Chapter Ninety-Two: She Would Not Remember

Birds scattered from Yu Daoyi’s shoulder as he twitched his little finger.

He blinked, and the fragrance of fresh grass drifted into his heart. A bright shaft of sunlight pierced his eyelids and reached his eyes, warm and faintly itchy.

Slowly opening eyes not yet used to the light, he found the same dreamlike scene before him: brilliant sunshine, blue sky, white clouds.

It took quite a while before Yu Daoyi finally came back to himself, though his mind was still somewhat hazy.

“...Do I have to bite my own hand every time?” He caught sight of his saliva on his left hand and looked disgusted.

“Hey, hey, this is the first time I’ve...” a familiar voice came from behind him.

“Hey, hey, this is the first time I’ve seen someone stupid enough to bite himself on purpose,” Yu Daoyi interrupted without turning around, speaking on as if to himself.

“? ? ? How did you know what I was going to say?” came Xiaoqian’s startled voice from behind.

“Good morning, sir! Peach Blossom Village!” For some reason, his mood was remarkably calm now, and he felt like shouting.

After surviving a mortal ordeal, as though reborn, Yu Daoyi lazily stretched.

He took stock of himself anew, and to his surprise found that his cultivation had firmly remained at the fifth level of Qi Refinement, while the sea of his spiritual sense within had expanded several times over.

If before, it had only been a slight oddity in his mental power or spiritual sense that had given him an unusual talent for alchemy and the ability to discern others’ differences, then now the strength of his spiritual sense had undergone an earthshaking transformation, so much so that it could even contend with the spiritual sense of a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

With mental power this strong, even without any peculiarities, one could perceive many things beyond the reach of ordinary people, such as the enormous peach tree behind him—though only for an instant.

Turning around, he looked at the youth upon the tree and could not help smiling gently. The fierceness of before was gone without a trace; now he looked like nothing more than a handsome boy next door.

“Who are you? Why have I never seen you before?” Xiaoqian asked in confusion.

“Mm, Yu Daoyi!” Yu Daoyi smiled and, instead of using his old alias of Song Cheng, gave his own name. “I’m an old friend of your sister’s.”

“An old friend of my sister’s?” Xiaoqian tilted his head, clearly shocked.

“Mm. Good boy, if you can, call me brother-in-law! I won’t treat you badly!” Yu Daoyi laughed heartily.

“? ? ? Huh? Not just an old friend, but an old flame too?” If he had only been surprised before, now he was practically frightened.

“Mm—yes, yes!” Yu Daoyi nodded shamelessly.

“What kind of taste does my sister have!” Xiaoqian let out a deep sigh nearby, full of doubt, even bordering on collapse.

“...Cut the nonsense and go home. Your sister is calling you back. And tell her to stay at home and wait properly—I’ll be there soon.”

“But? What about you?” Before Xiaoqian could say anything more, Yu Daoyi had already pushed him away.

“What ‘but’ is there? If you keep dawdling, I’ll tell your sister you’ve been sneaking drinks behind her back and see whether she beats you or not,” he said like a rogue.

“Don’t, don’t, don’t! Please don’t tell her—I’m going home right away!” Xiaoqian said anxiously.

Watching the utterly distrustful look in Xiaoqian’s eyes, Yu Daoyi could not help but lament that his acting still needed work. And as Xiaoqian kept looking back every three steps, he seemed to be afraid he had run into some bad person.

After Xiaoqian left and disappeared from sight, Yu Daoyi turned back toward the peach tree beside him and pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers. The traitor-like book within him seemed to have lost a great deal of its power; no matter how he called out, it acted as though it heard nothing at all. He had no choice but to put settling accounts with it aside for the moment.

He would settle the score later. Autumn reckoning. The first bill of autumn. And what a costly bill it was—he had nearly died.

Yet this waking felt almost like rebirth. If he understood correctly, he had already died in his previous attempt. Every death in this illusion would consume a large portion of his mental power, until at last that power was exhausted and he died here for good.

For some reason, however, at the moment he was about to perish, a power both familiar and strange had appeared and pulled him back. Even more astonishingly, the sea of spiritual sense that had been like a small pond now kept surging forth with pure mental force, endless and inexhaustible. Compared with his former self, he was like an entirely different person.

Though he did not know why such a change had occurred, the transformation was real and profound. He would have to explore it slowly after all this was over.

Looking ahead, the peach tree before him now seemed to change completely under the gaze of his spiritual sense, as though it were no longer the same thing at all.

The luxuriant abundance visible to the naked eye, the deep roots and flourishing branches, the life overflowing toward him with overwhelming vitality—all of it had vanished. In the perception of his spiritual sense, what appeared in his mind was an image of a tree grown old and withered, every trace of greenery dried away. Not a single peach-colored blossom remained upon the great peach tree; only rough, parched bark and a black trunk riddled with holes of all sizes. In his senses, this was a tree nearing death.

“Yao Yao? Yaoyao? Peach blossoms in full bloom?” Yu Daoyi murmured to himself, then went on, “Can you tell me about yourself now? Or rather, what exactly is your relationship with Yao Yao?”

Once more, a breeze passed by and peach blossoms danced through the air, but this time the tree chose not to remain silent.

“I never thought you would still be alive,” the peach tree said in an ancient voice, tinged even with surprise.

Those few words carried an immense amount of meaning. At the very least, they proved that the peach tree truly was the key to breaking this deadlock, just as he had suspected—and that it remembered his previous death.

“So I thought I was going to die too. But what can I say? I’m blessed with a stubborn life,” Yu Daoyi said with a cheeky grin.

“Do you want to get out?” the aged voice asked again.

“Before, I did want to leave this place as soon as possible. But now, I’ve changed my mind,” Yu Daoyi said with a shrug.

“This is not a place where you should linger. Even if you possess some unusual qualities, in time you will still die,” the old voice counseled.

“You should know this: here, by your side, I made a promise with a girl,” Yu Daoyi said softly, his eyelids lowered.

“She will not remember it. You are only wishfully clinging to it, making trouble for yourself,” the old peach tree sighed deeply.

“But I remember, don’t I?” Yu Daoyi raised his head, his expression utterly serious. “As long as I remember, then the promise still counts. It counts forever.”

“You awakened me. I can use my last bit of strength to send you out now. But if you insist on this path, you will die here,” the voice continued to advise.

“It’s too late. Too late. Who told you I’m a fool? If I haven’t done what I came to do, I won’t leave,” Yu Daoyi said with a smile, as though recalling something. Warm and sincere, he waved it off indifferently.

“Heh. An interesting human boy. Then this old man will ask you to do one thing for me, all right?” After a silence, as though placing everything on a single throw or pinning his final hope on this one chance, the old peach tree said in a low voice.

“Old sir, I’ve already roughly guessed some things. I truly want to help her, to help them, and I also want to repay you for the kindness of that blow that awakened me from my delusion. So I will do my utmost!” Yu Daoyi said with complete seriousness.

“Good, good! Ha, haha. To you, I really am old. If not for you battering me again and again before, I doubt I would ever have awakened again.” The aged voice laughed. Its tone was heavy, yet the joy in it was unmistakable.

It seemed the peach tree before him was far stronger than he had imagined. The dozens of strikes of the Nine Refining Hell he had unleashed on it had amounted, in its eyes, to nothing more than a waking battering service. No wonder his senses had made it seem like nothing more than an ordinary peach tree before.