After a Fake Death, the Emotionless Dao Senior Sister Became Obsessed - Chapter 82

Gui Ji brought Little Fish back to Peach Village, which was shrouded by the Sea of Silence and which no mortal dared to set foot in.

She taught Little Fish to say her own name, “Jiang Yun,” one syllable at a time.

She then interlaced her fingers with hers and softly repeated “Gui Ji” in her ear.

Hand-in-hand, she taught the girl how to dress, write, and practice swordsmanship, leading her step by step into the cage woven from vines, from which it would be difficult to ever leave.

Jiang Yun knew nothing of the world of the Nine Provinces beyond the Sea of Silence. Hooking her arms around Gui Ji’s neck, she recognized her as her own kin.

She pecked her cheek, and the very first word she spoke, hazy and innocent, was “A-niang” (Mother).

…This is good, too.

Gui Ji raised her lips in a dazed smile, gazing at the sleepy Little Fish, precious as a jewel, unable to look away.

Her body, which had been silent for years, once again produced fresh flesh and blood. Jiang Yun rested in her embrace, stirring up a strange, unfamiliar taste in her chest, surging like a tide.

Little Fish grew into a graceful, elegant young woman under her almost meticulous care.

She was beautiful and radiant, so similar to the crimson-skirted figure with the sword in her memories.

Gui Ji concealed the secret chamber where she had reshaped Jiang Yun’s soul using the Merman Lamp. On the night of the girl’s birthday, she kissed every shyly covered part of Little Fish, insatiably.

Amidst the intoxicating atmosphere of the chamber, “A-niang” changed to “Niangzi” (Wife), following the current.

Jiang Yun leaned in her arms, her cheeks faintly flushed, softly pleading for her to tell the story again of how she had specifically chosen her from the great fish populace of the Great Marsh.

How was it ‘choosing’?

Little Fish was her only one.

Long, long ago, since her consciousness first awakened, the single glimmer of precious crimson that remained in her hazy vision was her.

But Jiang Yun was not just hers alone.

The girl, whom she had raised in the Demon Palace, knew little about love. When she accompanied Gui Ji to the Lantern Festival market in Peach Village, her swordsmanship was so exceptional and breathtaking that it attracted admiration from everyone in Peach Village.

Dark clouds rolled in the sky. A pair of golden vertical pupils appeared faintly, deeply imposing.

Jiang Yun noticed them. She flew up on her sword and directly met the ancient dragon’s gaze.

She observed it curiously for a moment, then spoke bluntly, “Ugly dragon! You’ve scared everyone away.”

Gui Ji recognized the somber grey, ill-tempered dragon before her.

Zhu Yin.

Perhaps because its ancestors had been personally annihilated by Jiang Yun, or perhaps because Jiang Yun still carried a portion of ancient dragon blood, Zhu Yin was both greatly afraid of Jiang Yun and yet harbored a desire to please and be close to her.

It didn’t hesitate to transform itself into a small snake, wanting to coil around the girl’s arm.

“Do you want to be my friend?” Jiang Yun was delighted, yet also a little flustered, “I… I’ve never had a friend…”

The girl, who had been restrained in the dark, cold Demon Palace for so long, was easily captivated by the fresh freedom of the outside world.

Jiang Yun began to stay out all night.

Peach Village was too small, so Zhu Yin would carry her to see the landscapes beyond the Sea of Silence.

Gui Ji silently followed behind them, her eyes growing cold and bloodshot from staring, never blinking.

The red leaves of the Northern Province, the Great Marsh of the Eastern Province… she had once visited all these places with Jiang Yun, but now, someone else was by Little Fish’s side.

Why?

What did she do wrong? Why would Jiang Yun never completely belong to her?

She had waited so long, guarding the Merman Lamp in solitude.

She even suspected that, even as a Cold Stone, she would eventually perish in the endless eons before she could see Little Fish again.

Gui Ji seized the moment while Zhu Yin was asleep by the fire, embracing Jiang Yun. She coldly channeled her demonic energy and cleaved Zhu Yin in two.

Ancient dragons would not easily perish. She did not intend to kill, and she deliberately avoided Zhu Yin’s vital inverse scale.

She brought Jiang Yun back to the Demon Palace, spoiling and indulging Little Fish as usual.

But all she received in return were the girl’s tear-filled, bloodshot eyes, her expression of disappointment, and a hollow question, “You killed Zhu Yin.”

“Why did you kill my only friend…?”

Gui Ji’s soft heart, which she had regained after her loss, began to turn cold and heavy, bit by bit.

Zhu Yin was clearly coveting Jiang Yun.

The undisguised lust in its eyes, its unvarnished words, and its greedy physical contact with Little Fish… all made her want to eliminate it instantly.

