Xu Lingxin only allowed An Fei to rest until she had barely caught her breath, and forced the latter onto her feet once her breathing had stabilized. The young girl could only stagger along with shaky limbs and feet as the celestial maiden dove deeper into the forest.
The rays emitted from the sun diminished in strength and frequency as the barrier of leaves and branches thickened their skin, and soon, An Fei was allowed to stop once again when they have arrived at the middle of a dense pocket of trees.
The majority of the sun’s rays were blocked from displaying their warm glare, and the towering sentinels cast unfriendly glares onto the intruding young girl. An Fei’s arms drew close to her chest on instinct as the temperature began to drop at a noticeable rate, and her breath began to crystalize after a few minutes had passed.
Xu Lingxin seemed not to bother, instead settling herself onto the ground with relative ease.
“Little Sister, come sit,” the celestial maiden patted the ground with her hand.
“The trees won’t bite, and the soil is cool and soft.”
An Fei’s lips twitched as a cold breeze slipped into the underside of her clothes to lash at her skin directly, leaving scarlet marks that threatened to ooze with blood. Arms hugging her torso, the young girl staggered to sit besides Xu Lingxin, but the insufferably cold ground elicited more than a few hisses in pain from the former. Her skin crawled and shivered at the prolonged, chilling torment, but Xu Lingxin seemed not to take much notice – or give much care, in any regard.
Instead, the celestial maiden gently lowered her body onto the soil and crossed her arms behind her head as a pillow. Xu Lingxin directed a soft gaze towards the dense curtain of interwoven branches and leaves, and the thin specs of sunlight desperately attempting to break through.
“Little Sister, there is so much I cannot understand about you,” she sighed and closed her eyes.
“You were stabbed directly in the chest, but still managed to survive as a mortal. You cannot speak Bei Tang’s language nor are you from Great Yan, but are roaming in the midst of their territory. Who are you? Why are you here?”
These questions again… why did everyone seem to want to demand such answers?
An Fei grumbled under her breath as she quickly remembered the other instances that people had hurled similar sets of questions towards her face. The young girl desperately suppressed another shiver as the cold invaded her body from head to toe, and forced out a retort from her chattering teeth.
“Why do you care where I come from? What will that do, anyway?”
Xu Lingxin blinked in incomprehension. She pondered on the irregularity of the young girl’s words for a few breaths, but quickly hurtled her body into a loosely seated posture. The celestial maiden tapped on the soil with her index finger, and her brows crossed in disapproval.
“Everyone has an origin, a place where they come from. What’s wrong with sharing one’s origin to another? Do you not have a place where you belong?”
“Origin? A place to belong?” An Fei gaped, and her lips began to twist in sarcasm.
“I don’t have a place to belong. I don’t even know where I came from. Why does that matter, anyways?”
She, An Fei, came not from the modern city of Shanghai, not Great Yan, not Great Yong, nor even the Flowing Wind Residence of Jiang’an.
In this world – the Shattered Continent – her home could only be called a place that didn’t exist!
Xu Lingxin’s words that were filled with concern and sisterly warmth seemed utterly cold and condescending as they smashed into the young girl’s ears. An Fei’s eyelids drooped as the settling cold incited an overwhelming exhaustion to wash over her bones.
It was laughable. Her circumstances, however alive she seemed, were ultimately similar to death.
The young girl finally understood the creased brows and weird expressions when she mentioned having come from Great Yan, but it was only after she encountered He Xin that she thoroughly grasped the reason. The people of Great Yan spoke a dialect similar to the Cantonese in her memories – how could that ever possibly be confused as the soft-spoken tone of her own dialect, Mandarin?
It was just a simple difference, one that hardly amounted to much, but it made her seem so, so unbearably alone.
She lost the raven – Xiao Hei – that was delusional to the extent it believed it was a crow, and the small fox with nine tails disappeared to some unknown corner of the earth. Those who she encountered along her rampage across the continent ultimately sought either to pillage from or kill her, and now she didn’t even know where upon Bei Tang her feet stood.
