He was still speaking in the overseas language.
Li Fei wracked her brains, recalling the little bit of overseas language she had learned over the past half month, and answered haltingly, word by word: “Yes, this is your name, Lei Xiuyuan.”
Lei Xiuyuan… To be honest, he felt nothing special about these three characters, nor did he have any memories of this exceptionally beautiful and fragrant young woman before him. He felt even less familiar with her than he did with the innate sense of spiritual energy entering his body and the Five Elements Immortal Arts.
But he didn’t dislike her. No man would dislike such a stunning woman, especially one who had crossed the seas for him.
Lei Xiuyuan looked at her for a while, then slowly nodded. “Alright, you can go now.”
Seeing him turn to leave again so decisively, Li Fei forgot all about the overseas language in her urgency and immediately said anxiously, “Xiuyuan, what are your plans? Will you stay on this island from now on?”
Lei Xiuyuan said in a low voice, “If you want to stay here, learn the language properly. Your accent is too ridiculous.”
…It wasn’t like she wanted her accent to be ridiculous! Li Fei chased after him, jogging to keep up: “The language here has too many twists and turns, and you have to curl your tongue. It’s really hard to learn. Xiuyuan, if you have time, could you teach me a little?”
He entered the courtyard without looking back, only leaving a sentence: “Learn it yourself, you have a mouth.”
He said the same thing as Ri Yan… Li Fei could only rub her nose and turn to walk away. How should she put it? Although he seemed to have changed a lot, in essence, many things were still the same as before. He never approached troublesome matters, and within a range that wouldn’t make people truly hate him, he fully indulged in his mischievous side. While others tried hard to improve their relationships, he always pushed away those who tried to get close.
The urgent matter at hand was indeed to become fluent in the overseas language first.
Li Fei raised her head and saw that the passing villagers were all staring at her with fiery, adoring eyes. She couldn’t help but smile. Many people here believed that the island was the entire world from birth to death. Moreover, the climate was pleasant, and they never worried about food or clothing, so the local customs could be simple and pure. To these Central Plains people who had experienced many hardships, the villagers seemed naive to the point of foolishness.
This must be what it means to be carefree and content.
She walked over, gesturing and stumbling through conversations in the overseas language that left both parties bewildered. If Ri Yan could learn the overseas language so well, she didn’t believe she couldn’t do it.
So gradually, the mountain spirit girl holding a notebook and charcoal pencil became a strange sight in the village. By the seaside rocks, along the field ridges, on tree stumps, by the wells… Wherever there were people, she would be wandering around. Sometimes she would babble incoherently to people like a child learning to speak, and sometimes she would bury her head in her notebook, writing something very seriously.
As soon as it got dark, when no one was paying attention, the mountain spirit girl would silently return to Jing Mountain. Early the next morning, she would continue to ride her oddly shaped mount that looked like a single horn, slowly floating down to the village to continue her disjointed communication with the villagers.
The villagers quickly figured out the mountain spirit girl’s daily routine. Apart from finding people to talk to randomly everywhere, she would often hover high above the Divine Envoy’s courtyard on her mount, gazing at the Divine Envoy with deep affection. Sometimes when the Divine Envoy was in a good mood, he would exchange a few words with her, but more often he would coldly ignore her. The villagers couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, and more and more people began to complain about the Divine Envoy’s lack of romantic sensibility.
The two people involved were unaware of this. Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, four months had passed. The seasonal changes on Jurchen Island were not dramatic, and it could be described as spring-like all year round. Recently, there had only been a few cold winds and rains, and the leaves on Jing Mountain hadn’t even turned yellow.
Li Fei was awakened by the cold rainwater rolling off the leaves above her head. She looked up and realized it had started raining again. She instinctively turned her head to look around, but there was no sign of Ri Yan, the fox, returning. It had been four months, and who knew where he was frolicking to his heart’s content.
She yawned and lightly jumped down from the tree trunk. For these four months, she had been sleeping on random big trees, almost forgetting what it felt like to sleep on a bed.
After carefully washing up at the clear spring in the mountain, facing the drizzling cold rain, Li Fei’s body lit up with a fire light, instantly drying her rain-soaked body and clothes. She casually picked a large leaf as an umbrella, mounted the Horn of Si, and set off towards the village at the foot of the mountain with renewed spirit.
These days, she had figured out a pattern. When she went to his courtyard in the morning, if the doors and windows were open, it meant he was already awake. As soon as she arrived, he would come out of the house and chat with her casually. If the doors and windows were closed, it meant he was sleeping in. Since becoming some kind of divine envoy, he had become much more lazy overall.
Today she seemed to have woken up a bit late. She wondered if Lei Xiuyuan would be waiting for her, and if she could talk to him a bit more today. Li Fei felt like she was getting to know Lei Xiuyuan all over again. Before he had fallen for her, his most authentic personality was on display, and she was still deeply drawn to it, unable to extricate herself.
She could fall in love with him over and over again, but she didn’t know if he would fall in love with her a second time.
Li Fei smiled self-mockingly. Of course, she could wait for him to remember everything. Wait for a few hundred years, and he might remember. But that felt like she had lost somehow. She had no way to make Lei Xiuyuan develop feelings for her without being under the curse of the Jianmu fruit.
