The Forbidden Path to Immortality-Chapter 276

“I’m tired too,” she said. There was a slight rise and fall to her voice now, a hint of emotion. “But I’m short on hands. I wanted to find someone to help out, and the one person I want is nowhere to be found.. What else can I do?”

Li Xun could tell right away she was talking about him. He allowed a hint of embarrassment to cross his face and opened his mouth to explain. Gu Yin beat him to it with a small smile. “I figured with two major sword sects going at each other like that, you’d definitely stick your nose in,” she said. “But half a month went by and you were nowhere to be seen. That’s why I sent a flying sword to track you down. And had people posted along all the likely routes, ready to stop you so we could talk... Turns out you slipped all the way to the outskirts of the Star River without anyone noticing. Looks like I really underestimated you.”

Something in her tone was off, enough to prickle at Li Xun’s nerves. His heart sank. He wanted to step in, to patch things up while there was still time.... but Gu Yin’s voice stayed calm and pleasant, rolling on without pause, and it left him no space at all to get a word in.

She turned to face him and met his eyes, then gave a soft chuckle. “Come to think of it, this has been going on for a while now. I know your cultivation keeps climbing, and you’ve been acting more and more on your own. Your old position can’t really hold you anymore.”

Li Xun’s heart was pounding now. At this point he didn't give a damn about manners; he cut her off. “Sect Master Gu, you give me too much credit. All these years, whether it was your guidance or Senior Sister Wuyou’s help, I’ve never forgotten any of it.”

Gu Yin gently raised her right hand. At the sight of it, Li Xun's words died in his mouth.

He remembered that this was the hand that had been badly injured by Master Tianzhi’s Five-Colored Divine Light. Now, at least on the surface, there was no sign it had ever been hurt. It was still pale and slender, smooth as polished jade. And maybe because of that, the sight of it carried a kind of magic that could make your heart skip a beat.

“Save the empty talk. If you were the type to get tied down by beauty or flirtation, I never would have taken you seriously. All these years, I’ve only given you a place to relax and pass the time. The things you truly wanted, I never offered, and you never once asked. Isn’t that right?”

He didn't say anything.

And Gu Yin didn’t say no more. She turned her gaze to the endless sky outside the carriage. And the air inside the carriage grow thick and heavy with silence.

The cloud carriage shot through the sky like it was tearing the heavens apart, yet inside, time seemed to almost stand still.

Only then did Li Xun realize something was wrong.

He followed her example and looked out of the carriage. He checked the position of the sun, and suddenly his expression shifted. “Hang on... where are we headed?”

Gu Yin turned her gaze back from the window. A trace of weariness crept over her face. She leaned against the carriage wall, lifted the book in her hand again, and flipped through it idly. Then, in a distant, almost dreamy tone, she said: “Yemo Heaven.”

“Yemo Heaven?” Li Xun was honestly a little lost. He stared at for a long moment. “Why are we going to Yemo Heaven? Isn’t Sect Master Gu supposed to be over by the Star River…”

“Over by the Star River is where you should be, isn’t it?” She didn’t look at him at all. Her eyes stayed on the pages, and her voice grew lazier and more distant.

This was way out of character for her. She was always the picture of propriety and restraint... but damn if her words didn’t still cut straight to the heart. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

“The problem is that something this important happened, and you showed up far too late. If it were anyone else, maybe it wouldn’t matter. But the one who suffered was Ming Ji, the person in the sect who has taken the best care of you. With an attitude like yours, how could Qingming and the others ever be satisfied?

“To put it even more seriously, the reputation you’ve built over the past few decades is going to take a major hit. Faced with that, how do you plan to fix it?”

No question about it. This was the exact headache Li Xun had been wrestling with. Since she brought it up, he had no choice but to answer. “I was planning to draft a rough outline of the Star River’s forbidden formations. It doesn’t need to be too detailed. As long as it shows I can get in safely for a bit and make it back out, it at least proves I tried. It wouldn’t look great, but it might pass.”

Gu Yin flipped another page. “It’s a plan, but nothing impressive. And the situation there is shifting too fast. Can you guarantee you’ll finish this outline before things change again?”

He fell silent. But from her attitude, he realized what she was waiting for. He put on his best humble face and asked, “Sect Master Gu, do you already have a plan?”

Gu Yin lifted her eyes, glanced at him, and gave a small nod. Li Xun brightened for a moment, then asked in confusion, “What does this idea have to do with Yemo Heaven?”

“It has nothing to do with Yemo Heaven. But this is something I’d only tell you after I’m sure there’s absolutely no risk. And you… right now you’re really not giving me much confidence.”

She caught the stunned look on Li Xun’s face. And she smiled.

“What’s the big deal? People all think differently. Even between me, Qixia, and Qing Luan, there are things we can’t say out loud. It doesn’t hurt the bigger picture. If something actually gets in the way of us working together, we just say it, clear it up, and move on.”

