Wanxi Rebirth - Chapter 118

In the six months following their grand wedding, Yue Tingxi split her time between preparing for the expedition into the Xuanshui Secret Realm and… building a nursery for her future little snake.

To be safe, she planned to wait until they returned from the secret realm before conceiving the snake egg. For now, she spent these six months focusing entirely on gathering supplies and preparing everything the little one could possibly need.

Carrying the egg was out of the question for Qin Suliu. A snake body possessed a natural advantage for holding eggs; during the pregnancy, Yue Tingxi could simply maintain her half-snake form, which meant she wouldn’t have to worry too much when it came time to lay it.

The nursery was built right next to the bridal chamber they had reconstructed from their past memories. Yue Tingxi left plenty of room for future expansions, figuring that once the child grew up and became independent, she could add to or modify the room herself.

The primary goal of this trip to the Xuanshui Secret Realm was to retrieve the Bi Fang egg located in the ruins layer. If they came up empty-handed before the realm closed, they would just have to come back and try their luck again in three years.

While sorting through her past memories to log details about the Xuanshui Secret Realm, Yue Tingxi suddenly remembered a unique aquatic region known for “fire hidden within water,” as well as the Shuohan Flower that grew inside it.

The last time they encountered that flower, it had already lived for three or four hundred years. If it was still there and still trying to dodge its human-transformation tribulation by parasitizing human female cultivators they would have to extract it and relocate it to the Demon Mountain or an uninhabited spiritual field.

The Baichuan Alliance kept a consolidated ledger of information on various secret realms. Qin Suliu and Lin Fengqing took some time to pull the records relevant to the Xuanshui Secret Realm.

“The time flow has definitely shifted,” Lin Fengqing noted after a brief glance. “But every time the secret realm opens, the time flow between the inside and outside aligns again.”

“That’s because of the spell Tingxi-jiejie left behind back then,” Qin Suliu said with certainty. “However, she set up a mechanism in the deep-water layer that only we and Xie Zhi can adjust. When the time comes, we can see if we can restore it to its original speed or speed it up depending on the situation.”

The ecosystem of the Xuanshui Secret Realm had been stable since ancient times. According to the “Qin System’s” calculations, even if it fast-forwarded by several thousand years, it wouldn’t change drastically. That was exactly why the past Yue Tingxi had dared to let her personal wishes play out.

Lin Fengqing nodded, falling into deep thought. After a moment, she asked, “The only thing is, we don’t know exactly how many years it fast-forwarded. What if the Bi Fang has already hatched?”

Qin Suliu: “…”

Driven by her old friend’s sudden hypothesis, the moment they entered the Xuanshui Secret Realm, Qin Suliu pushed their cloud vessel, the Whale Fall, to full speed, charging straight toward the ruins layer.

Even without the detailed maps and the assistance of the gray moths previously provided by System 7364, the group was familiar enough with the layout to easily navigate the quickest teleportation vortexes to the depths, doing their best to avoid random mini-vortexes and Iris Whales.

Chan Ying had tagging along this time as well. In her past memories, the original Bi Fang had been a rival she didn’t particularly fear, but she was genuinely worried that the Bi Fang they were bringing home might have already grown into a powerful grand demon.

Half a day later, the cloud vessel arrived at the ruins layer.

Taking advantage of the sparse crowds, they headed straight for the area where they had found the Bi Fang egg in their past memories.

The grass here, rich with wood spiritual energy, grew as tall as a person. Standing inside it, one was almost completely swallowed by the greenery.

As everyone spread out their spiritual awareness to conduct a “carpet search,” Qin Chuhan, who was traveling with them, simply ignited the fire spiritual energy around her body, taking care not to harm any of the surrounding spiritual plants.

She was a Shuohan Flower who had been carefully raised to human form by Chui Yin. After centuries of cultivation, her control over fire spiritual energy was entirely seamless.

“A Bi Fang will be drawn to a large, pure source of fire spiritual energy,” she explained.

Since this location also boasted a dense concentration of wood spiritual energy, the combination of wood and fire created the ultimate “trap” to entice a Bi Fang.

