A Quiet Homecoming

He Zhuoming was now almost afraid to look at Lin Qingyun's face. Logically, she knew that Lin Qingyun was Lin Qingyun, and the Corrupted Deity was just possessing his appearance. But emotionally, she was scared of that smiling, handsome face. Her mind, which had blurred those memories to protect itself, had now brought them all back in this nightmare, leaving her feelings for Lin Qingyun tangled and uneasy.

A face that split open from the middle like a ghost story, a face with only eyeballs streaming blood, a face with a soft, moist lower lip catching the light—that same face could scare her to tears, yet also make her heart race.

He Zhuoming was wavering, but Li Shui showed no impatience. She sat back down by the bed, continuing to gently pat He Zhuoming's back, and said, "Alright, I won't call him. Are you feeling better? Would you like some hot water?"

He Zhuoming gradually calmed down, nodded, and let go of Li Shui's hand. Li Shui did fetch her a cup of hot water. He Zhuoming held the cup and drank, her mood improving, no longer as frightened as when she first woke.

She murmured a thank-you and handed the cup back.

Li Shui smiled slightly. "You're welcome, it's my duty. Did you have a nightmare just now?"

He Zhuoming nodded, still shaken.

Li Shui reassured her, "The Corrupted Deity can contaminate a soul and put it under a spell. Since you had close contact, you've been affected, so nightmares are normal. But they're just nightmares—your mind is still clear, which shows your will is strong, and you haven't fallen under the spell. You can go to the main hall and pay respects to the Earth Immortal. That might help dispel the lingering effects faster."

He Zhuoming hesitated. "Can I go out now?"

Li Shui smiled gently. "Of course. The Corrupted Deity has been driven away, so the Divine Palace is very safe now."

He Zhuoming washed her face and went out. The long corridor outside her room was as quiet as ever, and the crabapple blossoms outside were still blooming fiercely.

As she walked through the corridor and entered the main hall, He Zhuoming almost began to wonder if the chaos she had experienced was just a figment of her imagination.

The main hall had hardly changed at all—not a single tile was missing from the roof, and the towering crimson statue of the deity was still piled high with offerings, gold paper, and flowers that defied the season. The only difference was that there were more white-robed attendants inside, all bustling about cleaning: some were folding gold paper, some were climbing ladders to wipe the statue...

The air was thick with an extremely heavy fragrance, a mix of burning incense and candle wax mingled with fruits, flowers, and gold paper.

Standing in the main hall, He Zhuoming suddenly realized she could now distinguish what was meant by the "scent of incense and offerings." The scent in the temporary shrine of the Dao Lord of the Two Principles was smoky and hot—a pungent "incense" smell. But the scent in the Earth Immortal's main hall was a moist, expensive fragrance, like the limited-edition perfume in her mother's dresser sprayed onto talisman paper and then mixed together.

When she took a deep breath, He Zhuoming felt as if she had inhaled a big gulp of perfume that hadn't quite evaporated; her nose and throat became moist—so damp that she couldn't help sneezing.

She pinched her nose, feeling that sneezing in front of the statue was terribly rude, so she quickly took three sticks of incense, lit them, reverently offered them, and muttered, "I didn't mean to offend you. You're a god, so please be magnanimous and don't hold it against me... Now I know you're a reliable True Deity who can drive away evil spirits—thank you for driving away the Corrupted Deity and saving my life... Please, be a good person—er, god—to the end. Since you saved my life, can you also bless me not to have nightmares anymore?"

After mumbling, He Zhuoming originally wanted to habitually chant "Amitabha," but then she thought, the Earth Immortal isn't Guanyin—afraid of offending this True Deity, she held back and earnestly offered the incense.

She remembered Xu Feixian had said that if you make a wish to a True Deity and it comes true, you must go and fulfill your promise. Fulfilling a promise meant making offerings—incense, oil, candles, ever-burning lamps, and treasures; the scale depended on the size of the wish. He Zhuoming hadn't made a wish to the Earth Immortal, but she recalled that before she fainted, she had been rolled up like a chicken roll by the Corrupted Deity—surely the Earth Immortal had descended like a divine soldier in her moment of crisis to save her life. Such a life-saving grace deserved an offering even without a formal wish.

As for the possibility that the Earth Immortal might be a villain... Her best friend Lin Qingyun wasn't even necessarily the male lead, so He Zhuoming thought there was even less reason for her to hold a grudge against her own life-saving deity.

After offering the incense, she asked one of the attendants for directions and walked to the offering chamber. Standing at the entrance, she craned her neck to look at the absurdly tall door frame, stared blankly for a while, and then squeezed out a "Wow." Entering the offering chamber and seeing the room full of large and small oil vats, she let out another "Wow."

The white-robed attendant guiding her smiled. "Have you never been to any True Deity's offering chamber before?"

He Zhuoming shook her head. "No, I haven't. Are all these oil vats filled with lamp oil?"

