Crush's Cold Senior Sister is Actually Childhood Sweetheart - Chapter 26

Chapter 26: I Could Only Grab the Corner of the Quilt and Drag it Towards the Other Party Little By Little.

“But—” Zhao Han’s words took a turn. “One of the rooms was where the Vermilion Bird Dao Master stayed before. I’m not sure if the two of you…”

“We’ll just take one room, thank you!”

Ling Qi’s mouth was open, but before she could say a word, An Jin quickly took over. Seeing the surprised looks on Ling Qi and Zhao Han’s faces, An Jin realized that her response was perhaps a little too eager.

Zhao Han didn’t say much. She just nodded and led them to the room.

Although the guest room in the cottage was simple, it was surprisingly well-equipped. Pushing the wooden door open with a creak, they were greeted by a clean and tidy single bed, with a router on the bedside table. To the right of the door was a bookshelf with some dusty books on it.

A projector screen was hung opposite the bed, and a projector was on the coffee table. There was also a small refrigerator on the side. Zhao Han walked over and opened it, revealing a neat arrangement of various sodas and drinks.

Zhao Han gave a few instructions and then left. After the door closed, An Jin sat on the edge of the bed and began to look around. The single bed was a bit high, and An Jin’s legs were suspended in the air, her toes a few inches from the ground, unconsciously swinging back and forth.

Ling Qi stood in front of the bookshelf, scanning it. She had just taken out two books from the middle right shelf when she heard the person behind her ask: “Senior Sister… are you very close with the Vermilion Bird Dao Master?”

Ling Qi turned around and saw An Jin sitting on the corner of the bed, her legs still swinging in the air, looking up at her, as if she had struggled for a long time to ask this question.

But Ling Qi didn’t know how to react at the moment. She lowered her eyes, remained silent for a while, and then instead of answering, she asked: “Why are you suddenly saying that?”

“Liao Huan said everyone in the upper realm knows that you two grew up together as childhood friends and were inseparable for over a thousand years.”

“Then what do you think?” Ling Qi asked her. “Do you think we look like it?”

An Jin slowly shook her head.

Although she had rushed to the lower realm after a phone call, her senior sister looked more like she was worried about a friend in danger. And when they met at Chong Guang Palace, the atmosphere between them wasn’t even friendly.

“Then that’s that.” Ling Qi let out a low laugh and casually tossed a book to An Jin.

An Jin subconsciously reached out and caught it, but the name on the cover left her baffled: “How Foxes and Carps Fall in Love?” She widened her eyes, her gaze shifting back and forth between the door and Ling Qi.

Ling Qi coughed. When she had taken that book out of the bookshelf, she hadn’t thought much of it. She only remembered that the other person used to love reading this book and hadn’t connected the title to Senior Zhao and the others at all. She handed her own book over: “How about we switch?”

“One Hundred Ways to Kill a High God?” An Jin craned her neck and squinted her eyes to read the title, then shook her head quickly, “No, no, that brutal book should be left for the Vermilion Bird Dao Master. I’ll stick to reading about foxes and little carps falling in love.”

She hugged the book in her hands tightly, as if afraid Ling Qi would snatch it away. Ling Qi shook her head helplessly and asked: “Have you thought about how you’re going to tell Liao Huan about this?”

An Jin was silent for a moment and then said: “I don’t know.”

“If it were me… I would agree with Senior Zhao’s point of view. Although keeping Liao Huan in the mortal realm wasn’t her intention, she was indeed absent from Liao Huan’s life for over a decade. The mother-daughter bond is shallow, so it’s best not to see each other.”

“But this is Liao Huan’s own business, and I can’t make the decision for her.” An Jin added, “I’ll probably just repeat the whole story to her as it is and see what she thinks.”

“…That’s right, we can’t make decisions for others.” Ling Qi’s eyes were a little complex, seemingly with a hint of subtle struggle and sadness. An Jin blinked, but the other person’s face had already returned to calm.

An Jin didn’t think too much of it. After thinking for a while, she said: “Don’t look at me speaking so easily now. If I regain my memory and find out that my own family abandoned me in the mortal realm, I might not even be as calm as Liao Huan.”

She tilted her head slightly, and a strand of hair slipped from behind her ear and hung down the side of her cheek.

“…How could that be?” Ling Qi casually placed the book she was holding on the bookshelf, walked over to An Jin, and tucked the loose strand of hair back behind her ear. “Your mother must have loved you very much.”

“Why do you say that?” An Jin asked, looking up.

“Because your name is Xiao Jin… Hibiscus, hibiscus. It blooms in the morning and withers in the evening. It is infinite, it is endless, it is a constant cycle of life.” Ling Qi’s fingers lingered in her hair, and a very gentle smile was in her eyes. “The person who gave you that name must have loved you very, very much.”

“But if she loved me so much, why didn’t she want me?”

All the way until the lights were turned off, and the two of them lay face to face on the narrow single bed; all the way until An Jin’s sleepiness came over her, and she couldn’t help but close her eyes; all the way until the other person’s breathing gradually became even, that question still echoed in Ling Qi’s mind.

Eight hundred years ago, red clouds descended from the heavens, and there were too many suspicious points. Ling Qi had placed all her suspicion and attention on Yang Chongguang. But that was Emperor Qing Yuan… Why would a mere immortal, an immortal who had just touched the threshold of ascension, cause Emperor Qing Yuan to destroy her immortal bones and scatter her soul?

