Gu Pin’er felt a flicker of surprise.
She knew of Li Xun’s other identity, and she understood the entanglements between the Demon Phoenix, the Lin Ge, and him. So this seemingly out-of-the-blue question was enough to stir her curiosity.
Li Xun, on the other hand, was jolted. For an instant, he almost thought Shui Die Lan had seen through his hidden identity and was probing him.
He turned back, only to realize that her words probably meant nothing more than idle conversation, as if between friends.
Still, he couldn’t make sense of what she was getting at. After a long pause, he finally muttered, “What does that have to do with me?”
Shui Die Lan smiled at that, though her expression carried something strange and hard to place.
Li Xun noticed, of course. It struck him that when she spoke just now, her state of mind had shifted. She seemed both more at ease and somehow resolved. The subtle feeling was impossible to pin down.
Bewildered, though more cautious than anything, he asked carefully, “What do you mean by that?”
“You answer me first,” she said. “Why do you think Qixia and Lin Ge ended up together?”
Shui Die Lan’s will was unusually unyielding on this point. Although Li Xun had no desire to waste his energy on such a matter, he forced himself to answer out of caution: “If there’s affection, won’t people naturally come together?”
"Yeah, affection? But then they went their separate ways anyway!"
Li Xun muttered inwardly, Good grief.
The childishness of this topic, along with the unpleasant memories it stirred, quickly ate away at his patience. Irritated, he said, “Then the feeling fades, or it changes. Isn’t that all there is to it?”His half-hearted reply, however, seemed to please Shui Die Lan.
Her icy-blue lips curved slightly as she smiled. “If their bond rests on emotion, then separation is inevitable. But if it is not emotion that binds them, what then?”
Li Xun let out a short laugh, using it to show his impatience. Yet the moment it stopped, he turned to her with a strange look. He finally realized that as the conversation went on, the air between them had grown oddly charged.
He still could not understand why Shui Die Lan had brought up such a subject. To him, it had no bearing on their current situation and was utterly at odds with her nature.
What was out of the ordinary must be treated as dangerous, and his wariness spiked.
Just then, Shui Die Lan smiled at him. “I’ve always been intrigued by what happened with Qixia back then. I even did some calculations. Do you know how long the earth-shaking romance between Qixia and that man Lin Ge actually lasted?”
“How long?”
“Forty-three years.”
Seeing the surprise on Li Xun’s face, Shui Die Lan laughed. “Shocked? But it’s true. In fact, for most men and women in the mortal world, marriage usually lasts about that long, until sickness and old age take them. For them, marriage is a lifetime. But for cultivators and demons like us, with lifespans that stretch so much longer, forty or fifty years pass in the blink of an eye. It’s a different matter entirely.”
Li Xun didn’t know how to respond. For the moment, he forgot his earlier sense of caution and was naturally pulled into those distant memories.
Though sixty years had gone by—enough for mortals to count it as a whole lifetime ago—the sight of blazing maples on Tiandu Peak and the heartbreaking tragedy of that time still filled much of his memory.
He remembered the Demon Phoenix’s deep, unyielding hatred. He remembered Lin Ge’s sharp, grief-stricken cries.
Forty-three years. Can you believe it? Those two loved each other for forty-three years, hated for more than a century, and in the end still faced each other in life and death.
There could hardly be anything more absurd in this world.
But now, hearing it from Shui Die Lan’s lips, why did it carry such a strange undertone? Thinking back to the odd things she had said before, Li Xun felt as if he understood and yet did not. His thoughts refused to straighten out.
At that moment, Shui Die Lan spoke slowly. “We both know very well that each of us would rather see the other dead. Otherwise, with you knowing my secrets and me knowing yours, even if neither of us ever lifts a hand against the other, all it would take is to spread the word and we’d both be in no end of trouble.”
The abrupt turn in topic unsettled Li Xun, but he had to admit she was telling the truth. He had considered that possibility more than once, and each time the killing intent in his heart had grown heavier. So when he heard her say it, he only nodded without a word.
Shui Die Lan caught the look on his face and gave a light laugh. Leaning forward a little closer, she lowered her voice. “I have an idea. Think about it. Would you… marry me?”
Li Xun gasped sharply, the air catching in his throat. Before he could recover, Shui Die Lan’s body shrank back, then suddenly crashed straight into his arms.
“Got you!”
Li Xun realized what was happening almost instantly. He tried to strike back, but she had clearly planned this move for a long time, thinking through every variation in advance. The moment his hand came up, it was knocked aside. At the same time, a sudden numbness spread across his chest. Shui Die Lan had already landed a palm strike.
