“Um, Sister Zhan, are you sure it’s really okay for us to do this?”
Yun Mu and Zhan Lixue walked side by side on the road back to the Valley of Cultivation, one tall and one short, one on the left and one on the right.
In his hand, he held an upward-floating vine, and at the end of the vine was Qingmei No.1, who was bound upright and flapping her wings hard, flying forward like a kite.
She looked just like a green sky lantern, inexplicably a bit adorable.
“Of course it’s fine. If you hadn’t stopped me just now, I would have given them a good beating already.”
Zhan Lixue glanced at the utterly hopeless No.1, her hair fluttering in the wind. Immediately after, a series of miserable screams sounded behind her, and a giant Qingmei Sky Lantern floated up in the air.
The other little Greenmei, who had been flying low and listless, were instantly roused by her outburst.
None of them dared slack off anymore; with all their demon power, they flapped their wings and soared upward.
“You’re right… People who do bad things should really learn their lesson…”
Yun Mu felt the surge of the sky lantern behind and to the right, and in his mind replayed the scene from just an incense stick of time ago, when Zhan Lixue had been ready to start a full-on beating.
The guilt in his heart lessened a bit.
Letting their savior fly them like kites for a while shouldn’t be a problem, right?
After all, he had helped these little ones avoid a good thrashing…
Rather than punishment, it could be considered an act of gratitude.
***
The two continued walking like this, until the dense forest gradually thinned and the sun rose higher in the sky.
Only then did Zhan Lixue stop.
She raised her eyes to the blazing sun overhead, frowned slightly, and then, as if changing tricks, pulled out a giant Pine Leaf Umbrella from her robes and held it high above her head, shading them from much of the sunlight.
Feeling the sudden coolness, Yun Mu was momentarily stunned.
Something occurred to him, and he couldn’t help feeling puzzled.
But before he could ask, the Tree Demon Woman had already started walking again.
Helpless, he could only shut his mouth and hurry after her.
But after just a couple steps, he bumped into her back and was forced to stop.
“Um, Little Yun Mu, although big sister knows you’re not talkative by nature, if you stay this quiet the whole way, I’ll really be bored to death.”
She absentmindedly flicked the vines entwined in her hair, turned to look at him, a hint of grievance in her eyes.
“You’re not really planning to just keep walking with me in silence, without saying a word or asking anything, all the way back, are you?”
“Ah? No, I thought Sister Zhan, you didn’t like to talk…”
“I don’t like to talk? Who told you that?”
“Uh, I guess that was my own assumption.”
He scratched his head and explained softly, “Mainly because along the way, unless I spoke first, Sister Zhan, you never started a conversation, and every time we did talk, you didn’t say much. So I thought…”
“Ah? That’s not it, I just…”
Zhan Lixue wanted to defend herself, but as she searched her mind, she realized that, indeed, she’d been a bit reticent along the way.
She couldn’t think of a good explanation, so the words stuck in her throat.
“Sorry… I really am not good at starting conversations, or at chatting…”
As she spoke, she pulled him to her side, her voice low and dejected.
“I’d better just hurry and get you back…”
Before she finished speaking, Yun Mu suddenly felt a strange force push against his back, and then, as if uprooted from the ground, his feet left the earth in a flash—this was his first time experiencing what it truly meant to “fly.”
“Ugh, that, whoa—ahhh!”
He tried to say something, but the fierce wind blew straight into his face, making his ears ache.
He had no choice but to shut his mouth.
He knew his face must be a total mess right now, mouth wide open from the wind, maybe even drooling.
He clung tightly to the vine binding No.1, and after thinking a bit, he finally came up with a countermeasure—turn his face away.
But even this was extremely difficult.
Zhan Lixue was moving so fast that each time he turned his head, the wind twisted it right back.
Again and again, over a dozen times, but he just couldn’t do it.
Finally, he held his breath, tensed all his muscles, and gave it everything he had—at last, with a “crack,” his head twisted to the side.
“Um… Zhan, Sister Zhan, actually, I do have some questions I wanted to ask you.”
“Really!?”
She stopped abruptly, overjoyed.
“Re-really. But we should land first; I think I twisted my neck.”
He pointed at his still-tilted head and gave an awkward smile.