Yue Tingxi raised her hand, weaving water spiritual energy into threads as fine as hair and scattering them across the perimeter. If a Bi Fang approached, she would know instantly.

Barely fifteen minutes passed before every person and demon present simultaneously stiffened.

A heavy pressure was descending from above, casting a massive shadow over them.

“It’s here!” Qin Chuhan’s hand flew to the hilt of her blade. “But judging by the size, this is absolutely not a chick!”

The moment the words left her mouth, the Bi Fang gave a violent beat of its wings. A gale so powerful it felt physical slammed down right toward them!

Yue Tingxi’s fingers flew through a series of hand seals. The fine threads of water spiritual energy instantly expanded into a thin, protective net, shielding the entire group beneath it.

Meanwhile, Qin Suliu and Qin Chuhan swung their blades in tandem, unleashing sheets of blade aura. Their goal was to disperse the fierce wind and pin the Bi Fang down, so they held back their fire spiritual energy to ensure they wouldn’t accidentally hurt the creature.

To their surprise, the moment the attacks clashed, their blade auras were completely neutralized.

“Spiritual beast hunters?”

Before they could adjust their strategy, the Bi Fang soaring high above suddenly spoke, its voice laced with wariness and irritation.

“No, we aren’t! We came looking for a child!” Luo Yansha cried out, taking an urgent step forward. “She is a Bi Fang who hatched just a few years ago—”

She cut herself off mid-sentence.

That was the trouble with regaining past memories; the moment panic set in, it was easy to blur the past with the present.

In this current timeline, their purpose in entering the Xuanshui Secret Realm was to find the Bi Fang egg and bring the little Bi Fang they knew so well back home.

“We once shared a deep bond with that young Bi Fang. During certain temporal anomalies, she left her memories behind, hoping we would find each other again in this new timeline,” Chan Ying added calmly, quickly stepping up to stand beside Luo Yansha.

For some reason, the Bi Fang above fell silent.

Sensing something, Luo Yansha stared up at the creature and called out tentatively, “Little Chenjing…?”

Instead of answering, the Bi Fang let out a sudden, piercing cry, turned sharply, and flew off into the distance as if fleeing.

“Back to the cloud vessel! We follow her!” Qin Suliu immediately summoned the vessel and threw the doors open. “I’m afraid that really is Luo Chenjing!”

The hypothesis Lin Fengqing had tossed out before they entered the realm was turning into reality.

The egg was gone. The Bi Fang egg they were supposed to carry out of the secret realm and gift to Luo Yansha had hatched long ago, growing into a powerful grand demon.

The cloud vessel pursued the creature for a considerable distance until they unknowingly followed the Bi Fang into a cavern.

To Yue Tingxi, this cavern looked entirely too familiar.

The moment they stepped off the cloud vessel, a damp chill hit their skin. Ahead of them lay a deep, dark pool of water.

The Bi Fang had landed in the center of the pool, right next to a tightly closed Shuohan Flower bud. She was watching them with an incredibly complex expression.

“‘Little Chenjing.’ Head hurts,” she spoke, her words brief and halting.

“Do you actually remember the past?!” Luo Yansha blurted out.

The Bi Fang shook her head, though it was unclear whether she meant “I don’t remember” or “I can’t explain it.”

“It’s okay, it doesn’t matter. I brought the memories you left behind!” Luo Yansha hurriedly pulled out a sealed container she had desperately scrambled to retrieve from her storage during the chase. “If you don’t want to be overwhelmed by your past life’s memories, take this Soul-Cleansing Pill before you look!”

As she spoke, she boldly stepped into the pool.

Ice spiritual energy spread beneath her feet, freezing a path across the water. She walked toward the massive Bi Fang all on her own, her eyes completely devoid of fear filled only with deep, aching affection.

She had raised Little Chenjing from an egg until she was old enough to take human form. She knew better than anyone how delicate and picky the little creature was, and how much she hated being lonely to the point of needing to sleep right beside her every single night.

The Bi Fang instinctively shrunk back a fraction, but she had no intention of driving her away. Her gaze flickered between the Soul-Cleansing Pill and the sealed container in Luo Yansha’s hands. Ultimately, she snapped her beak forward and bit directly into the container!