Li Xun’s fury erupted. Despite all his vigilance, she had still found an opening and struck first.
Without hesitation, he unleashed a technique he had rehearsed countless times in his mind. Behind him, Nether One let out a bestial roar, shaking the surrounding primordial qi. Just as Shui Die Lan was withdrawing after her strike, her retreating figure suddenly faltered in a strange way. In the next instant, Gu Pin’er appeared behind her, hand transforming into a sword and slicing toward the back of her neck.
But something was off with Shui Die Lan. She failed to react to Gu Pin’er’s attack in time, only crying out loudly, “Stop!”
“Stand down!”
This time it was Li Xun shouting. To his surprise, Shui Die Lan's palm strike had not carried real force. The moment it touched, she pulled away. His chest felt tight for a moment, but he had taken no real injury.
Yet Li Xun could clearly sense that through the force of her strike, some foreign presence had seeped into his body.
The foreign thing that had seeped into his body was truly strange. It was true he had already suffered internal injuries and been poisoned, his organs left weak and hollow, nothing like his former peak. But ever since he had just absorbed the poison with the Blood Nightmare technique, the circulation of Yin Fire had been smooth, with no further obstruction.
By all logic, even a venom as vicious as the “Crimson Snow Chaos” should not have been able to break through so quickly.
Yet this thing moved inside him as though alive, swimming up and down through his body. Each time it slipped past the sharp edge of the Yin Fire, it would still manage to siphon off scraps and fragments bit by bit.
Soon it underwent a change in nature. It fused with the Yin Fire within him, becoming indistinguishable from it, then spread countless fine threads of energy through his blood and bones. It bound itself to his whole being, sharing his strength and his weakness alike. The unnaturalness of it chilled his heart.
Remembering the fearsome reputation Shui Die Lan had built up over tens of thousands of years, even Li Xun, confident as he was, dared not act rashly. So he followed her lead and called out sharply to stop the fight, then growled, “What the hell is this?”
Shui Die Lan let out a long breath, as though she had just walked away from death’s door.
Her slender hand brushed across her chest, steadying herself. But almost at once her face lit up in a bright smile. “It’s gu.”
“Gu?”
Thinking of all the rumors about such uncanny creatures, and remembering how Shui Die Lan had shown astonishing skill in gu arts only a few days ago, Li Xun felt another jolt. But he quickly steadied himself, fixing his gaze coldly on her face. He ignored the charming smile she wore and asked in a low, grim voice, “What do you mean?”
“Simple. Survival.”
Shui Die Lan paid no mind to the poised blade-hand behind her. She smoothed her appearance a little before speaking calmly. “That move of yours was exquisite. At first I thought you were being kind, temporarily sealing the Blood Nightmare, but in truth you were laying your trap. If I really had just tried to ambush you, the outcome would have been far uglier, wouldn’t it? And even if I hadn’t made a move, when were you planning to use that trick against me?”
Li Xun gave a cold smile, which was as good as an admission.
She smiled as well. “So you see, we’re no different. In fact, releasing gu was only for self-preservation. Compared to your little scheme of ‘killing for profit,’ my act was far more generous.
“And besides, to call it releasing gu isn’t even accurate. What I really want is just to bind us with an oath, an alliance for mutual safety. That’s all.”
“An alliance?”
“Exactly. Gu is born of the five poisons and nourished within the blood and heart. It could be called the creature that understands human thoughts better than anything else under heaven, which makes it the perfect medium for forging oaths and alliances. The one I used is called the ‘Vow Gu.’ You could also call it the ‘Heart Knot.’ What do you think of that name?”
“Heart Knot?” The sudden warmth of such a tender name struck Li Xun’s ears, and the chill in his chest eased a little despite himself.
Seizing that brief pause in his momentum, Shui Die Lan smiled and went on. “That’s right. This is the most interesting creation I’ve developed in recent years. The idea came from watching Qixia’s fate. Her ending made it plain to me that love between a man and a woman cannot be counted on for the long term.
“So, for the sake of harmony between husband and wife, I created this gu. It embodies both yin and yang. When used, it is split through a special gu-releasing technique and planted separately into the bodies of a man and a woman…”
She tapped a finger lightly against her own chest, as if to say, See? I’ve taken it too.
A wry smirk tugged at Li Xun's lip. He was trying to look dismissive, but you could see his attention sharpen as he started listening more carefully to what she had to say.
“The yin and yang halves of the gu attract each other, joined by a shared qi mechanism. Whether the pair agrees or not, their qi mechanisms begins to merge and transform until it becomes one… Look, it’s already starting!”