“Twisted it? That’s easy to fix, just wait a moment.”
“Huh?”
Before he could react, he felt a sudden chill at his neck.
With another crisp “crack” from his bones, Zhan Lixue forcibly twisted his head back into place.
Then the vine snapped through the air with a “swoosh,” and in just a few seconds, his neck was wrapped up tightly, layer after layer.
From a distance, anyone who didn’t know better might have thought he was being wrapped up like a rice dumpling.
“Well, um, Sister Zhan, actually…”
“Ah, no need to thank me, it’s what I should do.”
“Uh… okay… Thank you…”
Actually, he just wanted to tell this beautiful woman that he’d recover soon enough anyway, but given the situation, he felt too embarrassed to say anything.
Forget it, this doesn’t do me any harm, so I might as well let Sister Zhan have her fun.
Thinking this, Yun Mu took a long breath and his expression returned to normal.
He raised his face, felt the gentle breeze, reached out and grabbed a handful of sunlight off the Pine Leaf Umbrella, and asked softly:
“Sister Zhan, can you tell me about the Greenmei race?”
“Greenmei? Little Yun Mu, you had me stop just to ask about them?”
“That’s one reason, but honestly, I’m most curious about those little ones.”
“Uh, to tell the truth, I really don’t want to…”
Zhan Lixue rubbed her forehead, looking gloomy as a bad memory surfaced in her mind.
She glanced at the bedraggled No.1, trying to think of a way to change the topic, but when she saw Yun Mu’s hopeful expression, she sighed softly.
After a struggle, she decided to answer his questions properly.
“The Greenmei, among all the Yao Zu and across the whole continent, are actually one of the oldest races. Their origins can be traced all the way back to the earliest ancestors of the Yao Zu—when the Ancestor of Ten Thousand Demons was still alive.”
“The Ancestor of Ten Thousand Demons? I think I read about them in a book—human face, snake body, right?”
“That’s just the most popular legend. It’s been too long, so honestly, even we Yao Zu don’t know what the demon ancestor looked like, so there’s no need to get caught up in it.”
“Alright, I understand.”
Seeing Yun Mu quiet down again, the beautiful woman cleared her throat and continued.
“Logically speaking, with such a long history, the Greenmei race should have produced some extremely powerful individuals. But that never happened, and the reason lies in their special traits as a race.”
She lifted No.1, who was still bound, grabbed one of her wings with her left hand, and poked her face with her right.
“Most demon races, except for differences in cultivation methods compared to the Human Race, get the same positive feedback from cultivation—the higher the realm, the more power and the longer the lifespan.”
“But Greenmei are different. From birth, their lifespan is already set. Guess how long it is?”
“How long? Hm… Humans who don’t cultivate and live to eighty are already considered long-lived. For the Yao Zu… three hundred years?”
Yun Mu guessed the most outrageous age he could think of.
“That’s conservative, but actually not that much longer. Not more, not less—exactly a thousand years, and that’s if nothing else kills them, like other demons or humans.”
“O-one thousand years! That’s not long?”
“Of course not. Once you cultivate, you might live even longer than that. By then, you might look back and sigh—’Ah, how pathetic I was in my youth, but at least I made it through the hard times.'”
“Really? To live that long is really…”
“Yes, that’s right. Anything is possible, especially for you.”
“That’s true. By the way, Sister Zhan, how long have these little Greenmei been alive? Any of them a hundred or two hundred years old?”
“No, as far as I remember, they’re only a little over six months old. After all, each generation of Greenmei is born only after the previous one dies, and the last generation only died a year ago.”
“Six—six months? So before, when I called them little seniors… haha… I really am too young.”
“Ah, don’t worry, it’s different in the cultivation world. If you really meet someone stronger but younger than you, calling them senior is fine—preserving your life is what matters.”
As she spoke, she patted Yun Mu’s shoulder, smiling, and continued the topic.
“In short, it’s as if the heavens punished the Greenmei. No matter what they do, their lives are limited. They cultivate and stick together just to survive. Because their future is so obvious, their race evolved a very interesting ability—Bluffing.”
“Bluffing?”
He muttered the word, clearly unable to grasp its meaning right away.
“Yes, I’ll have them show you a demonstration and you’ll understand.”