Chapter 92: The Girl Beside You Is Not Human

It was a cave, and it lay in utter silence.

Wen Jinge found no trace left by Lu Wei and the others. The cave walls were thickly spun with webs, and the ground was strewn with bones—whether from beasts or humans, she could not tell. For a moment, she had the uncanny sensation that she had stumbled into the lair of spider spirits.

“Master, did we take the wrong path?”

“That should not be the case,” Wen Jinge said, shaking her head. “Let’s go a little farther.”

She looked calm enough on the outside, but inside she was panicking badly.

Back when she had been at Xuanyun Sect, she had already taken the wrong direction more than once. It was not impossible that she had truly gone astray now. Unfortunately, she was the senior and had to keep up the dignity proper to one.

A few caws sounded from deeper in the cave. Wen Jinge brushed away the feathers on her clothing, only to see that what flew out were bats.

“No industrial pollution here, so why is there still a mutation?” she muttered, shaking her head as she lifted the torch and burned away a great deal of spider silk before leading her two disciples onward.

Ling Yi was half awake, half asleep, and very attached to Wen Jinge. Since his leg was injured and he could not walk, she had carried him the whole way.

At that moment, he opened his eyes as well and glanced blankly at the junior brother holding the torch. “Senior Brother, will there be anyone here?”

“I don’t think so,” Yang Wennan said.

“Then why are we still walking?”

“Master says to go, so we go.”

“Master, why do we have to keep going when it’s the wrong way?”

Wen Jinge: ...

That question...

She suddenly felt this child might be better suited to becoming a monk, with his head full of little question marks. It would be excellent to send him off to torment the Buddha of Joy and Sorrow.

“Good question!” Wen Jinge was still very supportive. Just as the two disciples were waiting to hear an answer, she gave them one with complete certainty: “I have no idea.”

The way behind them had already been blocked by rocks. If there were no problems here, who would believe it?

For now, they could only steel themselves and press on.

“Master, are you set on finding that holy son?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Why?

Wen Jinge smiled. What else could it be?

Because she was unwilling to die as the second-rate villain.

How stifling that would be.

She had always been someone with a strong will, determined to do everything as well as she could. Even if she was a villain reviled by all, it was the same.

The former Wen Jinge had been the one to carry the blame. She did not want to be the scapegoat, and she could not change the plot. No—wait, now she could change the plot. Then why...

Wen Jinge was left speechless by the question.

Fortunately, ahead of them appeared a tunnel barely wide enough for one person, which drew her attention. She tossed Yang Wennan two demon-binding chains and a demon-sealing rope; the other end was already tied around her own body. “Hold on to them yourself.”

Two should be enough, right?

Surely whatever was here would not be a spirit master!

“Master, will this... work?” Yang Wennan had never doubted that Wen Jinge would harm him, but the place was so eerie that he kept having the strange feeling he was going to die here.

Even so, he knew that with Master’s strength, the chance of her trapping him here so that he could not get out was very small.

But then what had the new junior disciple been saying?

He said Master had killed many people—so many people. Could it be that she had killed them after turning demonic?

He had been distracted all along, as though he had been struck by something. Only then did he hurriedly tug at the two ropes on his body. As he pulled at them, the torchlight fell on the ground, and the section of rope looked as though it had been cut by something.

“Master!”

He did not dare shout too loudly, fearing that other things hidden in the darkness might be drawn over.

Ever since they entered the cave, a chill wind had seemed to blow through it, as though countless eyes were watching them from the dark.

“Roar!”

At that moment, a foul, bloody wind surged toward him. Yang Wennan quickly recited an incantation and sealed himself within a barrier.

Following the rope’s direction, he kept moving forward. After some time, there was no path ahead, but on the ground he could see fragments from the severed rope and the shattered chain.

But that made no sense.

This was a chain. The sound of it being smashed should have been loud—how had Master not heard a thing?

All around him hung red lanterns. This cave resembled a many-eyed monster, and right now it seemed to be awakening. The bloody stench from earlier was the direction it was moving in.

Yang Wennan had to count himself lucky that he was blind.

If he had truly looked straight into those eyes, who knew what might have happened.

“Master, where are you?”

In the empty cave, only his faint echo answered him.

Yang Wennan felt helpless and could only take out the string of beads Wang Xi had given him. Every bead was dim, which meant that up to now, no one had been harmed.

This was a farmstead. The estate was planted with many fruit trees, and the ripe fruit hanging from the branches was bright and glossy, like little lanterns, especially pleasing to the eye.

Vegetables and fruit also grew in the fields. The leaves were a vivid green, and the ripened melon stems had turned slightly yellow, waiting only for the harvest.

Wang Xi licked her lips and absentmindedly rolled a string of beads in her hand. She called to a farmwife who was opening her door, “Auntie, are the fruits in your yard for sale?”

She was a warm, cheerful girl, and country folk were usually simple and honest. In the past, when she said things like that, most of them would not even charge for what she ate for free.

But this time, the woman merely glanced at her, and as though she had seen something dreadful, she even dropped the basin in her hands to the ground before hurriedly locking the door.

“Senior Brother, am I that frightening?”

Wang Xi wore a miserably pitiful face and took out a mirror. In the mirror, she still looked exactly as she always had, except that all this traveling had made her face much thinner.

“More or less,” Liang Si said, frowning.

The two sneaking figures behind them did not need any guessing to know who they were, but from this distance they still looked human. Besides, there was something in the way, and this woman was just an ordinary person; there was no way she could see through the fact that those two were not human.

“Let’s go in and take a look.”

With that, Liang Si leaped into the courtyard, and Wang Xi hurried after him.

The closer she drew to the land of Qianyan Kingdom, the stranger the feeling in her heart became, as if something were urging her to hurry back.

She thought she must simply be too homesick, and she never mentioned that feeling to anyone.

In the courtyard, the basin of water lay quietly spilled on the ground. The owner of the basin was still peering through the crack in the door. Seeing Liang Si and Wang Xi follow her in, she hurriedly began moving tables and chairs inside the house, apparently using them to brace the door.

“Auntie, we’re only mystics passing through. Why are you afraid of us?”

“You... you’re not human.”

The two exchanged a glance and looked each other over. In the end, Wang Xi reached into her storage pouch. “Senior Brother, this is the demon-revealing mirror. I’m still me!”

Liang Si also stepped over to look, only to find that the person in the mirror had changed.

“Hm?” he said, puzzled.

The person in the mirror had grown younger. It was the appearance he had worn three years ago, when his grandmaster brought him up to Ten-Thousand-Feet Peak.

The demonic aura in his eyes had not been concealed, and the killing intent around him was heavy enough. He had no memory of the events in Xuanyun Sect before that, only of what had happened on the mountain afterward.

If the woman had seen him as a demon, then that did make sense.

“If you’re not human, then what are you?” Liang Si asked.

“I... I don’t know.” There was a crash by the doorway, as though the piled-up things had all fallen to the floor. “You... the girl beside you, s-she’s not human...”