And High God Tian Mo had a past with the Emperor… Did Xiao Jin know about this? The Emperor never mentioned it for over a thousand years. When she was alive, her interactions with High God Tian Mo were more like ordinary senior sisters who knew each other but weren’t close. And High God Tian Mo was also tight-lipped about it…

Ling Qi’s intuition told her that this matter must be one of the breakthroughs in investigating the cause of the Emperor’s death, but countless images flashed through her mind, and she couldn’t grasp which ones were the key points.

She lay on her side on the bed, and An Jin beside her was fast asleep. The window of the room wasn’t closed tightly, leaving a gap, and a cool breeze blew into the room from the gap in the window, making the loose hair on An Jin’s forehead flutter slightly.

The two of them were sharing a blanket. Ling Qi was afraid of waking An Jin up, so she could only grab the corner of the blanket and pull it over to the other person little by little.

Almost two-thirds of the blanket was now covering the shoulders of the person who was fast asleep. An Jin seemed to feel the warmth and unconsciously snuggled into the blanket. Looking at her curled up in the blanket, Ling Qi seemed to find it cute, smiled silently, and also closed her eyes.

She had a dreamless night.

Early the next morning, when Ling Qi woke up, she found that most of the blanket was back on her. Her gaze shifted to the other side of the bed, where a certain someone was lying spread-eagle on the bed, looking like a stretching kitten with her face up.

Ling Qi shook her head helplessly, covered her with the blanket, and quietly pushed the door open. But as soon as she closed the door, she was met with a very familiar pair of eyes.

The person who should have been outside investigating the truth was now sitting on one side of the wooden table. After seeing Ling Qi come out, she naturally waved to her: “Come look at this.”

“Didn’t you say…” Ling Qi’s voice caught in her throat. She saw that Ying Huai Xu was still wearing Yuan Shunhua’s face and even learned to smile with her eyes, just like Yuan Shunhua used to. “Aren’t you surprised?”

“…Don’t make that expression with her face.” Ling Qi frowned and turned her face away, not looking at her.

“Fine.” Ying Huai Xu shrugged and returned to her previous look, a hint of regret in her tone. “And here I thought Senior Ling would be a little softer when she saw this familiar face.”

“The fact that I can tolerate you parading around in front of me with her face is already a sign of me being very soft.” Ling Qi said. “When are you leaving Tian Mo Palace? Hurry up and change that face.”

“I don’t know. Maybe when I get a clear picture of everything, or when Xiao Jin regains her memory.”

Ling Qi’s brows were tightly furrowed, clearly disapproving, but Ying Huai Xu didn’t give her a chance to speak. She put away her smile and looked directly at Ling Qi, “If I leave now, who else can get in?”

In one sentence, she blocked all the reasons Ling Qi was about to say.

Tian Mo Palace had always been one of the most mysterious places in the upper realm.

Although Wuyou Island seemed isolated from the world, various immortals came and went all the time, and it was treated like their own backyard by their group. But Tian Mo Palace was right next to Jiu Yang Palace, yet very few outsiders entered or left, and it rarely had any collaborative missions with other immortal sects.

Ling Qi had always thought that Ying Huai Xu’s ability to impersonate Yuan Shunhua and pretend to be sick in Tian Mo Palace for so many years was due to High God Tian Mo’s desire to gain a good reputation in the upper realm by saving “Emperor Qing Yuan’s only daughter.” But now it seemed… things were much more complicated than she had thought.

Seeing that Ling Qi wasn’t speaking, Ying Huai Xu gave a triumphant smile and handed her a stack of photos: “I took them in the hot springs. They just got developed.”

“You actually found the hot springs that were built thousands of years ago?” Ling Qi’s eyebrow raised. She pulled a wooden chair over and sat across from Ying Huai Xu.

She arranged the dozen or so photos on the wooden table and scanned them. Her brow furrowed slightly: “Why did you take so many identical photos? What’s the point of—”

Before she could finish, her gaze suddenly froze on a certain marking, and she looked up sharply. Seeing that Ling Qi had figured it out, Ying Huai Xu leaned back in her chair and relaxed her posture. “I can’t tell what kind of formation this is specifically, but it’s definitely Shen Tianmo’s work.”

Whether in the upper realm or the mortal realm, every immortal would leave a unique mark when setting up a formation, just as distinct as their personal style. Because of this, most High Gods and immortals would erase the traces afterward, leaving nothing behind.

And those dozen or so photos were all taken around the hot springs. The angle of each one was almost the same, but the markings in the bottom right corner were slightly different.

That was High God Tian Mo’s unique formation mark.

“Why didn’t she destroy it?” Ling Qi was completely baffled, and Ying Huai Xu across from her shrugged, indicating that she didn’t know either.

“At least we can confirm now that this formation was created by Shen Tianmo and is related to Emperor Qing Yuan.”

Ying Huai Xu leaned back and balanced her chair on two legs. “After all, the layout of these hot springs is exactly the same as the hot springs where they… were embracing in the painting.”

She was about to say “kissing,” but she couldn’t bring herself to say the two words.

“What hot springs?” A girl in pajamas stumbled out of the room. She rubbed her eyes, clearly not fully awake. “Senior Sister, are we going to a hot spring?”