The Heroine Fell Deeply For Her [Quick Transmigration] 222p1

Chapter 222: What’s This About Marrying First and Loving Later? 7(1)

Before sunset, Tao Ning returned to her doorstep.

She didn’t rush inside, habitually circling the house once, checking the surroundings. She noticed a destroyed marker.

The tourists had an unprecedented desire for life and would search for clues whenever they had the chance. The ancestral hall, as an important location in the village, was actually the easiest to enter, while the villagers’ houses were the hardest.

They instinctively believed that there would be hidden clues in the villagers’ houses. The village chief’s house, the best in the village, and Tao Ning’s dilapidated house were the most frequently searched places.

Of course, those who came to Tao Ning’s house would leave empty-handed. Her dwelling seemed to have nothing to hide, everything usable placed in plain sight.

Casually brushing away the unintentionally destroyed marker, Tao Ning walked to the door, taking out the key from her pocket and unlocking it.

An old-fashioned iron lock hung on the wooden door, heavy and solid, fastened with an iron rod through the bolt.

A cloth doll lay on the cloth bag, its soft body filled with cotton, the internal frame supporting its soul, allowing it to move freely.

The cloth doll stared at the weathered wooden door for a long time, thinking what was the point of locking such a house.

Broken door, rotten windows, damaged roof, nothing could protect the things inside, nor the people.

It had thought its mountaintop home was drafty enough, but it hadn’t expected there to be someone even more exceptional down the mountain, exceptionally broken.

While Tao Ning fiddled with the lock, Xuan Miao finally spoke: “You, you lied, your house isn’t as big as my pool.”

A hand reached out, covering the doll’s black beady eyes. Tao Ning said, “Don’t look at things you shouldn’t.”

With a click, the lock opened. Tao Ning pulled out the bolt, taking the iron rod and lock inside, lest someone from the tourist camp with special skills lock her out.

“…” Xuan Miao struggled to remove the hand covering her black beady eyes, revealing her dark, lifeless eyes, “You, are rude.”

Tao Ning, mischievous as she was, hadn’t sewn a fanged mouth on the doll, otherwise it would have bitten her hand.

Her gaze swept across a half-footprint in an inconspicuous corner, the pattern unique, like the print of a cloth shoe.

Casually wiping away the trace, Tao Ning walked to the table, placing the cloth bag down and carefully seating the doll on the side.

She said again: “Humble abode, my apologies.”

This silenced Xuan Miao, who had wanted to criticize, sitting quietly in place.

Someone could live contentedly in such a humble dwelling, this wasn’t a reason for her, Xuan Miao, to mock them.

It was just…

Watching the busy figure moving back and forth, Xuan Miao shifted her position, sitting where she could see Tao Ning more clearly.

She didn’t quite understand why someone with such abilities would live in such a place. She had suspected that this place didn’t belong to Tao Ning, but then she thought, who would steal a house that was practically open to the elements?

If they were going to steal, they might as well steal a better one, once and for all, maybe even with a few servants, to be more convincing.

Seeing the doll on the table staring at the hole in the roof, Tao Ning decided to be quick, not wanting to waste time on unnecessary things, and she didn’t intend to explain.

Her silence, however, piqued Xuan Miao’s interest: “How did this happen?”

Tao Ning had to say: “It’s a long story, so I’ll make it short. Simply put, at the time, I was empty-handed, weak and defenseless, so I could only shout from the side, ‘Stop fighting, stop fighting, stop it.'”

“Unfortunately, no one listened to me. The person standing on the roof lost their balance and fell down in a Tom-chopping-a-tree pose, blood everywhere. After that, I had to throw away the bed and replace it with this one. The advantage is that there’s no more creaking sound when I turn over.”

Xuan Miao was silent, thinking, what a “empty-handed, weak and defenseless” story.

However, Xuan Miao: “What is a Tom-chopping-a-tree pose?”

Hearing this, Tao Ning stopped what she was doing, thinking that describing this scene to a lonely female ghost was a bit cruel.

She found paper and a pen, carefully drawing Tom-chopping-a-tree.jpg, and placed it in front of Xuan Miao.

The incredibly lifelike drawing stunned Xuan Miao for a long time, leaving her speechless.

Even 520 sent a complaint to Tao Ning: [Polluting a lonely female ghost with modern civilization, you have no conscience.]

Now, 520 had gone from being afraid of the Ghost King getting angry and eating Tao Ning, to thinking Tao Ning was truly bad, always finding ways to provoke the ghost.

It wanted to watch, but couldn’t help but feel nervous. Fortunately, Tao Ning always stopped before crossing the Ghost King’s bottom line, not causing any substantial harm, and even increasing the level of trust.

This kind of manipulation was something 520 hadn’t expected.

At night, Tao Ning sat at the table, using the remaining pencil to draw the murals in the cave one by one.

She had been in a hurry before, only glancing at them briefly. Just now, she had remembered something and decided to draw them all down for a closer look.

She had a good memory and wouldn’t forget anything she had seen once. She meticulously drew every detail she had seen, presenting it on paper.

Starting from the first picture depicting the widespread plague, to the Taoist priest leaving after the ritual, the remaining villagers reluctantly seeing him off.

While drawing, Tao Ning noticed something she had overlooked before. A blurry, short figure often appeared beside the crudely drawn Taoist priest.

At first, Tao Ning thought it was a village child, because there were many similar figures in the mural. But when the Taoist priest left the village, this child also walked on the departing path.

If the child was taken from the village by him, then the child was walking in front of the Taoist priest, its face blurry, more likely knowing the way back and leading the way.

