Chapter 148 – Don’t Kill Me

Shuang’er stretched her arms and made a lazy nasal sound.

“What…happened to me?” Gu Suihan slowly opened his eyes and looked a little confused. His instinct was to shake his head repeatedly as if he was trying to empty it of its confused thoughts.

“Did I get a nightmare again?” he muttered. His fine but dense eyebrows were above a pair of eyes that shone as brilliantly as gemstones. He looked both puzzled and…absolutely confused.

The little girl turned over and got poked by a branch, so she got up and pouted. She turned to look at the gentle, elegant, and the almost perfect young man who seemed so surreal in the light of the fire and blushed slightly. She cautiously tugged at his sleeve and whispered, “Big brother! Can we eat the roast meat yet?”

“Wait a bit.” Gu Suihan snapped out of his thoughts and smiled at her. He seemed oddly sweet and kindly under the dim moonlight.

He took out some spices from his sleeve, crushed them with his hands, and spread it all over the meat. Sparks flew as the oil of the animal dripped into the fire. A wonderful smell instantly hit their nostrils.

“Little girl, I’m going to the capital to see if some rich family wants to hire me. Where are you going?” Gu Suihan laughed when he saw the hungry look on Shuang’er’s face and flicked her head very lightly to tease her.

“Me?” She stared blankly at Gu Suihan. She cupped her cheeks and mumbled, “I want to go home.”

“Is your home also in the capital? Then again, judging by your appearance, I suppose you must be from some well-to-do family,” mumbled Gu Suihan as he glanced at her and nodded to himself.

“No…I’m…I’m a cultivator!” whined Shuang’er as she seemed a little anxious to tell Gu Suihan who she was.

“A cultivator? Those formidable fighters who always look like others owe them money? The people who can make the clouds come and go as they wish? You?” An amused smile spread across his handsome face even before he finished speaking.

Shuang’er swung her fists as if to prove her point and huffed indignantly. “I…I really am a cultivator!”

“Cultivators know how to fly. Can you?” Gu Suihan teased her as he tore one of the rabbit’s legs and stuffed it into her mouth.

“I…unnghahgaaa…” She was about to retort but couldn’t complete her sentence after Gu Suihan stuffed the rabbit leg into her mouth. She had no choice but to direct her anger to her food, biting it angrily as she glared at Gu Suihan like she was taking revenge on him for not believing her.

Gu Suihan just sighed quietly as a confused look filled his eyes again. He pulled at the meat while thinking and put it mindlessly into his mouth.

“Watch!” Shuang’er threw the bones into the fire, which stirred up some sparks and the noise snapped Gu Suihan out of his thoughts. He looked up without flinching and turned to look at Shuang’er.

But after he did that, his jaw dropped and the meat he was chewing fell to the ground.

“You…you’re really a cultivator?” His lips twitched uncontrollably when he saw that Shuang’er was standing three feet above the ground. His voice trembled as he said, “A…a cultivator? Why would a cultivator…how could a little girl be a…UNLESS!”

A thought struck Gu Suihan, making his hair stand on end as a chill ran down his spine. He immediately sprang up and ran.

“HEY! Why are you running?” Shuang’er had been so smug that she had proved herself to be a cultivator, but Gu Suihan ended up running away like she was some terrifying animal or monster.

“Stop right there!” Shuang’er angrily stretched out one of her slightly chubby fingers and a beam of qi shot out like a snake, twisting in mid-air and effectively chaining Gu Suihan to the ground.

“Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! I’m not nice to eat!” Gu Suihan felt his body stiffen up and he couldn’t move his feet anymore, as though they had been nailed into the ground. He immediately shut his eyes nervously and muttered these words repeatedly as cold sweat ran down his face. The moonlight illuminated his deathly pale face and reflected panic, fear, and other such emotions.

“This….this is insane!” The Huangquan Evil Ghost watching in the shadows widened its eyes as it witnessed how Gu Suihan had turned into a completely different person.

“Big brother! I’m not a monster! I’m not going to eat you!” Shuang’er rushed over and was amused when she heard what he was muttering repeatedly. She set him free, only for him to collapse onto the ground, gesticulating frantically as he looked up at her anxiously.

