Wanxi Rebirth - Chapter 114

“The visions always come so suddenly, out of nowhere, with no pattern to them.”

Despite her young age, Qin Suliu was already capable of organizing her thoughts logically and presenting them clearly. “It feels as though… I’ve been to Xishan Mountain before, and that I used to interact with the humans and demons here.”

Because the demon who held her heart wanted the truth, Suliu held nothing back.

“But that’s completely impossible, and I have absolutely no memory of ever doing the things I see in those flashes!” She shook her head emphatically. “So… I think I must be ill. I’m afraid I’ve started fantasizing about an unrealistic future, and maybe my subconscious just secretly hopes it will all come true…”

“That might not necessarily be the case,” Yue Tingxi interjected instinctively. “Actually, I used to experience the exact same thing back when I was living at the villa.”

“But my visions are mostly about you. Besides, the fact that I can match you blow for blow in combat is something I just can’t ignore.”

Qin Suliu froze for a long moment before carefully picking the topic she cared about most—one that felt safe enough not to veer into romantic territory: “We shouldn’t be evenly matched, should we?”

Sister Tingxi was nearly thirty years older than her. Although Tingxi usually suppressed her cultivation realm and altered her appearance to look like a child when they sparred, Suliu was a martial artist herself. She knew all too well how terrifyingly massive the advantage of age and experience could be in combat. Yet, without ever holding back, Sister Tingxi fought her to a standstill every single time.

If one had to make sense of it, it could only prove one thing…

“Perhaps we knew each other in a time and place that neither of our current selves can recall,” Yue Tingxi said, voicing the very thought in Suliu’s heart. “When all things in this world die, their spiritual energy disperses and returns to the great cycle of heaven and earth. Once certain unfathomable conditions are met, they return to the world once more…Lord Xie Zhi taught me that many years ago.”

But she quickly shot down her own theory. “No, that’s not right. If it were just between the two of us, Chan Ying wouldn’t be appearing in your visions. She is roughly my age, and I know exactly what she has been through and who she has met in her life.”

“If that’s the case, we should just ask Lord Xie Zhi for help,” Qin Suliu suggested. With so little information to go on, trying to deduce anything further was a dead end.

After listening to Yue Tingxi’s brief summary, Xie Zhi was mildly surprised.

To think that both of them were starting to recover fragments of their memories simply by spending time together and revisiting old haunts. Did that mean if they stayed together long enough, their past lives would naturally piece themselves back together?

Brushing the thought aside, she explained patiently, “Aside from reincarnation, there is another incredibly rare and specific phenomenon: turning back the wheel of time to start all over again. When this happens, either the one who triggered the regression or the Heavenly Dao itself will actively interfere with the memories of the world’s inhabitants…either erasing or suppressing them…to prevent the ‘newborn world’ from falling into chaos due to the remnants of a past life.”

“However, your situation is far more complex than a standard time regression. Back then, you two stood in the shoes of the Heavenly Dao… or rather, the world’s consciousness. You chose to rewind time yourselves to correct the errors left behind by the previous world consciousness.”

Yue Tingxi and Qin Suliu stared back at her in sheer bewilderment, clearly failing to grasp the concept.

Xie Zhi fell into a brief silence before summarizing concisely, “In short, it is neither a hallucination nor an illness. They are your original memories, slowly waking up because the two of you are together again.”

“My advice is not to force it. Don’t wrack your brains trying to make the memories return all at once. Just let nature take its course; otherwise, your souls might not be able to bear the strain.”

That last sentence was purely meant to scare them. Knowing these two little troublemakers, they would almost certainly take reckless risks if she didn’t give them a stern warning.

There was truly no need to rush. Both their human and demonic lives had only just begun, with an incredibly long road ahead. There would be plenty of time to look back on the past when they were older.

At the very least, they should enjoy a few years of carefree youth before they had to start exhausting themselves running around for the sake of peace between the two races again.

“So… do we still go ask Lord Chui Yin?”

Stepping out of Xie Zhi’s small wooden cabin, Qin Suliu looked uncertainly at Yue Tingxi.

“Let’s just let nature take its course for now,” Yue Tingxi replied, still feeling quite muddled herself. “Lord Xie Zhi has already answered our questions, even if my current experience and knowledge aren’t enough to fully comprehend it. If our visions truly involve things on that scale, asking Lord Chui Yin will likely just give us another pile of information we can’t make sense of.”

“Alright, we won’t ask.” Qin Suliu nodded. It was her first time encountering concepts so far beyond normal comprehension, leaving her heart torn between anxiety and a strange joy.

The joy came from knowing that her past self had likely stood alongside Sister Tingxi to accomplish something monumental enough to affect the world itself. The anxiety, however, stemmed from the fact that their past relationship remained a complete mystery.

