Chapter 3

“Ah, it hurts!” Shen Qing’s eyes instantly filled with tears. Even a pain of three parts, she played up to ten.
Yet faced with the weeping, flower-like girl, Li Daoxuan felt no pity whatsoever. If anything, his impatience only grew.
“This priest asked how you came up here, and for what purpose,” he said, voice edged with annoyance.
Shen Qing’s temper flared too. With a slight sob in her voice, she protested, “I already said I don’t know! I chased my maid here! She suddenly grabbed my hairpin and ran, no matter how I called, she wouldn’t stop. That hairpin is important to me!”
Li Daoxuan watched her quietly, something unreadable flickering in his dark eyes.
Shen Qing glared right back, refusing to yield. Tears hung on her lashes, about to fall yet stubbornly clinging there, the corners of her eyes red and damp, pitiful enough to melt most hearts.
Anyone else would have felt nothing but tenderness, wanting to coax her gently.
Li Daoxuan, however, remained unmoved. The killing intent in his heart only deepened.
Just as Shen Qing thought he would, like in her previous life, drive his sword straight through her chest,
The door exploded inward.
Bang,
A violent gust tore through the room, sending everything flying, their robes whipping and tangling in the storm.
Clang!
Li Daoxuan flicked his sword, knocking aside a fast-moving object. It spun through the air and embedded itself in the wall with a metallic ring.
Looking closely, it was a pink-and-white magnolia hairpin.
“My hairpin!” Shen Qing cried, shoving his hand away to dash over and yank the jade pin from the wood. Seeing it intact, she let out a real breath of relief.
She’d barely exhaled halfway when the demon wind knocked her off her feet. Her palms scraped against the floorboards, leaving bloody streaks. Her bun came undone, ink-black hair cascading down her back like a spill of dark silk.
She might have ended up on the floor, but her hairpin was safe in her hands, and the sword at her throat had been withdrawn. Shen Qing couldn’t help feeling secretly thankful for the demon’s timely arrival. If not for it, she’d already be thinking of ways to drag this man into the grave with her.
Li Daoxuan stood like a boulder, completely unmoved, letting the wind lash his robes so they snapped and billowed.
“A brat who hasn’t even lost his milk teeth dares kill my companion!”
A furious male voice shook the room. A flash of green lunged straight for Li Daoxuan.
The sound, laced with demonic force, pierced Shen Qing’s ears. She clapped her hands over them with a cry of pain.
Li Daoxuan didn’t spare her a glance. “So what if I killed your companion?” he shouted back at the oncoming demon. “This priest will grind you into ash as well.”
With that, he flicked a glance at Shen Qing curled in the corner, then lifted his sword and met the demon head-on.
Man and monster clashed without the slightest regard for the ordinary girl still trapped in the room. Within a few moves, they’d already smashed nearly everything inside to pieces.
Shen Qing had no intention of just sitting there and waiting to die. For the sake of her life, and her poor ears, she pulled a prepared yellow talisman from her sleeve and slapped it down, quickly forming a small barrier around herself to block all harm.
In her previous life, before the Shen family’s massacre, Shen Qing’s talent had been so mediocre that no matter how she trained, her progress was like water dripped into sand. In the end, she simply embraced a salted-fish slump.
At Xuanji Pavilion, Liu Jiyue worried about everything for her. At home, her parents and relatives sheltered her from all storms. All she had to do was enjoy life. Before the age of seventeen, her biggest troubles were the occasional early-morning lessons at Xuanji Pavilion, or not being able to buy a dress she wanted.
From the moment the Shen family was wiped out and Shen Ling arrived at Xuanji Pavilion, Shen Qing finally felt a sense of crisis, and only then did she begin to work hard.
No matter how she trained, though, her cultivation refused to budge. Her sword-work was laughably bad, so she turned her focus to formations instead.
Later, she wasted countless years obsessing over Shen Ling and neglected her studies, but before that, she’d at least managed to learn formations to a barely respectable level, enough to be of use.
Otherwise, in her previous life she could never have activated a forbidden array, dragged Li Daoxuan in as a blood sacrifice, and bought her own rebirth.
Now, with the barrier up, the piercing demonic energy vanished at once. No matter how fiercely man and monster clashed, nothing reached Shen Qing’s little corner.
The male demon had a strikingly handsome face and wore a shocking blue-green robe. His hair was green as well, and each of his ten fingers ended in razor-sharp claws, one swipe against Li Daoxuan’s silver bracer struck sparks.
The sparks had barely died before Li Daoxuan sliced off one of those clawed hands.
The longer they fought, the clearer it became that the demon was at a disadvantage. Li Daoxuan remained utterly composed, not even using his full strength.
The peacock demon seemed to realize he couldn’t win. In a panic, he plucked several beautiful tail feathers and shot them at Li Daoxuan.
Li Daoxuan’s sword flashed, deflecting them, only for a few feathers to change direction midair and bury themselves in the wall right beside Shen Qing.
She plucked one out and examined it carefully, discovering that it was a feather from a peacock’s tail. So the demon’s true form was a peacock.
After admiring it, Shen Qing casually flicked the feather toward Li Daoxuan’s side of the room.
While Li Daoxuan was occupied slicing down the volley of feathers, the peacock demon dove through the window and fled. As he escaped, he still had the gall to shout, “You just wait! I’ll come back for revenge!”