Panicked, Luo Yansha tried to pry her beak open to force the Soul-Cleansing Pill down her throat, but the memories belonging to Little Chenjing only spanned a few years. Absorbing them took a mere fraction of a second.

The hand trying to pry her beak open was gently nudged aside by the Bi Fang’s head. The creature then leaned her head down, resting it against Luo Yansha’s palm, narrowing her eyes as she nuzzled her.

It happened so fast that even Luo Yansha couldn’t react in time. Before she knew it, a massive wing swept forward, pulling her into a tight embrace against the warm, incredibly soft feathers of the Bi Fang’s chest.

Watching this unfold from a distance, Chan Ying felt the heavy anxiety in her chest finally settle.

No matter how their rivalry played out in the future, she was already Luo Yansha’s most indispensable family member and best friend. Even if the Bi Fang didn’t like looking at her, she couldn’t kick her out of this home.

“I haven’t been hatched for very long. Maybe… half a jiazi (thirty years)?”

After reclaiming her memories, the Bi Fang spoke much more fluidly. After all, Luo Yansha had taught her how to speak word by word in her past life.

Thirty years.

Because she hadn’t spoken in so long, her vocal cords were a bit stiff, making her voice sound quite raspy. “Spiritual beast hunters would come by from time to time, catching the beasts in the realm to sell outside for a premium. Even though I couldn’t remember the past, I always felt like… someone was coming to get me.”

She paused for a moment before continuing, “A very gentle human woman. Her hands were sometimes freezing cold, and she would peel melon seeds she roasted herself for me. I refused to leave the secret realm until I saw her… I’ve been waiting for her.”

Unbearably soft-hearted when it came to family, Luo Yansha couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. She threw her arms around the creature, burying her face deep into the plush feathers.

“Why are you staying with a Shuohan Flower?” Chan Ying asked, her brow furrowing slightly. “The moisture here is incredibly heavy. If I recall correctly, you absolutely detest damp places.”

“I originally wanted to eat it once it bloomed. A spiritual plant entirely composed of fire spiritual energy is hard to come by,” the Bi Fang admitted honestly. “But it just refused to bloom. Since I wasn’t in a rush to breakthrough, I decided to just guard it so no other spiritual beasts could snatch it away.”

Hearing this, Qin Chuhan walked over to the side of the Shuohan Flower. In the next instant, she rested the flat of her blade directly against the base of the bud.

“Keep playing dead, and I’ll chop your head off,” she threatened coldly.

It takes a Shuohan Flower to know a Shuohan Flower; she saw right through the little thing’s tricks.

The flower visibly shuddered. Reluctantly and slowly, its petals unfurled outward, and a thick, rich wave of fire spiritual energy quickly saturated the air around it.

The Bi Fang’s eyes went wide. Considering that her dear Yansha was right there, she forced down the desperate urge to lunge forward and swallow the flower whole, contenting herself with glaring daggers at it.

“What should we do with this flower now?” Yue Tingxi asked. “Aside from refusing to bloom, does it pose any other danger?”

“I’ll take it back to show Master first,” Qin Chuhan said, ruthlessly uprooting the flower without an ounce of gentleness and tossing it into a jade medicine box. “Master loves tending to Shuohan Flowers. If this little thing is truly a coward looking to take shortcuts instead of cultivating properly, Master will give it a thorough lesson.”

She herself was a Shuohan Flower gifted to the goddess Yue Tingxi and the System Qin Suliu by Chui Yin. She had always cultivated diligently, and she had heard about the “bad flower” that parasitized female cultivators in past cycles. Now that they had actually crossed paths, she wasn’t about to be polite.

With both the Bi Fang and the flower secured, the group boarded the cloud vessel once more, leaving the ruins layer and heading straight down into the safe zones of the deep-water layer.

The original deep-water layer had been occupied by Xisheng, who had mutated from absorbing too much karmic resentment, and with Xie Zhi deliberately blocking the path, it had become a forbidden zone that explorers dared not enter.