Gui Ji used soft chains to bind Jiang Yun to the bed in the Demon Palace.

She cast aside her dignity, crouching by the girl’s tail to coax and keep her, until pleasure drowned them out, and Jiang Yun could no longer utter a word of resistance.

But Little Fish never smiled at her again.

Her crimson eyes held only emptiness. She spoke slowly, quietly uttering cold words, “I hate you.”

“…I hate Gui Ji.”

Gui Ji’s face was pale. She cupped Jiang Yun’s hand in her palm, gently kissed it with a lowered head, and forced a faint smile.

Hatred is fine too.

She loved everything Little Fish inflicted upon her.

As long as Jiang Yun’s gaze still lingered on her, as long as they would still be entangled in the future, she was willing to endure this cold treatment.

Gui Ji did not want to return to that long night where there was only the faint glow of the Merman Lamp, where she could only numbly hold Jiang Yun’s corpse.

The evil thoughts whispered and chuckled in her ear, “But you are becoming more and more like me.”

“You also want Little Fish to stop struggling, to stay with you forever, forever, don’t you?”

Gui Ji plunged a short blade into her own chest, churning it as if to abuse herself.

She used the pain to remind herself not to repeat her past mistakes.

Even if it meant self-destruction, she would not personally thrust the blade into Jiang Yun’s chest again.

In the blink of an eye, Little Fish’s birthday arrived again.

Gui Ji brought Jiang Yun to Peach Village for another Lantern Festival.

She personally wove a grand illusion, conjuring firework trees that would never dim with demonic energy. With a sweep of her sleeve, the sky brightened, and the continuous rolling rose-colored clouds were breathtakingly beautiful.

But Jiang Yun was even too weary to glance at them.

She merely whispered, “I want a sword.”

“A sword… the sharpest sword in this world.”

Gui Ji naturally agreed.

She thought this was Jiang Yun’s hope for her to turn back, believing that if she personally presented the best sword in the Nine Provinces, Little Fish would lean and fall into her arms as usual.

Calling her “A-Ji,” shy and longing, saying she was the most unique and beautiful stone in this world, her only Niangzi.

She wanted… to fulfill all of Little Fish’s wishes.

Gui Ji used the Merman Lamp to personally refine herself, the withered Cold Stone of a hundred years, into a longsword that belonged solely to Jiang Yun.

Even with her senses dulled by the light, the pain was unbearable.

It was as if she was watching herself crumble into dust, enveloped by the feeling of near-death, only to be re-formed in extreme cold and extreme heat into a vessel that was strange even to her.

Gui Ji slightly curved her lips.

She saw that at the core of the Cold Stone, wrapped in layers, was a piece of jade resembling a heart.

So, she already had a heart?

Would Little Fish be happy if she ground the jade into the shape of a pearl and gave it to her along with the longsword?

If Jiang Yun could read the unspoken thoughts accumulated during her long, lonely days, would she forgive her and stop hating her?

Gui Ji painstakingly attached a sword tassel shaped like a small fish, tied with red silk, to the longsword gift.

Using the last faint wisp of her soul to coalesce into a human form, she waited in the dark, lightless sleeping chamber for the girl to push the door open.

But when Jiang Yun took the sword, she was reluctant to show even a trace of a bright smile.

Gui Ji pulled the girl into her arms, coaxing her to bite her own lips.

To wash the sword with blood would make it acknowledge its master, and then she could… stay with Little Fish forever.

But all she heard was the sound of the longsword being drawn from its scabbard.

The softness still lingered on her lips, but the smell of blood—she couldn’t tell if it came from her mouth or her chest.

Gui Ji could no longer feel pain; the experience of forging herself into a longsword had been far more excruciating than this moment.

Yet, she still felt a strange, illusory spasm and contraction in her nonexistent heart.

So, this is what it feels like to be pierced by the one you love.

Gui Ji heard Jiang Yun gasp and retreat in panic, looking at her with confusion.

Though trembling with fear, she stuttered that Gui Ji was a demon, that she had ruled Peach Village for nearly ten thousand years, turning the Sea of Silence into a demonic lair.

Little Fish had discovered the corpses identical to herself in the secret chamber, which led her to misunderstand, saying that Gui Ji’s elaborate efforts were only to raise a forbidden concubine with an identical appearance.

However, seeing the crimson blood gushing from Gui Ji’s chest, tears of confusion fell from her eyes.

“…If only A-Ji wasn’t a demon,” Jiang Yun murmured.

“A-Ji promised me that you would accompany me on my journey through the Nine Provinces, in place of Zhu Yin.”

Jiang Yun’s second life was still lonely.

Gui Ji prided herself on her long lifespan, yet she still failed to accompany Little Fish through her remaining days.

