Guide to the Rebirth of the Evil Woman in the Immortal Realm - Chapter 40

As the night deepened, Shen Fuxin pulled a chair into the courtyard. Before her sat two alchemy furnaces she had stolen from the Azure Emperor’s Spirit Mountain.

Since Shen Sha was willing to entrust her life to the attempt, Shen Fuxin had no desire to waste the time she had spent across multiple cycles of reincarnation and searching. Her period of tempering in the mortal realm was limited to a hundred years. If Shen Sha could regain her former strength and ascend within this century, that would be ideal. If not, Shen Fuxin had to successfully refine a pill to open her spiritual awareness during these years among mortals.

Shen Sha had already retired to her room, leaving only Ji Ting leaning against the pomegranate tree in the courtyard. Ji Ting idly flipped through the alchemy manual that the Great Deity Yandan had given to Shen Fuxin.

Unversed in the alchemical arts, she soon grew bored of the text and turned her gaze toward Shen Fuxin, who was focused on tending the fire.

Compared to those words on the page, Shen Fuxin was someone Ji Ting never tired of watching.

Ji Ting suddenly understood why the gazes of both Zhao Lanying and Yu Zhanxu lingered on Shen Fuxin for so long, and why they held such private partiality for her. In the immortal realm, a place of infinite longevity and infinite loneliness, Shen Fuxin was vivid even in her malice. She was a flower growing from the mire, not a beautiful, dead thing plucked and meticulously arranged in a vase.

Ji Ting sighed, finding herself reaching a point of absurdity. Even when Shen Fuxin was crushing her own father to death, she possessed a vitality that made it hard to look away. If the day came when Shen Fuxin decided to crush her as well, Ji Ting would not find it surprising, and perhaps she would not even be that angry.

This feeling was nebulous and inexplicable. Ji Ting did not want to dwell on it too deeply. She simply allowed her gaze to rest on Shen Fuxin by instinct until the latter suddenly turned around with a sharp look and asked, “What are you looking at?”

Ji Ting leaned against the tree with an air of nonchalance. Her voice was flat and unchanged from her usual tone as she replied, “Watching you refine pills.”

At that moment, Shen Fuxin was clutching the lotus flower snatched from the dead man’s tomb, lost in deep thought. She did not bother with Ji Ting anymore, tolerating the constant gaze fixed upon her as she tossed the golden lotus into one of the cauldrons.

She was certain the lotus was merely a container and that the true prize was hidden within. To extract the contents, Shen Fuxin first had to melt away the outer layer of gold.

However, once the lotus was inside the cauldron and she saw its condition, Shen Fuxin felt a rare flash of bewilderment. It would not melt.

She was an immortal fetus of the celestial realm, possessed of extraordinary talent and pure spiritual fire. A flame like hers could have incinerated a dozen Green Chambers, yet it could not melt a small funerary object belonging to a mortal emperor. Furthermore, the lotus was made of gold, a metal naturally soft and easy to melt. Yet even after several breaths in the fire, it remained motionless, showing no sign of liquefying.

Shen Fuxin was forced to retrieve it. The heart of the flower glowed red from the spiritual heat, but it remained unchanged from before it was thrown in. Through her perception, she could feel the spiritual energy inside was still abundant. Not a single shred had leaked out.

She tried prodding it with a sword and smashing it with stones, but the lotus remained stubborn. Her senses insisted it was indeed made of gold, but where in the world was there gold this hard? For a moment, she even wondered if the spiritual energy trapped inside had developed a self awareness, controlling the shell to refuse the melting process. Or perhaps there was a flaw in her method of refinement.

Seeing her busy for so long only to suddenly go still, Ji Ting felt that familiar sense of foreboding creep back in. No matter how much Shen Fuxin bared her claws to the world, as long as it was a problem that could be solved with a sword, it was a minor matter. But if she suddenly went silent, she was surely contemplating some grand scheme that others would find impossible to stomach.

