Lady Cultivator

It was a simple act of turning around, but it actually wounded her greatly.

He had never thought about it. Maybe, even she herself hadn’t thought about it much either.

Qin Xi was Qin Shoujing. She tried to accept it when she discovered this fact and yet, he used such a cold and indifferent attitude to reject her approaches. She, therefore, made up her mind—Qin Shoujing wasn’t Qin Xi.

But this conclusion was completely wrong!

Why had he acted like that? Because he had a tiny bit of affection towards her but his pride was trampled on by those two Deification cultivators, so he rejected her approaches—it was because his meaningless pride got hurt, and also because… at that time, his feelings for her weren’t that deep yet.

“That was because…”

This time, she gave him time to speak, yet he couldn’t say anything.

Because at that time, his feelings weren’t deep enough? Even though this was a fact, if he told things how they were, he really wouldn’t have any hope.

Apart from this, what else could he say? He wasn’t good at lying, much less coming up with sweet words. He was bad with words; he always just told the truth. He had only ever deceived someone once, and for that one time, he had to pay the cost now.

A long moment passed, but Qin Xi still didn’t answer. Thus, a cold sneer gradually took shape on her face. “Can’t say it?”

He looked away as he didn’t know how to face her.

In the end, she just felt thoroughly disappointed. “You’ve always been like this, giving me false hope then withdrawing, letting me struggle in the vortex by myself. When I finally crawl up, you pull me down again. I’ve formed my Gold Core; I can now be distanced from worldly affairs. If you ignore me, my feelings will most likely slowly die out, but why do you still have to provoke me? Qin Shoujing, you know I love you!”

When she shouted that sentence, even she herself also never realized that she actually felt so aggrieved.

In this life, she’d lost too much, so she wasn’t afraid of losing. However, she disliked this kind of feeling, the feeling of being unable to obtain something while unable to let go!

When she formed her Gold Core, she calmly dealt with these feelings. If it wasn’t for his barely-existent provocation, these feelings might really disappear in a few more years.

But he never let her go. Throughout this whole journey, he seemed to both have and not have feelings for her. One moment he was extremely kind to her, but he would be extremely cold the next—he wasn’t like Jing Xingzhi, who tried to seduce her openly. If he was, maybe those tiny feelings she had left would disappear without a trace. He just stood at a distance that seemed both far and close at the same time, preventing her from coming close but also making her unable and unwilling to leave.

“You can’t say it, right?” Upon venting dozens of years of pent-up emotions but getting no response whatsoever, Mo Tiange gradually regained her calm and stopped him just as he was about to speak. With her head held up high and a tone that carried a hint of arrogance, she said, “Then you don’t need to say anything at all. I managed to pass my core-formation, and I will continue to progress until I reach the Nascent Soul realm. This matter ends here. I don’t want to hear any more excuses, and I hope you can keep your distance from me from now on!”

“I’m not—” How could he possibly stop at that point? Particularly after she said that! “Tiange…”

Since she had limited space to retreat, she could only turn around and turn her back to him. If she didn’t see him, maybe she wouldn’t be soft-hearted.

Nevertheless, his arms wrapped around her from behind. In such a narrow space, she simply couldn’t free herself from him.

He breathed next to her ears, and his tone carried a kind of hard-to-control excitement. “How could I keep a distance from you? You… You said you love me…”

“So what?” she sneered, “Haven’t you known long ago?”

“I didn’t know!” he said while aggressively turning her body around. “I knew you had a good impression of ‘Qin Xi’ from back then, but I didn’t know the extent of your feelings. I thought, I thought…” He seemed to be overly excited that his speech became rather incoherent. “You could form your Gold Core, so you certainly no longer… at least they couldn’t be that deep…”

After blabbering incoherently for a while, he once again became serious, asking earnestly, “How were you able to form your Gold Core?”

Mo Tiange was taken aback, but her anger quickly flared up again. “What do you mean by ‘how was I able to form my Gold Core’? Could it be that you’d only feel happy if I failed?”

“Of course not!” Qin Xi was anxious; he didn’t know what he should say. “But… but… I can’t form my Nascent Soul! I tried to think of countless ways, medicinal pills, mental cultivation, and even… and even letting master use a secret technique to enter my sea of knowledge, but I always failed at the last step. It’s unreasonable that you could—”

“What does you being unable to form your Nascent Soul have to do with me?!” Her anger flared up even more vigorously. “Let go!”

“No way! I’d be an idiot if I still let you go after you said all that! Master will definitely beat me to death if he found out!”

“You…”

“Wait a moment!” He forced himself to calm down a bit. “Let me think for a moment how I should explain things to you.”

Qin Xi mused for quite a while, but he still didn’t know what to say in this situation, so he eventually gave up. “Forget it—I’ll just explain from the start. You’re not allowed to talk now.”

“Why should I—”

The latter part of her sentence was cut off by him. Mo Tiange furiously opened her mouth to bite him, but Qin Xi didn’t give her the chance. He held her jaw and nibbled on her tongue so that she couldn’t speak.

A while later, he finally stopped. Their breathing was unstable, and she had a hard time gasping for breath. “You—”

He sneaked into her mouth again, putting a stop to her speech again. “I told you—you’re not allowed to talk now. If you still want to speak, then the two of us don’t need to say anything anymore.”

