Longing.

—

[Seven months later.]

Running toward Tian Xing, who was currently helping Yelena fish for a four-stage river creature, Ying Yue called out, "Wait, love! The previous one was very hard to tame!"

Helping Yelena reel in the fish, but knowing that his lack of cultivation was useless in this kind of environment, Tian Xing changed his approach, throwing rocks to hit the weak spots on the fish's body based on his common knowledge of fish. Having become a cultivator capable of intuitively combating Yin Confusion, he managed to hit the fish a couple of times, while others kept missing. Turning toward Ying Yue, he shouted back, "Quick! We need your Wan Shi Tong Dao! This is a new one!"

Punching the head of the fish inside the large basket to render it unconscious because she didn't have time to focus on a single creature, Ying Yue then dashed toward where Yelena was currently struggling to fish with a type of immortal bamboo.

Placing her hand on Yelena, whose veins were swelling and popping up, she felt the right rhythm for this kind of fish. After a few seconds of silence, just letting Yelena struggle with her feet slowly being dragged into the river, Ying Yue quickly instructed, "Increase senior power by about 70 to 100 thousand jin for reeling in, and decrease it by 30 to 60 thousand jin when senior need to relax the pole tension."

Running to the edge of the river where Tian Xing was currently distracting the hooked fish below, which was trying to disturb the concentration needed to escape certain doom if it neared her love, Ying Yue grabbed many stones from the pile Tian Xing had already prepared for situations like this.

She gave herself some space, avoiding getting too close to her love, since the Origin Return Domain was currently compacted to a very small area to catch the fish when it emerged from the river. She then focused her attention back on the deep water, noticing her cultivation had returned to normal.

Adopting a throwing stance for the Flying Confusion Dart martial arts technique, which she had developed after being inspired by the Dao of Yin Confusion, hoping it would also have unpredictable movement, Ying Yue threw the stones with all her cultivation.

But since the fish could clearly see the trajectory and dodged completely, she realized the technique was not even in its initial stages yet and could only defend against Yin Confusion. Because of this, she kept throwing stones again and again, hoping just one would hit its mark, targeting the specific gill of the fish that her Wan Shi Tong Dao revealed as its weakness.

Bam! It hit, and the fish struggled to breathe. The fish unable to focus on the ongoing battle of reeling in and out, Yelena was finally able to fish it out of the water into the expert domain. Knowing the fish was completely defenseless without cultivation, Yelena dashed forward to re-enter the expert domain, not wanting her cultivation to drop again from the poison inside her body. 

With her cultivation gone, Yelena coughed up a mouthful of black blood onto the ground, unable to endure the pain from the Heaven-Severing Heart-Eroding poison. Collapsing from weakness once again, Yelena was helped to stand by the expert, who held the fish in one hand.

Using all of her willpower, honed over one hundred thousand years of life, Yelena stood back up with the assistance of the expert named Tian Xing, who offered her a shoulder to lean on. After being dragged to the nearby large flat rocks and checked on with a concerned look by the expert, Yelena just shook her head and replied that everything was fine and that he didn't need to worry about her.

Even after lying down on the flat rocks, the expert continued to tend to her for dozens of minutes, even giving her his clothes to use as a pillow before leaving to prepare the antidote for her poison.

Knowing that after all these months of spending quality time together, he genuinely had a compassionate nature—not doing this because he wanted her to become his servant like Ying Yue, but because it was in his nature to act this way—she realized the cruel part of his character was an adaptation to the messed-up world they lived in.

Unlike her, whose nature had always been broken and had spiraled downward over the span of her life. If not for the sacrifice of two strangers who freed her from being a slave hundreds of thousands of years ago and their words that motivated her to keep going, she might have already snapped and fully embraced the evilness within her.

Thinking about those two stranger saints, who seemingly had compassion beyond this world—just like the expert's daughter, whom he bragged about all the time—Yelena couldn't help but wonder how their lives were now and how they were doing, since she had never experienced reincarnation and only heard about it from others. So, she kept musing on many different topics, trying to distract herself from the pain of the poison.

However, the harder she tried to distract herself, the more pain she felt, as it only made the poison sever and erode her heart more violently because she wasn't focused on controlling her body. Fortunately, the expert and his servant had already finished collecting all the ingredients needed to cure her from the poison. Although she had been skeptical at first, since, from her knowledge, the Heaven-Severing Heart-Eroding poison had no antidote, the mystical things they did—despite their low cultivation—gave her a glimmer of hope.

So, as she watched them both prepare the antidote from all the ingredients they had collected—with the last one being the fish they had just caught—while enjoying themselves and laughing together on a nearby rock, Yelena found her thoughts drifting. Instead of focusing on the antidote, her unconscious mind lingered more on the relationship between the expert and his servant.

Unknowingly, a bitter sigh escaped her lungs as she longed to have this kind of normal relationship as well, or at least some social interaction like she had in her modern society. For such a long time, Yelena had been immersed in the world of devil cultivators, where they could only rely on themselves since there was no concept of friendship—only benefit and power mattered, making them paranoid all the time.

She was tired. From being a Red Room spy to a Black Calamity Dynasty slave, and now a devil cultivator of the Soul Refining Sect, she was exhausted by the constant tension and the need to always anticipate betrayal, as there was no one she could trust. Seeing the two of them like this only made her heart feel even more bitter and hurt—more painful than the Heaven-Severing Heart-Eroding poison.

Her thoughts turned to how her heart had become so pained, and Yelena let out a bitter laugh at the absurdity of the situation—seeing a scene of simple, normal relationships made her so emotional. But knowing that sooner or later she would have this kind of normal relationship, as the expert desired her loyalty for some reason, Yelena buried her longing deep inside her heart and patiently waited to see what the future would hold for her.

—