Fu Ling looked at her mother in shock, but the other adults in the village gnashed their teeth, each one chiming in without hesitation.
“I want to, too.”
“If things keep going like this, we’re dead either way.”
“It’s better to have it over with quickly than to be dragged off to build that damn house again.”
While some spoke words of bloodlust, others shared their fantasies.
“I heard the sang army has potions! Drinking them makes you invulnerable like an immortal!”
“Hahaha, maybe it even gives you infinite strength!”
The villagers chattered about various things, but no one spoke of not joining the Sang Army.
Because there was no other way.
They had killed the officials; they could no longer stay in the village. They had no home left. Were they not just like stray dogs? Aside from joining the Sang Army, they had no other choice.
But the children did not know that. Fu Ling did not know that.
It was her first time killing someone, and she instinctively felt terrified. Hearing her family members say such things only made her more panicked and anxious.
Fu Ling grabbed her mother, her eyes filled with urgency. “Mother, don’t listen to their nonsense. The sang army isn’t invulnerable.”
“When Uncle Dagou and the others came, they were covered in wounds. Uncle Cai could barely even walk.”
“Mother, you can’t believe them!”
The adults in the village laughed when they heard Fu Ling’s words. Three or five hands reached out, playfully or mischievously ruffling Fu Ling’s hair.
“Little girl, you don’t understand. Everyone says the sang army is invincible and invulnerable.”
“Could everyone be wrong?”
Fu Ling was so frustrated that tears began to fall, but no matter what she said, the villagers refused to believe her. They even began to pack their belongings with laughter and chatter.
In truth, they had almost nothing.
After they had returned from the town together last time, they had collected a harvest of grain, but more than half of it had been seized during the last round of conscription.
The crops currently in the fields were far from ripe, and since things had come to this, there was nothing they could do about it.
Everyone simply gathered the worthless broken bowls and pots from their homes and dug up the remaining grain they had hidden in the ground.
After searching high and low, they finally found a piece of heavily torn, yellowed white cloth. Using charcoal and following their memories, they wrote a crooked, malformed character for “sang” on it and hoisted it onto a pole.
A group of people, old and young, carrying the lanterns from the center of the village, set off—at once lost and determined.
They were going to find the main force of the sang army.
Eventually…
That yellowed white cloth fell to the ground, stained with blood.
“A few weak old men, women, and children actually dared to become rebels! It’s enough to make one die of laughter!”
That was the last voice Fu Ling heard.
The soldiers wanted to capture her to serve the army, so she was the last one left alive.
But how could Fu Ling be willing?
She jumped off the mountain cliff.
Li Yunxian watched Fu Ling, who had hit her head and was now hanging from a large tree, completely unconscious. Not far from the edge of this cliff was a mountain cave.
Undoubtedly, there was a cultivator inside.
A cultivator at the Golden Core Stage.
He seemed to have heard the commotion outside and was slowly walking out of the cave.
Li Yunxian thought, ‘Is this the kind of treatment people with good luck get? Falling off a cliff and actually meeting a “hidden master”?’
Recalling her own experiences, Li Yunxian’s expression turned extremely gloomy.
Feeling the surrounding environment growing thin, Li Yunxian knew that this memory of the past was about to end. If Fu Ling did not wake up now, she would undoubtedly remain here forever.
Obeying Fu Ling’s request, Li Yunxian woke her.
Fu Ling opened her eyes in a daze once more, and the experiences of the past year or so resurfaced in her mind. The memories she had once forgotten or lost were restored.
In Fu Ling’s actual past, things had been even worse than this experience.
When the soldiers came to seize people, the Fu Ling of that age hadn’t been as strong as she was now. She hadn’t killed that official immediately.
More blood had been shed in the village, and she had suffered more wounds and hardships on the road than she had this time.
But the end was the same.
All of her family members had lost their lives in such an innocent and miserable way.
Li Yunxian looked at Fu Ling’s reddened eyes and the string of tears flowing down her face. Li Yunxian reached out and gave Fu Ling a light pat, which barely counted as comfort.
“If only I hadn’t been sick back then,” Fu Ling murmured. “If I hadn’t been left in the village, Uncle Dagou and the others might not have died. Maybe a few of my family members could have survived.”
Li Yunxian did not answer Fu Ling’s murmurs. She didn’t know how to answer. Should she say that in that era, no one would have survived regardless?
At this point in time, the total destruction of the sang army was not far off.
Those three members of the sang army who had stumbled into the village were actually wounded deserters. Li Yunxian could see it.
The Fu Ling of the past might not have, but the Fu Ling with restored memories certainly did.
If Fu Ling hadn’t fainted, and they had seen that no one was in the village, perhaps they would have found some grain and continued on their way.
They wouldn’t have stayed in the village for over ten days, developed feelings for the children, and then risked their lives in the city to save the villagers’ families.
Or perhaps, without the sacrifice of those three men, the villagers would have returned after finishing the construction in the city and completing their forced labor.
Without hearing how great the sang army supposedly was, perhaps the others in the village wouldn’t have thought to join them.
At that time, the main force of the sang army no longer existed in that county.
The villagers might have become bandits, or perhaps they would have just fled into the mountains and might not have been annihilated.
But those were all “perhaps.”
In that era, there were tyrannical policies, forced labor, taxes, conscription, grain seizures, rioters, and bandits.
