The artifact spirit seemed to have fallen back into dormancy.
All the better; things were considerably quieter now.
Gu Yanqing pulled a mission with a decent point reward from the bulletin board in the Mission Hall.
Lin Zhixue glanced at the mission slip. “Rank C, an investigation mission.”
The details on the slip were sparse, merely stating that rumors had recently spread among several villages at the foot of the mountain about a strange person appearing in the wilderness, occasionally seen near the settlements.
Terrified, the villagers had reported it multiple times, but the Mission Hall had shelved it for a while since no one took it, nor were the points particularly high.
Gu Yanqing turned the slip over and read it twice; the description was extremely vague.
There was no noted cultivation level, no specific location, only oral accounts recorded from a few villagers.
Disciples were usually reluctant to accept this kind of mission. It was time-consuming and often turned out to be nothing more than villagers scaring themselves.
“Let’s go.” Folding the mission slip, he tucked it into his sleeve. Lin Zhixue was already waiting for him at the entrance.
...
The village at the foot of the mountain was small, with a few dozen households scattered along the banks of a stream.
A few elderly villagers were sitting on boulders by the village entrance, basking in the sun. Upon hearing that they were cultivators from the Yunxiao Sect, they immediately gathered around.
“Oh my, you’re finally here!” An old, gray-haired woman stood up, leaning on her crutch.
“That strange person has scared us half to death! She lives in the mountain out back, and sometimes at night you can see her standing on the edge of the cliff, just like a ghost!”
“Has she hurt anyone?” Lin Zhixue asked.
The elders exchanged glances. “Well, no,” an old man said, scratching his head.
“She just stands there and never comes down. Some folks ran into her while gathering firewood in the mountain, but she didn’t do anything to them.”
“It’s just terrifying to look at—red eyes! How could that be a normal person?”
Gu Yanqing asked a few more questions: when she had first appeared, where she was seen each time, and whether she was alone or had accomplices.
The villagers’ answers were fragmented, but pieced together, they confirmed one thing: this strange person had never actively harmed anyone, nor had she ever stepped foot into the village. She merely lived in the mountain, occasionally spotted by chance.
“Let’s go,” he said, stowing away the jade slip he had used to record notes. “We’ll head up and take a look.”
The mountain was not particularly high, but the going was rough. Shrubs and vines thoroughly choked what used to be a trail, forcing the two of them to slash their way through the undergrowth as they climbed. The dense canopy blocked out most of the sunlight, leaving the forest damp and stifling.
After walking for about half a shichen, Gu Yanqing suddenly stopped in his tracks.
The forest ahead came to an abrupt end, giving way to a gravel slope that stretched from their feet to the edge of a nearby cliff.
A figure stood at the edge of the cliff.
Long black hair fell to her waist, tinged with a faint luster of deep blue, and a pair of dark crimson eyes quietly watched them, devoid of hostility.
Lin Zhixue’s hand was already resting on the hilt of her sword. The Guilan Sword hummed faintly in its scabbard, as if sensing something.
Gu Yanqing raised a hand, signaling for her to hold.
She merely stood there, watching them quietly, as though trying to recognize something, or perhaps waiting for something.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The young girl did not answer. Her lips moved slightly, as if mimicking the shape of his words, but no sound came out.
“What is your name?”
She remained silent for quite a while longer before shaking her head very, very slowly. “...Don’t know.”
“Where did you come from?”
She raised a finger and pointed toward the cliff behind her.
Gu Yanqing took a step forward. The girl did not back away.
He studied her carefully for a moment.
Her robes were worn but relatively intact, not some discarded rag.
Her cultivation fluctuations flickered faintly, but the trajectory of that spiritual energy circulation... He furrowed his brows slightly.
Lin Zhixue felt it too. Stepping up beside Gu Yanqing, she lowered her voice. “Her spiritual power isn’t right.”
It was not the spiritual power of an ordinary cultivator. No matter the attribute, when a cultivator’s spiritual power flowed through their meridians, it carried a natural rhythm—like flowing water, blowing wind, or sprouting foliage. Yet the movement of energy within this girl had none of that regularity. It was heavier, colder, far more like an undercurrent that had been forcefully suppressed.
This was not the spiritual energy of an ordinary cultivator. This was demonic qi.
Gu Yanqing naturally recognized it as well. He did not draw his sword, because the girl’s expression had not changed from beginning to end. She did not know what they were talking about, nor did she even understand what the phrase “her spiritual power isn’t right” meant.
“Do you know who you are?” he asked.
The girl shook her head gently.
“There is a... rather different power inside you. Can you feel it yourself?”
She looked down at her hands, her fingers slowly clenching and unclenching as if trying to sense something. Then, she shook her head again.
Gu Yanqing and Lin Zhixue exchanged a glance. This was no facade. If she were truly pretending, her acting was so impeccable that neither he nor Lin Zhixue could detect a single flaw.
Yet how had she survived all by herself in these deep mountains until now?
