Bamboo Forest Mist

"I, have no name." The boy shook his head, still tightly clutching the hairpin he had just snatched from Hua Ruoying.

Hua Ruoying looked at his appearance and thought he didn't trust her, so she didn't intend to tell him her name.

In a place like the Flatland where dragons and snakes mixed, this kind of thing was understandable.

Hua Ruoying didn't intend to argue with him anymore, she turned around and wanted to leave. Just as she took a few steps, she felt the boy following behind her.

"Why are you following me?" Hua Ruoying waved her hand to drive the boy away.

Hua Ruoying walked forward again for a while and found that the boy was still following her at a certain distance.

Hua Ruoying turned around, waved her hand, and gestured to drive away the boy.

The boy didn't respond, his eyes begging Hua Ruoying for something.

Hua Ruoying turned around again, but then she seemed to think of something and turned back to ask.

"Are you a human or a demon?" Hua Ruoying asked with some confusion, after all, in the Flatland, a normal child couldn't survive for so long.

"I... my mother is human, my father is a shadow demon, sister, I really don't have a name." The boy replied in a low voice, lowering his head.

"Is the hairpin your mother's?" Hua Ruoying guessed since he was holding onto it tightly.

Things from the Flatland always had unknown origins, so the boy's attachment to the hairpin naturally had its reasons.

The boy nodded, looking at Hua Ruoying with eyes that seemed to be pleading for her to let him keep the hairpin.

"Since it's your mother's hairpin, how did it end up in this black market?" Hua Ruoying asked.

"It was, it was stolen, a few days ago." The boy said stutteringly.

Hua Ruoying looked at his dirty clothes and faintly visible injuries, guessing that he must have been robbed and pawned to the black market.

"Since that's the case, you keep this hairpin." Hua Ruoying said.

"Thank, thank you." The boy bowed gratefully.

"Little shadow demon, are you following me because you have nowhere else to go?" Hua Ruoying asked.

The boy lowered his head, nodded silently, and didn't speak.

"In that case, if you're willing, you can follow me in the future." Seeing the pitiful little shadow demon in front of her, Hua Ruoying remembered her own and her brother's wandering and homeless days.

"Can, can I?" The boy asked hesitantly.

"I don't mind, although it's not glamorous, it's definitely safer than wandering around the Flatland all day." 

Upon hearing Hua Ruoying's words, the boy's eyes shimmered with gratitude.

"Um... but first, you need a name. Let me think about it." Hua Ruoying touched her chin and thought.

"My name is Hua Ruoying, since you're going to follow me, let's give you a name related to me." Hua Ruoying muttered to herself.

"Clothing steps on the moonlight, bright as flowing water containing green apples." Hua Ruoying said excitedly.

"Huaying, Qingping... there you go, from now on, you'll be called Qingping!"

"Okay." The boy nodded vigorously, accepting the name with a smile on his face.

"Then you'll follow me from now on. I promise you won't go hungry with me." Hua Ruoying patted her chest confidently.

"Alright, I have urgent matters to attend to, so come with me. We'll find a place for you to change into some decent clothes and eat something. Look how thin you are, is there anything special you want to eat?"

"Steamed buns."

"Eating just steamed buns won't do. Don't you have anything else you'd like to eat? I still have some medicinal herbs to buy, and there should be a teahouse ahead. We'll pack some pastries later to eat on the road."

The two of them walked forward in this way, chatting along the way in the Flatland, completely unaware of the black figure and the pair of cold eyes under the mask overhead.

Ice Bamboo Forest, Mi Xingzhe is chasing after Bingo.

"Little Bingo, wait for me, slow down. I asked you to take me to find dragon bones, not to train your body." Mi Xingzhe gasped.

The running Bingo showed no intention of stopping and disappeared into the depths of the bamboo forest in the blink of an eye.

Within the misty ice bamboo forest, Mi Xingzhe soon got lost.

"Bingo~ Little Bingo." Mi Xingzhe waved his hand to disperse the swirling smoke and called out for Bingo.

A faint figure of jade green flashed in the bamboo forest behind him, and a sharp gaze shot out from the deep black eyes,

"Dare to steal my book, truly, lacking discipline." Before the words fell, two slender fingers gently waved, and a light purple spell flew towards Mi Xingzhe's feet.

Mi Xingzhe, preoccupied with finding Bingo, didn't pay attention to the path beneath his feet. Suddenly, he felt a void under his feet and tumbled down the hillside, hitting his head on a stone and fainting.

