Love Travels through Time (My father who traveled through time and space to cultivate immortality came back to pick me up) - Chapter 84
Chapter 84: Mirage
Yin Changli guessed her thoughts.
“If you ask me, he came to our world specifically to dump his trash and unload his troubles.”
Back then, the three divine swords had triggered a foul storm of blood and rain.
Many believed that the big shot next door wanted to use the divine swords to disrupt the normal order of their world for his own hidden motives.
Yet, every sword master who successfully seized a blade and began cultivating with it was consumed by bitter regret, suffering a fate worse than death.
This was especially true for the masters of Tian Kuang, who experienced drastic, unhinged personality shifts one after another.
Yin Changli had never told Xiang Haikui how the previous owner of Tian Kuang had died.
At the peak of the Seventh grade, that sword master had transformed into a flood dragon and accidentally bumped into a mountain peak.
Egged on by the sword’s madness, he insisted on seeing whether his skull or the mountain was harder—living through the agony as he smashed his own skull to pieces.
The most terrifying part was that the Twelve Divine Swords were not something you could simply abandon to start over if you no longer wished to cultivate them.
Once a divine soul bound with a divine sword, it attached itself like a stubborn plaster.
Unless the sword master died or achieved the Dao, they could never hope to shake it off.
“Aren’t you judging a noble person by a scoundrel’s standards?”
Xiang Haikui’s lips twitched slightly.
She reached out to touch the Tian Kuang sword scabbard, accidentally brushing against his tail.
The black snake tail curled in on itself as if burned, letting out a low hiss.
“Those treasures and secret manuals? I’m afraid they were merely compensation he offered out of a guilty conscience.”
Xiang Haikui found it amusing.
“It seems you harbor a deep resentment toward the divine swords.”
Thinking about it, it made sense. To level Tian Kuang to its maximum, how much of Yin Changli’s wool had been sheared?
After a long silence following her words, Yin Changli spoke with a tone of wistful melancholy.
“Yes. You have no idea how much I regret giving you Tian Kuang in the first place.”
“Why regret it?” She frowned.
“In the past, I genuinely hated this idiot sword so much my teeth ached. But without it, I would have died long ago. I wouldn’t be standing here today, doing whatever I please and stabbing whomever I want.”
If you want the horse to run, you have to feed it enough grass.
Mundane grass for mundane horses, and naturally, celestial grass for celestial steeds.
It was perfectly reasonable.
As she spoke, she leaned forward again to peer into the icy spring pool.
The little black snake was hiding in her sleeve to keep warm.
As her body moved, he felt it distinctly.
“Your ability to see the people from the other world just now was an extremely rare fluke. It was likely because the three of you were meditating around the icy spring—the sword aura of Tian Kuang, the Inspiration of the Celestial Clan, and the pure-turbid qi of the Jianmu tree combined into one, achieving a fleeting resonance with that water-attribute artifact next door…”
These words were meant to persuade her to continue her secluded cultivation and stop being distracted.
As for seeing that handsome man next door again, such a thing was something one could only chance upon, not demand.
Fearing Xiang Haikui might not understand, Yin Changli gave an example, “Have you ever seen a mirage?”
A mirage was a phenomenon caused by light refraction.
Xiang Haikui had never seen one in person, but she had seen plenty of news reports about them.
Yin Changli said, “The scenes presented by a mirage are sometimes from our world, and sometimes a place like that cannot be found in our world at all. This is because the spatial world wall fluctuates, exposing the neighboring world at the point of turmoil. The frequency of such fluctuations is extremely low.”
Xiang Haikui listened to him emphasize this for a long time—which was basically just saying how thick the spatial world wall was and how difficult it was to penetrate.
Mirages didn’t just appear randomly.
“However…” She had a look full of suspicion.
“However what?” Yin Changli asked patiently.
Xiang Haikui asked, “When my father sought you out back then to get the array to bring me over, did he ever mention any anomalies that occurred before he transmigrated?”
Yin Changli was puzzled.
