Originated from mountains and seas, life never ends

Chapter 133: What is Ah Shui?

Hearing the name, the woman's eyes moved slightly. She was about to shake her head, but then she paused, as if she noticed something, staring at the man, squinting her eyes, as if trying to identify something.

Finally, the woman's face turned cold, her voice was icy, and her aura was sharp.

"Are you that bastard kid?"

"She actually gave birth to you." The woman put down the things in her hands and stared at Xiao's face. She seemed to have seen something funny and sneered: "That woman asked you to come?"

"I heard... Luo Qingchen is here." Xiao's expression was slightly tense, and there were complicated emotions in his black eyes. "How did you recognize him?"

"You look a lot like her." The woman said coldly, glancing at Meng Liyun and narrowing her eyes, "Is this your daughter?"

"No. I met him on the road." Xiao pursed his lips and half-closed his eyes, as if thinking about something.

Meng Liyun didn't understand what they were talking about. She looked at Xiao, then at the woman, but never asked any questions. She kept her presence to a minimum and guessed about their relationship in her mind.

It seems like they have a bad relationship... Are they enemies? But there is no such tension... Are they friends? But the atmosphere is so weird...

"So, what are you doing here? To recognize your relatives?" The woman twitched her lips and smiled sarcastically, "Then you'd better get out of here. I feel sick just by looking at your face."

Meng Liyun was stunned and looked at Xiao, but found that he didn't look unusual.

Meng Liyun looked at Xiao's face in confusion. He was very good-looking. Although he was a man, his facial lines were soft and not sharp. It was just that his expression was too indifferent and looked a little cold. He looked handsome. I don't know what the woman disliked.

"...I want to find out...about him." Xiao's throat seemed a little dry. He didn't show any anger when he heard the woman's offensive words. His eyelids trembled slightly and he spoke softly.

"Him? Didn't that woman tell you? What did she do before..." The woman said, as if she thought of something angry. Her eyes were sharp and her whole body exuded a cold aura.

"She's dead." Xiao's voice was still calm, but the black color in his eyes did not seem to be what he showed. "Only a skeleton is left."

"Huh?" The woman was stunned, but then she laughed. "If that's the case, then God is indeed merciful. No, letting her die like this is too easy for her. She should be scraped into fish scales and let die in endless pain and regret."

The woman's tone was sinister, and her eyes showed a look of pleasure. This made Meng Liyun feel uncomfortable, and she couldn't help but look at Xiao, somewhat puzzled.

According to their words, wasn't this woman scolding his mother? Why could he be so indifferent?

"...So, is Luo Qingchen here?"

Xiao's indifferent look made the woman frown successfully, and looked at him suspiciously: "Are you not angry when I say this about her?"

"..." Xiao paused, and instead of answering the question, he asked again, "Can you tell me what happened back then?"

Now it was the woman's turn to pause. She looked at Xiao carefully with a questioning look before finally opening the door and letting them in.

There was nothing special about the house, just like other farmers' houses, with a few farm tools hanging on the wall and firewood piled in the corner of the kitchen. The woman took out a pot of corn and wanted to peel all the corns one by one.

Xiao and the woman sat opposite each other. Before sitting down, the woman glanced at an inconspicuous corner. Meng Liyun followed her line of sight and found two swords.

The swords are one red and one blue, one wide and one narrow, and they seem to be a pair.

"What do you want to know?"

"…She said that he didn't want us—"

"I don't want you?" The woman sneered. "What a joke!"

Xiao closed his mouth and looked at her quietly, obviously wanting to listen to what she said.

“You shouldn’t have been born.” The woman’s eyes were cold, and she was gloomy as she thought of something. “If she hadn’t knelt on the ground and begged me that she was pregnant, I would have killed her with a sword.”

"..."

"...Qingchen and I were engaged since we were young. We grew up together as childhood sweethearts, and later, when we had the chance, we joined the immortal sect together and practiced together. We were very close because we were sure that we would be together with each other..." The woman recalled the past, and her eyes seemed to deepen, "Until I met her when I went out one day."

"At first, I just treated her as my sister - Qingchen did the same. If she was in danger, I would protect her first. If she got into trouble, we would do our best to help her. Even if we heard others say that she had bad intentions, we were willing to believe what we saw with our own eyes... until that day -"

As the woman said this, she exerted force with her fingers and inadvertently crushed the corn stalk into pieces.

"She found out about my engagement with Qingchen, and everything changed after that."

"She started out by trying to alienate Qingchen and me, deliberately stirring up trouble and causing conflicts between us... But I had told Qingchen how to resolve conflicts many years ago, so we explained everything clearly each time. So, after a few times, we realized something was wrong."