“…” Mo Tiange felt that things were rather amiss. Why did it feel like she was being led by the nose by him? But it seemed that not listening to him wouldn’t work either…

Qin Xi couldn’t help but chuckle upon seeing her confused expression. He tidied her messy hair and said softly, “Listen to me, okay?”

She hesitated for a while but in the end, she tacitly agreed. It seemed… not agreeing wouldn’t work.

“I… admit—at the very beginning, I didn’t have any feelings for you. I just thought that simply being Qin Xi and getting along with you felt really good. If I became Qin Shoujing again at that time, you’d have definitely kept yourself away from me. Furthermore, with your extremely suspicious nature, if it was Qin Shoujing who saved you, would you have felt that close to me?”

Mo Tiange didn’t respond, but he already got the answer from her expression.

Qin Xi smiled. “You seemed… to always be afraid of going over your strength. Maybe that was what made you always feel insecure. I could understand; having to keep such secrets, you certainly had to be careful about everything. However, such wariness caused you to reject every form of force that you had no control over. If I was Qin Shoujing, you definitely wouldn’t have trusted me. Even if I saved you and brought you back to Xuanqing School as Qin Shoujing, it’d certainly be difficult for you to feel you belonged at Xuanqing School. Am I wrong?”

“…” Mo Tiange really wanted to refute him, but his words didn’t seem wrong. The first one who made her develop trust in others was Senior Martial Brother Qin. That was why, when she came to Xuanqing School, she could slowly accept such a life. Later, she discovered that trusting the people around her wasn’t that hard at all. Even though she was later disappointed with Senior Martial Brother Qin, Luo Fengxue, Ye Jingwen, Martial Uncle Xuanyin, her master… these people made her feel that trusting others wasn’t terrifying at all.

Senior Martial Brother Qin wasn’t the whole reason, but he was the original reason.

“Of course, I myself also liked that kind of feeling. I felt… in front of you, being a small cultivator who was in the same realm as you was much more relaxing. I could chat and do some things without any misgivings…”

During that time, she indeed felt he was frank and sincere, without any pretense, honest and clean, but…

“Then there was that demonic beast riot,” Qin Xi said, “I don’t know how I should explain it to you, but I can tell you this—my mood wasn’t good at that time, but it wasn’t targeted at you.”

He didn’t target her, but he put on that dead man’s face in front of her? Mo Tiange was infuriated. “You—”

“Hey! I said it before—you’re not allowed to talk now.”

Mo Tiange closed her mouth, feeling even more infuriated.

“Maybe you don’t know, but a few things happened.” He took a deep breath. For the first time, he intended to reveal this matter to someone else. “Did you notice…? I was injured when I came out of the two Deification seniors’ Virtual Sky World?”

Mo Tiange gave it some thought before she nodded. Although they didn’t talk about it explicitly, at that time, she could see he was injured with her own eyes.

Qin Xi smiled, seemingly mocking himself. “In fact, that was because in the Virtual Sky World, Senior Yuan Bao said that since I had a Yang Spiritual Bead in my body, I was suitable to practice his cultivation technique, so he played around with me…”

Faced with Mo Tiange’s questioning gaze, he could only tell the whole story. “He fed me a lot of strange things and used a lot of inexplicable methods on me—he practically tormented me until I lost half my life. It was precisely because of this that I got injured. He said… everything was to transform my body so that my body would become very similar to a body with a Pure Yang Constitution. That way… that way I could… be your Human Furnace…”

At that point, he’d practically lost his voice.

Mo Tiange’s eyes widened, and she finally spoke. “Human Furnace?”

“En.” He looked away as a faint red spread over his face. “He said that although I didn’t innately possess a Pure Yang Constitution, the two spiritual roots I possessed—metal and fire—were both affiliated to the Yang attribute, and I also possessed the Yang Spiritual Bead. After going through his transformation, as long as I slowly practiced his Pure Yang Technique, my constitution would become extremely similar to a Pure Yang Constitution… That way, if I became your Human Furnace, I’d be able to help you cultivate faster…”

Mo Tiange stared at him all along, hardly daring to believe what she just heard. Human Furnace? She’d always been afraid that she’d be forced to become a Human Furnace because of her constitution, yet in the end, he was also… afraid of becoming her Human Furnace? What the hell was this all about?!

Qin Xi cleared his throat, feeling very uncomfortable under her stare. “I admit… Senior Yuan Bao’s words hit me really hard, so once we were out of there, I was anxious to go back to recuperate and enter Closed Door Meditation so that I could quickly advance to the Nascent Soul realm. That was also why I took my anger out on you…”

Mo Tiange was silent for a long time. She initially thought that no matter what reason he came up with, she’d still feel angry. But, but this reason… was too ridiculous! So ridiculous that she couldn’t even say anything. She didn’t even have the energy to get angry…

“Tiange,” he said somewhat nervously, “I… Are you laughing at me?”

“…” After being silent for a long while, she expressionlessly nodded her head. “Yes, I’m laughing at you.”

“Sure enough…” He heaved a sigh then said in a self-mocking tone, “I know it was very ridiculous, but… I think you also don’t understand how big of a humiliation that was to me.”

“I definitely don’t understand,” she said. In the next moment, however, she grabbed his collar and said through gritted teeth, “but I know—you were deceived!”