The white-robed attendant said, "Yes, they're lamp oil. It's usually only large families that can afford vats of oil; ordinary moderately wealthy families can only afford a few ever-burning lamps, not enough to warrant moving them into the offering chamber. They just light them on the walls of the main hall."

He Zhuoming recalled the golden candlesticks that lined the walls of the main hall—so those were the ever-burning lamps offered by the faithful. She had previously thought they were just lit by the palace staff for illumination.

The white-robed attendant led her further inside, weaving around the oil vats. Beyond, there were several more spacious rooms piled high with all sorts of treasures, their glittering opulence far surpassing any jewelry exhibition He Zhuoming had seen in the modern world. This drew another small "Wow" from He Zhuoming, and she suddenly understood why Lin Qingyun spent money like water—because the Earth Immortal's Divine Palace was truly wealthy.

The white-robed attendant said, "If you wish to offer money, just pour the gold and silver here."

He Zhuoming couldn't believe it. "Just pour it? Won't the Earth Immortal not know I made an offering to him?"

The white-robed attendant smiled helplessly. "Actually, no matter how much is offered, the Earth Immortal won't notice—His Holiness doesn't pay attention to such trivial matters."

He Zhuoming was curious. "Since the Earth Immortal doesn't pay attention to such trivial matters, couldn't you attendants embezzle from the offerings?"

Hearing this, the white-robed attendant's face turned as pale as his robes, and he stammered in panic, "You—you mustn't speak nonsense! How could we dare show disrespect to His Holiness!"

Seeing that he was about to faint from fright, He Zhuoming quickly apologized and said she took back her words—but the attendant's face remained ashen as a corpse's, and he never smiled at He Zhuoming again. Fortunately, He Zhuoming didn't care whether he smiled at her or not. When he stopped smiling, she just thought he was tired from smiling too much, never considering that she might have annoyed him.

He Zhuoming fished around in her pouch, pulled out a handful of copper coins, held them in her palm, and reverently poured them into the midst of the gold, silver, and jewels. Then she pressed her palms together in prayer and whispered, "Earth Immortal, sir, I'm a bit poor right now, so I'll just offer you these for the time being. Later, after I graduate from college and become an elementary school principal, I'll donate a statue to you, and I'll burn incense for you every year. But building a temple for you probably wouldn't work—it would be investigated. Your kind of religion counts as a cult in my hometown, and I'd be locked up in a police station. You wouldn't want to see me in jail, would you..."

After her sincere prayer, He Zhuoming opened her eyes and saw the white-robed attendant staring blankly at the handful of copper coins she had scattered. He had never seen anyone so stingy entering an offering chamber. Even the most miserly person would at least pour out a chest of silver. If he had known this person was only going to offer a handful of copper coins, he wouldn't have guided her here at all... A handful of copper coins, and she goes into the offering chamber?! She might as well scatter them in the square's pond as decorative pebbles!

But looking at the white jade token hanging at He Zhuoming's waist, the attendant could only keep a stern face and silently lead her out.

Outside the offering chamber, the night was serene, with moonlight making the pebble path sparkle. He Zhuoming parted ways with the guiding attendant and walked alone on the pebble path, looking up at the stars as she walked. Along the way, there were many crabapple trees. They looked—at least from the outside—perfectly normal now, a complete contrast to those trees that had grown wildly during the chaos.

He Zhuoming thought about the matter of the two Lin Qingyuns, and about the Corrupted Deity's face that was identical to Lin Qingyun's. Why had the Corrupted Deity taken on Lin Qingyun's appearance? And why did the puppet left by the Earth Immortal also have Lin Qingyun's face? If the puppet had grown Lin Qingyun's face from that tangle of red threads because it had swallowed the Corrupted Deity with Lin Qingyun's face—but wasn't that face just a deception the Corrupted Deity had conjured up? Could a fake face created by the Corrupted Deity also fool the puppet left by the Earth Immortal?

And the Corrupted Deity had even said things like, "I admit, the Tang Shuyu who left his image with you on the memory stone wasn't me, but that doesn't make any difference—it's all 'Tang Shuyu' anyway. I don't mind sharing friends with him, and he wouldn't have objections." It was strange. Could there be more than one 'Tang Shuyu' in this world? And why was the name Tang Shuyu so tightly bound to the young Lin Qingyun's face, often appearing together?

Tang Shuyu thought too highly of himself, and when he was perfunctory with He Zhuoming, he often said contradictory things, leaving many holes. But each time he managed to bluff his way through. The most important reason wasn't that he was a great liar, nor that He Zhuoming was truly stupid—rather, from the very first day they met, He Zhuoming genuinely believed he was a good person. She had presupposed the stance that Tang Shuyu was a good person, and so every lie he blurted out would receive a stance-based supplement in He Zhuoming's heart, each supplement reinforcing the cognition that 'he is a good person.'