She offered up her heart.

It was a pearl crafted from a piece of the Cold Stone, polished tens of thousands of times.

Her soul essence was shattering, on the verge of dissipation. Gui Ji coaxed Jiang Yun to accept the pearl, her voice gentle and soft, just as she had countless times before when lulling Little Fish to sleep.

“A-Ji will never break a promise to Jiang Yun.”

Will the longsword and the pearl accompany Little Fish throughout the Nine Provinces?

Will Jiang Yun remember her forever?

If only she could witness it herself… that would be enough.

Before the sensation of imminent death completely spread, Gui Ji heard the Merman Lamp’s detached, illusory words—like the silent gaze of the Heavenly Dao, or the gentle, smiling pause of a Buddha holding a flower.

Heaven’s will cannot be defied.

Ten thousand years of waiting were merely a footnote to the fulfillment of the slightest hope.

To resurrect Jiang Yun, she ultimately had to offer everything of herself—only that was an equivalent exchange.

Just as Jiang Yun and Gui Ji were originally contradictions, meanings opposed to each other.

Gui Ji never lived to see the day she would travel the Nine Provinces with Jiang Yun.

When she opened her eyes again, her chest was empty, all feelings and obsessions gone. She was submerged in the icy, bone-chilling Sea of Silence, drifting up and down with the white bones.

She didn’t understand why she was abandoned here in solitude.

She seemed to be perpetually waiting, waiting for a bright smile, waiting for warmth to fall into her embrace.

Waiting for… a master to retrieve her.

Gui Ji felt many repeated yet deep etchings on her body, which should have recorded the important people and events of the past.

However, she could remember nothing.

Until she heard the anxious and expectant roar of a dragon above the Sea of Silence.

A figure, vibrant and unrestrained, approached the Sea of Silence from afar, robes fluttering, stepping on a plain sword, like a streak of crimson cloud in the dark sky.

Gui Ji found the plain sword, and the strange dragon circling above, utterly displeasing to the eye.

Her gaze was irresistibly fixed on the woman, and she began to hum uncontrollably.

The crimson-robed woman landed on a piece of reef in the sea of blood. Quite nonchalantly, she scooped up a handful of water to wash her snowy calves, not caring that the hem of her robe was stained red by the blood-dyed water.

She seemed to narrow her eyes mischievously, not looking up, her voice sweet and charming, “Let me guess… who has been staring at me all this time?”

Gui Ji was unable to speak.

The dragon, which had been hiding fearfully in the clouds, now swam out, whining softly in a flattering manner.

The woman raised the plain sword in her hand and waved it like a playful threat at the ancient dragon hovering in the air, “Stupid dragon, it’s not you. How many years has it been? Still haven’t made any progress.”

Crimson water splashed. In a blink of an eye, the woman—whose skin was snowy-white and soft, and supremely alluring—swam closer.

She was completely naked, and through the murky blood-water, the faint shimmer of a crimson, soft fish tail could be seen.

“I was looking for…” the woman, who looked like a sea demon, smiled.

“You.”

She took out an xun (a globular, vessel flute) made of what looked like suet jade, lowered her eyelashes, and began to play an unknown melody.

It was ethereal and melancholic, as if recounting the hopelessness of long, drawn-out days.

It was more like playing all the stories accumulated over ten thousand years for her to hear.

Gui Ji’s heart caught.

She recognized that xun was made from a missing part of her original body, the culprit responsible for the emptiness in her chest.

Why was her heart in the hands of this captivating woman before her?

Jiang Yun tucked the xun into her bosom, swam away lightly, and winked, “I’m a naughty fish-dragon who steals hearts.”

“A-Ji, aren’t you going to come and retrieve your heart?”

Gui Ji found it increasingly difficult to control the humming and trembling emanating from deep within her being.

She coalesced into a human form and chased after the crimson, lithe figure.

The other party seemed to deliberately wait for her, slowing down, even seductively flicking the tip of her tail to tempt her.

However, in a moment of carelessness, she was restrained by Gui Ji, who held her wrists and pinned her onto the cold, undulating reef.

Gui Ji lowered her head and saw that the woman had apricot-shaped eyes, the color of gold foil—charming and alluring. Meeting her gaze, the woman’s eyes curved into a smile, shattering the sparkling reflections on the water.

She was clearly naked, yet showed no shame. Instead, she pressed on Gui Ji’s neck, urging her to come closer.

Suddenly, as if playing a trick, she bit Gui Ji’s icy lip.

The woman’s pink lips were stained with deep crimson. She smiled and leaned close to Gui Ji’s ear, “Beautiful stone, what are you planning to do to me?”

“You have acknowledged me as your master. Could it be that you intend to defy your superior?”

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