This child wasn’t from the village; it was a Daoist boy or apprentice brought by the Taoist priest from outside.

Stories from the past were mostly not recorded in writing, relying on oral transmission from the elders. Because Tao Zi was born foolish and no one cared about her, she didn’t know much, and Tao Ning could only rely on piecing together clues.

Since the mission had been issued, and the world consciousness had specifically made Tao Ning transmigrate into the small world at this point in time, did it mean that whether or not Tao Ning existed, Xuan Miao would be released from the formation?

But Xuan Miao, with her memory loss, didn’t necessarily have much of an advantage. Something would definitely happen later, resulting in a lose-lose situation, and then the world line would collapse, the two small worlds in the merging phase directly dissipating.

As mentioned before, this small world’s energy was chaotic, unable to withstand the consequences of a world line collapse.

They didn’t even have the ability of previous small worlds to calculate the subsequent development of the world line, unable to provide a complete world line.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t directly see through the small world’s trajectory, with all the past and future like a book for her to browse at will, everything in plain sight.

So this time, Tao Ning could only rely on the few clues she had to find Xuan Miao in advance.

After much effort, she had finally brought her down the mountain. Now, Xuan Miao was sitting at the table, watching her draw with her black beady eyes.

Xuan Miao felt dizzy watching: “Why are you drawing them?”

With someone accompanying her to practice, Xuan Miao’s speech became increasingly fluent, only occasionally stuttering at the beginning of a sentence.

Tao Ning brushed away the eraser shavings on the paper: “Making a kill list, and also looking for any other clues about your past, trying to find it back for you.”

Xuan Miao only heard the latter half as a serious statement: “How did you know I lost my memory?”

Tao Ning looked at the black beady-eyed doll sitting beside her: “Because every time I ask you a question, you always have to think for a while before responding, so I guessed that you lost your memory and don’t remember anything.”

“Aren’t you afraid that I’m like the one in the mural, repaying kindness with malice, and eating you?” Xuan Miao said, a faint black aura emanating from her.

Honestly, such a cute-looking doll couldn’t pose any threat to Tao Ning.

And she had never been afraid.

Tao Ning’s eyes lit up at this: “Wouldn’t that be perfect, then we’ll be together forever.”

Xuan Miao: “…” As expected, it was pointless to ask.

She turned her back, not looking at Tao Ning, the black aura receding, as if sulking silently.

A more serious answer came from behind. Tao Ning said, “I know you don’t want to trust me now, and although you probably won’t believe what I’m about to say, I came for you. No matter what you do, it must be someone else’s fault.”

Having gone through so much together, if they didn’t even have this much trust, Tao Ning wouldn’t be Tao Ning.

“…” A strange feeling surged in Xuan Miao’s heart, like stepping into the void, the moment before falling from a great height.

The rustling sound of pencil on paper continued. Tao Ning was correcting some blurry details, thinking while drawing about the connection between the Taoist priest in the painting and the mission.

The people who appeared here, those listed in the mission, couldn’t have appeared randomly.

Unconsciously, Xuan Miao, sitting on the table, turned around, looking at the figure bent over the desk.

Her profile was slender and straight, her wet hair draped behind her, a few strands falling beside her face. The candlelight from the lantern cast a warm yellow glow on her, her long eyelashes casting shadows beneath her eyes.

The pencil in her hand was a bit short, its black and red stripes making Tao Ning’s fingers look even longer. She painstakingly gripped the ridiculously short pencil and drew, even the eraser looked like it had been preserved from many years ago, its surface…

In Tao Ning’s hands, it became proof of her serious work. It could only be said that as long as the person was beautiful, anything around her would become a foil.

It should have been a somewhat comical scene, but Xuan Miao didn’t feel like laughing, only watching quietly and seriously.

Talking about peeking while bathing, her house clearly had a small shower room. She had said that to tease her, and after bathing, hadn’t she come out fully dressed?

Suddenly, Tao Ning moved, her long hair falling forward. She tucked it behind her ear with her finger.

A faint scent of soap beans wafted over, damp and alluring, carrying the unique warmth of a human.

Xuan Miao thought silently, didn’t she not have a nose? How could she smell anything?

This was the Ghost King’s awkwardness acting up. Saying that she couldn’t bite Tao Ning’s hand because the doll didn’t have a mouth, if she wanted to, there was nothing a Ghost King couldn’t do.

A weakened state didn’t prevent her from giving herself a mouth.

If she couldn’t do it, it was because she didn’t want to, not because she couldn’t.

Late into the night, Tao Ning organized the drawings on the table and put them into her cloth bag.

Leaving such things at home to be found would be too out of character, and could easily cause the small world to collapse. It was safer to carry them with her.

After tidying up, Tao Ning went to bed.

She had long been accustomed to sleep to rest and recuperate. Xuan Miao, having slept for an unknown number of years, was tired of sleeping and stayed on the table alone.

As Tao Ning was making the bed, preparing to lie down, a voice suddenly came from behind: “Are you planning to spend a long time looking at these drawings tomorrow?”

It was Xuan Miao speaking.

Tao Ning sat on the bed, facing Xuan Miao: “Of course not, tomorrow won’t be as peaceful as today.”

Xuan Miao: “…?”

A seven-day tour of an ancient village, the later it got, the more dangerous it would become. Today was just an appetizer.

But tomorrow, she still had to go to the small wooden building to see Xiao Zhen. She had a feeling that Xuan Miao had some connection to the fake Mountain God who was keen on marrying brides.

As for what kind of connection, it was still unclear.