Ch60 - Making Yellow Content?

Editor: Sahlonknir

The twilight clouds remained suspended in the sky.

The sound of the wind rushed to his ears as the giant eagle flew onwards. Even though it was flying relatively slowly, Jiang Yinghe still experienced his ears popping when it landed.

He rearranged his hair and sleeves as he sat on the cliff and looked down. Lush forests of ancient trees greeted him, as well as the looming peaks in the distance.

Clouds the colour of fire covered half of the sky.

Jiang Yinghe stared at them for a long while before another shade of red sprang to mind, a shade even more vivid and passionate than the hazy sunset.

His memory was fuzzy and difficult to decipher, so he turned his head to look at Chang Ye, who rested beside him.

Chang Ye turned his ink black eyes to meet his gaze. They were filled with nothing but pureness and sincerity.

A gentle breeze lifted the hair framing Jiang Yinghe’s face.

Everything was as it once was.

To Jiang Yinghe, the past 370 years seemed to be but a drunken dream. However, it was an endless cycle of pain and recovery for others.

Chang Ye looked at him for quite some time before he quietly said, “Shizun.”

“En.” Jiang Yinghe responded. He could sense the unease radiating from the other figure, so he raised a hand to ruffle those soft locks. “What’s on your mind?”

…Nothing really.

Just the selfish desires of a child.

Chang Ye didn’t voice any of this as he let Shizun ruffle his hair. He shuffled over and said, “Shizun, Ye-er is actually not your only disciple.”

His tone was hesitant, but he went on.

“I’m your third one.”

Jiang Yinghe nodded. “I vaguely knew this. I just couldn’t recall the specifics.”

“But the three of us,” Chang Ye continued seriously, “are actually one person.”

“…One person?”

Jiang Yinghe was stunned. These words seemed to pierce an invisible membrane in his mind. Gradually, the figures of the other two became clearer.

Chang Ye was far too close. His breath slowly approached, revealing a familiar and provocative fragrance.

This scent lingered around them.

“Ye-er actually doesn’t want to become one with them,” Chang Ye said, “but for Shizun’s sake…”

His words trailed off.

“I’m guessing they feel the same way.”

He placed a very light kiss on Jiang Yinghe’s lips, but the words he murmured were even more alluring.

“They must be willing to do this for your sake.”

Jiang Yinghe mulled over this revelation. Just when he was about to reply, the giant eagle resting nearby cawed as it looked at a fairly close point in the sky.

Chang Ye followed its gaze. He noticed how the streams on a lone peak before the fiery horizon turned dark red and viscous. It was reminiscent of blood.

Chang Ye’s eyes dimmed. He said to Jiang Yinghe, “Shixiong’s going to hit me now.”

Jiang Yinghe was startled, “What?”

Chang Ye added, “He’s always disdained me. Now that I didn’t tell him that I’ve found you, Li-shixiong’s definitely going to lose his temper.”

Before Jiang Yinghe could finish deciphering this sentence, the streams of fresh blood on the lone peak rose and gathered to form the figure of a man.

Li Huanhan stepped out from between the currents made up of blood, dressed in dark robes. His cloak shifted slightly as the chilly mountain breeze of early spring blew past, revealing the rust-red fabric on the inner surface.

There was a black snake with shining scales curled around his shoulders. A pair of ice-cold eyes the colour of blood swept across his surroundings. When they alighted on Jiang Yinghe, Li Huanhan closed his eyes as if he had drifted off to sleep from exhaustion.

The residual sun stained the clouds behind him a rich shade of crimson.

All Jiang Yinghe felt was an arctic blast of wind brush past as he turned to take a look. But Chang Ye was forced to retreat dozens of steps by this sword wind. As the current scattered, a blood red sword swept him into an adjacent cliff, half of which promptly exploded.

Not only that, many of the smaller protrusions in between were also shattered by the energy emitted by the sword. Cracks emerged under Jiang Yinghe’s feet as the giant eagle beside him suddenly took to the skies with a loud cry.

Just as the cliff broke apart, Jiang Yinghe suddenly fell into a familiar embrace. He landed in a safe location with Li Huanhan holding him by the waist.

Jiang Yinghe could only watch as this series of events unfolded. He was still worrying over Chang Ye when his hands were caught by the other party.

Li Huanhan carefully checked him over to make sure he was not injured anywhere before frowning and rubbing his hands.

“How are they this cold?”

It was early spring at the moment, and they were on top of a cliff to boot. Even if he wore many layers, their effectiveness was still diminished under these conditions. But Jiang Yinghe thought he could handle it, which is why he didn’t mention it to Chang Ye.

Jiang Yinghe’s fingers were narrow, thin and slender, and their joints were faintly blue due to the weather. Li Huanhan’s hands covered them completely, but his body temperature wasn’t high either.

