When the first heavy snow fell on Juying Island, Ri Yan finally returned. This trip seemed to have taken him to many places, and he even had a huge cloth bag in his mouth, bulging with unknown contents. Upon seeing Li Fei, he immediately wanted to show off and boast, mocking: “It’s been half a year, how are you still miserably sleeping in trees alone? Look at how much you’ve wasted these months, while I’ve been to so many places and brought back so many things! It’ll dazzle your eyes!”
With that, he used his teeth to tear open the bag, and its contents scattered all over the ground, startling Li Fei.
Most of the bag’s contents were oddly shaped corpses, bloody and mixed with some glowing stones and tangled branches and flowers. Rather than being surprising, it looked quite terrifying.
Li Fei looked speechlessly at the corpses strewn on the ground, then at Ri Yan’s bright green eyes. He was proud, his five tails almost curled up to the sky.
“…Are these corpses of various people from the Thousand Islands?”
She went closer and carefully examined a relatively intact corpse. This person looked no different from ordinary people, except for a mouth full of black teeth, sharp as canine teeth. Most of the remaining corpses were killed by Ri Yan, either with rotted shoulders or necks, dying in miserable states.
“Not just that!” Ri Yan said with flying spirits, using one tail to scatter the pile of corpses and roughly separate the tangled stones and plants, before continuing: “Not only are there people from overseas, but also various mythical beasts and auspicious creatures only heard of in legends! Look, this is a Miemeng bird! That one is even more precious, called a Chenghuang! Don’t these leaves on the branch look like pearls? This is called a Ruoceng! They’re all very rare even overseas!”
Li Fei looked through everything for a while before sighing: “Ri Yan, you didn’t just rush up and bite anyone who looked strange, did you?”
Ri Yan glared: “That’s right, so what?! I’m stronger than them, it’s their fault for being killed by me!”
She felt that trying to lecture this thousand-year-old demon about right and wrong would not only be difficult but also useless. He always acted with a hint of wickedness and did as he pleased, so she simply gave up and spread her hands: “You’ve brought back such a pile of corpses, where are you going to put them? On the ground? I’m afraid they’ll rot in a few days.”
Seeing that she didn’t nag, Ri Yan became happy again: “You’re now a mature Jianmu Fruit, your abilities should be greater than Qingcheng’s back then, right? Open up a cave heaven, or like those damned immortals, create a small thousand worlds. We’ll make our own Thousand Islands Yimin Tomb, not just for overseas people, but also for those legendary plants, trees, and various beasts. Wouldn’t that be much grander than the one in the Middle Earth before?”
Li Fei’s eyes lit up: “That’s a good idea, but the spiritual energy is scarce overseas, so a cave heaven might not be possible. Creating a small thousand world should be doable though. In the future, when I go out with you, it’ll be convenient to carry the small thousand world with us.”
Ri Yan laughed heartily: “You’ve finally come to your senses? Not staying here to waste time with that brat? This is the best! When that little devil remembers everything, he’ll come after us himself, why bother about him!”
Li Fei buried her head in arranging the tangled branches and leaves, saying calmly: “I meant in the future, and also, I’ll go with you to prevent you from killing people indiscriminately.”
“Pah!” Ri Yan was exasperated, “Still wasting time?! Men and women, it’s just that one thing! Take off your clothes and sneak into his bed at night! I don’t believe it won’t work!”
Li Fei kneaded a large snowball and threw it at him hard: “Don’t say it like it’s so natural! Without feelings, how is it different from casual sex!”
Ri Yan shook off the snow on his body and angrily said: “Who cares about all that? So much nonsense, it’s annoying! First, open a small thousand world! I want to put these things inside!”
Li Fei asked curiously: “How do I open one? I don’t know how.”
Ri Yan was also stunned for a moment, pondering: “I only heard Qingcheng mention it before. It seems you need to find an object to attach spiritual energy to first. Look at that damned immortal, he used a mirror as the attachment, so his small thousand world is mirror image magic. This attachment object seems to have some requirements… Let me think about it, no rush.”