“What anomalies? Your father only said that on that morning, he vaguely heard someone knocking on the door. Half-asleep, he got up to open it. It was winter then, and the doorway had iced over. He accidentally slipped, fell, and knocked himself unconscious. When he woke up, he had already left his hometown and switched to a new physical body.”
So he had never mentioned it. Perhaps too much time had passed, and her father had forgotten about it himself.
Xiang Haikui said, “When I was five years old, my mom… after my mother passed away, my father was originally a long-haul truck driver. To take care of me, he quit his job and drove a taxi in the city… Do you understand?”
Sigh!
Different civilizations are really hard to explain.
Xiang Haikui mulled it over and said, “It’s roughly equivalent to a coachman in the city…”
Yin Changli asked, “And then?”
He had been waiting for her to take the initiative to talk about her life in her original world.
At this moment, he was listening with utmost intent.
Xiang Haikui said, “Then, not long after, my father started having ‘hallucinations.’ When he was driving… operating the vehicle, he kept seeing strange scenes. Because of this, he went to see a psychiatrist…”
Xiang Heng told the doctor that another world existed around him, filled with many monsters and strange humans wearing ancient costumes who could fly.
It was as if an invisible wall existed between the two worlds—he could see it, but could not touch it.
The doctor’s diagnosis was that he had just suffered the sudden loss of his wife, which shocked his nerves and caused him to hallucinate.
“My father took medicine for a long time, but it didn’t help at all. Instead, the ‘hallucinations’ occurred more and more frequently, and he almost got into an accident. Having no choice, my father couldn’t continue driving, so he quit that job too and started a street stall selling snacks to raise me.”
Looking back on it, Xiang Haikui remembered that those times were truly destitute, yet they were a rare period of happiness in her memory.
“Later on, until I was nine years old before he passed away, he never mentioned the hallucinations again, nor did he go to the hospital anymore.”
Because Xiang Heng had already gotten used to it.
“After I entered the orphanage, no one was ever willing to adopt me because they were afraid I would inherit my father’s mental illness. I was somewhat scared myself, but fortunately, I never experienced those kinds of hallucinations.”
When she saw the man below the icy spring earlier, Yin Changli said he might be someone from another world, which suddenly reminded Xiang Haikui.
A question thus arose in her mind.
If the intersection of two spatial worlds was such a difficult thing—requiring a water-attribute artifact with terrifying spiritual energy on the other side, and the combined strong forces of the three of them on this side pulling against each other to achieve it—
Then how could her father see the other world back then?
Without any reason at all, when it was frequent, he could see it several times a day, each time lasting for over ten minutes.
“How could that be?” After listening in silence and pondering for a long time, Yin Changli was still unable to understand.
He asked, “Was the mirage your father saw back on Earth from our world?”
“I never asked.”
Xiang Haikui shook her head. After coming to this world, she had spent very little time by Xiang Heng’s side, and they rarely talked about the past.
After all, for Xiang Heng, those were old events from over two hundred years ago.
She added, “But my father watched the ‘cultivation world’ for four years. After he fell to his death and his soul left his body, he really came to the cultivation world. It should be this place, right?”
Yin Changli pondered, “Once your conditions stabilize, I will go ask him about it.”
This matter sounded rather unusual.
A soul transmigrating to another world after death through a twist of fate was not strange.
However, having so many strange occurrences happen to Xiang Heng before and after was quite thought-provoking.
Yin Changli rewound the timeline in his mind to sort it out.
First, before his soul transmigrated to this world and became Xiang Tianqing’s “father,” Xiang Heng could see mirages of another world while on Earth.
Second, Xiang Heng was not born with the ability to see mirages; it only gradually began after Little Kui’s mother passed away.
Third, Xiang Heng was an orphan who didn’t know who his parents were, and his wife was also an orphan with unknown parents.
So after the two of them died, Little Kui didn’t have a single relative left…
Question marks filled Yin Changli’s mind.
He asked cautiously, “Little Kui, I’ve never asked you… how did your mother pass away?”
Her eyelashes trembled slightly as Xiang Haikui replied softly, “Sudden death.”
Her father was working away from home back then and was often not around.
On many nights before she turned five, only her mother and she were at home.