Sure enough, Shen Fuxin turned around and sat down to meditate. Seeing her calm expression while still clutching the lotus, Ji Ting could not help but make a joke. “Are you planning to reform it with love?”

“If you have love, you do the reforming. I have no such thing,” Shen Fuxin replied. “I am going to let it know the consequences of not yielding to my will.”

She held her breath and focused her mind, feeling a patch of warmth at her Dantian. The sensation was strange. It was not exactly uncomfortable, but rather peaceful. Since descending to the mortal world, Shen Fuxin had not only meditated and controlled spiritual fire daily, but she had also practiced gathering spiritual energy in her Dantian. Over time, she had grown accustomed to the feeling and no longer felt the panic she experienced during her first attempt at using her body as a crucible.

“What are you trying to do?” Ji Ting straightened up. “Shen Fuxin, you”

Shen Fuxin guided her Qi to guard her Dantian. The lotus flower jerked in her hand and then plunged directly into her body. In a daze, she felt as if she were a hollow shell with nothing inside. The lotus was like a bird with wings, or perhaps it was spreading its wings within her heart, liver, spleen, and lungs, scattering a wealth of abundant spiritual energy.

This energy gathered instinctively into a small, round, semi solid mass.

Her eyes could not see, but she could roughly guess the color of this newly formed spiritual elixir. It should be pale blue, emitting a subtle, moon white glow. As the spiritual energy solidified further, the familiar sense of security she felt when she first touched the lotus grew heavier. Where had she seen this before? Her consciousness blurred. She felt a vague certainty that she had seen it somewhere.

It must have been a very long time ago, so long ago that Shen Fuxin could not remember clearly. Perhaps, once upon a time, someone had held her in their palms like a treasure, surrounded by a mixture of the smell of blood and the faint, fresh scent of manifested spiritual energy.

Where had she seen it?

Ji Ting was already half supporting her. Shen Fuxin leaned into her embrace. Her face did not show the agony of her previous refinement, only a weary paleness. Ji Ting watched her closely, terrified that the pure, domineering energy inside the lotus would damage her cultivation. But Shen Fuxin merely tilted her head slightly, leaning against Ji Ting’s arm.

Ji Ting’s hand stiffened for a moment as she saw the look of daze on Shen Fuxin’s face. Suddenly, Shen Fuxin grabbed her arm, refusing to let go. Trapped in a delusive vision, Shen Fuxin’s lips moved. Thinking she was about to say something important, Ji Ting leaned in to listen, only to hear her murmur two extremely soft, muffled words she had never heard her utter before.

“Mother.”

Shen Fuxin felt as though she were immersed in icy water, but her lower abdomen was warm. A wave of heat was pressed against her belly, making her feel cozy and comfortable. She tried to roll over to let her body absorb more of the heat, but she discovered she could not move at all.

Moreover, she was blind. Her only way of perceiving the world was through touch, smell, and sound. In her blindness, her hearing became exceptionally sharp. She could hear the sound of the wind rippling across the water’s surface and the gentle rustle of certain leaves colliding.

Besides that, there was the sound of someone humming a strange, out of tune song. The singer was a woman. Her pitch was bizarre, as if she had never spoken before, and the tune she hummed was an oddity Shen Fuxin had never encountered. She sounded like a vengeful ghost who had never stepped out of the shadows in her entire life.

As the woman made those tuneless, eerie sounds, Shen Fuxin suddenly felt top heavy. She did not seem to be in human form. She began to roll, yes, roll, along that gentle, warm terrain. Amidst the spinning world, Shen Fuxin felt the absurdity of it. Was she an egg?

But this is fine, she thought. At least her whole body was warm now. She was not cold anymore.

That familiar spiritual energy enveloped her. Shen Fuxin could feel herself growing rapidly within this energy she had never sensed before. The singing continued. The woman making the sounds seemed to be cradling her. Shen Fuxin had a lingering premonition that the song was being sung for her.

