The implantation of the fire seed went smoothly. At first, Xing Shuishui felt nothing except a burning sensation in her body. But as time passed, things began to feel wrong. The fire seed needed to merge with her divine consciousness and attach to her blade.
The system was right. The fire of separation was difficult to control.
Every day, Xing Shuishui curled up in pain as the fire seed ran wild through her organs, completely uncontrollable. Large drops of sweat slid down her bangs.
Xue Zhuangxin touched her burning forehead and was truly frightened.
“Little sister, do you have a fever?”
“Little sister, wake up, look at your sister.”
Xue Sansi also came over and crouched down to feel her forehead: “Little Nine, how do you feel? I’ll go get a wet towel.”
Xing Shuishui’s mind was hazy. She opened her eyes dimly to see their anxious faces.
She forced a smile: “Sister… Brother Sansi… I’m fine…”
“How can you be fine when you’re this sick?” Xue Zhuangxin said worriedly. “You must have caught a chill at night. It’s my fault the blanket was too thin. I’ll go get you some medicine.”
Xing Shuishui called out to stop her: “Sister.”
Xue Zhuangxin turned back.
Xing Shuishui said with difficulty: “Don’t go ask Guan Shuangshuang… don’t ask him… I’m really fine.”
Xue Zhuangxin hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Xue Sansi also kept trying to comfort her.
After they left briefly, the room was very quiet. Everyone had gone to work during the day.
Xing Shuishui clutched her small knife but was still in great pain. Her entire body felt like it was being burned through by the fire seed. This couldn’t continue, or Guan Yinzi would eventually notice something was wrong.
System: “I warned you. You should have waited for people from Lingshan to come.”
Xing Shuishui: “Are you so certain that Li Shixu would report his friend of many years? For the sake of people like us who have nothing to do with him?”
System: “You don’t understand. This is about righteousness.”
Xing Shuishui: “You don’t understand either. Don’t rely on others. You can only trust yourself.”
The system fell silent for a long while before saying: “You’re right.”
Xing Shuishui was in great discomfort. Even the wet towel provided no relief. She could only try to distract herself through conversation: “I’m actually very curious why you insist I must kill that person? Just because he’ll be excellent in the future and the heavenly way can’t stop him, he needs to be eliminated? That’s too wasteful.”
System: “If you’re a genius, does that mean you don’t need to take college entrance exams?”
Xing Shuishui was perfectly defeated: “You do.”
She clutched her stomach and stayed quiet for a long while before she couldn’t bear it anymore: “But I’m about to be burned to death by the separation fire…”
The system was exasperated: “Don’t you know how to circulate energy? You need to refine the fire seed. Make it adapt to you.”
Xing Shuishui: “I don’t know how. No one taught me.”
Before she finished speaking, her body sat up involuntarily, hands positioned on her knees in meditation. Her internal energy began circulating, causing her hair to float. The burning sensation in her body lessened considerably.
System: “Now do you know how?”
It had used its one-time privilege to control her body.
Xing Shuishui nodded frantically.
Xue Zhuangxin returned with medicine packets. Seeing Xing Shuishui’s improved color, she was very happy.
Xing Shuishui stared at what she was holding, hesitating: “Sister…”
Xue Zhuangxin smiled: “I didn’t ask Guan Shuangshuang. Young Master Mu gave this to me.”
Xing Shuishui thought for a long time but couldn’t figure out who this Young Master Mu was. Then she turned her head and saw the stranger beside her sister, her expression immediately darkening.
Young Master Mu wore cyan robes and had an elegant, scholarly demeanor with long flowing hair. But his lips were pale, his complexion unnaturally sickly, looking like he might cough blood at any moment. He had a scholar’s face but appeared as delicate as a willow – clearly short-lived.
Xue Zhuangxin introduced him: “This is Young Master Mu, Mu Ziyu. He came to the city for medical treatment but unfortunately ran into bandits and ended up here. Luckily I found him. Little sister, call him Brother Mu. He shared some medicine with you.”
Xing Shuishui had no good feelings toward any man around her sister. She reluctantly said: “Brother Mu.”
Mu Ziyu coughed twice and said gently: “It was nothing. I should thank your sister for saving me. I thought your sister had heavenly beauty, but didn’t expect her heart to be just as kind.”
He smiled warmly at Xue Zhuangxin, who blushed.
Xing Shuishui rolled her eyes at Mu Ziyu behind their backs.