“Father wasn’t home that night. Mother coaxed me to sleep. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by the cold. She was lying beside me, her body completely icy. I called out to her several times, but I couldn’t wake her up.”
But she was too young back then to truly understand death.
Pulling up the quilt to hug her mother tightly, she fell back into a deep sleep…
Xiang Haikui didn’t continue speaking.
Her father was someone she didn’t want to bring up.
And her mother was someone she didn’t dare to think about.
The little black snake poked his head out from her sleeve, his bright black eyes looking toward her slightly dimmed gaze.
He wanted to comfort her, but though he organized many words in his mind, every option felt somewhat improper.
It was truly hard to imagine that someone like him—who had always been so glib and eloquent—would actually turn tongue-tied in front of her.
In the end, he asked, “What Zhu Rongrong said before—about my mother intentionally conceiving multiple children to harm my father—do you guess it is true or false?”
Sure enough, Xiang Haikui instantly snapped out of her own emotions.
Turning to look back at him, her eyes held a hint of caution.
“Since you are asking me to guess, could it be that you know the answer?”
When she had mentioned it to Yin Changli back then, she had already guessed from his expression that he might know.
Knowing meant that what Zhu Rongrong said was the truth.
Yin Changli hadn’t wanted to bring it up either, as it was a family scandal after all.
But to divert Xiang Haikui’s attention, he flicked his tongue and explained, “My mother was from the Shanhai Merfolk Clan. Because their sea territories were widely scattered, the merfolk had many branches. When my mother was a young girl, her branch produced a leader who was both powerful and rebellious. He was my mother’s maternal uncle and her only living relative.”
That granduncle of his had a personality similar to Que Chi—believing that the Shanhai Clan switching to cultivate the Human Dao was an act that defied their nature. Thus, ignoring clan regulations, he led his clan members to wantonly hunt and kill other races.
The Grand Patriarch issued stern warnings multiple times, but the granduncle refused to mend his ways, even provocatively devouring the envoy sent by the Grand Patriarch.
After discussions among the Council of Elders of the Shanhai Clan, it was decided to dispatch his father leading clan forces to suppress them, and that granduncle of his was killed by his father.
Xiang Haikui didn’t feel it was proper to pry further, so she simply listened attentively.
“My mother was gravely injured at the time. On the way back to the clan under arrest to face trial, a sea witch rescued her, healed her, and took care of her all along. Over time, she developed feelings for the sea witch, but because hatred was buried in her heart, she kept those feelings suppressed. After she fully recovered, she wanted to seek revenge on my father, but her cultivation level was far too distant from his…”
And so, she thought of a honey trap.
Yin Changli continued, “The sea witch repeatedly tried to dissuade her, but my mother’s mind was made up. Unable to overcome her stubbornness, the sea witch changed her identity, arranged everything, and enabled her to smoothly approach my father. But the more she interacted with my father, the more she felt she couldn’t kill him on her own strength. So she painstakingly married him and conceived a child, thinking that when his energy was absorbed by the child and his body became weak, it would be the perfect opportunity to kill him…”
Xiang Haikui was a bit confused.
“Then, when she conceived the first child and failed to successfully take revenge, she conceived a second one?”
Until she was pregnant with twelve?
It was simply mind-boggling.
The icy spring was truly too cold.
The little black snake shrank back into her sleeve a bit more, those clear, bright eyes still looking at her.
“No. When she was pregnant with my eldest brother, she learned about one thing and could no longer bring herself to do it.”
Xiang Haikui asked, “Hmm?”
Yin Changli remained silent for a long moment.
“My father and the sea witch were actually the very same person.”
Xiang Haikui’s eyes widened. Who was scheming against whom here?
No wonder people say life is like a play—it all depends on acting skills.
Yin Changli gave a helpless laugh.
“I don’t know the full details either; I only found out when eavesdropping on my older brothers’ chatter. In short, except for my eldest brother, whom my mother conceived with dark intentions, the later children were all born because she was angry and intentionally wanted to torment my father. However, my father probably didn’t view it as torment. Though my mother never gave him a shred of a warm expression her whole life, she loved us dearly. In the end, she even died alongside my father on the battlefield.”