Li Fei looked at the bloody corpses on the ground, shaking her head and sighing: “Then these corpses can only be left here for now. Fortunately, it’s cold, so they won’t rot in a day or two.”
Just as she finished speaking, a cold male voice spoke from behind: “Put them in my place for now.”
Both were startled and quickly turned around to see Lei Xiuyuan standing in the snow with an umbrella. He seemed to have been standing in the vast snow for a long time, with a thick layer of snow accumulated on the umbrella.
Li Fei was both surprised and delighted as she approached: “Why did you suddenly come?”
Lei Xiuyuan deliberately put on a stern face and said calmly: “It’s almost the Hour of the Snake. I thought a certain student was slacking off.”
She had always been very regular in her routine, returning to the mountain as soon as it got dark and coming down between the Hours of the Rabbit and Dragon the next day. Last night’s sudden heavy snow, although he knew she wouldn’t freeze or get cold, he still didn’t sleep well all night. This morning, before the Hour of the Rabbit, he was already waiting at the village entrance. Who knew he’d wait until almost the Hour of the Snake without seeing her? Worried, he came up the mountain himself to look for her, only to find that nine-tailed fox boasting about his “trophies”.
Li Fei laughed dryly: “Sorry, I didn’t have time to tell you.”
Lei Xiuyuan folded his oil-paper umbrella and walked to the pile of corpses, examining them carefully. Ri Yan sneered: “You little devil, these two or three years of leisure and wealth have dulled you! Do you know what these are? Have you ever seen them? Haha! Haha!”
Lei Xiuyuan also smiled: “These grey-feathered Miemeng birds are common, what’s so special? Have you seen the blue-feathered red-tailed ones? The Ruoceng leaves are not big enough either, all inferior products.”
“What did you say?!” Ri Yan was furious, “Why don’t you bring me a blue-feathered red-tailed one to see!”
Lei Xiuyuan glanced at him, and that glance made him even more furious: “If you can’t produce one, I’ll bite you to death!”
“Follow me,” Lei Xiuyuan handed the oil-paper umbrella to Li Fei, casually brushing off the snow on her shoulders.
Seeing them leave so suddenly, Li Fei hurriedly followed. They arrived at the village at lightning speed, only to find that the usually busy and hardworking villagers had all closed their doors tightly and were nowhere to be seen. She looked around for a while and exclaimed in surprise: “Where are they?”
“The people here hibernate like bears for three months every winter,” Lei Xiuyuan pushed open the courtyard gate, explaining calmly, “Starting from the first snow, we don’t need to bother them. They’ll naturally wake up when spring comes and flowers bloom next year.”
The various unusual habits of overseas people were indeed strange and interesting.
Seeing Lei Xiuyuan enter the house and gently push on the bookshelf facing south, the bookshelf suddenly moved aside, revealing an underground passage. Ri Yan quickly shrank in size, jumping onto Li Fei’s shoulder, showing a rare surprise: “Underground? Did you make this yourself?”
Lei Xiuyuan opened his palm, a bright red flame dancing in it: “There are four levels underground, I connected them when I had nothing to do. It’s not convenient to keep corpses and such things outside. Follow me.”
An unusual aura emanated from the underground passage, seemingly remnants of a trace of demonic and spiritual energy. Li Fei hadn’t walked far down the passage when she suddenly found herself in a spacious area. What surprised her more was that an overseas person was standing right in front of her, lifelike. Although it had a human face, it had a body like a wild beast, with extremely large ears on both sides of its face, each hanging two green snakes. If it weren’t for the dull grey of its eyes, she would have thought it was a living person standing before her.
Ri Yan was so shocked that he forgot to maintain his composure and jumped onto the person’s shoulder, his pointed nose twitching constantly: “Shebi corpse! My goodness! Is this a Shebi corpse?! You killed him, didn’t his clan hunt you down to the ends of the earth?!”