"Heh, fainting already? Then I'll have to take advantage of the opportunity." The figure snorted lightly, then walked towards Mi Xingzhe.

As night fell, Hua Ruoying and Qingping, who had obtained the ice bamboo jade token, came out of the depths of the ice bamboo forest, chatting and laughing. As they were about to reach the border between the ice bamboo forest and the Flatland,

"Sister Ruoying, look ahead, is there something?" Qingping suddenly stopped, pulling on Hua Ruoying's sleeve.

Hua Ruoying looked in the direction Qingping was pointing and saw what seemed to be a person lying not far away.

Hua Ruoying protected Qingping behind her and looked around cautiously,

[How could there be someone lying here in the middle of the night? Judging from the clothes, it should be a disciple of a sect. I wonder if they're alive or dead.]

The two cautiously walked towards the figure, Hua Ruoying picked up a stick from the ground and carefully poked the person lying on the ground. Seeing that the person didn't react, she walked a bit closer to take a closer look.

Hua Ruoying tentatively checked his breathing and pulse, finding that he had only fainted, so she raised her hand to diagnose his pulse.

"There are traces of Wu Feng Zhu in his body?" As a master of poison, Hua Ruoying easily diagnosed the poison Mi Xingzhe had been exposed to. Wu Feng Zhu was a poison she had developed with the Blood Lotus from Kunlun Mountain many years ago, and it had only been given to Lord Demon and her brother Hua Qiuyuan a few times. How could it appear in the body of a disciple of a sect?

"Sister Ruoying, is he... dead?" Qingping asked nervously, poking Mi Xingzhe's face with a stick.

"No, he just fainted. How could there be someone fainting here in the middle of the night?" Hua Ruoying wondered.

"Then, should we save him?" Qingping asked.

"It's late at night, and there's hardly anyone passing by. If we leave him here alone, I'm afraid he'll catch a cold... Oh, forget it, let's save him." Hua Ruoying sighed.

"But, but, what about that thing you mentioned earlier, the bead?" 

"The Wu Feng Zhu? There are only traces of it, but judging from his current pulse, he should be fine." Hua Ruoying subconsciously touched the sachet at her waist.

"Then he won't die, right?"

"I can't worry about that now, let's save him first." Hua Ruoying said as she took out a pill from her pocket and stuffed it into Mi Xingzhe's mouth, then gave him some ice bamboo jade token to swallow the medicine down.

"Qingping, come and help me, let's move him to the side. If a carriage passes by here, it's easy to accidentally hit him." Hua Ruoying reached out and pulled Mi Xingzhe up from the ground.

"Shouldn't we take him with us?" Qingping asked.

"He's a disciple of a sect. Where can we take him? Leaving him here is fine; their people will come to find him." Hua Ruoying replied.

Originally intended to help Mi Xingzhe up and lean against a tree on the side to wait for someone to find him, but then she felt the fresh blood on the back of his head.

"Sister, he's injured." Qingping looked at the blood on Hua Ruoying's hand.

[This bleeding is serious. No, we need to find a place to help him stop the bleeding quickly.]

"Qingping, go find a carriage quickly." Hua Ruoying, seeing the blood on her hand, quickly ordered.

In the study of Mirror Cloud Residence at night, Yun Qingyi stood anxiously in the study, reporting something to Li Luoning,

"What! Lost?" Li Luoning exclaimed.

Yun Qingyi rushed nervously into the study just now, informing her master that she couldn't find Mi Xingzhe anywhere.

"What exactly happened?"

"After breakfast, I asked Xingzhe and Bingo to go to the ice bamboo forest to find dragon bones. Originally, I reminded him to come back for lunch, but by evening, only Bingo came back, looking anxious and pulling me out. Then I followed Bingo to the ice bamboo forest, but I couldn't find Xingzhe anywhere." Yun Qingyi answered truthfully.

"Xingzhe is not a child, so he shouldn't have any problems." Li Luoning knew that Yun Qingyi had been watching Mi Xingzhe closely lately and speculated that it might be because of this that Mi Xingzhe ran away, so she didn't take it seriously.

Seeing that Li Luoning didn't seem to be worried, Yun Qingyi couldn't help but be anxious, clenched his fists lightly, pursed his lips, and hesitated.

Li Luoning noticed Yun Qingyi's hesitation, put down the book in her hand, raised her head, and stared at Yun Qingyi seriously.

"Master, he..." Yun Qingyi hesitated, but instead of calming Li Luoning down, he lightly frowned

, knowing from his understanding of Yun Qingyi that he was hiding something from him, and it wasn't a trivial matter.