This was probably a textbook case of love-hate.
Xiang Haikui shook her head; she couldn’t quite fathom it.
Yin Changli had originally intended to use this matter to dispel the gloom that had gathered in Xiang Haikui’s heart just moments ago.
Now, his own mood had sunk into a low ebb.
A silence fell between them for a time.
Xiang Haikui felt a headache coming on.
How had a fine conversation about other worlds and mirages ended up turning into a misery-competing contest between the two of them?
She wanted to say something, but she was genuinely terrible at comforting people.
Moreover, she understood that Yin Changli didn’t share these things to gain her sympathy.
The snake head that had extended outside slowly retracted back into her sleeve, coiling several times around her arm as if using it as a bamboo pole.
Xiang Haikui’s arm had originally been resting on her knees. At this moment, she gathered her hands together, aligning sleeve cuff to sleeve cuff so the wind would no longer blow inside.
Such a small gesture made Yin Changli feel an indescribable warmth.
“Go into secluded meditation. I’ll guard you two,” he urged her.
“Stop letting your thoughts wander.”
“Alright,” Xiang Haikui replied, closing her eyes.
Perhaps due to trusting Yin Changli’s capabilities, her mind was much calmer during this meditative state, and she quickly entered the realm.
Yin Changli remained coiled without moving, terrified of disturbing her.
He continued to sort out the matter regarding Xiang Heng in his mind.
This time, who knew how much time had passed, when Xiang Haikui faintly heard some noise—like the harsh screeching sound of fingernails scratching across glass.
Her goosebumps stood on end. Because she was in a deep meditation, it took her a while before she opened her eyes.
Unsure of which direction the noise was coming from, she instinctively looked down at the bottom of the icy spring.
Sure enough!
She saw that heroic and valiant man again.
This time, he wasn’t the only one looking upward with his face raised; another face had leaned over as well.
It was the refined, handsome face of a young man, who was raising his arm and brandishing a small knife in the air.
From Xiang Haikui’s perspective, his arm was penetrating through the bottom ice layer, and the small knife was completely submerged in the icy spring water.
Yet, just like the heroic man before, he was like a ghost, failing to stir up even a single ripple.
Had a mirage been triggered again?
Just as Xiang Haikui was about to send a voice transmission to Yin Changli to tell him to take a look, suddenly, following a harsh screeching noise, she actually heard the conversation between the two at the bottom of the icy spring, and she instantly held her breath.
The refined young man holding the small knife said, “Did you see clearly? There is no hidden space; there’s no issue.”
The heroic man frowned.
“Impossible. I truly felt that in the region above, a pair of eyes has been spying on me all along.”
The young man spread his hands. “But the facts are right in front of us—there’s nothing here.”
With his hands behind his back, the heroic man said, “That’s just because your skill is lacking. Keep cutting! I am certain there is a hidden space here.”
Xiang Haikui’s breath hitched. It seemed the young man was foreign reinforcement he had brought in. Neither of them knew this place was the intersection of two worlds, yet their abilities were extraordinary—one had sensed her presence, while the other was capable of tearing through space itself.
Her eyes suddenly lit up. If they truly managed to carve out a hole, wouldn’t she be able to pass through it to reach the Nineteen Continents next door?
Since the Nineteen Continents and Earth both existed within the Three Thousand Realms, wouldn’t that mean there was hope for her to return to Earth?
The heroic man’s brows knitted closely together.
“Hurry up and cut! Today, I absolutely must drag this woman out.”
The young man was puzzled.
“Since she was spying on you from the shadows, how can you tell she’s a woman?”
The heroic man sneered.
“I felt it again just now. That lustful, drooling look in her eyes—if it’s not a woman, then it’s a pervert!”
Xiang Haikui, who was in the middle of daydreaming, froze upon hearing this.
Lustful?
Isn’t this big guy a bit too narcissistic? What she was lusting after was the interdimensional passage about to be cut open, and what she was looking at was merely the knife in the young man’s hand.
When on earth had she been looking at him?