There were also those beasts and creepy things hidden in the forests, each waiting to devour people.
In the final years of the shen dynasty, barely one in ten survived. Countless villages were extinguished in the ruins of history. Fu Ling’s village would not have been an exception.
Fu Ling knew all of this.
“Don’t beautify things that never happened,” Li Yunxian finally said.
Fu Ling’s tears still wouldn’t stop. “I know. I know everything. But I can’t let it go. I just can’t.”
“Even if I lost my memories, even if my Master was a sword cultivator and was furious about it, I still chose the path of a body cultivator.”
“Even if I forgot everything, I still remembered that they wanted to be ‘invulnerable.'”
“They all say that cultivation is about being detached and not entangling oneself with the mortal world.”
“When they came to me and said they wanted to change the world and end this man-eating feudal era—saying that even if we had to give up our cultivation levels, we had to intervene in the mortal world—I followed them.”
“I achieved what Mother and the others wanted when they joined the sang army—a world where everyone can live in peace, with enough food and warmth. But I still can’t move on.”
“Why couldn’t I save them?”
Li Yunxian knew that Fu Ling didn’t need an answer right now. She simply sat quietly beside her, watching as the past gradually dissipated along with Fu Ling’s returning consciousness.
The two of them reappeared inside that building with the bracket sets.
Su Wenjing, who had been standing guard, was stunned when he saw the state they were in. He looked up slightly toward the flag.
The flag was still there. Fu Ling had not reclaimed her marker.
Su Wenjing frowned slightly as he watched Fu Ling crying uncontrollably. He sent a soft voice transmission to Li Yunxian: “What happened?”
Li Yunxian replied softly, “Having to face the things she forgot and didn’t want to remember, plus the fully immersive experience, made it feel like it just happened all over again. The emotional impact was too great.”
Su Wenjing was speechless. “So, it was another failure?”
Li Yunxian hummed in affirmation.
“She is unwilling to accept the past.” Li Yunxian originally thought Fu Ling’s memory loss was some kind of interstellar conspiracy, but the reality was that she instinctively wanted to forget that pain.
Even at the Spirit Fusion Stage, it was still the same.
Fu Ling had entered the Heaven’s ruins so many times, yet when she saw this flag, she subconsciously rejected it, refusing to even consider that it was her marker.
Even when Li Yunxian brought it up, her instinctive reaction was that it was impossible.
“Maybe after a very long time, she’ll be able to let it go, or maybe it will never be possible.” Li Yunxian sighed softly. “This kind of thing can only depend on her. No one else can help.”
Su Wenjing understood this as well. He didn’t ask further about that and instead asked Li Yunxian how she had managed to follow her inside.
Li Yunxian frowned and explained how her divine soul was unstable and how it seemed she might be pulled along.
Su Wenjing: “…”
He didn’t know if this was Li Yunxian’s bad luck or Fu Ling’s good fortune.
It should probably be considered Fu Ling’s good fortune. After all, she was a miraculous person who could encounter a “hidden master” even after falling off a cliff.
“Then for our next move, let’s go to your ginkgo tree first,” Su Wenjing said.
Li Yunxian blinked and narrowed her eyes at Su Wenjing. “What’s going on with your place? You actually don’t dare to let me go in with you!”
Hearing about her divine soul’s condition, Su Wenjing’s reaction was undoubtedly that he didn’t want to take her!
Su Wenjing’s face remained calm as he asked directly, “Are you planning to go meet my parents with me?”
Li Yunxian: “…”
She was choked up. This guy had adapted far too quickly; now he could even talk back to her with such nonsense.
The time spent inside a marker was consistent with the outside world. Li Yunxian and Fu Ling’s consciousness had stayed inside for two years, and Su Wenjing had stood guard outside for two years.
That was more than enough time for Su Wenjing to adjust his mindset.
Sigh! What a pity!
Li Yunxian lamented.
The two chatted idly, waiting for Fu Ling’s emotions to stabilize. They stayed in the bracketed building for another two days before the three of them set off again.
It wasn’t until their next destination was clearly defined—that tall, massive ginkgo tree—that Fu Ling’s mouth twitched.
She remembered Li Yunxian’s pseudonym, and she also remembered how, when they had entered the marker previously, the feeling of Li Yunxian’s divine soul was far superior to her own cultivation level.
She looked at Li Yunxian, then at Su Wenjing, who showed no surprise, and finally took a deep breath. “Just what is your cultivation level?!”
Li Yunxian looked completely innocent. “Golden Core Great Perfection.”
Seeing the veins popping on Fu Ling’s forehead, Li Yunxian cleared her throat and added, “But I was once at the Tribulation Transcendence Stage. It’s just that there was a bit of an accident, and I had to restart my cultivation.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
Fu Ling: “…”
Not a big deal, my foot!
At this moment, Fu Ling finally realized how Li Yunxian had “victimized” every corner of the four great academies during her time as a student.
Who the hell exploits people like this?!
This is too much!!
Fu Ling voiced her strong condemnation.
Then, they encountered another Mahayana Stage creepy entity.
Fu Ling: “…”
Once again, she quickly tucked Li Yunxian under her arm and fled.
No, wait—why was she, a failed Spirit Fusion Stage cultivator, running away while carrying a former Tribulation Transcendence Stage expert?!
Fu Ling was speechless.