If they had been close friends, that would be wonderful. But what if they had been enemies?

“Come on, if we’re not going to ask, let’s stop overthinking it.” Yue Tingxi patted Suliu’s shoulder before lifting her up to sit comfortably on her massive snake form. “If you’re really that curious, how about we start writing down what we see in our visions? We can see if we can link them together like a puzzle.”

Qin Suliu caught her breath, instinctively wanting to refuse out of fear, but curiosity ultimately triumphed over her anxiety. She nodded vigorously.

No matter what, she had to figure out the truth of their past.

“Huh? They asked you about that?”

Deep within the Baichuan Alliance, Chui Yin…currently in her white tiger form…lazily lifted an eyelid to glance at the transmission pearl. “Since they couldn’t understand it, it’s just like them to drop the matter. You made the right call. They fought so hard for both our races for so long; it’s about time they got some rest.”

The “Karma Sentinels” that Yue Tingxi and Qin Suliu had planted across the world before their spiritual energy dispersed were still functioning to this day. As a powerful organization uniting the top forces of both humans and demons, the Baichuan Alliance kept a constant, vigilant eye on every faction’s movements.

No sane person wanted to start a war when they could live in peace. And even if some fool tried, their current forces were more than capable of crushing any threat in its infancy.

“Still… out of pure selfishness, I really do wish they would remember the past sooner,” Chui Yin sighed, gazing out the window at the courtyard filled with the flowers and trees the young couple had requested before they left. “After all, they are my benefactors and my dearest friends. Not to mention, we dismantled the biggest extra-dimensional threat to this world together. Ever since they dissolved into spiritual energy and left, things have been rather lonely around here…”

To gather more fragments of their memories, Yue Tingxi and Qin Suliu became practically joined at the hip.

The allure of the unknown was powerful. As long as there was a chance to reclaim what was lost and both were willing, they weren’t about to give up easily. They simply decided that “living together” was the best way to coax the memories out safely.

However, Qin Suliu was still just a seven-year-old child. Staying away from home for too long made her homesick for her family and friends at the villa. Thus, they spent a significant amount of time at Kongming Villa, only returning to Xishan Mountain when it was time to harvest fruit.

Lin Fengqing, who frequently dropped by to check on the progress of their relationship under the guise of studying medicine and alchemy, was more than happy to shuttle between both locations.

Every time she traveled, she was escorted by a sect elder and her older brother, Lin Chaoyao.

Lin Fengqing had her own little calculation running. By running around outside while she was still young, she could get her parents accustomed to her independence. That way, once she was old enough to enter secret realms, her parents would confidently let her venture out with Sister Qin and the others without forcing her brother to tag along as a babysitter.

She quickly noticed that the two had become incredibly close, but no matter how much she pried, both Yue Tingxi and Qin Suliu kept their lips sealed.

This was the first time they had ever kept a secret from her since they met, which only made it more intriguing.

The young sect master was not the type to sit around waiting for a closed clam to open on its own. She went straight behind their backs to the elders who knew them best, questioning everyone from Qing Wu to Xie Zhi and Chui Yin. Ultimately, it was the elderly Chui Yin who “mercifully” shed some light on the matter.

Perhaps because she had been raised studying incredibly dense medical texts and countless alchemy formulas, Lin Fengqing actually understood everything the old tiger told her. She even took the opportunity to ask Chui Yin about the tales of old.

“So, they were the mysterious wandering cultivators who reminded our founding ancestor to look after me?!” Lin Fengqing was ecstatic. “My past self actually had such incredible friends!”

“Key word being past self,” Chui Yin huffed softly, narrowing her eyes as she let the excited girl scratch her head. “In this reincarnation, everyone starts fresh. Moving forward without knowing anything about the past isn’t a bad way to live either.”

“But I get the feeling you aren’t entirely satisfied with that outcome, Senior,” Lin Fengqing said, tilting her head as she studied the subtle shifts in the tiger’s expression. “After all, not everyone forgot. Someone has to ‘bear the responsibility’ of remembering everything, right?”

“You little brat, you’re as unnervingly sharp as always. How annoying,” Chui Yin grumbled, though the contented curl of her tail betrayed her true feelings at being understood.

Lin Fengqing smiled, giving the “big cat” a few more pats before finally revealing her true motive: “You know exactly where they can go to regain their memories, don’t you?”

“…Come back when you’re twelve years older,” Chui Yin replied. She had no intention of hiding the truth from those who genuinely wished to remember. After all, before the two had departed in their previous life, they had deliberately preserved the memories of almost everyone close to them.

