"Xiaoyu! Xiaoyu! Wake up!"
Who was calling?
Jiang Qingyu instinctively twitched her fingers, and that voice drifted into her ears again: "You're finally awake! I thought you were a goner."
Jiang Qingyu kept her eyes closed and her mouth twitched.
Actually, she had already woken up just now, she just didn't want to open her eyes. But given this voice, no matter how much she wanted to keep playing dead, she couldn't pull it off.
A sharp-tongued little-boy voice, low in attack power, but utterly humiliating.
She was saved.
Jiang Qingyu lifted the quilt and sat up, her eyes scanning her surroundings first.
There wasn't much furniture in the room: a bed, a folding screen, a daybed, and a low table. Judging by the grain, it was mostly Hainan huanghuali wood, exquisitely crafted.
On the low table sat only a Yixing zisha tea set and a plate of lychees, with some unfinished tea still in the cup.
The entire room was clean, tidy, and bright, without any excessive decoration. Instead, several flower pots sat by the window, planted with lingbing flowers—six-petaled ice-crystal flowers with translucent petals that were thriving.
A tiny dark cloud floated just above the flowers, scattering sparkling, crystal-clear snowflakes that created a localized snowfall in that exact spot. Looking closely, there was also a barrier by the window, specifically sealing the chill within that area.
Lingbing flowers were delicate and grew only in extreme cold. The colder the place, the better they bloomed. They usually had five petals, so six-petaled ones were extremely rare.
In the books left behind by the old man, she remembered seeing large, sweeping cursive characters written in the blank space beside the lingbing flower illustration: "Barrier-Breaking Pill."
She was still wearing the same clothes she had arrived in, except that the bloodstains had been cleaned away.
Feeling that her legs could already move freely, Jiang Qingyu lifted her tattered skirt. The bone-deep wounds on her lower legs were gone, covered over by fresh flesh, leaving only an ugly scar. The bones in her knees, once shattered to pieces, had been restored as good as new.
To recover as good as new from injuries like that—if she were back in the modern era, they'd have just amputated the leg and called it a day.
Having incurred a life-saving debt the moment she arrived, Jiang Qingyu smiled wryly, feeling helpless.
Moving slowly to the window, Jiang Qingyu curiously eyed the small patch of "ice and snow."
Through the barrier, she could only sense the pure Spiritual Qi carrying a hint of coolness. It was her first time seeing spiritual power used like this; it was simply extravagant.
It seemed her savior was a very formidable senior, able to harness even natural phenomena like dark clouds!
Her peripheral vision inadvertently drifted to the side, where a small bronze mirror rested. Seeing the reflection of the person in the mirror, she froze on the spot.
Jiang Qingyu touched her cheeks, staring in disbelief at the bronze mirror. This face bore an eighty percent resemblance to her own childhood self from her past life!
The remaining twenty percent difference was due to this body lacking nutrition, leaving the skin slightly yellowish. Yet it made up for it with delicate facial features and bright, dark eyes, making it vaguely recognizable as the bud of a beauty, even down to the exceptionally gorgeous bone structure.
Seeing a familiar face eased Jiang Qingyu's mood slightly.
But beauty is always shattered by something jarring—for instance, the sharp-tongued little-boy voice from earlier, which was already starting to get irritated...
"Xiaoyu, can you let me out for some fresh air first? It's so dark in here, I can't see a thing, I'm scared!"
"...Who are you?" Sensing no malice from the other party, Jiang Qingyu relaxed. Regarding this child's voice calling her Xiaoyu, she had a bold guess.
"Who am I? You're asking me who I am? Xiaoyu, you're going too far! Earlier you clearly kept calling me your precious!"
...
"Don't doubt your guess, it's just what you think it is!"
...
Jiang Qingyu used her Divine Sense to look inward at her sword manor. A precious sword, jade-like from hilt to tip with a single plum-red dot at the heart of the sword, was floating around like a ghost.
Sorry, she must have woken up too abruptly and started hallucinating.
Jiang Qingyu withdrew her Divine Sense from the sword manor and re-entered. It was still that exceptionally elegant and noble precious sword, swaying unsteadily as if it had downed two liang of Maotai.
After a moment of silence, Jiang Qingyu asked the ultimate question: "...Did you get plastic surgery?"
Jinglan snapped back, as irascible as ever: "I'll plastic-surgery your seventh maternal uncle!"
"..." Who, exactly who, taught it those words? Come out and face justice.
Jiang Qingyu looked at Jinglan, remembering when the old man first gave her the sword. Back then it was just a broken blade, snapped right down the middle into two halves, covered in rust, with two crooked words carved into its pitch-black hilt: Jinglan.
She had once despised this ragged sword for being ugly and failing to even split a rock—right up until she accidentally stumbled into a volcano, obtained a wisp of fire essence, and watched this fellow quietly swallow it whole, after which it suddenly became sharp enough to cut through iron like mud!
Ever since then, whenever Jiang Qingyu got her hands on anything good, she would throw it to Jinglan first to see if it could digest it.
For several hundred years, pulling out all the stops, she finally managed to reconnect the other half. Although there was a visible seam, it was already a peerless, priceless sword in Jiang Qingyu's eyes.
No wonder it had carried her straight into the tribulation lightning—it had wanted to use the heavenly lightning to temper its physical form and undergo a complete rebirth.
"So that's how it is..." Jiang Qingyu instantly pieced the whole story together. "Too bad I can't pull you out to swing you around a bit. Before, when the old man said you had a spirit, I didn't quite believe it."
Jiang Qingyu let Jinglan grumble for a while longer before the haughty little sword spirit finally calmed down.