Now, the deep-water layer held only a few bizarre-looking aquatic spiritual beasts. Once the group activated a repelling ward crafted by a grand Grandmaster-level demon cultivator, the creatures scattered and fled without a trace.

The cloud vessel descended, arriving near the mechanism left behind by Yue Tingxi during her time as a goddess.

Yue Tingxi and Qin Suliu stepped out of the cabin, swimming deeper through layers of protective barriers.

“It feels like every time we revisit an old place like this, we manage to pick up another piece of the puzzle from our past,” she said to Qin Suliu.

“Where do you want to go to pick up the next piece?” Qin Suliu asked.

“Let’s leave it to fate. There’s no need to constantly dwell on the past; finding new ‘puzzle pieces’ sounds much better,” Yue Tingxi smiled. “As for our short-term plans… well, you already know.”

She placed her hand over the sigil left by her past self, activating the magic to gradually slow the accelerated time flow back to its normal pace.

Waiting patiently until the spell was fully complete, Qin Suliu wrapped an arm around Yue Tingxi’s waist out of sight of the others, her hands coming to rest gently over her lower abdomen.

After exiting the Xuanshui Secret Realm, the Shuohan Flower was taken by Qin Chuhan to the Baichuan Alliance and handed over to Chui Yin, who happened to be free lately.

The Bi Fang returned to the Luo family home in the Xishan mountains, where she was immediately treated to a mountain of dried fish prepared by Luo Yansha’s mother. Delighted, she scrambled through her memory for all the “polite phrases” Luo Yansha had taught her, praising Mama Luo until the older woman couldn’t stop laughing, adding several more chopsticks of fragrant, savory meat to her bowl.

Yue Tingxi and Qin Suliu took three full days to rest and recuperate. On the fourth day, after informing Qing Wu and Xie Zhi, they set up an isolation barrier inside their cave dwelling to figure out how to form the snake egg.

First, they had to consider the little one’s spiritual root attribute. Their own spiritual energies were fundamentally conflicting; they either had to let the child lean toward one side or choose an attribute that didn’t conflict with either of them, even if it meant a slower gestation and hatching period.

“Let’s go with a wood spiritual root. It’s gentler,” Yue Tingxi admitted, having always been slightly envious of Lin Fengqing’s wood attribute…versatile in combat, great for defense, naturally close to spiritual flora, and highly convenient for alchemy.

Thus, seven days later, a tiny snake egg rested safely inside her snake form.

This was a brand-new “puzzle piece” that had never existed in her past memories. Yue Tingxi could only seek out grand demons who had laid snake eggs before to ask for tips and prepare in advance.

At first, Qin Suliu was a bit hesitant to sleep in the same bed, terrified she might accidentally bump into the egg, or that Yue Tingxi might unconsciously wrap her coils around her in her sleep and compress it.

Yue Tingxi immediately reassured her over and over, even showing her the incredibly sturdy water-attribute protective barrier she had constructed inside her body. Only then did they return to sharing a bed.

The downside was that Yue Tingxi would sometimes wake up from a faint tickling sensation. Opening her groggy eyes, she would invariably find Qin Suliu’s ear pressed flush against her snake belly, likely trying to listen for any movement inside the egg.

Ever since learning that Yue Tingxi was carrying an egg, Qing Wu didn’t show much on the surface, but he would frequently ask the Luo family mother and daughter to whip up delicious meals, which he then had Xie Zhi deliver to Yue Tingxi. Whenever asked, he would claim it was the “Balance of Salvation making amends.”

However, Yue Tingxi and Xie Zhi were old acquaintances. She knew exactly which gestures came from Xie Zhi’s own heart and which were done at Qing Wu’s behest.

Still, she saw no reason to blow his cover. Every time, she simply accepted the gifts with a smile and invited her friends over to feast together.

Lin Fengqing was always the most eager to accept the invitation. She even brought over the introductory books on wood spiritual roots that she had read as a child. Regardless of whether the future little snake could understand them, she stacked them neatly inside the nursery anyway.

Yue Tingxi figured it was an occupational hazard of being a medical cultivator. Otherwise, why did Lin Fengqing’s smile widen further every single time she noticed her snake belly growing just a little bit rounder?

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