Chapter 5: Do You Want Me to Kill Him?

Professor Song had gone to attend a medical conference, and Chen Dahai was nowhere to be seen, busy with his own affairs.

For the past few days, Ding Ling had been placed temporarily under the care of Nurse Xiao Xu. If she wanted to head up the mountain under the cover of night, this was her only chance.

Yao Beibei was no good at academics, but she was always well-informed.

“You probably don’t know yet, but the city dispatched a team of experts specifically to investigate our cave.” Yao Beibei chewed on a rainbow gummy worm and shoved a carton of strawberry milk into Ding Ling’s hands. “Word is they’re using new equipment to resurvey and evaluate it this time. The teacher told us we’ll all have self-study that day.”

She leaned in close to Ding Ling, looking conspiratorial, and asked in a low whisper, “Is there really something inside that cave?”

An immortal? A demon? Or some kind of treasure?

“I don’t remember,” Ding Ling replied.

Before the school had a chance to question Ye Yibai, the Ye family had already taken him away.

Ding Ling didn’t even remember how to turn on a faucet right now. When Nurse Xiao Xu told her to take a shower, she later found Ding Ling simply clutching a towel, staring blankly under the showerhead for ages.

So naturally, she wouldn’t remember what was inside the cave, either.

Yao Beibei also mentioned that after the incident that day, Chen Dahai had “lie-detected” all the students.

She made two circles in front of her eyes with her hands. “It was terrifying! Teacher Chen’s glasses were glowing, and when that light hit me, it felt like someone dumped a bucket of ice water over my head.”

A truth-discerning magical artifact? The human heart had always been impossible to fathom; did this world truly possess such a thing?

Ding Ling’s interest was piqued. “How does that thing know if someone is lying?”

Yao Beibei chewed her rainbow gummy worms twice. “Well, you know, when people lie, their heart beats faster, body temperature goes up… or something like that?”

Was that the principle? As an academic slouch, she genuinely had no idea.

So that was it. Ding Ling no longer worried.

“Besides, if they really wanted to ask, why didn’t they go ask Ye Yibai?” Yao Beibei muttered under her breath. Ye Yibai still hadn’t returned to the summer camp.

All of them had seen it: when Ye Yibai left, not a single hair on his head was out of place. If anyone should be questioned, it was him!

The only reason Yao Beibei had tagged along for that cave exploration was that she had a slight crush on Ye Yibai.

Ye Yibai was handsome, tall, wealthy, and had top grades. Whenever he walked by, the girls couldn’t help stealing a few extra glances at him.

Yet when she saw Ding Ling injured so terribly while Ye Yibai was picked up by the Ye family without a scratch, Yao Beibei suddenly fell out of love with him.

“Ye. Yi. Bai.”

A surge of fury welled up inside Ding Ling.

Every time someone mentioned that name, this intense emotion would churn like stormy waves in her chest.

When no one was around, Ding Ling asked the lingering soul, Do you want me to kill him?

“She” actually hesitated, then, as if scared out of her wits, didn’t dare to appear again for a long time.

As for what on earth had happened inside that cave, Ding Ling was also very eager to find out.

After sharing some more gossip, Yao Beibei checked the time. “It’s time, it’s time!” The TV drama that she and Nurse Xu both loved was about to start.

When the television had first been brought in, Ding Ling thought it was a magical artifact like a Thousand-Li Soul-Tracking Mirror, reflecting cultivators across the sects of the three realms the moment it was turned on. How was such an artifact forged? Did those cultivators simply allow themselves to be monitored without a single one noticing?

She had been quite intrigued by this artifact called a “television set” and studied it closely for two episodes, but the more she watched, the more her brow furrowed.

Why were the cultivators in this realm so obsessed with romantic entanglements, babbling nonsense, and at every turn… threatening to drag all three realms^[1] down to the grave with them?

Was this cultivating immortality? Or cultivating demonic arts?

Could the cultivation laws of this world truly be so inverted, blurring the line between immortal and demon? Just as she was pondering whether she should even continue cultivating in this place-

Yao Beibei enthusiastically recommended, “This novel is so good! I stayed up all night bingeing it to the finale. The later chapters are super touching. Do you want to know what happens?”

“A novel?”

“You didn’t know? This show is adapted from an original book! The author’s next book, Demonic Love Across Yin and Yang, is getting adapted too. The whole internet is voting to pick the lead actors right now.”

“So, all of this is pure fabrication?”

After that, Ding Ling never watched it again. Such foolish nonsense was nothing short of an assault on her eyes and ears.

Yesterday’s episode had reached the part where the male immortal fell in love with the female demon lord, immortal and demon tangled in an ocean of love and hatred.

The female demon lord fled in heartbreak, while the male immortal lord abandoned all living beings and locked himself away. With the demon realm seizing the opportunity to wreak havoc, the countless lives of the three realms were on the verge of being buried alongside their romance.

…

While the opening theme song played on television, Yao Beibei pulled out today’s notes.

