spirit Jade Pills?
Li Ruoshui let out an “oh” without a hint of politeness and swiftly stowed the Spirit Jade Pills back in her storage pouch. She lowered her gaze to the Golden Eagle trailing shakily behind her and said, “Fellow Daoist Yan, take it with you.”
There was no room for this bird between her and Lian Rusu.
Yan Xun’s eyebrows twitched. She didn’t want to get involved in trouble, but it was hopeless to completely disassociate herself now. She could only nod and say, “Alright. If I hear any news, I’ll send you a message, Fellow Daoist.”
Li Ruoshui nodded perfunctorily, unlike the focused attentiveness she showed when speaking with Lian Rusu.
Yan Xun knew when to quit. After giving Li Ruoshui a courteous bow, she left with the Golden Eagle.
Li Ruoshui raised her eyes to take in the Heavenly Capital Main City of the Feather Kingdom. The scenery here differed from the Merfolk Kingdom: half was densely packed buildings, the other half towering verdant trees. On the side planted with woods, sturdy branches stretched like a net draped across the sky, forming crisscrossing sky bridges. Some extended straight ahead, others climbed upward. Amid the floating clouds veiling the firmament, treehouses built among the leaves could faintly be glimpsed.
Retracting her gaze, Li Ruoshui turned to Lian Rusu and asked, “Why isn’t Senior Sister speaking?” It might not have been due to the Mysterious Technique’s merit; Lian Rusu had always been taciturn. After spending time together, Li Ruoshui knew this well but still couldn’t help trying to start a conversation.
Lian Rusu was momentarily taken aback and replied warmly, “I saw you chatting happily with Fellow Daoist Yan.”
She had wanted to ask, but Shangshan Junior Sister had already spoken up. Why repeat it?
Was that the reason? Had she spoken too quickly and densely, making her close friend feel neglected? Li Ruoshui’s eyebrows twitched. Unable to read anything from Lian Rusu’s face, she could only guess. Successfully misunderstanding, she quickly beamed. “But if Senior Sister speaks, I’d only listen to you.”
Lian Rusu chuckled helplessly. “That’s not appropriate. Official matters come first.”
Li Ruoshui’s response was pure coaxing. “But since I came out with you, I should fulfill our promise of touring the four seas together. This certainly counts as a major event.” Though it wasn’t quite as she had originally imagined, traveling together was traveling. Solving the Ruin Spirits’ harm while keeping the promise avoided further delays—a win-win.
But Lian Rusu didn’t see it that way. For once, she didn’t go along with Li Ruoshui and frowned. “This isn’t a leisure trip.”
Li Ruoshui choked and gave a sheepish laugh. “It’s not that different, is it?” She could imagine that if the Ruin Spirits were smoothly resolved in the future, she’d be so weary from running east and west that she’d hole up in a cave abode for a century, with no leisure to tour mountains and rivers! Wasn’t her close friend a homebody? Why was she so insistent on traveling?
After a moment of eye contact, Li Ruoshui conceded. “Fine, it doesn’t count.” What if Lian Rusu changed her mind later?
Lian Rusu stared straight at Li Ruoshui. “You’re deceiving me.”
Even words of reproach from Lian Rusu came out calmly, as if no matter how big the issue, they could only stir a tiny ripple in her heart. If it were anyone else acting this way, Li Ruoshui would ignore it outright, but facing Lian Rusu now, she couldn’t disregard even the slightest shift in her emotions.
“How could I deceive you!” Li Ruoshui put on her most sincere demeanor to quibble.
At most, she just hadn’t told the full truth. Was that really deceiving?
“But earlier, you—” Lian Rusu had plenty of past grievances to recount.
How could Li Ruoshui let her voice them? She didn’t want to be the chestnut thrown onto the fire. Raising her hand to cover Lian Rusu’s mouth, she sighed. “Didn’t we agree not to bring up old matters?”
Sometimes, it was good for a close friend to be a bit quiet.
Li Ruoshui grumbled inwardly.
Lian Rusu pulled down Li Ruoshui’s hand. “You’re not letting me speak because you find me noisy?”
Li Ruoshui stared at Lian Rusu in shock, unable to believe her ears.
This wasn’t something her close friend would say. Who taught her that?!
The doubt in Li Ruoshui’s eyes was too obvious; Lian Rusu understood at a glance. She still spoke in her usual indifferent tone. “It’s from a storybook.”
Storybooks were truly harmful!
Novels had made her transmigrate—but forget it, that gave her a second life, a real chance to live.
But corrupting her close friend was unforgivable! That storybook was written by someone from Three Saints Academy, right? She knew Three Saints Academy wasn’t anything good.
Li Ruoshui was both angry and annoyed, her face tinged with a faint blush. She declared righteously, “Nonsense. Senior Sister, your voice is a melodious timbre that lingers in the beams. I only regret it doesn’t echo in my dreams. To listen to it every moment would be my fortune.”
Lian Rusu let out a light laugh.
The blush on Li Ruoshui’s face deepened. She secretly lifted her eyes, trying to catch any change in Lian Rusu’s expression, but their gazes met, and the queued-up quibbles scattered like smoke in the wind. She opened her mouth, then looked away. “Anyway, I’m not annoyed.”