Li Daoxuan did not bother standing there to listen. With a soft snort, “Idiot.”, he stepped onto the window frame and leapt out in pursuit, his high-tied hair streaming behind him in a clean, elegant arc.
The room fell abruptly silent.
Shen Qing dispelled the barrier and tiptoed over the debris to the window.
In the glow of the setting sun, one red and one green figure chased each other across the rooftop tiles. Shen Qing gave a small, amused huff. “Two idiots.”
With that, she tugged a feather out of the window frame. Hanging from the end of the plume was a Twin Fish jade pendant.
Two plump little fish bit each other’s tails in playful circles. The jade was smooth and round, edges worn soft by frequent handling.
One glance was enough for Shen Qing to tuck it into her brocade pouch.
Having acquired what she wanted, she didn’t linger. She slipped around the crowds, returned to the private room by the back door, and before long Cuizhi came back as well.
The little maid burst in clutching the sesame flatcakes, panting from her run, only to see her young miss with her hair in disarray, clothes rumpled, and a fresh cut across her neck, blood still beading there.
Scarlet drops against her pale throat were shockingly bright, like red pearls nestled in jade.
Plop.
The flatcakes hit the floor. Cuizhi’s eyes went red. She shrieked, “Miss! What happened to you?!”
Sobbing, she rushed over and pressed a handkerchief to Shen Qing’s neck to stop the bleeding. “Was, was there some villain who broke in just now? Why didn’t you call for help?!”
Shen Qing was still nibbling the snacks on the table, letting Cuizhi cling to her and cry. When the maid finally seemed about ready to start screaming for the entire restaurant, Shen Qing shoved a jade candy into her mouth.
“Your young miss is fine. I just ran into a little demon hurting people and dealt with it in passing.”
Everyone in Chang’an knew she’d grown up at Xuanji Pavilion. The fact that she could subdue a minor demon didn’t surprise Cuizhi, but seeing her mistress in such a state still made her heart ache.
On her way back from the next street over, Cuizhi had noticed a few young Daoists searching for something. She’d guessed there was a stray demon on the loose near the restaurant.
“Miss, this place is dangerous,” she blurted. “Let’s not eat anymore, let’s go home! Deputy Liu is supposed to visit the estate today. With him there, we’ll be safe for sure!”
Shen Qing didn’t argue. She nodded pleasantly.
Cuizhi tied the handkerchief around her neck to hide the wound, then used the magnolia hairpin to twist her mistress’s hair into a simple bun.
The disheveled clothes, however, were beyond fixing. In a rush, the little maid ran to the clothing shop next door and bought a cloak to drape over Shen Qing’s shoulders.
Only once they’d left the main hall and safely boarded the carriage did Cuizhi finally breathe again.
“Tell them to hurry,” she urged.
The coachman obeyed. The whip cracked, and the horses picked up speed.
Shen Qing added, “When we get back, don’t say a word about this. I’m fine anyway. No need to make Father and Mother worry for nothing.”
Cuizhi’s brows scrunched together. She hesitated a long moment, but in the end, she agreed. The master and madam had spent half their lives worrying over their daughter. It was only right not to add to their burdens.
The horses snorted, hooves drumming steadily over the road. The carriage wheels rattled as they rolled away, leaving two deep tracks that were quickly trampled over by countless feet.
Back at the Shen estate, Shen Qing secretly applied medicine to her wound. It would take at least several days to fade completely. The girl frowned at herself in the mirror and sighed.
“Got the watermelon, but twisted my ankle,” she muttered.
If Mother saw the wound on her neck, the house would be turned upside down.
She fretted for a while, then a sudden idea lit up her mind. She shot upright. “Cuizhi! Bring me those neck ribbons!”
She re-did her hair into twin buns, changed into a pale yellow ruqun, and tied little green-belled ornaments at the base of each bun. A gentle shake set the bells chiming softly.
Now she stood before the bronze mirror, holding ribbons up to her neck one by one.
In her previous life, she had gone through a phase where she was obsessed with buying neck ribbons, every color and pattern, matched to different dresses to make her neck look even more slender.
Now they were finally useful.
In the end, she chose a light green ribbon. It matched her outfit perfectly. When Shen Qing stood and spun in place, she looked like a little spirit from the flower fields, light, bright, and lively.
Outside Chang’an, in a deserted stretch of countryside, the peacock demon and Li Daoxuan were locked in a vicious duel. The surrounding weeds were decapitated in wide swaths, each tuft shortened by a good three inches.
In the end, the peacock demon came up short, literally and figuratively, forced back into its true form by a single strike.
Li Daoxuan grabbed it by the tail and hoisted the entire bird into the air before sheathing his sword.
His handsome features were tousled with wild arrogance and disdain. “So much nonsense from your mouth, and this is all you amount to.”
The peacock coughed blood, dangling like a dead fish in his grip, unable to move. At his words, another spray of blood burst from its beak.
Li Daoxuan grimaced and held it farther away.
Thinking back on the two demons he’d handled today, and how neatly they aligned with the locations of the disturbances, he decided his business here was done. Time to return.
As for the peacock… Autumn Blade would eat well tonight.
With that in mind, Li Daoxuan slung his sword across his back and automatically reached for his waist.
His hand met empty air.
He froze.
Looking down, he saw nothing at his belt. The jade pendant that should have been hanging there was gone. A sheet of ice seemed to settle over him.
His jade pendant was missing.