Chapter 103: Have you ever seen a god who needed the help of a human?

“Master?” he murmured, and even as he spoke the word, he froze.

“Who is your master?” The god named Qiyun had already turned toward him. “A soul from the future?”

“You... you can see me?” He had always thought himself a witness to this place, for he had come here long ago, yet no one had ever been able to see him.

This man resembled someone he remembered, but only in appearance. In temperament, however, he was even more severe than that unsmiling figure, like a corpse just woken from a coffin, devoid of the least trace of human warmth.

“This deity asks you: who is the self in your eyes?”

“I...” He looked down at his own hands in confusion, yet no matter how hard he tried, he could not remember who he was. He only recalled that there was something very important still waiting for him to do. “I... do not know...”

“Do not know?” Qiyun smiled, but there was no warmth in that smile; it was faintly chilling. “Truly do not know, or have you deliberately forgotten?”

“Deliberately...? Forgotten?” Something seemed to stir in his mind, and a face surfaced there.

That face was reflected on the water, vaguely familiar.

Plop. Plop. Plop.

A few drops of water fell, rippling the surface. This was him remembering; the reflection in the water was his own.

He stared at the figure in the reflection, and the figure stared back. Qiyun curved his lips as if smiling, yet his eyes remained cold. “Remembered?”

“I am...” he murmured, then looked again at Ji Alaol, who lay on the ground. It should have been Qiyun who had moved his limbs, yet even now Ji Alaol had not died. “Di Ruo?”

“I do not know.” Qiyun fixed his gaze coldly on his face, brows drawn tight, as though troubled by something. “I should not have come.”

She muttered under her breath; he did not catch the rest. When he finally made it out, he knew Ji Alaol was looking at him. “Run! Run! Do not come back, do not let them find you! Go! Go far away, and never return!”

It seemed to have become Ji Alaol’s obsession. Even with Qiyun there, he still could not hold on.

Ji Alaol died. Qiyun drifted in the air. “Will you go back on your own, or shall I send you back? Strange. How can you return?”

“I... I do not know who I am...” He had truly forgotten who he was. It seemed he was the Di Ruo Ji Alaol had spoken of, yet also someone else entirely.

And that other identity would not permit him to remain here any longer. He had urgent matters to attend to.

But there was an even more important question in his mind, one he had to ask: “God Qiyun, is it you?”

“Count it as such.” Qiyun looked at him a few more times, as if observing him, and yet also whatever trailed behind him. “So it was her after all!”

“Are there truly gods in this world? Does Qiyun really work?”

“Have you ever seen a god that needed human help?” Qiyun smiled coldly, and the severity in those words was something he had never felt in that other person.

He was left speechless. The overlap of memories made him cry out that familiar title. “Master, Second Senior Brother is still waiting for us to save him. No, that’s not right—you’re not Master, you are a god...”

Qiyun: ...

She sighed, and for once displayed a kindness she had never shown before anyone. With great patience, she stepped forward and pressed a hand to the top of his head. “You should wake up. After you wake...”

Qiyun gazed at him fixedly. This time, her smile was genuine, carrying a trace of release, faint and light. “The soul race will return because of you.”

A wave of dizziness crashed over him. In a daze, he remembered: he was the third disciple under Wen Jinge of Lofty Peak in the Azure Cloud Sect. His name was Yang Wennan.

He was not Di Ruo, and he had never truly shared Ji Alaol’s fate. That god simply had the same face as his master.

Through the haze, he heard a sigh carried on the wind. It must have been the god Qiyun. “The final lifetime, at last! I’ve waited so long!”

“Master!” He opened his eyes.

His body burst with a surge of force, as if something of terrible destructive power had been brought back with him. He thought this was probably something he had taken from that god Qiyun.

Soul race mark, awakened...

Had it really not been a dream?

He still felt unreal.

Qiao Yu opened his eyes. When he saw him, there was not the slightest surprise. By his expression, this should have been his grandmaster, and murderous intent was already stabbing toward the bald monk sleeping nearby.

“Grandmaster.” Yang Wennan was about to step forward, only to find his legs had gone weak and refused to obey him.

“We do not celebrate today.” As soon as Lu Wei said that, he slapped himself across the face. What an all-too-familiar line that was!

Then he heard Qiao Yu speaking. “Grandmaster, what did I do wrong? Don’t hit my face—if I’m disfigured, Master won’t like me.”

Lu Wei: ...

“How are you?”

Yang Wennan was in poor shape. From the nimble way he had just dropped to his knees, it was clear he must have been injured.

Lu Wei could not help looking at him a few more times, only because the aura around him did not feel like that of a sword cultivator. Instead, it carried a kind of ancient presence he was far more familiar with.

As for what it specifically was, even Lu Wei could not see through it at once.

“Didn’t you get captured by the Dream Weaver? Why didn’t you go to the Black Forest with us?”

Yang Wennan looked at the shadow stretched across the ground in the distance. That was Wen Shuqing. The bloodstains on the ground trailed all the way from his original position. He should have been the first to wake, and also the first to suffer grave injury.

“The Black Forest?” he asked, puzzled.

“I—yes, Grandmaster, do you know a god named Qiyun?”

“Hm?”

“She has the same face as Master, but it was strange. I remembered nothing there. If not for her, I might not have come back. It was a scene from the past, so why could she see me? Grandmaster, do you think there can be a god who speaks to people across two different times?”

Lu Wei was left at a loss.

The question felt strangely familiar. When he had first arrived at Lofty Peak, Wen Jinge had always squeezed him dry and liked to ask him all sorts of odd questions.

Wen Jinge had asked this question before as well.

“Why?”

“It should have been what she said.” His expression was peculiar.

Wen Shuqing’s corpse on the ground was already cold, the body rigid and mottled with postmortem lividity. Yang Wennan was certain this man had died well before this encounter.

“When she spoke, she was looking past me. She said, It is her! It felt like she was talking to Master while looking at me.” Yang Wennan shook his head. “Maybe I was mistaken. Right, Grandmaster, let’s go find Master! I’ve lost contact with Master and my junior brother for a very long time.”

Yang Wennan held a walking staff. His condition was growing more and more like that Di Ruo’s—his knees seemed struck by an arrow, his legs trembling so badly that he could not stand at all.

“Your master had you acting blind because she was fooling you into helping her make money. No need to be so stubborn. Besides, there is no one here.”

“No one?” He closed his eyes. Indeed, there was no one.

And yet he still felt as though a pair of eyes were hidden in the dark, watching him, as though someone were aiming a sword at him.

He heard the rush of wind. Before he could even open his eyes, a flash of sword light came straight for him!

“Die!”