Chapter 9 - Did we use to know each other? (2/2)

“Did we use to know each other?”

How was I supposed to answer that? Yes, we knew each other. Where? In the underworld, by the Wangchuan River… If I said that, he would only think I was joking.

I scratched my head, saying: “Well, if you think I look familiar, then this must be fate. Yes, fate!”

“Fate?” He sneered ironically. “How does this world have so many fates…?”

Hearing him say a line as though he had seen all there was to see in the ways of the world, I knitted my brow and asked, “And why not? Our meeting each other is fate.

To be here chatting is also fate.” For a stone like me to be able to go to the mortal world to seduce you is an even bigger fate. Of course, I swallowed these words back and did not say them to him.

He lay in the snow. Under the moonlight, he took a good look at me and, after a long while, lightly uttered two words: “Cursed fate.”

I inwardly nodded. Cursed fates are still fates. They are even more lasting and persistent than ordinary fates. I was delighted, but then I thought, that wasn’t right.

From the way he sounded, I needed to react with disdain. I mustn’t smile so that I could make him wait in vain. Moreover… I glanced at his posture lying in the snow.

It was such a convenient posture to jump him!

I pointed at him prettily. “Y… y… you! You are most exasperating!”

He narrowed his eyes, his expression becoming indecipherable.

I turned around as if I was leaving in indignation. When I got to him, I yelled out:

“Whoa! Why is it so slippery?”

I pulled what I thought was a beautiful pose and slipped and fell on top of him.

Being a precisely calculated movement, I should’ve fallen onto his chest, enacting the scene of a shy maiden lying in the hero’s embrace.

Little did I know I also slipped the same way Zhonghua did, crashing on top of him in a graceless position and knocking my head onto his. Unfortunately, my lips did not meet his, but smacked right onto his forehead instead.

I only heard the man underneath sounding a grunt and giving no more reaction forthwith.

By the time I clutched my head and clambered to get up, Zhonghua was lying on the ground with both of his eyes closed. There were two bleeding holes my rock like front teeth had left on his forehead.

“Umm…” I haltingly reached my hand out to touch him. “Hey…” I patted his cheek but he still didn’t respond. I panicked a little. I couldn’t have sent him straight to Yanwang, could I have? But he hadn’t gone through his tribulation in this lifetime yet. There was going to be huge trouble this way.

“Zhonghua! Zhonghua! It can’t be that bad, right?!” I scratched my head. You are, no matter what, His Most Reverend. If you actually got knocked to death by a woman like me, this, this… if this got out, it’d be really humiliating. I hurried to pinch his Renzhong acupoint while muttering: “Moxi, don’t get me into trouble. I’ll really be condemned by the heavens for knocking a god on his trial dead. Moxi…”

I tearfully called his name for a while. He seemed to understand my dilemma for he soon groaned and then slowly opened his eyes. I elatedly sent my grateful prayers to Yanwang over and over again.

“Master…” he quietly said as he looked at me.

I froze, only now smelling the strong alcohol in his breath. I reckoned alcohol had gone to his head and he had lost his cognizance.

“Master,” he called again, “why…”

He spoke so softly that I couldn’t hear him at all. “What is it?” I leaned in and pressed my ear against his lips to listen more carefully. However, his words made my mind blurred for a moment. “Why did you develop those sorts of feelings for Hu’yi?” he asked.

“Was your master a man or a woman? Did your master fall in love with Hu’yi? How far did they get? What happened to them? Why was Hu’yi locked up in the pagoda? And where’s your master now?” I asked as subtly as I could, and then blinked while quietly awaiting Zhonghua’s answers.

But his head fell to the side, asleep.

I squeezed my fists.

The feeling of unsatisfied curiosity made me want to poke the two holes on his forehead. But looking at his peaceful sleeping face, I finally sighed and resignedly tore my skirt into strips to bandage his wounds for him.

Since Chang’an was sleeping inside, dragging his revered Reverend in wouldn’t be very prudent. It wouldn’t be very convenient to have my ways with him either.

I mulled for a bit, then dragged him under a plum tree and let him rest on my lap.

As for me, I leaned against the tree, caressed his forehead, took his hands in mine, and lastly placed a kiss on his lips, then fell into the most carefree sleep that I’d had in a long while.

The next morning when I woke up, I saw a pair of clear eyes staring at me. I smiled at him and waved hello: “Good morning, Your Most Reverend! You’re still here?”

He shut his eyes and took a deep breath, looking as though he was trying his best to keep calm. At long last, he said to me with some restraint: “Untie me.”

I laughed uneasily, untied the rope that was yoking his neck to my leg, and innocently said, “Can you blame me? I was afraid you’d run away.”

Not waiting for me to completely untie the rope, he struggled to his feet and scowled at me.

I spread my hands in helplessness. “I knew you’d run away after you wake up and then deny the fact that we’ve spent the night together. That’s why I’ve placed more than a dozen spells on the rope. That’s the only way to prove that you have really slept with me last night. By the rules of the humans, take responsibility, Mo… Zhonghua.”

Each time I spit out a word, his face would darken by the second, and then by the end of my speech there was even a rare shade of red in all that blackness: “Sh… sh… shame…”

He couldn’t manage a complete sentence even after trembling for a long time. I helped him out with a sigh: “Shameless.” Being able to make the ice-faced Reverend this angry was an incredibly proud accomplishment. “It’s all the same whether I’m shameless or not. Zhonghua, you still have to marry me.”

He looked at me for a moment, seeming to have calmed down. His expression gradually chilled. “Even if I were drunk, I can clearly remember everything I did. You and I are not the same kind. How could I have done that sort of thing with you?”

I asked curiously, “So you can’t do it if you’re not the same kind? Then what about your master and Hu’yi?”

Zhonghua’s expression suddenly iced over. He looked as though he could mince me into pieces. He stormed away. I was a stubborn rock. If I didn’t get a clear answer now, I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight. I hurriedly caught up to his side and yell out to him: “Hey! What about your master and Hu’yi? What was going on with them? Your master…”

A flash of fury grazed my ears, striking the snow behind me and sending snow dust whirling in the air.

I froze on the spot.

“Hold your tongue.” He icily threw these words at me before turning around to leave.

Moxi had never looked at me that way. Even when he hurled a fireball at my feet when we were last in the underworld, he didn’t have such a chilly expression.

I’d only seen that expression from him once before. It was in the last lifetime when two thugs broke into our house and harassed me that he had put on that face.

He seemed to intensely hate hearing anyone speak of his master and Hu’yi. Perhaps besides physiological discrimination, his hatred for Hu’yi was also emotionally seated. It seemed he cared very much for his master…

His feelings toward his master might have even been a little… not so ordinary.

I thus became ever more curious as to whether his master was a man or a woman.