"Although I felt that something was wrong with her, I didn't know why she was like that, so I started to observe her and found that she always said those ambiguous words to Qingchen. Her words were very powerful. They didn't make Qingchen feel uncomfortable, but they also made him feel inexplicably close to me."

"I found out about this and told Qingchen about it. After we discussed it, we decided to make things clear so that she wouldn't do this again..."

"Who would have thought——"

When the woman said this, she clenched her teeth, her voice suddenly became gloomy, and her eyes were terrifying. Meng Liyun dared not breathe, and could only lower her head and clasp her fingers.

"She actually cast a spell on Qingchen."

"It's a love poison... Either you have an antidote, or you fall in love with her."

"Qingchen didn't want to. I wanted to find her and force her to hand over the antidote, but she hid it. We were at our wits' end. Qingchen had planned to die of the poison on the last day. But I didn't expect that she would take the initiative to give us the antidote."

"She cried like a pear blossom in the rain at that time, saying that she wanted to change her past and seek peace..."

"We saw her expression and she offered us the antidote, so we believed her," the woman said, and she couldn't help but sneer. "Now that I think about it, I was really stupid."

"Afterwards, nearly two years passed, and she didn't do anything weird again, and her behavior became normal. We gradually put our minds at ease... Unexpectedly, during a training session, Qingchen was seriously injured, and I was not there at the time. She... actually put a curse on Qingchen again, controlling his body and making him have sex with her when he was completely sober..."

When the woman said this, her eyes became even colder and her tone was filled with disgust.

"By the time I arrived, it was too late. I saw Qingchen unconscious in the cave with her clothes dishevelled and her inner garments - she had shown them to me before, so I recognized them - but she had disappeared."

"Later, when Qingchen came to his senses, he was so ashamed that he wanted to slit his wrists and neck several times, but I stopped him. If you think what I said is false, you can wait for him to come back and see the scars."

"Until now, when I see those injuries, I wish they would multiply on that woman." The woman became excited, grabbed Xiao's collar, and stared at him coldly, "Do you understand now? How did you get here?"

"A few months after that day, I finally found her. I wanted to kill her with a sword, but I didn't expect... she actually cried and told me that she was pregnant. She asked me to let her go and promised that she would never appear in front of us again..."

The woman gritted her teeth and tightened her fingers. Her eyes were horrified. “Do you understand? You shouldn’t have existed in the first place. Your life is a stain and a nightmare to Qingchen! When Qingchen heard this, he lost his mind on the spot and wanted to kill her with his sword. I stopped him because I didn’t want him to dirty his hands. I cut the woman’s tendons in her hands and feet, and then destroyed her cultivation and told her to get lost. Do you understand?!”

"I'm telling you, if you came here today to recognize some father, you'd better get out of here! Qingchen and I don't welcome you, you——"

"...I just want to take a look at him." Xiao was silent for a long time, and finally spoke, "I just want to know what kind of person he is."

"Can I see him?"

After Xiao asked, he quietly waited for her answer.

The woman wanted to refuse, but she looked at Xiao and seemed to be stunned by his expression. She was silent for a moment: "He will be back soon after sunset. You are not allowed to tell him anything about that woman."

"Otherwise...I will definitely kill you."

The woman threatened him murderously, but Xiao seemed not to feel it, nodded slightly, and thanked her.

Meng Liyun couldn't see clearly on both sides, and at this time she couldn't quite understand the meaning of what they said. She just felt that Xiao's mother sounded a little bad, and she didn't have much feeling.

The woman loosened Owl's collar, sat down and began to shell corn again.

Xiao also sat down and watched her peel the fruit quietly.

There was silence all around. The yellow dog lay on one side, looking left and right with its black and shiny eyes, and whimpered twice like a spoiled child.

"...Have you been following that woman all these years?" The woman lowered her eyes and was silent for a moment before speaking again.

"No, she died when I was a child."

"Why? Vendetta?" the woman asked casually.

"because I."

Xiao's words made the woman pause.

Xiao seemed not to notice and continued, "She used my sister and me as tools to raise the Gu. My sister was responsible for bleeding, and I was responsible for letting the Gu worms parasitize. We lived in an iron cage and were not allowed to go out at ordinary times. We were only let out when we needed to bleed, or to take out the fully developed Gu worms and put them in new ones."

The woman looked up at him, her eyes changed again and again, and her lips moved slightly, as if she wanted to say something.

"One day my sister couldn't bear it anymore and went out to find someone to help... In the end, one life was exchanged for another. She died, and I survived."

Xiao's tone was frighteningly calm, and there was no ripple from beginning to end, as if he was talking about a very ordinary thing. There were no intense emotions, and no touching words. The language he used was also quite ordinary, and there was no sense of relief at all after surviving a painful disaster.