Mu Ziyu’s arrival made them even more cautious than before. If Guan Yinzi discovered they were hiding an outsider, none of them would have a good outcome. While Xing Shuishui was refining the separation fire, she also watched the relationship between Mu Ziyu and her sister bloom, from blushing at first sight to holding hands. Even though she repeatedly warned her sister, her sister assured her that Young Master Mu was a good person.
Xing Shuishui’s attitude toward Mu Ziyu could only go from rejection to forced acceptance.
This short-lived weakling looked so frail, unable to protect her sister or give her a good life. She couldn’t understand why her sister would like such a man.
Mu Ziyu’s only valuable contribution was when he told them: “Before entering the city, I heard that Li Shixu reported Guan Yinzi to Lingshan. I believe it won’t be long before people from Lingshan come to rescue you.”
Sister’s eyes immediately lit up: “Really?”
Xing Shuishui looked at the increasingly thick dark clouds and had an ominous feeling.
Sure enough, disaster struck. The recently mercurial Guan Yinzi ran into Guan Shuangshuang, who immediately fell to his knees in fear, calling out “Father.” Guan Yinzi looked down with a sinister smile: “What’s that in your hand?”
Guan Shuangshuang said: “Father, it’s… it’s just an ordinary jade pendant.”
Guan Yinzi flipped it over with puppet strings.
Two characters were carved on the back of the jade: Zhuangxin.
He repeated the characters carved there: “Zhuangxin… Xue Zhuangxin… Why do you, who carries my blood, think not of ascending to immortality, but instead fall in love with something less than a lowly slave?”
Guan Shuangshuang was terrified of Guan Yinzi: “Father, let me explain, it’s not like that… not what you think.”
Guan Yinzi said: “Li Shixu betrayed me, and now you betray me too. Why do you all betray me?”
Xing Shuishui was hiding at the other end of the house playing with fish in the pond when she overheard their conversation.
She hurriedly ran back to the room and said to Mu Ziyu: “Take my sister and leave now, quickly!”
The sky was darkening as night approached.
Mu Ziyu looked at her in confusion: “What happened?”
Xing Shuishui became so anxious she could barely speak: “Just quickly take my sister and leave, that old bastard Guan Yinzi wants to kill my sister.”
Xue Zhuangxin asked: “Little sister, is what you’re saying true?”
Xing Shuishui held up two fingers anxiously: “Sister, that old bastard discovered Guan Shuangshuang likes you. You need to leave quickly, hurry, or it will be too late!”
Everyone’s expression changed. Outside the window, thunder crashed and lightning flashed, as if brewing a storm.
The door was blown open by a dark wind, the temperature around them dropping. Guan Yinzi appeared like a ghost: “Where are you going?”
Mother stood up: “Zhuangxin, Ziyu, take Little Nine and go. I’ll hold him here.”
Xue Zhuangxin: “Mother.”
“Don’t forget, before this old bastard destroyed my cultivation, I was a female general. How many fox spirits did I fight off over the years? Go quickly!”
The other peach blossom spirits were already panicked by Guan Yinzi’s imposing manner.
Guan Yinzi flicked his folding fan. Mother broke off a wooden stick and barely blocked it. She fearlessly picked up the chopping knife and threw it at Guan Yinzi. He was just toying with her, not taking her seriously at all, but unexpectedly the chopping knife drew blood from his jaw.
He gave a sinister laugh: “You’re as foolish as your husband.”
The fan flew out, and a dark iron sword rode the wind straight for Mother’s throat. Xing Shuishui pulled out Qitong to block the black sword. Though she wasn’t very skilled yet, there was no time to worry about that now.
Evil fire tried to corrode her hand. The separation fire wound around the back of her blade, and the moment it touched the evil fire, the evil fire vanished!
This feeling was fear.
Guan Yinzi narrowed his eyes: “Interesting. I’ve never seen spirit fire like this. The weakest peach blossom spirit can actually possess spirit fire. No wonder you’ve been acting so mysterious – you must be hiding secrets.”
He beckoned, and the black sword returned. His eyes looked down contemptuously at Xing Shuishui’s bleeding lips.
“Too bad this spirit fire probably hasn’t fully accepted you as its master yet.”
Xing Shuishui wiped the blood with the back of her hand: “As long as I can kill an old bastard like you, it’s enough.”
Guan Yinzi raised his hand and summoned a cauldron filled with blood both inside and out. This was what he usually used for refining medicine. At the bottom burned an undying evil fire. Xing Shuishui guessed his own son had probably become one of its victims.