“What do you usually eat?” Lin Zhixue asked suddenly.
The girl turned her head toward the dense forest behind her, pointing at some wild fruit growing beneath a tree, and then at the vines creeping up the cliff wall.
The way she did it looked almost as if she were pointing out her few remaining friends.
“You found them yourself?”
She nodded.
“How long have you lived here?”
She remained silent for a long time. It was not that she refused to answer; she was genuinely trying to think.
After much contemplation, her fingertip pointed first to the sky, then down to the earth, before she shook her head softly.
She did not know either. Perhaps a very long time.
Gu Yanqing crouched down, meeting her eyes at level height. Beneath the daylight, those dark crimson eyes did not appear savage in the least; they merely watched him quietly, completely devoid of aggression.
“What else do you remember?” he asked, his voice softening a notch. “Anything at all.”
The girl lowered her eyelashes.
After a long silence—so long that Lin Zhixue thought she would not speak again—she finally parted her lips to let out a few fragmented words.
“...Someone pulled me, running.” Her voice was soft and slow.
“Many people were chasing behind. That person told me to keep running and not look back. Then...”
“That person disappeared. I don’t know who she was. But her hand was very warm.”
She placed one hand over the back of the other, giving it a gentle squeeze.
After that, she did not know what else to say.
The woods stayed quiet for a long while, filled only with the sound of the wind rustling through the treetops and a few distant bird calls.
Gu Yanqing stood up and walked back to Lin Zhixue.
With their backs turned to the girl, the two walked to the edge of the gravel slope. He could see the expression on Lin Zhixue’s face.
She was hesitating, weighing the situation. He was pondering the very same question.
“She hasn’t hurt anyone,” he whispered, “nor does she have any intention of attacking us.”
“Yet she is a demonic cultivator after all. If we bring her back to the sect, how will the Hall of Deacons deal with an unidentified demonic cultivator who remembers nothing? Not to mention she is at late Foundation Establishment.”
“Lock her up? Hand her over to the elders for interrogation? Or conduct an outright soul search?”
Lin Zhixue fell silent for a moment. “Then what do you propose...?”
“We know nothing right now. Bringing her back might not be doing her any favors,” he said.
Lin Zhixue looked back at the girl in the distance. She was still standing where she had been, waiting quietly without attempting to follow or eavesdrop on their conversation. She didn’t even realize she was being discussed.
“So we just let her stay here?”
“She can survive on her own. There are wild fruits and stream water in the mountains, and she was living here for who knows how long before we showed up.”
Lin Zhixue said nothing more. She merely looked at the girl once again, then gave a slight nod.
Before descending the mountain, Gu Yanqing walked back up to the girl.
“We won’t take you away for now,” he said, looking into her eyes and enunciating clearly.
“Stay here. Do not go down the mountain.”
“The villagers at the foot of the mountain are afraid of you. If you go down, they might harm you.”
She seemed to understand and nodded.
Lin Zhixue retrieved a few rations from her storage bag and placed them on a rock beside her. Then, taking a small medicinal bottle from inside her robes containing several pills for external injuries, she set that down as well.
She did not say much, only looking into the girl’s eyes to offer a gentle, “Take care of yourself.”
The girl looked down at the rations, then up at Lin Zhixue, and suddenly spoke.
“...Thanks.”
The word sounded exceedingly clumsy, as if it were her first time coordinating lips and tongue to produce the sound.
The two retraced their steps down the mountain. Once they emerged from the dense forest, sunlight bathed their faces once more, and wisps of cooking smoke from the village were already visible in the distance.
Upon returning to the village, they found the elders still waiting by the entrance for news. Seeing them descend, an old woman stood up with her crutch. “Immortal Masters, that strange person...”
“We went up and checked,” Gu Yanqing said. “She will not harm anyone. So long as you don’t provoke her, she won’t come down the mountain.”
The villagers looked at one another. “But those eyes of hers...”
“She simply looks a bit different from ordinary people,” Lin Zhixue interjected. “We interacted with her in the mountains, and she didn’t attack us. In the future, when you go up to gather firewood or herbs, just take a detour if you see her. There’s no need to be afraid.”
Although the villagers were still somewhat skeptical, with the Immortal Masters from the Yunxiao Sect putting it that way, they could hardly say anything more.
The old woman nodded, promising to pass the word along to the other villagers. After expressing their gratitude, the two took their leave and headed out of the village.
Lin Zhixue remained quiet the entire way back. As they approached the sect gates, she suddenly asked, “Are we really just leaving her on her own?”
Gu Yanqing gazed at the mountain path ahead and stayed silent for a moment. “She doesn’t even know who she is. What could we possibly do for her right now?”
Lin Zhixue said nothing more. Lowering her head, she watched the mountain path passing beneath her feet, step by step.
By the time they returned to the sect, dusk was falling. The two went to the Mission Hall to report completion, and the deacon disciple credited twenty points to each of their names in the register.
Rate on N.U.