By the time Qin Suliu turned fifteen, Luo Yansha and her mother had leased a shop on the prestigious Heaven Tier of the Linglang Pavilion in Qingxiao City, naming it “Shuiyue Sha.”

During a small gathering at Chan Ying’s house, the moment Qin Suliu heard the name of the shop, it struck a chord of deep familiarity. Sure enough, a flash of memory surged into her mind a second later.

She had long since grown accustomed to these “hallucinations.” Without missing a beat, she calmly sipped her tea, ate her pastries, and listened to Luo Yansha list the clothing styles and small accessories like hairpins and waist ornaments they planned to sell, offering her own thoughts and suggestions.

In her past life, something major seemed to have happened at “Shuiyue Sha.”

She saw Luo Yansha, she saw Sister Tingxi, and she saw a stranger whose face was blurred but appeared to be a woman based on her build and attire.

Upon returning to Yue Tingxi’s cave dwelling, Suliu recorded the details of the vision and described the scene vividly to her partner.

“…What a coincidence, I saw almost the exact same thing,” Yue Tingxi said, though she withheld one detail…in her version of the memory, Qin Suliu’s clothes had been stained with blood.

She couldn’t tell if Suliu had been hurt by someone else, or if the blood belonged to an enemy Suliu had cut down.

However, after spending years by her side, Tingxi firmly believed that the Qin Suliu she knew would never harm anyone without cause. If it was the latter, the other party undoubtedly deserved it.

“The aftermath was that ‘Shuiyue Sha’ closed down, and we went back with Shasha to… uh, a place called the Qin Estate,” Yue Tingxi continued. “But I noted the surroundings of the estate. It didn’t look like it was in Mount Youhuang, but rather somewhere on the outskirts of Qingxiao City.”

Using a blank spiritual parchment, she sketched the gates of the Qin Estate, mapping out every building and layout she could recall.

Qin Suliu stared at the parchment in silence.

From all the clues, the Qin Estate was undoubtedly her home in their past life. But if that was true, why had her ancestor traveled all the way to Mount Youhuang to establish Kongming Villa in this life instead of rebuilding the Qin Estate?

Coincidentally, her aunt, Qin Chuhan, was the very first leader of Kongming Villa.

“Once we return to the villa, I’ll ask my aunt immediately,” Qin Suliu promised, snapping out of her thoughts. “Shall we get back to Shasha’s matter?”

“Mm… I don’t think ‘Shuiyue Sha’ will close down this time,” Yue Tingxi said confidently. “Shasha is the disciple of the first leader of the Baichuan Alliance, and her shop is on the Heaven Tier! Even if Senior Chui Yin is too busy to look out for her, Kongming Villa has her back. I just heard Chan Ying mention that all future disciple uniforms for Kongming Villa will be outsourced to ‘Shuiyue Sha.’ Whether it’s repairs or tailoring new clothes as the disciples grow, it will be incredibly convenient.”

Over the years, she had continued to consult Xie Zhi. Although the grand concepts still eluded her, she held fast to one particular piece of advice: Karma is ever-shifting; if the cause changes, the effect will naturally follow a different path.

At the very least, this version of Shasha had a literal army of powerful figures protecting her.

If she ever decided to close the clothing shop down the road, it would probably just be because she and her mother had a sudden craving to open a massive, bustling restaurant instead.

Three more years passed. Qin Suliu turned eighteen, her stature finally matching the exact image preserved in Yue Tingxi’s memory fragments.

She still preferred her signature violet robes, though her once overbearing temperament had mellowed significantly. She didn’t want any rumors of her being “spoiled and arrogant” to reach her Tingxi-jiejie’s ears.

On the day of her coming-of-age banquet, Kongming Villa hosted a massive celebration for their allies and guests. During the feast, representatives from various factions began subtly prying into the second young miss’s marital status. Upon learning she was not yet betrothed, many began to harbor secret ambitions.

Somehow, word of these discreet inquiries reached the ears of the eldest young miss, Qin Yingguang. Completely ignoring the fact that it was her twin sister’s birthday banquet, she put on a freezing expression and personally threw every single matchmaking opportunist out of the villa, banning them from ever returning.

The loose-lipped guests dared not utter a single word of complaint. They slunk away in disgrace, bitterly cursing the formidable twin sisters on their journey home.

Yet, on the very next day, the Baichuan Alliance shook the region by formally announcing the betrothal of the second young miss of Kongming Villa, Qin Suliu, to the snake demon of Xishan Mountain, Yue Tingxi!

“I have been waiting twelve years for this day.”

As the dawn began to break on the morning after her birthday, Qin Suliu gently caressed the warm scales of the snake form beside her. Leaning down, she pressed herself close to Yue Tingxi’s ear and whispered softly, “I never imagined… that Sister Tingxi would truly indulge me like this.”

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