Puppet strings flew from Guan Yinzi’s hand toward Xue Zhuangxin. Mu Ziyu stepped in front of her, while Xing Shuishui struggled to control the wild separation fire to block the puppet strings.
But unexpectedly, the puppet strings’ real target wasn’t Sister.
It was Mother.
Mother was pulled into the cauldron by the puppet strings, the situation completely reversed.
“Mother!”
“Madam!”
“No!”
Many voices cried out at once.
Xing Shuishui jumped in without thinking. Guan Yinzi closed the lid, laughing: “Disobedient things, go die!”
Xing Shuishui had separation fire in her body that could resist some of the burning, but Mother couldn’t resist it and was already barely breathing.
Xing Shuishui stared at her helplessly, holding her in her arms, only able to watch powerlessly as she dissipated.
“System, System! Save her! I beg you to save my mother!”
The system remained silent.
Mother gently caressed her cheek, completely opposite to her attitude when Xing Shuishui was born.
“Little Nine, my Little Nine.”
“I know you don’t like this name, and I know you’ve resented me for giving birth to you, bringing you into this world full of suffering. But whatever your name is, a name is just a name, it’s not who you are in my eyes.”
“In my eyes, you will always be my pride. How fortunate I was to watch you grow up.”
“You must… protect your sister well…”
With those words, her form dissipated.
Xing Shuishui held the ashes in her hands, crying in anguish: “Mother, I never resented you, I really never resented you. I love you so much, come back!”
Just as Guan Yinzi was about to kill the rest, the evil cauldron suddenly exploded! Separation fire filled almost every corner of the room. The building collapsed, everyone else had already fled outside, leaving only the two of them.
Guan Yinzi exclaimed: “How is this possible!”
He tried to grab his fan but was slapped to the ground by Xing Shuishui as separation fire spread.
The young woman stood in the sea of flames, her hair flying, completely unharmed by the fire: “Old bastard, you look surprised?”
Her eyes reflected the firelight beautifully.
Guan Yinzi laughed madly: “I just find it a pity that I might die by your hands. I thought I would die under Li Shixu’s sword.”
Xing Shuishui lowered her eyes: “Then I’ll make your death more miserable.”
The separation fire burned Guan Yinzi until he was barely alive. She crouched down and used Qitong to stab out his eyes, blood gushing forth.
“This cut is for my father.”
She continued, stabbing his temple: “This cut is for someone whose name I don’t know.”
Finally, she aimed at his heart: “This cut is for my mother, for me, and for the thousands who died miserably by your hands.”
She stabbed many times until her entire arm was covered in blood. With a final burst of fire, Guan Yinzi’s three souls and seven spirits were all burned to ash by the separation fire.
Xing Shuishui turned to look at those who used to bully them, treating them like dogs to play with and order around. She curved her lips in an innocent smile.
Just as those people breathed a sigh of relief, the next moment separation fire spread before their eyes. The once-glorious Guan mansion became hell in the blink of an eye. Apart from the peach blossom spirits present, no one survived.
As Xing Shuishui finished burning Guan Yinzi’s “Yin Mountain Treasured Scripture,” several golden lights flashed on the horizon. Several distinguished cultivators stood on spirit swords, high above.
“Little spirit, I am He Lianziyu of Lingshan’s He family. We came by the mountain lord’s order to arrest Guan Yinzi, but unexpectedly you’ve killed him. You must return with us to Lingshan.”
Xing Shuishui had no intention of paying them any attention and burned their flying magic tools with a burst of fire.
The great fire burned away sin.
In this world, some live in glory while others’ lives are as worthless as grass.
In her daze, she saw her parents from the real world going door to door with missing person posters looking for her, crying every day for a long time before finally dying with regret.
Yin Mountain was gone, a hundred years passed.
But at this time, Xing Shuishui certainly couldn’t imagine that Sister would die in the future. And that Li Shixu, who had gently patted her head then, given her a piece of ginger candy, and righteously reported Guan Yinzi’s evil deeds to Lingshan, would appear in Fengdu City three hundred years later with Yin Mountain’s evil techniques, becoming someone completely different.
How could it… how could it be him?
Xing Shuishui’s thoughts returned to the ancient tower, her feelings very complicated.
She didn’t notice the countless bloody hands reaching to grab her. He Lianziyu tried hard to warn her before she finally came to her senses.
He Liangsheng angrily said: “Xing Shuishui! Don’t you have legs to run with?”
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