Under the desolate setting sun, the west wind of autumn blew softly.
In front of the house, Nalan Yunyan had already left with Tang Qiurou.
Qian Yu blinked as she looked at the Emerald Green Dagger and the powder that had been thrust into her hands.
According to the other woman, she had two days.
At the latest, Nalan Yunyan would come the day after tomorrow to verify the results.
If she failed to complete the task by then, she would have to face the consequences.
Qian Yu sighed.
Before the confession, she was supposed to betray Gu Qinghan.
After the confession, she still had to betray Gu Qinghan.
In that case, hadn’t her confession been for nothing?
“Nalan Yunyan, give me back my first confession.”
The twilight wind blew her cowlick askew.
Although Qian Yu’s mood was complicated, she wasn’t overly distressed.
She trusted Gu Qinghan’s character at this point in time.
As a growth-type Feng Aotian, before experiencing those betrayals and blows, the current Gu Qinghan was just a simple young girl who seemed cold but actually focused entirely on her cultivation.
In that case, wouldn’t it be fine to just go to her and speak openly?
With Gu Qinghan’s personality, how could she not help her?
Qian Yu remembered that the reason Nalan Yunyan hated Gu Qinghan so much, besides her refusal to lose, was mostly due to certain deliberately guided misunderstandings.
Once she got through this hurdle, she could even try to help Gu Qinghan and Nalan Yunyan resolve their misunderstandings.
When that time came, two of the future’s greatest figures would both be indebted to her. Wouldn’t her fortune be massive?
Hehehe.
Thinking of this, Qian Yu’s eyes sparkled, and even her two large, fluffy ears perked up, looking exceptionally cute.
However, just as she was offering blessings for her beautiful future and considering whether to bathe and change her clothes before going to see Gu Qinghan…
In a place she didn’t know, inside the dwelling of the girl she called a Feng Aotian, a cataclysmic change that would determine her fate had already been completed.
For some unknown reason, when that girl of destiny named Gu Qinghan experienced a severe injury that destroyed her meridians in the future, she did not experience a Phoenix Nirvana and take a step further as expected. Instead, she had walked toward death in despair.
Now, she was reborn—bringing with her a deep, bone-carving hatred.
This was because the event that led to her fatal injury was not some treasure hunt in a Secret Realm, nor was it an invasion by the Demon Race.
It was a man-made disaster—a disaster caused by a certain Half-Yao named Qian Yu!
***
In Gu Qinghan’s dwelling, the black-haired girl, who looked like a fairy under the moon, slowly opened her eyes.
With a hint of confusion, she stared blankly at her own hands for a long time before finally coming to her senses.
As soon as she recovered, her originally peaceful and clear eyes were instantly filled with grimness and hatred.
The last memories of her previous life were not the glory of a Phoenix Nirvana, but being thrown into the abyss from filthy mud while her meridians were shattered and her spiritual power was exhausted.
Qian Yu!
That name was like the sharpest icicle, stabbing ruthlessly into Gu Qinghan’s mind.
Scenes from the past flashed uncontrollably before her eyes:
It was she who had saved that shivering, wounded little fox in the Secret Realm.
It was she who could not bear to see a fellow sect member (even if it was just a despised Half-Yao) in such distress and helplessness, so she shared the healing Elixir she couldn’t even bear to use herself, clumsily comforting the other not to be afraid.
And it was she who, under the wet, dependent, and grateful eyes of that fox, had accepted her as a friend.
Even after that fox had cruelly slashed her face, she had still been soft-hearted and chose to forgive.
But how did the other party repay her?!
The girl thought Gu Qinghan was easy to bully because of her kindness.
Not long after that, she chose to betray her a second time.
She deliberately exposed their location, allowing enemies to lay a dragnet.
Her master died while blocking a tribulation for her, her spirit pet died in agony from poison in her arms, and her own meridians were shattered as she fell into the dust…
Even the hand that gave her the final, cruelest push into the abyss belonged to this “good friend” she had once protected and even forgiven—Qian Yu.
“Truly… haha…”
Her feelings at this moment were indescribable.
The heart-wrenching scenes made Gu Qinghan’s exquisite face flush with a somewhat sickly red.
She looked at her undamaged cheeks in the mirror and laughed uncontrollably.
Five slender, snow-white fingers stroked her cheek as the laughter grew louder, more pathological, and more frenzied.
Though she didn’t know why, she was back.
She had returned to a point in time where everything had yet to happen, but was about to.
In this life, she would not let a single person who had harmed or betrayed her go.
They all had to die!
Her emotions returned to a state of calm in an instant, and Gu Qinghan slowly raised her hand.
Ice crystals condensed and shifted at her slender fingertips, reflecting her current cold, stunning, and breathtakingly beautiful face.
The past had made her pathologically frenzied, but the heavens had given her a chance at rebirth not so she could drown in her emotions.
Calmness was the best emotion to face all of this.
Concentrating fully, Gu Qinghan began to organize her memories of this life.
She soon discovered a very interesting thing.