The rustling of countless leaves served as her accompaniment. The feeling was strange yet tender. Shen Fuxin was almost intoxicated by the nauseating smell of blood, but where was the blood coming from? Was the singer injured?

Before she could think further, her entire body stiffened as an overwhelming warmth covered her like a blanket, making her feel safe. But in the next instant, bone chilling water pierced in from all sides. Shen Fuxin heard the sound of bubbling water and realized she was being held in a hand and submerged.

After entering the water, the stench grew heavier. Shen Fuxin accepted her role as an egg, and luckily, eggs did not have a gag reflex. Otherwise, the smell of blood and rotting flesh would have made her vomit on the spot.

Hidden beneath the water, Shen Fuxin could not hear everything on the shore clearly. It seemed there were footsteps, but no one spoke. The visitor came and went in a hurry. She only caught the scent of more fresh blood. For some reason, Shen Fuxin suddenly felt a desire to cry.

Long after the visitor had left, the woman began to sing softly again. This time, there were no leaves to accompany her. Shen Fuxin did not understand the language of the song, but it made her skin crawl. The woman seemed to be trying her best to sing tenderly, but the coarse voice and the underlying hatred that could not be hidden made the whole thing even more bizarre.

She sang for a very, very long time, so long that Shen Fuxin fell asleep and woke up again. Finally, the woman stopped singing. In its place, Shen Fuxin heard the sound of something swimming, the sound of a massive monster lurking at the bottom of the water, struggling to crawl.

This process continued for a long time until the woman brought her to the shore. This time, Shen Fuxin heard someone else arrive, but the woman did not hide back in the water. Something was placed gently on the shore and picked up by the woman’s other hand.

The woman was shaking off water, trying her best to make her hands dry, but the water would not stay away. Shen Fuxin, hidden in her palm, heard the sound of pages turning, accompanied by the sound of water droplets falling into her ears.

Someone had brought her a book.

The woman began to read the words one by one in that strange tone. Shen Fuxin heard it clearly. It seemed to be something like a dictionary. The woman struggled to read, often failing to understand the meaning. But the visitor did not speak. They communicated by writing on paper. Shen Fuxin heard the rustle of a brush across the page.

The woman, no longer singing, read the dictionary for a long time as if she were selecting something. Shen Fuxin listened for so long she nearly fell asleep again, until finally, she heard the woman’s voice become slightly clearer.

She said, “Fu xin.”

In that instant, Shen Fuxin felt as if she had been struck by lightning. Her mind had no time to think. It simply went blank.

The woman continued, “Shen Fu xin.”

The person on the shore paused and wrote again, seemingly asking why she chose that name. Amidst the extreme dizziness and suffocation, Shen Fuxin heard the splashing of water. The gentle aura that enveloped her dispersed as the woman held Shen Fuxin out toward the shore, gesturing for the other person to see.

“My heart,” she said. “It is me, my heart.”

At this moment, Shen Fuxin could only hear the heavy thudding of her own heart.

The person on the shore suddenly spoke. She was also a woman, her voice cold and devoid of emotion, like the snow atop the Nine Heavens. “You cannot keep her,” the person on the shore said. “Why bother giving her a name to leave a lingering attachment?”

The woman seemed enraged by those words, letting out a hysterical roar. Amidst the terrifying scream, Shen Fuxin heard the sound of chains clanking in the water. It was faint, but impossible to ignore.

At the very moment she was so overwhelmed she wanted to drown herself, Shen Fuxin snapped her eyes open.

The moonlight was still the same moonlight. It was as if she had experienced an utterly absurd and baseless dream. Ji Ting was half holding her, shaking her.

What was real?

Shen Fuxin recalled that strange, coarse song and closed her eyes. She could no longer ignore it or escape it. She had never felt such pain in her life.