But things that don't exist cannot be conjured into being just by describing them. As He Zhuoming's relationship with Tang Shuyu grew better and better, he showed her more and more of his 'self'—and so all the casually spoken lies became shaky. The false identity he had constructed, the real self he revealed—everywhere there were contradictions.

As He Zhuoming walked, she unknowingly returned to the vicinity of her residence and went all the way to the end of the corridor. The staircase she had walked many times at night was right before her eyes. The crabapple trees that had once covered the stairs had now scattered, and moonlight slanted across the steps, illuminating every single one clearly. By the moonlight, He Zhuoming noticed for the first time that these steps, winding upward, were as white as snow.

But in the middle of the stairs, there was a dark red drag mark—a trail of intermittent dark red bloodstains suggesting that a living creature had been dragged up there... Judging by the length of the blood trail, He Zhuoming suspected that the person who had been dragged had very likely died from excessive blood loss.

Was Lin Qingyun still staying in the room at the end of the stairs?

He Zhuoming hesitated for a long time, then gathered her courage and stepped onto the stairs—at the same time, from the crabapple grove beside her, came a steady rhythmic clip-clop. A magnificent and handsome green horse sauntered out from the grove, walked unhurriedly up to He Zhuoming, and bit her sleeve.

Just as He Zhuoming was staring at the horse in surprise, the green horse tugged her sleeve to the side. She realized and exclaimed, "Hey! Qing—Qing Yang?!"

The green horse blinked.

He Zhuoming was delighted. "Why are you here? Didn't you ungratefully abandon your master and run away!"

The green horse: "..."

The green horse suppressed the urge to bite her arm, and instead dragged her away from the stairs.

He Zhuoming was pulled into a trot. "Hey! Hey! Where are you taking me?"

The green horse pulled her into the crabapple grove. The branches, dense enough to skewer a high-level cultivator like a hedgehog, quickly and warily moved aside as the horse and human passed, at most dropping a few petals onto He Zhuoming's head.

As she was dragged along by the green horse, He Zhuoming felt puzzled: so there was a path inside this grove? When she looked into the grove from the corridor, she could only see densely interwoven crabapple trees with no gaps at all, and she had assumed it was an impenetrable thicket.

He Zhuoming muttered to herself, "Is this what they call 'the old horse knows the way'?"

The green horse tugged her impatiently, making her stagger. She was surprised. "You can understand what I'm saying?"

The green horse gave a soft whinny in assent.

He Zhuoming said, "Then why are you pulling me? 'The old horse knows the way' is a compliment!"

The green horse: "..."

A faint schadenfreude rose in its heart, because it thought that He Zhuoming talked to Tang Shuyu with the same kind of logic. There was a saying among humans that was quite right—'Every dog has his day.' Everyone should get what they deserve, even the emperor. It pulled He Zhuoming to the destination and then stopped, nudging her with its head.

He Zhuoming looked up and saw an exceptionally tall tower. It was so tall that even craning her neck she couldn't see the top, but she could see Tang Shuyu sitting on the protruding eaves of the second floor. Beneath the eaves hung an octagonal bell, swaying gently in the night breeze, but silent.

He Zhuoming looked up from below and couldn't make out Tang Shuyu's face clearly, but from the red robes and short hair, she knew it was Tang Shuyu. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, "Lin—Qing—yun!"

Tang Shuyu looked down at her, then extended a hand and beckoned her up.

The tower's great door was open, so He Zhuoming went in and climbed the stairs to the second floor. From the second-floor corridor door, there was a viewing area with a railing; but the eaves where Tang Shuyu sat were outside the railing.

He Zhuoming gripped the railing with both hands and said, "Lin Qingyun! Don't sit there—what if you fall?"

Tang Shuyu chuckled. "It's not high at all. Even if I fall, it won't matter. Do you want to come over? It's very comfortable sitting here in the breeze."

He Zhuoming didn't want to seem cowardly, so she climbed over the railing and stepped across the slanted tiles toward Tang Shuyu. She felt her balance seemed to have improved—if it were before, walking on such a steep roof would have definitely made her slip, but now it felt easy, as if walking on flat ground.

A faint sense of pride rose in He Zhuoming's heart, sweeping away all caution. She tucked both hands into the pockets of her jacket and looked up at Tang Shuyu with feigned calm.

Tang Shuyu was sitting cross-legged, at ease; the wind blew his hair and earrings swaying together. There were no lamps inside or outside the tower, only moonlight shining on everything it could reach, including Tang Shuyu—his skin looked cool-toned in the moonlight, a blue-tinted white. His face overlapped with that of the smiling young man from the end of the gambling den; the same curved, smiling eyes were submerged in the darkness.

A chill ran down He Zhuoming's neck, and she stopped in her tracks.

Tang Shuyu stood up lightly, tilted his head, and smiled at her with a gentle tone: "Why did you stop?"