He made sure to keep a safe distance from her and said cautiously, “You’re…really not going to kill me?”

“I’m not going to. You saved me, so why should I kill you?” asked Shuang’er curiously. She had very little experience as a cultivator, after all.

“According to legend…”

Before Gu Suihan could finish his sentence, an excited and relieved squeal resounded from afar.

“Shuang’er!! Are you alright?”

A bright light suddenly appeared in the sky, followed by a faint fragrance. Gu Suihan was dazzled by the light, and by the time he could see clearly again, a woman in a white dress and jade hair accessories in her long, black hair appeared in front of him.

“Senior sister!” Shuang’er called out joyfully and ran into the woman’s arms.

Gu Suihan looked at the woman and felt a chilling fear run through his body. He gulped and flailed as he turned to run again.

“Stop right there!” Their voices called out to him and frightened some birds in the trees nearby.

They were cultivators after all, so their senses were heightened with qi. Even the tiniest movement that Gu Suihan made couldn’t escape their eyes at all.

Gu Suihan yelped as he ran even faster than before and squirreled behind a large tree. He stuttered as he tried to plead with them, “I…uh…hurhur…ladies, I’m…I’m just…I’m just an ordinary fellow, so…why…why do you…why do you keep holding onto me?”

“You saved me and I haven’t repaid the favor yet,” said Shuang’er with a very serious look on her face as she took the older woman’s hand.

Gu Suihan looked at Shuang’er’s expression and instinctively moved backward as he started rambling incoherently, “There’s…there’s no need for that! We…our paths happened to cross and and and when I saw you needed help, I, uh, I thought I’d help! Um, um, sometimes people meet and sometimes people go their separate ways and and it’s alright! We’ll meet again if we’re fated to!” His eyes kept darting around as he tried desperately to find a way out of this sticky situation.

“You were the one who saved my junior sister?” said the woman from behind the thin veil over her face. Her voice was melodious and pleasant as an oriole.

“No, I’m not!”

“Yes, you are!”

“It was just a coincidence!”

“But you still saved me anyway!”

“That was just an accident!”

“But it’s the truth!”

Gu Suihan realized he had underestimated how stubborn this girl was. He sat down resignedly on the ground and looked like he was just waiting to die as he said in a depressed voice, “Go ahead and say it then. What do you want with me?”

“Do you…do you want to become a cultivator?” A mysterious smile spread across the woman’s lips.

“No!” Gu Suihan immediately shook his head and refused the offer without thinking. He realized he might anger the ladies by saying that, so he explained with a glum face, “My family isn’t doing well and I’m the only male descendant they have. If I become a cultivator, I won’t be able to get married and carry on the family line. I’ll let my ancestors down.”

“That’s…a reason that’s hard to argue with…” The Huangquan Evil Ghost could hardly believe his ears.

Shuang’er and her senior sister were equally speechless when they heard Gu Suihan’s extremely valid reason.

“I could give you great wealth or give you a high position. Would that be better?” asked the woman after thinking about it for a bit.

Gu Suihan considered it for a moment, then turned her down again. “No, that’s no good too. My father taught me to be a down-to-earth man. A man should not rely on others like that!”

He got up, patted off the leaves and soil on his clothes, then placed one palm over his other fist as he said solemnly, “Ladies, you really don’t have to insist on this. It was only right of me to help and I’m doing this for a reward. I will take my leave.”

“Wait up!” Shuang’er yelled after Gu Suihan after he walked off without even looking back. She angrily cast a spell to force him to stop and pulled him right back to where she was.

Actually, her senior sister was happy to meet someone who helped out without hoping for a reward. Shuang’er was not from this world and had a very special identity. She was destined for bigger things and would leave this world eventually.

But it was difficult to break the karmic cycle of repaying a benefactor. She had hoped to end the cycle by repaying the young man in a quick and simple way, but Gu Suihan had turned out to be such a difficult fellow to deal with.

“Spiritual Acupoint Compass!” A small and intricately designed compass appeared in her hand. She tapped it with a finger and seemed to have taken something out of Gu Suihan’s body. She then fixed her eyes on the compass.