"Mo Yu!" Shen Yebai's heart tightened.
"Yebai..."
Qin Moyu's voice was trembling with tears, and Shen Yebai's heart almost broke when he heard it.
Qin Moyu closed her eyes, and the days and nights she spent with her master kept flashing through her mind. Finally, she broke down and buried her head in Shen Yebai's shoulder, letting out a heart-wrenching cry.
Shen Yebai held Qin Moyu tightly. Every cry from Qin Moyu was like a knife stabbing into his heart, causing excruciating pain. However, he could not take Qin Moyu's pain away and could only gently pat her back to offer some insignificant comfort.
Qin Moyu cried for a long time, her eyes turning red. She leaned weakly against Shen Yebai, and eventually fainted from grief.
"Mo Yu?" Shen Yebai called softly, but Qin Mo Yu still did not respond.
Shen Yebai moved his legs, which had gone numb from not moving for too long, and changed his position to carefully hold Qin Moyu in his arms.
In order to prevent Qin Moyu from being too heartbroken and harming his health, Shen Yebai tried his best to feed him some pills and also helped him to clear the chaotic spiritual energy in his body caused by his disordered emotions. However, this was only a temporary solution and no matter how hard Shen Yebai tried, he could only get Qin Moyu out of unconsciousness and into a deep sleep.
Even in his dream, Qin Moyu frowned deeply, his long eyelashes trembled uneasily, and his hands were clenched tightly, unable to extricate himself from sorrow.
As the sun sets and dusk takes away the last warmth of the world, only a few cold stars remain in the sky when night falls.
Shen Yebai tidied up a relatively clean spot, took off his coat and spread it on the ground, then carefully placed Qin Moyu on it. The night was deep and the dew was cold, so Shen Yebai made sure Qin Moyu was more comfortable.
Shen Yebai lit a fire in the ruins, keeping company with the ice and snow.
Looking at the small fire and Qin Moyu still with his eyes closed, he decided to go up the mountain to collect some more branches.
But Qin Moyu opened his eyes as soon as Shen Yebai left. When Shen Yebai returned, he saw Qin Moyu sitting by the fire with his knees drawn up to his chest, staring intently at the fire.
“Mo Yu…” Shen Yebai held the tree branch, hesitating to speak.
Qin Moyu suddenly buried half his face in his legs, leaving only his eyes showing, and said in a muffled voice, "Ye Bai, I'm a little cold."
Shen Yebai hurriedly threw the branch into the orange flames. The crackling sound of the flames broke the tranquility of the mountain night, but it could not fill the emptiness in his heart.
"It's still so cold..." Qin Moyu hugged her knees tightly, her voice growing increasingly muffled.
Since he acquired the Red Lotus Karmic Fire in this life, Qin Moyu had not felt cold for a long time, but now he felt cold.
—The cold wind that seeped in from a gap in his heart blew into his limbs and bones, making his teeth chatter, and no matter how hard the fire burned, it was all in vain.
Shen Yebai didn't say much, but silently took out a black robe and draped it over Qin Moyu. He then sat down next to Qin Moyu, pressing his body close to hers, and whispered, "Then I'll be closer to you, it'll be warmer this way."
Qin Moyu forced a smile, trying to say he was alright, but only managed a smile that looked worse than a grimace. In the end, he gave up and simply said softly, "Thank you, Ye Bai."
If Shen Yebai hadn't been there for her all along, even Qin Moyu wasn't sure if she would have been devastated by this blow, going insane or falling into despair.
Shen Yebai shook his head and gently grasped Qin Moyu's cold hand, without any hint of romance, simply wanting to transfer his warmth to Qin Moyu.
Perhaps it was the sound of flickering flames at night that stirred loneliness and a desire to confide in someone. Qin Moyu rested her head on Shen Yebai's shoulder and suddenly asked, "Yebai, do you know how strange Master is?"
Shen Yebai knew that Qin Moyu didn't really want to ask him or expect an answer, so he didn't speak and simply listened quietly.
Sure enough, Qin Moyu started talking to himself.
"He's really strange... a grumpy old man... Despite his low cultivation level, he knows a lot of things and can always produce many treasures. Because of this, I even suspected that he might be some powerful being hiding his identity, but the way he skillfully cooked for me dispelled my suspicions. After all, which powerful being would go down the mountain to learn cooking from a chef for three months just because I said I wanted to eat, saying that he couldn't bear to see me looking so pitiful as I eagerly awaited to come down the mountain—"
“He always wore a tattered Taoist robe. I asked him why he didn’t wear better clothes, and he said that the robe had special significance. Later I found out that it was the robe I was wearing on the day he found me. When I was a child, I would cry if I couldn’t see the robe. Before I knew it, I had grown taller than him, but he had gotten used to wearing that robe.”
“He used to be most afraid of me crying. Whenever I made him angry, as long as I pouted, he would be completely calm, afraid that I would cry—even though he knew I was faking it.”
"He said that when I was little, my crying was all thunder and no rain, but the sound of the thunder was enough to bother him. He hopes that I will always be smiling and happy..."
“That grape trellis was built by my master and me. He planted it because I like grapes, but the grapes didn’t bear fruit much. The area under the trellis became his hiding place. Every time I asked him to quit drinking, he would say yes and yes, but then he would hide the wine under the trellis. He would even put a rocking chair on top of it and lie on it every day, afraid that I would find it.”
“His carving skills are not good because he never has the patience to do those detailed things. The jade pendant he gave me on my birthday was the most successful one he had secretly practiced for a long time. It was ugly and funny. How do I know? Because I saw the scraps he threw into the river in the back mountain that day. This silly master thought the river water would carry them away, but he didn’t expect that because there were too many, they blocked the river.”
"We know everything, but we all pretend we don't."
“He used to know nothing, but as I grow older, it seems like he knows everything.” Qin Moyu looked up, a smile on his face, but his eyes were veiled with tears.
"I miss him so much." Qin Moyu's voice grew softer and softer, like a whisper in a dream, or as if it drifted from afar and then dissipated in a gust of wind.
"You still have me." Shen Yebai squeezed Qin Moyu's hand reassuringly and said in a deep voice, "I will help you find the murderer."
"I've found it." Qin Moyu's eyes were half-closed, and her voice was much colder.
"who?"
"I am ashamed."
The unexpected name startled Shen Yebai.
"This is what I found on that person when you left." Qin Moyu sat up straight, his eyes sweeping over a corner before coldly withdrawing his gaze, and a storage bag appeared in his hand.
This storage bag was not only found on the attacker, but it also had a single word embroidered on it: Burn.
The pattern of the embroidered words was exactly the same as the storage bag that Nan Xun stole from Fentian that Qin Moyu had seen that night.
Having read the original novel, Qin Moyu knew that Fen Tian was a petty and narrow-minded cannon fodder character, but he never imagined that just because he was there that night, Fen Tian would be so relentlessly searching for him, even going so far as to burn down the sect and kill his master.
When Qin Moyu found the storage bag, he felt incredibly ironic.
He painstakingly persuaded the old Taoist priest to leave the sect's location in the original story and move to this desolate wilderness in order to avoid the calamity of being wiped out by the male protagonist. He thought everything would be fine, but unexpectedly, he brought disaster to the old Taoist priest instead.
"I've been thinking about this for a while now—"
"In a way, I am also the culprit who killed my master."