“But why do we have to go to Yemo Heaven?” Li Xun asked, but when Gu Yin didn’t answer for quite a while, he glanced over. The delicate woman had her eyes half closed, leaning lightly against the back of the carriage. The book in her hand had slipped onto her lap. She looked as if she had fallen asleep from exhaustion. Just as Li Xun was feeling awkward, he heard her murmur softly:

“There are some things I can only say in Yemo Heaven. Only there will someone believe me.”

Li Xun’s brows knotted tight. Without thinking, his hand drifted to his chest, pressing over the spot where the Bixie Jade’s cool, misty energy was pouring out, holding down the deeper surge of rage and madness like iron chains.

But all that power, all that restraint... it didn’t give him a damn bit of certainty or guts when it came to making the hard call.

He had the choice in his hands now. Yet, here he was, because of this goddamn caution and this... curiosity, letting this injured woman yank him around by the nose.

He fucking hated the feeling.

In truth, Yemo Heaven lay to the north and the Star River to the northeast, and the two were already connected. The straight-line distance between them wasn’t very long.

Pulled by Net Throat Demon, the cloud carriage sped through the sky at an incredible pace. After roughly a day and night of travel, they reached their destination before noon the next day.

When the polar winds came howling past, Gu Yin pulled her fox fur a little tighter and sighed. “Ever since Nightless City was moved away, this whole polar land has only grown lonelier. Tianzhi…”

The last word faded into little more than breath, swallowed by the sharpening whistle of the wind. Li Xun barely caught the sound, but could only pretend he hadn’t heard anything at all.

The cloud carriage made a gentle turn, found the main path leading into Frostwind Valley, and headed straight in. Gu Yin finally set down the book she had been holding for more than a day, turned to glance at Li Xun. “So what is it that you really want?” she suddenly asked with a small smile,

The question caught Li Xun off guard. During the whole day-long journey from the Star River, Gu Yin had spent most of her time reading or resting. When she did talk to him, it was only in passing and never about anything sensitive. Mostly small bits about cultivation.

That had led him to believe she'd already decided not to bring up the real issues until they reached Frostwind Valley, or maybe even the Heart Garden.

But clearly, she had chosen this moment to begin.

Faced with such an open-ended question, Li Xun could’ve given a thousand flawless answers. But under Gu Yin’s strange little smile, he couldn’t get a single word out.

Truth was, Gu Yin wasn’t planning on giving him the chance to speak anyway.

“I’ve been questioning your intentions for a long time. Don’t blame me. If anyone’s at fault, it’s you for being too good at what you do. Maybe you don’t see how sharp you really are, but the truth is that in the sixty-some years we’ve been watching you, everything you’ve accomplished has gone far beyond what any cultivator could ever hope to reach.

“Take Zhong Yin, for example. Even in his first hundred years of cultivation, he was still sitting on Zuwang Peak trying to comprehend the sword. And you? You were already making waves and carving out a place for yourself in the Tongxuan Realm...

“Fine. Maybe we have to be like Qingming and the others and accept that anything connected to Zhong Yin always turns bizarre, and use that as an excuse for how fast you’ve advanced. But what’s even stranger is your own attitude.”

Gu Yin turned, settling into a more comfortable angle to watch the changes in Li Xun’s expression. “What I don’t get is this. Over the years, the benefits I’ve sent you through Wuyou have always been kept at a very standard level. A few beauties, a few treasures, a few cultivation manuals. Back when you were young, that was more than generous. At your current stage, though, it’s starting to look a little shabby.

“But from beginning to end, your attitude toward all of it has never changed. Once, twice, ten times, a hundred, a thousand times, it’s always the same. Even if I didn’t think it was fake, I’d still be sick of it.”

Li Xun was left speechless. He never expected Gu Yin to notice a flaw from something like that.

By now, the carriage had already passed over Frostwind Valley and entered the Thousand-Turn Pass, heading toward Heart Garden.

Seeing Li Xun looking a bit fidgety, Gu Yin suddenly switched topics and cracked a joke. “Qixia and Qing Luan are out handling business, and Wuyou went with them. I’m the only one in Heart Garden right now, so you don’t need to worry.”

Li Xun gave a dry laugh. After seeing how you tricked that Kunpeng back then, I’d have to be a real idiot to believe you.

But he also realized something: the Gu Yin sitting before him now wasn’t the Gu Yin he was familiar with. Or rather, she wasn’t the version of herself she usually put on when she was around him.

If he absolutely had to pick someone to compare her to, Li Xun'd naturally think of that woman atop Zuowang Peak... the one who cracked jokes and brimmed with a lively, almost defiant energy that night.

This must be the other side of Gu Yin, he thought. And the thought sparked a little flame in his chest, loosening the stiffness in his body bit by bit.

Gu Yin, of course, wasn’t actually able to read minds, so she had no idea what he was thinking. She simply continued, picking up where she left off: “If someone can keep themselves from being swayed by outside things, it means their thoughts already sit on a level far above those things. That much is undeniable.

“The question now is: what exactly are you thinking about? I once spent some time turning that over in my mind and came up with all sorts of interesting guesses. Want to hear them?”

Li Xun shrugged. “I’m all ears.”