"...So, you are just being used as tools by her."

The woman was silent for a moment, then sneered, with mockery in her eyes.

"Sure enough, I didn't misjudge you." The woman muttered, opened her mouth, and said loudly, "She just used you as bargaining chips at the time, and wanted to use it to gamble."

"I thought she would treat the child she had worked so hard to get well... Really, she felt that you couldn't tie Qingchen down anymore, so she just abandoned you. This way of doing things is really like her cruel personality."

The woman said sarcastically, as if she had never considered whether Xiao would be sad to hear her say that.

"So, she has never loved you, and you don't need to be sad about it. She gave birth to you just to use you to impress Qingchen. Seeing that you couldn't gain any benefits for her, she used you without mercy."

Xiao didn't say anything, he just lowered his head, not knowing what he was thinking.

The woman finished shelling the corn in her hand, stood up and walked towards the kitchen. After a while, the kitchen emitted a faint green smoke, and the billowing air quickly warmed up the room.

Because they were in a hurry to get on the road, they only had a little lunch at noon. Meng Liyun was a little hungry, but she looked at Xiao and didn't dare to say anything. She looked at the yellow dog at the door who looked up at her, thought for a moment, and slowly approached. Seeing that the dog didn't show any rejection, she tentatively stepped forward and touched its head.

The yellow dog licked her hand with its eyes narrowed. Its rough tongue licked her palm, and the warm temperature reached her heart. Meng Liyun relaxed and smiled at it.

With a creak, the door seemed to open.

"Are there any guests?"

A gentle male voice came, and looking towards the source of the sound, I saw a wheat-colored man carrying a bamboo basket walking towards this side. When the yellow dog saw the man, it immediately wagged its tail attentively and barked a few times enthusiastically.

The man smiled and touched its head and scratched its chin. When the man lowered his hands and stretched his neck towards the dog, Meng Liyun saw several hideous long scars crisscrossing, extending from his wrist to his forearm, and spreading diagonally from behind his ears to the depths of his collar.

Thinking of what the woman said, Meng Liyun's eyes moved slightly.

The man turned his gaze towards her, his eyes curved, and he smiled, with stars in his eyes: "You are--?"

Meng Liyun suddenly heard him talking to her and didn't know how to react. While she was thinking, she saw the man take out a few candies from his arms, put them in her palm, and touched her head.

"Qingyun?" The man didn't hear the woman's reply. He raised his body in confusion, but met the eyes of Xiao who was sitting opposite the door.

At this time, the sun had already set. There were a few lights on in the house. A breeze blew, and under the flickering lights, Luo Qingchen could not see the boy's expression clearly, but looking into his eyes, he suddenly felt an indescribable sense of crisis in his heart.

This boy... is dangerous.

Luo Qingchen's eyes narrowed slightly, his fingers tightened, he stood up straight, looked at the girl beside him, paused, and smiled: "Is this your child?"

Xiao looked at the man and nodded in an instant.

At this time, the woman walked out of the kitchen with a spatula in her hand, looked at Xiao, then looked at Luo Qingchen: "Go wash your hands first, it's time to eat - where's Ah Zhi?"

Luo Qingchen was about to speak when a boy covered in mud and with red eyes walked out from behind him. The boy pursed his lips and looked at the woman timidly, not daring to speak.

Meng Liyun then noticed the boy and looked at him curiously - the boy should be younger than her, his hands and face were red, and his body was covered with mud. Noticing Meng Liyun's eyes, the boy's face turned even redder.

"How did you do that?" the woman asked, stunned.

After hearing her question, Luo Qingchen looked at the boy helplessly, walked aside and put the things down, obviously not intending to help him explain.

"I... I made a bet with them, saying that the loser would have to challenge Ah Shui, and I, I lost..."

Azhi told the story hesitantly, his eyes wandering around, not daring to look the woman in the eye.

"...Go change your clothes, wash your face and come over for dinner." The woman didn't lose her temper. She brought the cooked meal to the table and glanced at Xiao. "You guys can come too."

Xiao was stunned, he didn't expect her to say that. Meng Liyun was overjoyed and hurriedly thanked the woman.

Seeing her like this, Xiao did not refuse and nodded in agreement.

Luo Qingchen helped the woman prepare the food. After everything was done, Azhi also changed his clothes and washed his hands before coming over.

The woman brought two more stools and asked Azhi and Meng Liyun to sit on one side. The dining table was square, and Xiao was sitting opposite. Luo Qingchen looked at them and had to sit between them.

Luo Qingchen waited for a long time but the woman didn't introduce herself. Just when he was about to ask a question, he heard the strange boy next to him speak.

Xiao opened his mouth, and the first question he asked was to Azhi.

"Ashui...what is it?"