The exit of the mountain forest was near. Li Fei didn’t want to think too much. The Horn of Si suddenly accelerated, darting out of the forest like lightning. In the drizzling rain, there seemed to be a figure at the village entrance. Her heart suddenly moved, and the Horn of Si immediately slowed down, floating over slowly.
It was Lei Xiuyuan. Li Fei stared at him in a daze. His hair was still unbound, and he wore an outer robe, holding an oil paper umbrella, standing quietly at the village entrance, waiting for who knew who.
“Xiuyuan,” she called out to him, jumping down from the Horn of Si and walking up to him. In her not-so-fluent overseas language, she asked, “Why are you here?”
Lei Xiuyuan saw her holding a large leaf over her head, with crystal-clear water droplets sliding off the leaf tip. The sight was quite amusing, and he could barely hold back his laughter. Trying hard to suppress his smile, he said, “Nothing.”
Nothing? Li Fei was stunned as she watched him hand her the oilpaper umbrella, and then decisively walk back in the rain. Her heart skipped a beat, and she suddenly seemed to understand. Holding the umbrella, she chased after him in a few steps, standing on tiptoe to hold the umbrella over his head, while smiling and saying, “Xiuyuan, can I take a look in your room? I won’t touch anything.”
He didn’t say yes, but he also didn’t say no, so that was tacit approval, right? Li Fei walked on tiptoe the whole way, holding the umbrella for him. After a few steps, Lei Xiuyuan snatched the umbrella back and said in a low voice, “Walk properly.”
She took the opportunity to move closer, gently grasping his sleeve, and looked up at him with an ingratiating smile. “Then thank you for holding the umbrella.”
What a presumptuous little girl, Lei Xiuyuan glanced at her, but he didn’t dislike her at all, not one bit.
Pushing open the courtyard gate and shaking off the water droplets from the oilpaper umbrella, he first closed the wide-open windows from the outside. Li Fei’s sharp eyes had already noticed water stains on the desk under the window, and the floor near the door was also wet with rain—he must have opened the door and windows waiting for her for a long time, and finally couldn’t resist going to the village entrance to wait when she didn’t show up.
A warm feeling rose in Li Fei’s heart. The hardships of the past few months suddenly felt as light as a feather. He had once fought desperately for her for many years, while she had only slept rough in the mountains for a few short months, racking her brains to learn the overseas language. It wasn’t any real hardship at all. She knew that although Lei Xiuyuan rarely spoke sweet words, he would use all his strength to be good to the person he liked, even taking away her troubles and pain.
Lei Xiuyuan had once said that meeting her was a blessing from heaven. He was wrong. Meeting him was her blessing.
She followed him into the room, first looking around. Surprisingly, unlike his rooms in the academy or Wuyue Court, which were almost empty with no decorations, this place was different. In the corner stood many large bookshelves, densely packed with countless books. Although there were many books, they were spotless, showing that he frequently read them. Along the bookshelves, on the other wall, were several potted flowers of types she had never seen before. One of the flowers was as large as a human head, ink-black in color, with a strong fragrance permeating the air.
Now that he was the Divine Envoy, naturally what he wore and used was infinitely better than before. Even the chairs were inlaid with gemstones. The room wasn’t lit by oil lamps but by pearls adorning the corners. The bed was ridiculously large, with gold threads embroidered on the quilt… Li Fei looked around for a while, feeling dazzled, and finally gave up on these luxurious decorations, walking to the bookshelf to look at the books.
She couldn’t recognize a single character in the books, but the writing wasn’t unfamiliar. The stone tablet in front of the Yimin Tomb had been carved with this kind of writing. It must be the overseas script.
Unable to understand the books, Li Fei could only lower her head to look at the flower pots, while asking, “Were these books and flowers prepared by the villagers?”
She didn’t think the Jurchen people, who were simple to the point of foolishness, could obtain these things. The flowers and books were not items that could be found on Jurchen Island. There probably weren’t even people here who could read, with everything still maintaining an undeveloped, self-sufficient stage.
Lei Xiuyuan placed a cup of tea on the table and said indifferently, “I collected them from other places when I had nothing to do these past two years. The vastness of the overseas world is beyond imagination. I collected books from various places, and these flowers are all legendary things. But this is only a tiny fraction. I don’t know when I’ll be able to fully understand everything about the overseas world.”
Li Fei held the teacup and stared at him blankly. He had said this in the overseas language, and the words were too complex. She could only hear without understanding.
Lei Xiuyuan, feeling a bit disdainful yet somewhat amused, pulled out two books from the bookshelf and pointed to the chair in front of him. “Just learning to speak will end up making you illiterate in the end. Come sit down, I’ll teach you starting with the simplest characters.”
She finally understood this sentence more or less. Overjoyed, she came over to sit down, taking out her charcoal pencil and notebook from her bosom, and putting on a serious and studious look.
Lei Xiuyuan curiously took her ever-present notebook and flipped through it. It was densely filled with Central Plains characters, using them to annotate the pronunciations of various overseas words. At the end, she had specifically written down the meaning of each sentence. He finally couldn’t help but chuckle softly.
“Don’t laugh!” Li Fei snatched the notebook back, embarrassed and angry. “How else am I supposed to learn if not like this? There’s no one here who can read.”