The mere thought that it had now been more than three years since she left those majestic, towering city walls of Jiang’an shook her pitiful heart.
“Little Sister, if you are tired, just sleep for a while. Elder Sister will return soon, alright?”
The melancholic voice gently lulled the young girl to allow her eyes to rest, and the pillaging cold no longer seemed as aggressive. The glacial ice wrapped around her body in a thick cocoon, and An Fei slipped into a momentary lapse of thought. She paused to sluggishly ponder over a few useless matters, cry in a secluded corner, and roar at a few personal enemies, and when she felt satisfied, opened her eyes to witness Xu Lingxin sit besides her with a light sigh.
The cloud silk dress was replaced with a robe woven from cotton, and the celestial maiden carried a basket filled with colorful berries slung around her right arm. An Fei was momentarily dazzled at the vivid assortment of red, indigo, and light violet beads swirling in the hickory, bottomless void.
“How… how long did I sleep for?”
“Three days! Little Sister, you really can sleep for someone so frail and petite, no?”
The cheerful voice smashed over the young girl’s head with the full force of He Xin’s prided and hateful iron cauldron, and the contents of the words stabbed deep into her heart. An Fei gagged at the number that Xu Lingxin had casually tossed from her lips, and directed a pleading gaze.
“Little Sister, why do you look at me like that – you really did sleep for three days ah!” the celestial maiden palmed her chin with an amused expression on her countenance.
“Thanks to that, Elder Sister finally got to enjoy a full dinner for three straight nights! He Xin even wondered how you could enter secluded cultivation when still an ordinary mortal, heh.”
“Seclu… secluded meditation?”
An Fei pried apart her lips from the enveloping ice to prepare a barrage of questions, but found her mouth sealed by the soft and warm palm. The young girl struggled to move her gradually thawing body as Xu Lingxin pried her from the ground to settle her into a tight embrace. The celestial maiden locked An Fei in place with her left arm as her right tugged at the hickory basket.
“Little Sister, your body’s truly perplexing. Treating your wound was nearly impossible at the start – all of the spiritual medicines caused the gash to deepen, and the flowing blood even became poisoned as a result,” Xu Lingxin pried at An Fei’s lips with a dark-colored berry.
“Pills, spiritual medicine, herbs – any panacea that infused spiritual essence or mobilized spiritual essence through the body caused further damage. Surprisingly, poisons, toxins, and venoms that would destroy even the strongest of cultivators were surprisingly effective in treating your wounds and staunching the bleeding. How does that work – not even Granny Mei could figure it out!”
The mention of poison and venoms caused terror to rampage amok in An Fei’s mind, and she struggled harder to break free from her restraints. Alas, Xu Lingxin’s grip was a barrier that could not be broken even with her former body’s peak strength, and thus the young girl could only cry as delicate, long fingers shoved suspicious berries down her throat.
By the time the third black-colored fruit burst apart in her mouth and the viscous liquid drippled down her throat and fled from her lips, An Fei felt the thinnest stream of warmth spark in her chest.
“You – what are you doing to me? Poison!?”
The young girl stumbled to her knees and whirled to face the grinning celestial maiden to direct a hot glare. An Fei roughly panted as the thin streams of foreign cold threatened to capsize her body once more, and she felt the exhaustion beginning to settle for a second time.
“Don’t fret, don’t fret – Elder Sister isn’t kidding!” Xu Lingxin quickly arose to support the young girl’s frail state.
“Look – to keep yourself awake for the day, you need to consume either three Scattered Yin berries, four of these Seven Rending Veins, or one of the Guarding Heart berries. Otherwise, you’ll fall asleep for a few days, maybe an entire week – what, did you really think the cold was what forced you unconscious?”
The celestial maiden eagerly began to lecture with a rolled-up book clasped in her hand. The young girl’s pitiful expression that was a healthy blend of utter confusion and disbelief was left unnoticed, or perhaps ignored.