Jiang Yinghe said, “It’s fine, it’s not too cold. Is Chang Ye…”

Before he could finish, a weight settled around his shoulders. Black fleece adorned the top of the cloak in a soft half-circle. The rust-red interior reached all the way down to his ankles.

Li Huanhan spoke as he lowered his head to fasten the cloak, “He won’t die.”

At that moment, perhaps to illustrate his point, the shattered mountain face in the distance disintegrated even more into dust as a seemingly weak but completely unharmed youth in red emerged. He flew back and landed in front of Jiang Yinghe.

However, when Chang Ye tried to get a little closer, a sword the colour of fresh blood blocked his path. He glanced at the Jimie sword freely radiating demonic energy before turning to Li Huanhan, who was tying the cloak for Jiang Yinghe.

“Why are you this angry?” Chang Ye asked, “I was only able to find Shizun because half of my devil core was…”

Li Huanhan turned a deaf ear as he tied the ribbon before looking into the sea of stars in Jiang Yinghe’s bright eyes. He quietly asked, “Did he bully you?”

Jiang Yinghe was about to say, “How could Chang Ye have the guts to bully his shizun” when he remembered how he helped relieve his little disciple’s heat at the inn yesterday. He hesitated, “No.”

It was because of this half second of hesitation that the vividly crimson sword flashed brightly, as if sensing its master’s intentions, and flew over, enveloped by raging demonic energy.

It swatted the little disciple away again.

Jiang Yinghe was silent for a moment. He didn’t expect how ‘harmonious’ the relationship between these two disciples of his were. He sighed, “Nothing happened, really. Don’t be angry.”

It was difficult to tell when Li Huanhan was angry. He has always been a stoic and emotionless man who revealed a third of his true emotions on his face at most. His words were not the best clue about his mood. Rather, it was his actions and habits that revealed his temperament.

For example, right now Jiang Yinghe vaguely felt like he was eating vinegar, although he wasn’t sure why.

Li Huanhan brushed back the strands of hair by Jiang Yinghe’s ear. “Do you remember me?”

Jiang Yinghe nodded seriously and said, “I remember…a little bit.”

“Of what?”

Jiang Yinghe was too embarrassed to say it out loud. He stared into the other party’s calm red eyes for a moment before leaning in close to his ear. “I know that…you once locked me in a small dark room.”

The moment Li Huanhan appeared, he recalled the name and identity of this person. However, Jiang Yinghe didn’t expect the first memory he recovered to be…that. As he mulled over the complex emotions attached, he added.

“I also remember that you told me…you wanted to be by my side and live peacefully together forever.”

Actually, Jiang Yinghe omitted the latter part of that phrase, which was “without ever knowing the meaning of cruelty”.

Li Huanhan was taken aback. Slowly wrapping his arms around Jiang Yinghe, he whispered, “I’m sorry for my impulsive actions then.”

Their heartbeats seemed to synchronize as their chests pressed together, radiating a slight residual heat. Then the almost always silent system added a brand new purification bar with a ding.

Jiang Yinghe stared at the almost full blackened status bar before turning to the soft spoken man with dark eyes in front of him. He felt a sense of dissonance trying to connect the two.

The system issued a new notification.

“Purification Task 1: Please give the Innate True Nature a reassuring kiss.”

For the first time, Jiang Yinghe heard emotion from the mechanical voice of the system. He went over its words again in his head, pausing on “Innate True Nature”. He suddenly remembered some of the cultivation techniques he had learned before.

Among the techniques of the righteous faction, there were many for incarnating outside the body. They inevitably involved splitting the soul. One theory stated that the human soul was divided into three parts, namely the innate true nature, the acquired mentality, and the tendency of the heart.

At this point, Jiang Yinghe hadn’t yet discovered that the innate true nature was a combination of good and evil, as existence itself was fraught with setbacks. The acquired mentality, however, needed to be constantly honed and corrected by the trials one would face from Heaven’s predetermined path for them.

This world was, after all, a muddled place that humans could never fully control.

The system impatiently interrupted his thoughts by repeating the mission objective again. Jiang Yinghe looked up at Li Huanhan’s nearly full progress bar before meeting his eyes.

They were gloomy and a dark red, resembling both slowly flowing lava and crystal clear gems.

Jiang Yinghe could not look away. Tentatively, he leaned over to kiss him. “…I don’t blame you anymore.”

His slight initiative managed to drive back the almost filled blackened status bar by a large margin to a relatively safe percentage.

…Is this guy this easy to coax?

Just as Jiang Yinghe was considering whether or not to comfort the other party a little more, he was taken by the waist and kissed. The warm tip of a tongue ventured into his mouth.