Lei Xiuyuan said: “I didn’t kill him. None of the overseas people here were killed by me, they’re just collected corpses.”
Li Fei surveyed the spacious room on the first underground level with amazement. The room was sparsely filled with many corpses of overseas people, each seemingly wrapped in a layer of transparent gel-like substance, preventing their bodies from decaying. Even so, many corpses were incomplete, and some seemed to have already started decomposing before being collected, inevitably marrying their perfection.
There were four underground levels in total, all filled with various corpses of overseas people. The blue-feathered red-tailed Miemeng bird was completely overshadowed among them. Ri Yan stood in front of a merman’s skeleton in the corner, almost drooling.
“You even managed to get a merman’s bones! Not bad!” He rarely gave a compliment.
Lei Xiuyuan also rarely showed humility: “I couldn’t get a freshly dead one, let alone see a living merman. It was just by chance that I dug up this skeleton.”
Seeing the two of them suddenly start an excited discussion, Li Fei was truly surprised. She never thought there would be a day when Ri Yan and Lei Xiuyuan would get along like this. Originally always mocking and sneering at each other, now their eyes were bright as if they had found a common interest. Ri Yan’s words became gentle, and Lei Xiuyuan was also polite and refined, making her eyes nearly pop out.
After listening for a while, she couldn’t help but interject: “Why not do like the Yimin Tomb in Wu Yueting, write bronze plaques with the tribe names and origins? Wouldn’t that be more convenient?”
The two men, who were talking enthusiastically, indeed nodded in agreement: “That’s right! It’s a good idea!”
With that, they continued their endless discussion. Li Fei looked through all the corpses of various people and strange beasts collected on the four underground levels, and seeing that they were still talking, she felt out of place and decided to go up first.
In these few months of learning to recognize characters with Lei Xiuyuan, she could understand quite a lot of overseas writing. All the books on his room’s bookshelf were from various places in the Thousand Islands, covering customs, literacy, strange tales and anecdotes, and other topics. The variety was so diverse it was dizzying.
Li Fei picked up the book Lei Xiuyuan had prepared early in the morning and opened it. Sure enough, red circles had already been marked. She was a diligent and obedient student, and without needing her teacher’s urging, she began to grind ink and practice writing characters diligently. Learning an overseas language after recognizing characters was indeed much faster. Recently, she could already speak some uncomplicated sentences fluently, and chatting with villagers was no longer as brain-wracking as before.
Just as she was about to finish writing the circled characters in one book, Li Fei suddenly felt someone beside her. She turned her head and saw that Lei Xiuyuan had come up at some point and was sitting beside her, watching her write.
“Where’s Ri Yan? Still downstairs?” she asked casually with a smile.
Lei Xiuyuan said calmly: “He said he didn’t want to disturb us and left first.”
Li Fei’s wrist trembled involuntarily. She suddenly realized that Lei Xiuyuan had probably arrived early in the morning, and who knows how much of her conversation with Ri Yan he had heard. Ri Yan’s nonsense about taking off clothes and sneaking into bed was probably heard clearly by him too. She suddenly became flustered, coughed dryly a couple of times, and forced a smile: “He, he just likes to joke around. Some things are best just heard and forgotten, don’t mind him.”
“Oh? I don’t think so,” Lei Xiuyuan was very composed, “If you were to take off your clothes and sneak into my bed at night, thinking about it, it wouldn’t be bad.”
So he did hear it! Li Fei didn’t know whether to feel embarrassed or alarmed. She was stunned for a while, and for some reason, she began to smile bitterly instead: “For men, maybe being this direct is better?”
Lei Xiuyuan shook his head: “It depends on the person.”
Without waiting for her reaction, he suddenly took out a crystal-clear glass ball from his sleeve. It was only about half the size of a fist, with an even smaller red flower sealed inside. The flower petals were delicate and vibrant, on the verge of blooming, looking very endearing.
“For you,” he gently placed the glass ball in her palm, “Twelve Lives Flower. I just got it a few days ago, you might like it.”