Calculating the time, today was actually the day that hypocritical fox, Qian Yu, would come to drug her and use a knife to slash her face before going to Nalan Yunyan to offer her Certificate of Loyalty.
“What a coincidence~”
Toying with the ice crystals in her hand, a strange smile appeared at the corners of Gu Qinghan’s mouth, and the sickly red on her face deepened.
“Fine. Let the revenge of this life begin with you, Qian Yu…”
The empty dwelling was a vast expanse of white, and her soft murmur at this moment actually sounded somewhat tender.
In her previous life, because of her useless kindness, she had easily forgiven Qian Yu and paid a price so painful it was unbearable.
But in this life, in this life, it was time to let the other party taste the flavor of despair.
“I am truly looking forward to it.”
Crushing the ice crystal in her hand, Gu Qinghan, dressed in simple white clothes, stood up from the ice bed with a light laugh.
She began to make some interesting arrangements in the room while waiting for a certain fox to bring that hypocritical cowardice and poisoned dagger to appear before her, just like in her previous life.
She really wanted to see the look on the girl’s face as she cried and begged for mercy again.
“A-choo—”
Suddenly, a small sneezing sound came from outside the dwelling.
Gu Qinghan’s movements stopped.
The sound was strangely familiar.
She came to her senses, and her Spiritual Sense passed through the Guardian Array outside the dwelling to sweep outward. In the next moment, she froze slightly.
As a possessor of a Mutated Ice Attribute Spirit Root, the dwelling she lived in was located on a mountain peak.
The elevation was extremely high, and it was covered in snow year-round.
Just outside her dwelling, a small Fox Tribe Half-Yao was crouching by the stone door, curled into a tiny ball in the wind and snow.
The thin Servant Tunic was useless against the cold air of the peak, and her nose and cheeks were frozen bright red.
Perhaps because it was too cold outside, the little Half-Yao had pulled her snow-white, fluffy tail to her front, wrapping it around her neck and half of her small face like a thick muffler. Only a pair of eyes, like black obsidian, remained visible, staring expectantly at the stone door.
The tips of her milk-white hair, her long eyelashes, and even the tips of her furry fox ears were covered in tiny, un-melted ice crystals and white snow.
She looked exceptionally small and exceptionally soft.
The sneeze from just now had come from her.
“Qian Yu?”
Looking at the little Half-Yao shivering in the wind and snow, Gu Qinghan suddenly smiled.
As the dwelling of a True Disciple, the main gate was equipped with a Guardian Array.
If one did not know the special hand seals, ordinary people couldn’t even get close, let alone knock on the door.
This stupid Half-Yao was probably waiting outside just because of that.
How pitiful~
The smile on Gu Qinghan’s lips grew even more intense.
As her Spiritual Sense played with the pathetic sight of the little Half-Yao shrinking further into the snow, a detail she had never noticed before surfaced in her mind.
No, she remembered that she had taught the girl several times how to pass through the array to knock on the door.
How could Qian Yu still not know how?
It couldn’t be that… she was worried about disturbing her cultivation…
How was that possible?
The overlapping memories of two lives blurred many details, but things that had happened still left their marks.
Gu Qinghan suddenly remembered that since she met Qian Yu and since she agreed to become friends with her…
Every time the girl came to find her, she seemed to wait quietly outside like this.
She didn’t knock on the stone door, nor did she use a voice transmission to disturb her.
She would just quietly find a corner, hug her knees, wrap herself in her tail, and wait for Gu Qinghan to finish her cultivation and notice her.
Even though Gu Qinghan had taught her many times how to knock, it was always the same.
Before, she hadn’t cared about anything external, focusing only on her cultivation.
Agreeing to be friends with Qian Yu was merely out of instinctive kindness and pity; it didn’t really matter who the other person was.
Even if she saw the girl covered in snowflakes, she would only remind her that she could knock directly next time and then think no further of it.
But now, after treating Qian Yu as her greatest enemy, Gu Qinghan actually took notice of her.
She discovered that her past self seemed to have never thought carefully about it—clearly, she had reminded her many times, so why did Qian Yu still refuse to knock every single time?
With the girl’s weak cultivation, just how cold was this wind and snow that seemed like mere background noise to Gu Qinghan?
It couldn’t be that after she taught her the hand seals for knocking so many times, the girl still hadn’t learned them, right?
In her eyes full of coldness, there was a momentary, extremely faint flicker of distraction.
She could no longer deny that the girl’s refusal to knock was a form of clumsy consideration.
She remembered that she had casually told Qian Yu that once she reached her level, she could sense any outsider stepping near the dwelling, and if she didn’t sense them, it meant she was in closed-door cultivation.
Disturbances were strictly forbidden during closed-door cultivation.
Just because of that one unintentional remark, did this stupid fox really foolishly wait outside every time, preferring to shiver and freeze rather than risk knocking, for fear of disturbing her “secluded cultivation”?
Her heart, which was filled with hatred, felt a strange lump, and Gu Qinghan felt an emotion called guilt.
Those guesses just now were very consistent with Qian Yu’s timid personality.
But her past self had never thought of it, probably because even though she called Qian Yu a friend, she had never truly treated her as one.
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