"Hmph! That old codger was thoroughly rotten. Where is he anyway? Why hasn't he come to see me? I look so handsome now, let's see him dare look down on me!"
...Jiang Qingyu fell silent for a moment, her voice slightly hoarse.
"He's gone. He left a hundred years ago."
Jinglan remained silent for a long time. Eventually, it said, "He should be happy. He said he was tired, and that he was merely returning to the place he longed to be."
Seven hundred years ago, during turbulent times when people went hungry and lacked clothes, there was no money to spare. Whether you had a mother or not, you were just a weed growing in the wild.
Jiang Qingyu had scraped by in the mud, fleeing the battlefield alongside refugees.
When the old man fell out of the sky, she had been starving, collapsed in the red soil behind the Guanyin temple, chewing on tree bark and grass roots to survive.
The old man's passing had always been a thorn in Jiang Qingyu's heart. Aside from Jinglan and a few books, he left nothing behind—not even a handful of ashes.
During festivals and holidays, Jiang Qingyu didn't even know where to go to pay her respects.
"Xiaoyu, don't be sad. I feel like this world is very familiar. Perhaps before the old man tore through the void and brought you to the modern era, he was a person of this world. Even though a long time has passed, he was no nobody—do you understand what I mean?" Jinglan said firmly.
Jiang Qingyu took a deep breath. "Really? Then Jinglan, do you still remember what happened back then?"
"I slept a bit too long, I can't remember very clearly..." Jinglan's tone was filled with self-blame and regret. Seemingly remembering something, it continued: "Still, since we've returned here, I'm bound to remember bit by bit! As for you, you cultivated immortality for the better part of your life, only to find yourself back at square one overnight. You need to grow strong again quickly!"
"Mm, I will."
"Then focus on regulating your breath properly. I've just woken up, so I'll take advantage of this time to consolidate my state."
Withdrawing her Divine Sense, the sword manor fell into complete stillness.
Jiang Qingyu was lost in thought.
She had failed her Ascension in the modern era, her physical body blasted into nothingness, but her soul had grown immensely powerful with the help of the heavenly lightning. Her Divine Sense was a hundred times sturdier than before, capable of splitting into multiple strands—a blessing in disguise.
According to the books left by the old man, cultivators in the Cultivation World generally possessed formidable physical bodies and fragile souls.
Therefore, if one suffered damage to the soul, not only was the pain bone-deep, but there was also a seventy-five percent chance of being reduced to an idiot, which was far worse than death.
Since she was known to be the only cultivator in the modern era, and there were no soul-attacking demons or ghosts, she had never had to worry about such issues.
Now that she had transmigrated to the Cultivation World, she had to watch out for soul-related hazards, lest her great enterprise be cut short halfway and she turn into a moron.
She wondered if there were any secret manuals for training the soul.
With her thoughts drifting afar, Jiang Qingyu pulled herself back to reality. Her top priority was to recover her body first and then guide Spiritual Qi into her meridians; otherwise, she wouldn't even be able to draw Jinglan out.
Just as she was about to split off a strand of Divine Sense to inspect her surroundings—
"Recovering nicely, I see."
Hearing the visiting voice, Jiang Qingyu halted her movements and looked toward the doorway.
It was a strikingly handsome man, his starry eyes as gentle as water.
His cascade of soft dark hair was gathered simply by a jade-green bamboo hairpin, and he wore a sky-blue satin robe, the cuffs lined with a delicate silver cutout pattern of hibiscus flowers.
His posture was leisurely and graceful, retaining the lonely, slender elegance of snow and frost. His features were exquisite, especially his smiling eyes, which made one feel both noble and warmly approachable.
The man smiled faintly, stepping forward to pat Jiang Qingyu's fluffy head. His words were laced with lingering laughter, gentle and easygoing: "I didn't expect the little girl to be a fan of good looks."
Jiang Qingyu stood frozen in awkwardness, saying dryly, "Appreciation for beauty is universal."
Taking a small step aside, she bowed respectfully to the man. "Thank you, Senior, for saving me from the snow. I will certainly repay this kindness in the future."
The man raised an eyebrow slightly, a hint of teasing in his tone: "Are you so sure it was me who saved you?"
"Intuition!" Jiang Qingyu replied righteously.
"Hahahaha, interesting. I half expected you to rattle off some astonishing logical deduction. Truly amusing. I wonder how you plan to repay me?"
"What does Senior have in mind?" In truth, Jiang Qingyu had no idea how she could repay the favor.
Right now she was just a little milk-tot, good for nothing. However, if she spent a few decades or centuries acting as a gate-keeping child, sweeping floors, washing clothes, and tending to flowers and spiritual herbs, that would be doable.
It would allow her to repay the debt while continuing her cultivation—killing two birds with one stone.
Having made up her mind, Jiang Qingyu was just about to elaborate when the other person interrupted her.
"In that case, why don't you marry me instead?"
!?
Jiang Qingyu wore the expression of someone struck by lightning, instantly turning to stone right where she stood!
In broad daylight, under the bright sun, an illiterate outlaw had materialized out of thin air—it was utterly outrageous!
A dignified adult actually plotting to abduct a nine-year-old loli! Despicable and pathetic! Was this the moral decay of society, or the distortion of human nature?
Jiang Qingyu tilted her head, disbelief written all over her face, her expression practically screaming: *Who told you that being good-looking means you can do whatever you want?*
"Master, idioms aren't accessories—if you don't know how to use them, don't force it. You're going to scare the kid."
A booming crash echoed across the sky as First Senior Brother made a dazzling entrance!