“I wrote down everything I could. A quiz is coming up soon, so everyone’s notes are tough to borrow. Once the exam’s over, I’ll try asking Cheng Lu for hers.”

Cheng Lu was the top-ranking girl aside from Ding Ling. Ye Yibai and Ding Ling were tied for first, while Cheng Lu was second.

Still, Yao Beibei doubted Cheng Lu would lend them. Back when summer camp started, Cheng Lu had asked Ding Ling to borrow notes, but Ding Ling not only refused, she even sneered that Cheng Lu was just a bookworm who studied blindly.

Good notes alone were useless; once practical classes began, Cheng Lu’s scores would drop, and she’d end up in Class B at best.

Cheng Lu had been so furious that she ignored Ding Ling completely and hadn’t spoken a single word to her since. If she agreed to lend her notes now, it would be a miracle.

“Sigh, I wonder if you’ll ever get your memory back.”

Yao Beibei sometimes felt a bit dazed by it all. Ever since Ding Ling was struck by lightning, she seemed like a completely different person. She was still cold, sure, but at least she didn’t spit daggers every time she opened her mouth.

Once you actually spent time with her, Ding Ling wasn’t so bad. Maybe her awful temper before was just out of shyness?

Her roommates had all warned Yao Beibei against coming here: “She used to call you stupid all the time, did you forget? And here you are, pressing your warm face against her cold backside^[2].”

Yao Beibei just thought Ding Ling was pitiful. None of her family members had come to visit her, and it seemed they didn’t even have money to pay for her treatment.

Besides, the hospital room had a TV, and the head chef at the cafeteria cooked special meals for her, which tasted vastly better than the standard mess hall fare.

Ding Ling looked down and flipped through the notebook. Over the past week, she had learned quickly, but fully understanding these densely written pages was still difficult. Fortunately, the distributed “textbooks” contained color illustrations drawn with exquisite skill.

How to direct qi and circulate spiritual energy were both clearly depicted.

Touching the page, no ink stained her fingertips. She had no idea what kind of artifact was used to make such material.

The spiritual energy in this place was feeble, making significant progress in cultivation nearly impossible, yet strange contraptions abounded.

“Has it started yet?” Nurse Xu sat down in front of the TV with an armful of snacks.

Ding Ling lay right behind the two of them, glancing at the keys clipped to Nurse Xu’s waist.

After several days of investigating, she knew she needed a key to go up the mountain.

In the past, high peaks and deep valleys had been places she could roam freely without hindrance, yet now she was stopped by a mere iron lock.

With Professor Song away, Nurse Xu tended to slack off a bit during her shifts. Ding Ling was the only patient in the entire campus hospital, so after finishing her rounds early, Nurse Xu would watch television in the duty room at night.

Ding Ling quietly shifted toward the outer edge of the bed.

Yao Beibei and the young nurse turned the TV volume down. They were only able to watch TV thanks to Ding Ling; Nurse Xu was barely passing it off as keeping watch over a patient, while Yao Beibei had Director Chen’s tacit permission.

Chen Dahai felt that having someone her age around might help Ding Ling recover a bit faster.

Despite his busy schedule, he had even taken the time to talk with Yao Beibei. He concluded that although her grades were somewhat lacking, she was very optimistic and had always lived the life of an ordinary person, so having Ding Ling spend more time with her would be beneficial.

On the screen, an immortal lord clad in “mourning robes^[3]” sat desolately on an immortal terrace. Amid shifting constellations and boundless falling snow, he coughed up a mouthful of blood for his beloved.

The slow-motion camera cut back and forth, capturing how the spray of blood splattered across the snow in crimson specks.

“That’s so moving! The Immortal Lord, he’s just… I’m crying my eyes out.” Yao Beibei stuffed a handful of potato chips into her mouth.

Yao Beibei and this young medical cultivator surnamed Xu were diehard fans of this “actor.” Over the past few days, Ding Ling had heard endless talk about his height, weight, Western zodiac sign, and which of the local twenty-eight lunar mansions^[4] he belonged to.

Having finished coughing up blood, the immortal lord issued a challenge to the Heavenly Emperor of the Nine Heavens, who stood in the way of his romance.

“For her, so what if I raze the Three Realms to the ground?”

…

Ding Ling’s hand paused as she stole the keys, cursing her bad luck in her heart.

Why didn’t heavenly lightning strike down people like this? Heavenly lightning must be blind in its dog eyes.

Hooking the keyring into her hand, she removed the one for the iron gate, then clipped the rest back onto the medical cultivator Xu’s waist.

Sensing something amiss, Nurse Xu turned around and saw Ding Ling trying to open a bag of potato chips with a pitch-black hand. She let out a gasp. “Put that down, let me do it, let me do it!”

Ding Ling leaned back, smoothly sliding the key beneath the blanket.

Munching on chips, she turned on the tablet and muted the sound.

She began the first step of her renewed cultivation journey: Baby’s Complete Character Recognition. She had already successfully leveled up from the Toddler Edition to the Starry Sky Children’s Edition.