Chapter 91: I Can See the Future

Lu Wei fell silent, because he had nothing he could say.

The Wen Jinge before him was not the Wen Jinge he had hoped to see.

“Wake up!” he said, afraid she had lost her wits.

He was used to seeing her kill without so much as blinking, but now these might all be children touched by demonic corruption, and perhaps she had truly fallen prey to a heart-demon.

He did not know that it was the demon qin at work; he thought only from Wen Jinge’s point of view.

“Wake up, Wen Jinge! Didn’t you say you’d help me find a body? And now you’re giving up just like this? What happened to keeping your word as a noble person...”

Looking at him, Wen Jinge suddenly laughed.

Their eyes met, and for a moment the air turned awkward.

“You didn’t go mad?”

“No.” She shook her head, her tone full of teasing. “I’m no noble person. I am the greatest villain of this age.”

Lu Wei: ...

Fine. He would go mad with her.

The great war between gods and demons, which had ended tens of thousands of years ago with both sides grievously wounded, had long since given way to a future in which humans and demons would once again clash. Men and demons were bound to fight sooner or later, and even he did not know where he stood in all this.

He did not have many days left to stay at her side. If she wanted to be wild, then so be it.

Lu Wei laughed. “You?”

“At least I’m better than you!”

Like a man drunk on wine, Lu Wei was forced to take the punch she threw.

Seated nearby, the Buddha of Sorrow and Joy was roused from his daze by their roughhousing. Watching the two of them, each walking an utterly different path, he felt a great many things.

Good and evil. Sorrow and joy.

These had been the questions their master left them with before departing, and now, though they were already old men of a hundred years, they still had not found the answer.

“Master.” The child opened his eyes.

He had slept for a whole day. After drinking some medicinal broth and being carefully tended by Wen Jinge, his body already felt much lighter.

Compared with the other disciples, this child was more like a blend of Wang Xi and Liang Si—steady, proper, and socially adept.

Yesterday he had said so firmly that he did not want this, yet now he had obediently become Wen Jinge’s disciple. There was only one thing: upon waking, he realized his hand was still clutching his master’s robes.

“Do you have a name?” Wen Jinge asked.

Morning dew was thick in the mountains. When Wen Jinge first came to this world, she had suffered for it. Now she was traveling by sword, and the boy was clingy besides, so she had no choice but to carry him.

The two of them were wrapped in thick layers, looking like a pair of desert wanderers.

“Ling Yi...”

“Which Ling Yi?” Wen Jinge asked with a smile. “The monk said there’s a message in these mountains. Don’t tell me you’re some mountain spirit in human form, one that even evil thoughts can’t get into?”

In truth, when she had carried the child back yesterday, Yang Wennan had intended to tell her. But after she found out, the child would not let go, so Wen Jinge had been delayed by a day.

Lu Wei and the Buddha of Sorrow and Joy had gone together. As for Yang Wennan, he had stayed behind to help her recuperate through the night.

“The Yi in easy, and Ling as in soaring to the skies.” The boy blinked, draping his arms around Wen Jinge’s neck and looking at her with utter seriousness. “Master, are you certain you have decided to take me as your disciple?”

“What makes you ask that?” Wen Jinge could not make sense of what was in his head, though fortunately he always knew how to speak.

“I want Master to never leave me. This disciple dislikes betrayal.”

“Forever?” Wen Jinge did not know what forever meant to her, but when facing this child, her patience was always surprisingly good, as though she owed him something in a past life.

“Fine.” She agreed.

The only way she would ever leave this world was through death. That should count as forever, shouldn’t it?

Wen Jinge did not think much of it, not knowing that this single sentence nearly cost her the rest of her life.

“Has someone betrayed you before?” She was idle and wanted something to pass the time, so she asked casually.

“They all said I was the one who could save them, but in the end they still wanted to kill me. Master, would that count as betrayal?”

Wen Jinge hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Master, one day, will you kill me?”

The former Qiao Yu had already been enough to give her a headache, his questions always so meaningless that she had not even bothered to think about them.

But now, facing this Ling Yi, though his questions were still nonsensical, Wen Jinge somehow found the patience to consider them.

“Why would I kill you?”

The more she looked at the boy, the more familiar he seemed. Then she remembered: he was the same one she had first seen being beaten by a group of children.

Whether he was smiling or not, he looked rather deserving of a beating.

“I do not know.” Ling Yi shook his head in confusion.

One moment he was looking at the clouds overhead, the next at the trees retreating in neat rows below. “Master, if I said I can see the future, would you believe me?”

Wen Jinge’s heart lurched, and if not for the sword beneath her feet being the demonic qin and able to fly itself, it would have become the first aerial disaster in the history of the mystic arts.

“I saw it.” He pointed to his own eyes, solemn and grave. “I saw it when they chose me as a god.”

“What god?”

There were many sects and cults in this world. Only the ruler of the Kingdom of Qianyan did not want anyone making trouble beneath his nose; everywhere else, people believed in all manner of things.

Ling Yi looked more like some living Bodhisattva, someone who had always been worshiped.

“The God of Good Fortune, they said. A god who could bless people with peace and safety. But in the end I brought disaster instead. After I was taken back to the camp, the steward even held me up as a model to others.”

He gave a cold smile. A faint scar marked his face, and before long it would fade away.

“So... they all hated me and thought I had stolen their luck.”

“Can you read?” Wen Jinge asked, recalling the way he had spoken his own name. He must at least have been literate.

“Back home, I had a teacher. Then my home was gone.”

Back when she had stayed in the Azure Cloud Sect, Wen Jinge had never really noticed. Only after coming down the mountain and meeting more people did she realize that, when asked, so many of them were orphans. It left her at something of a loss for words.

This was a world in chaos, and there were many who had lost their homes.

When the world is in turmoil, demons and monsters emerge. It was just as an old saying once went.

“Then I met a diviner. He said I was a god and should be worshiped, so I came here with him.”

“Mm.” Wen Jinge nodded.

“When I arrived...” Fear shaded his eyes. “That very night I saw it. Everyone here would turn into dry bones. I watched one person after another die before me, and there was nothing I could do.”

A precognitive ability?

Wen Jinge took it seriously.

She had once thought there were no immortals in the heavens, and that no cultivator above the second rank existed, only for a paper-made immortal to really fall from the sky.

After seeing enough wonders, nothing was so strange anymore.

Ling Yi stared at her face, as though trying to spot a flaw. Seeing that she was not laughing at him, he said, “When I first saw you, Master, I saw snow falling everywhere.”

“Snow?”

The climate here was harsh. In the inhabited places there was still a little grass to be seen, but farther out it was mostly yellow sand. Snow seemed most unlikely.

“Not snow from the sky, but blood from human bodies.”

“Human blood?”

“Yes.” His eyes rippled like a thousand waves, as though they might swallow a person whole. “The sky was raining blood, the ground was covered with bones, and you were standing atop a heap of them, looking down.”

“Here?”

“Here.” Ling Yi was certain. “The temple where they enshrined me. I could not be mistaken.”

“The God of Good Fortune?” Wen Jinge murmured. “No wonder she was always so unlucky.”