Although his waist was held tightly, there was just enough space left, a half finger’s width. It seemed to be the invisible battleground between self control and desire.

The black snake coiled on Li Huanhan’s shoulder opened its eyes from its dormant state, as if affected by the emotions of its master. Its vertical pupils unmovingly captured the sight before it.

At the same time, Chang Ye, who had been swatted off the cliff for the second time, climbed back up and shook the dust off his claws before he noticed what was going on.

Although his cultivation had fallen and he was no longer a match for Li Huanhan in terms of fighting ability, this didn’t affect his ability to compete for Shizun’s favour.

Just as Chang Ye morphed into a little kitten and got ready to pounce over, the bright red blood sword automatically rose and imposingly placed itself before his eyes.

Chang Ye: “…”

“…Life is difficult.” sighed the kitten.

Li Huanhan seemed to sense Chang Ye’s return, becoming more restrained. He fondled Shizun’s slightly red lips with a hand as he quietly asked, “You still don’t know to keep breathing throughout?”

Jiang Yinghe grabbed his hand and forced it downwards before saying, “—I shouldn’t have thought you were easy to coax.”

This person was good in every other way, but he was impulsive when it came to love. And sometimes he could be quite fierce when he lost control.

Jiang Yinghe unconsciously recovered this insight from his memories.

He turned to look at the little cat on the cliff’s edge that was guarded by the blood sword. The little white cat covered in soot and debris was meowing up a storm, his entire body radiating petulance.

Chang Ye saw Jiang Yinghe looking over and immediately perked up again. When he tried to bound over into this person’s arms, he was mercilessly intercepted in midair, where he now hung by the scruff of his neck.

An indifferent voice suffused with a hidden hint of distaste rang out.

“You’re covered in dust and too dirty for that.”

Li Huanhan turned to look at the jet-black cloak on Jiang Yinghe, and the pastel robe beneath it, adding.

“Don’t touch him.”

The little white cat literally could not be more aggrieved than in this moment. He fiercely showed off his fangs and claws in midair for a moment, before his round, inky eyes turned to Jiang Yinghe. Chang Ye meowed pitifully twice at him.

Touched, Jiang Yinghe comforted him, “I’ll give you a bath when we get to an inn.”

The same instant the little white cats perked up at the word “bath”, Li Huanhan, who was carrying him, spoke up, “Let me do it.”

The little white cat stiffened. He wilted and lowered his head, meowing quietly to himself as he angrily thought, “This invisible tank of vinegar… Pah!”

—-

The invisible tank of vinegar became one of Jiang Yinghe’s escorts. He also gave the letter he had received to Jiang Yinghe.

Jiang Yinghe saw pale pink paper inlaid with peach blossom petals when he opened it up. Jiang Yinghe’s whereabouts and Li Huanhan’s identity were hinted at in incomparably beautiful calligraphy. At the end, there was a postscript mentioning a gift for the Saint.

For some reason, Jiang Yinghe thought the handwriting looked very familiar. He couldn’t remember who it belonged to, so he asked, “What gift did he send you?”

Li Huanhan glanced at him before expressionlessly taking out a book from his spatial artifact.

He handed it to Jiang Yinghe.

The cover of the book was a solid blue, and its neatly written title vertically spelled out—

《The Xianjun’s Secret Lover》

Jiang Yinghe: “…The style isn’t too shabby.”

That was all he could really vocalize at this moment, pure amazement.

“It seemed that humans in any world desire a perfect romance…” he thought as he flipped open the cover. Then the illustration on the first page caused him to stiffen.

The little white cat that was fresh from his bath scooted over like he was curious too. Jiang Yinghe pushed him away before he even got a glimpse of it.

Jiang Yinghe closed the book, thinking that he must’ve opened it the wrong way. When he turned the page again, he had no choice but to confirm exactly what type of book this was. It was a little yellow book of the cultivation world; the kind with illustrations.

…This was way too shocking.

Jiang Yinghe let out a long breath. A thought vaguely rose to the surface. This seemed like the work of a friend of his.

“…There’s no signature anywhere. Just who sent it?”

Li Huanhan answered, “It was entrusted to the Heavenly Pavilion for delivery. Most people would find it difficult to locate the Tian Mo School.”

Jiang Yinghe nodded and looked at the handwriting on the letter again. “….He doesn’t seem to have any intention of hiding his identity. I swear I’ve seen this handwriting before……Tong Guiyu?”

As he spoke, he turned over the letter and found a heart painted on the back with cinnabar.

Jiang Yinghe sighed. “…It really is him.”

As expected of the He Huan Sect, the site of the largest and most obscene adult industry in the cultivation world. Everyone there was filled with strange colours.

Author’s Corner

Tong Guiyu, who had changed colours: I’m unbelievably excited right now~