Chapter 18: Wuchang Saint

Ji Yunhe ripped apart her outer jacket and wrapped her chest with a strip. Then she tied her hair up into a man's topknot.

Changyi sat on the grass with his back turned. Without her word, his neck remained frozen and did not move in the slightest. But his tail softly fluttered against the ground, one twitch after another, as if a bit bored.

"Done."

Ji Yunhe walked up to Changyi, not waiting for him to turn around.

"How's this? Do I look like a man?"

He checked her up and down a few times and shook his head.

"No. Neither the body shape, nor the facial features look like a man."

Ji Yunhe glared at him and said, "You go then." He shook his head again.

"No."

This fish had a pretty face that was good for nothing. Ji Yunhe let out a hmph.

"What else can we do? I'm going to just break the broken pot."

(A Chinese metaphor for when someone chooses to make things worse after having already done something wrong)

She turned around and marched away, like a soldier entering a battlefield. She went with the expectation of getting thrown out after a good beating.

But it actually went smoothly. Ji Yunhe walked to the wrecked cabin where the black bird was now in human form again. She seemed tired from all the thrashing and sat calmly in the middle of the pool, hugging her knees.

She was surrounded by withered lotus flowers and the stagnant water under her feet was as still as a mirror, drawing a perfect reflection of her. It looked like two different worlds seamlessly merged into one. No matter from which angle you looked, it was as beautiful as a painting.

Ji Yunhe's footsteps startled her, and she turned slightly. The water beneath her feet was also disturbed, sending ripples across the reflected world. She saw Ji Yunhe and stood up.

"Who are you?"

Has she already forgotten Ji Yunhe in such a short time? This was good. It saved Ji Yunhe the trouble of having to explain why "he" looked identical to the demon master girl from before...

"I'm a scholar." Ji Yunhe already laid out a plan. If her disguise did not work she would immediately run away and think of something else. Otherwise, she would claim to be a scholar.

In the mundane storybooks that flowed in from outside the Demon Valley, female demons falling for scholars was a standard theme.

Ji Yunhe had read a lot of them and knew the routine by heart. She pretended to be a bit awkward, and said, "I saw you from afar and felt… attracted, so I came."

The attachment furrowed her brows and tilted her head to survey "him". Ji Yunhe thought: oh no. She felt a bit silly, as fooling someone with a man's disguise was no simple task at all.

However, the demonic attachment studied Ji Yunhe for a long time. Just as Ji Yunhe thought she was about to get a beating, the attachment suddenly asked, "What is a scholar? Why are you here? And why are you attracted to me?"

So many questions, but none of them were -- how dare you claim to be a man? Ji Yunhe did not expect her to be so gullible. After calming down, this demonic attachment was like a mentally incomplete child.

Ji Yunhe cautiously approached her and answered, "A scholar is someone who studies. I accidentally barged in here and saw you sitting there in melancholy. What is the matter?"

To provide the right medicine for a wounded heart, one must first know the details. The drama between the jade phoenix and the Wuchang Saint had happened a hundred years ago, no one knew about it anymore. Ji Yunhe could only try to dig it out of the demon herself.

The attachment muttered blankly, "Melancholy? What melancholy do I have?" She hung her head as if in deep thought, and a moment later, looked at Ji Yunhe and said, "I was betrayed by a demon master." Ji Yunhe waited quietly for her to continue.

The attachment seemed to have found an outlet. Words poured out from her mouth while she stared at Ji Yunhe with spiritless eyes. "His name was Ning Ruochu, and he was a powerful demon master. People called him the Wuchang Saint. At first he wanted to abolish me. We fought and wounded each other, and fell down the cliff together... "

(Wuchang means unpredictable in Chinese).

She turned away from Ji Yunhe and looked at their surroundings.

"The valley we landed in was very similar to here. There were flowers and grass, a small stream that converged into a pool of water, and a wooden cabin."

Ji Yunhe also looked around and thought to herself: this place should not be "very similar" to the original valley. It should be... exactly the same.

"There were ferocious beasts in the valley and we were both seriously injured. I had no demon power and he had no spiritual power. We used our raw strengths and worked together to fend off those beasts. Then we grew fond of each other... But I was a demon, and he was a demon master..."

No need to say more. Ji Yunhe knew that even a hundred years ago when demon masters ruled the world, such a relationship was not acceptable.