Lian Rusu smiled with her eyes and brows. “Good.”
Li Ruoshui knew it wasn’t perfunctory, yet a subtle unease still stirred deep in her heart, casting a shadow over her lively brows and eyes, spelling out “dejected” in big letters. What was with these sudden ups and downs? Wasn’t she supposed to be emotionally stable? “Senior Sister!” Li Ruoshui raised her voice.
Lian Rusu: “Hm?”
Li Ruoshui: “Nothing.”
After walking two steps along the street, Li Ruoshui spoke again. “Senior Sister.”
Lian Rusu gazed at her warmly. “What’s wrong?”
Li Ruoshui drawled, “Nothing.”
She just wanted to call out a couple times.
Even if Lian Rusu found it annoying, she’d still call.
But Lian Rusu wasn’t annoyed at all. Knowing Li Ruoshui was making excuses, she still patiently responded until Li Ruoshui was satisfied and her mood brightened.
“There’s a bookstore over there.” Li Ruoshui’s wits returned, her face flushed with embarrassment. Her voice was low, her gaze patrolling her shoe tips, her whole body burning. “We’ll only buy Strange Tales of the Feather Country.”
The Tianyan Mirror actually had many storybooks circulated via Dao transmission jade slips, but some still preferred the tactile feel of paper, so bookstores existed everywhere in the Nine Provinces.
Strange Tales of the Feather Country was the Feather Kingdom’s bestseller, priced at ten Spirit Jade Pills.
Li Ruoshui now had spare cash and was no longer the type to split one Spirit Jade Pill in two. She waved her hand, wanting to grandly buy two copies, but then thought better of it—were they going to sit opposite each other reading? Besides, she needed to vet it. What if Strange Tales of the Feather Country was only proper in name? The words on the tip of her tongue changed, and she bought just one copy.
The Feather Race favored treehouses; looking around, colorful bird-like nests dangled in rows from the branches. But Li Ruoshui preferred solid ground and rented a cave abode at a guest residence, settling in with Lian Rusu. After dusting and burning incense, she finally took out Strange Tales of the Feather Country.
Strange Tales of the Feather Country recounted events from the reign of the previous Feather Sovereign, Yu Liansheng. Li Ruoshui had no interest in praises and flipped straight to Yu Liansheng’s final years per the table of contents.
When the rift appeared in Tiandu, Yu Liansheng had cultivated to the Nascent Soul Third Layer, just one step from Cave Heaven—but that step was harder than ascending to heaven. However, as a major power in the Origin Sea alongside the Merfolk Kingdom and Dragon Palace, the Feather Kingdom had a Cave Heaven powerhouse: Wen Yuhuang from Phoenix Island.
That sudden rift was at the Cave Heaven level; suppressing it required a Cave Heaven True Person. Wen Yuhuang had entered the rift more than once, but past arrays and prohibitions were useless. The rift ceaselessly devoured the Feather Kingdom’s territory, even affecting the mechanisms of the Feather Kingdom’s Thirty-Six Floating Islands. Never mind the urgency; even migrating the Thirty-Six Floating Islands’ inhabitants to the Seventy-Two Sea Islands would be futile. Once the mechanisms were devoured, the island chains would crash, triggering Cave Heaven-level tsunamis that would destroy the Feather Kingdom outright.
The only solution was for Wen Yuhuang to carry the Feather Kingdom’s state-guarding Dao artifact into the rift.
According to Strange Tales of the Feather Country, on the eve of Wen Yuhuang’s departure for the rift, Tiandu was filled with plaintive flute sounds from all directions.
The Feather Sovereign appeared again after the rift vanished. She went alone to the rift’s site, fearless of the surrounding destructive energies. When she returned from the rift, her aura was disordered, her hair fully white, her Daoist robe bloodstained.
Afterward, the Feather Sovereign decreed that the heir apparent, Yu Chaoyun, handle state affairs, and she entered secluded cultivation.
The day she achieved Cave Heaven should have been a joyous one for the Feather Kingdom’s people, but the Cave Heaven Dharma Image that enveloped Tiandu dissipated after a short while. That was the last time the Feather Kingdom’s subjects saw the Feather Sovereign.
Li Ruoshui closed Strange Tales of the Feather Country and murmured, “Does the Human Emperor Dao achieve Cave Heaven through sacrifice? Is its essence solitude, the solitary path of a ruler without kin?” Even the Empire’s founder, the Qing Emperor, had martyred herself before achieving the Dao.
Before Lian Rusu could answer, she shook her head. “Whether one cultivates it or not, cultivation is always about choices and sacrifices. Is there any Dao that grasps everything?”
“Senior Sister, what do you think of predecessors who martyred themselves? Though you haven’t cultivated the Vow Dao, you have your own great vow to ferry the world, don’t you?”
“Since I cultivate the Causal Vow Dao, should I also abandon my life for that great vow?” But that seemed contrary to her original intent. She cultivated for longevity, not self-sacrifice. She wasn’t that noble.