"Qingyi, are you hiding something from me?" Li Luoning solemnly called out.

"Master, when I was tidying up clothes for Junior Brother this morning, I found this in them." Yun Qingyi knelt down with a thump, feeling a little guilty, and said truthfully, then handed something over.

"What is this?... Dian Qie Dan!" Li Luoning's originally calm tone instantly became surprised.

"A few days ago, when I helped Junior Brother tidy up his clothes, it fell out of them. At first, I thought it was Long Kui Dan, and I was curious why Junior Brother wanted this Long Kui Dan. But then I thought, we at Mirror Cloud Residence never use Long Kui Dan, so I carefully examined it and found it was Dian Qie Dan." Yun Qingyi said.

Seeing Yun Qingyi handing over the Dian Qie Dan, Li Luoning didn't say much. After all, Long Kui and Dian Qie were very similar, and it was understandable to mistake them for each other for a while. But what she was more curious about was how the Dian Qie Dan appeared in Mi Xingzhe's clothes.

"Do you know who gave him this package of Dian Qie?" Li Luoning asked.

"Looking at the female workers who made the sachets, it should be Yue Ruling who gave it to him."

"Yue Ruling? Logically speaking, Yue Ruling doesn't know much about Chinese medicine and wouldn't be able to distinguish between Dian Qie and Long Kui. This thing should have been deliberately switched by someone." Li Luoning muttered thoughtfully.

"Master, will Junior Brother... be in danger?" Yun Qingyi worried that Mi Xingzhe might have accidentally eaten the Dian Qie Dan inside.

"He won't. Judging from the amount of medicine in this sachet, he shouldn't have remembered to eat it." Li Luoning checked the capacity of the sachet and said.

"Master, Junior Brother has been out for most of the day, and now it's night. I'm afraid he might have had an accident." Yun Qingyi anxiously said.

"Qingyi, you go to Brother Muhan's place first and ask him to send a few celestial children with you to the ice bamboo forest to find him. I'll go to Xuanming Xingjun's place and borrow the Yinyue South." Li Luoning instructed.

The ice bamboo forest at night was brightly lit with torches, and celestial children were calling out Mi Xingzhe's name everywhere.

The Yinyue South in Li Luoning's hand flickered with a faint golden light, sometimes strong and sometimes weak.

"Senior Brother Qingyi, there's a discovery here." A celestial child shouted.

Yun Qingyi hurried forward to check, and this was the place where Mi Xingzhe had fallen and bled. The bloodstains on the ground were almost dry.

"Master, over here!" Yun Qingyi saw the bloodstains on the ground, panicked, and quickly called out to Li Luoning.

Hearing the sound, Li Luoning hurried over, and then touched the bloodstains on the ground with his fingertips. The only bit of blood on his hand was lightly applied to the Yinyue South.

The Yinyue South, touched by Mi Xingzhe's bloodstains, instantly reacted. Li Luoning and Yun Qingyi quickly flew towards the indicated direction to search.

Hua Ruoying was carrying the unconscious Mi Xingzhe and heading straight towards the direction of the Flatland.

On the carriage, Hua Ruoying briefly bandaged the wound on Mi Xingzhe's head, while Qingping beside her looked at the guy in front of her with curiosity.

"Sister Ruoying, do we really have to take him back to the Flatland with us?" Qingping asked with some concern.

"Otherwise? With him in this state, we can't just leave him in the bamboo forest to fend for himself. Let's go back to the Flatland first and settle him there for now..." Hua Ruoying was saying when the carriage suddenly stopped.

"Miss, I can only take you here. Ahead is the Yao Forest of the Flatland, and my carriage can't enter there." The old coachman said from outside.

"I see, thank you, old man." Hua Ruoying didn't insist, just paid the fare and got off the carriage with Qingping, carrying Mi Xingzhe.

Hua Ruoying and Qingping, supporting the unconscious Mi Xingzhe, entered the Yao Forest of the Flatland, and then found a cave to place Mi Xingzhe in.

Just as they had entered the Flatland, not far away in the Yao Forest, a figure flashed out, watching their gradually receding figures as they carried Mi Xingzhe.

"Well, I've done what I can. Now it's up to you." With a sinister smile, a deep voice whispered under the evil smile.

On the other side, Li Luoning and Yun Qingyi followed the guidance of the Yinyue South out of the ice bamboo forest and stopped at the boundary of the Flatland.

"The Flatland?" Li Luoning was somewhat puzzled, but looking at the guidance of the Yinyue South, it was indeed in the right direction.