Liao Tingyan heard the rapid beating in her chest. She wasn’t sure if it was because the earlier thunder tribulation had been so intense that she still hadn’t recovered from the shock, or if it was because Sima Jiao was making her heart race.
He had just defied the heavenly thunder, and his face still carried that cold, mocking expression that hadn’t changed. Looking at him, Liao Tingyan felt as if she had returned to when they first met when he often wore this same expression.
His finger brushed lightly across her face. At first, it was just a gentle caress, carrying an indescribable intimacy and comfort. But soon, he smiled and then smeared all the blood from his hand onto her face—the kind of mischievous act that begged for punishment.
Suddenly finding her face covered in blood, Liao Tingyan thought: …You still have the nerve to smile? Just a second ago, the little deer in my heart went splat and died, do you know that? Apologize to the little deer!
Thanks to his gesture, Liao Tingyan felt her heart function return to normal, and her brain could think properly again.
She grabbed Sima Jiao’s wrist and pulled him to sit down in the place she had tidied up earlier, then asked him, “Such a commotion, won’t it attract attention? Should we leave now or what?”
Sima Jiao casually flicked off some blood droplets from his hand, wiped the blood from his wound with his sleeve, and said, “Thunder Echoing Valley is special. When undergoing a thunder tribulation here, there won’t be any unusual phenomena outside.”
He had prepared in advance.
This thought flashed through Liao Tingyan’s mind, but her attention was quickly drawn to Sima Jiao’s careless actions. His slovenly lifestyle was just like that of a contemporary single young man—he had no idea how to take care of himself. She grabbed Sima Jiao’s hand, wiped the blood clean, and prepared to apply medicine.
Sima Jiao let her handle his hand, not saying anything more. He lay down where Liao Tingyan had been lying, like a noblewoman getting her nails done, positioning himself comfortably and watching her actions with leisure.
As Liao Tingyan wiped the blood from his hand, she thought it was such a waste. He would casually spill blood everywhere—how long would it take to recover all that?
The wound was still bleeding. The fingers are connected to the heart, and Liao Tingyan felt his pain just by looking at it.
She took out the special healing medicine she had kept from before, applied it to the wound, and then wrapped it with a medicinal talisman that could help heal wounds. With proper care, even though Sima Jiao’s wounds healed slowly, he should recover completely within a month.
After bandaging one hand, Sima Jiao waved his five fingers in front of Liao Tingyan, his expression once again filled with meaningful understanding. “Jade Spirit Ointment and Spirit Flesh Talisman—you didn’t carry these healing medicines before, but now you have quite a stock. It seems you prepared them specifically for me.”
Liao Tingyan replied, “Yes.” She didn’t even look up, agreeing straightforwardly.
With her simple acknowledgment, Sima Jiao fell silent.
They were quiet for a moment.
After a few minutes, Sima Jiao wiggled his fingers again, frowning uncomfortably, and moved to tear off the bandages on his fingers. “I don’t want to be bandaged. It’s troublesome.”
Liao Tingyan looked at him. His action of trying to pull off the bandages reminded her of when she went to a cat café with colleagues. There was a cat that had little socks put on its paws and showed the same dislike, pulling at the socks exactly as Sima Jiao was doing now.
Liao Tingyan: “Pfft.”
Sima Jiao paused and looked at her.
“What are you laughing at?”
When Liao Tingyan wasn’t emotionally agitated, he couldn’t hear what she was thinking. Like now, he couldn’t guess why she suddenly laughed, so he used his truth buff.
Liao Tingyan opened her mouth, “I think you’re cute, so I laughed.”
Sima Jiao seemed as if he hadn’t heard clearly. His expression as he looked at her was strange. After a while, he raised his hand to rub Liao Tingyan’s face, pulling her head close to his own, and rubbed it forcefully a couple of times.
Liao Tingyan’s lips puckered as he rubbed her, and she exclaimed, “Your hand! Your hand! Don’t use force! The wound will open!”
Sima Jiao: “Pfft.”
Sima Jiao: “Do you know what I’m laughing at?”
Liao Tingyan: “…” How would I know? I don’t have an innate truth buff skill.
She pulled Sima Jiao’s hand away and continued to bandage it. When Sima Jiao tried to pull back, she held his hand firmly, not allowing him to move.
Sima Jiao became displeased again. He disliked any form of restraint. “I don’t want to be bandaged.”
This ancestor, though hundreds of years old, was found to be quite like a child in some ways after spending time with him—probably because no one had taught him since childhood, and he had spent all these years with only a pet snake as a companion. Liao Tingyan held his hand and shook it gently, coaxing him, “The medicine was just applied. If not bandaged, the wound will easily split open. Just for three days, alright?”
Sima Jiao: “…”
Liao Tingyan: “Keep it on, please. It looks so painful to me. Once the wound heals a bit, we can remove the bandage.”
Sima Jiao: “…”
Liao Tingyan: “Please, I’m worried.”
Sima Jiao: “…”
Liao Tingyan looked at Sima Jiao’s expression, laughing loudly in her heart. Just because the ancestor’s expression was too amusing, it was hard to describe.
To say he was unhappy wasn’t quite right, but to say he was happy was strange too. To say he was conflicted, there was a bit of that, and hesitation as well. He was wavering between “listening to her and enduring it” and “not wanting to listen, not bandaging means not bandaging.”
Liao Tingyan wasn’t good at acting. Afraid he would notice the smile she could barely suppress, she simply pounced on him, hugging his neck, leaning on his chest, burying her face in the crook of his neck, and steadied her voice: “You know I prepared this especially for you. If you don’t use it, didn’t I prepare it for nothing? I’ve been wearing the yin-luo necklace you made for me.”
Sima Jiao, upon being hugged, stared at his own hand for a while, then placed it on her back in a reciprocal embrace.
“Just three days.” He compromised.
Liao Tingyan held back from laughing out loud.
Sima Jiao snickered coldly, very disdainfully: “You think I can’t see that you’re deliberately acting coy.”
What use was seeing through it when he still compromised? The ancients said that pillow talk works, and indeed it does.
Liao Tingyan hugged his neck, feeling her heart gradually calm down. The earlier deafening thunder gradually faded away, with only Sima Jiao’s steady heartbeat next to her ear. She suddenly felt a warm flow spreading through her body, soaking her heart, warm and soft.
She leaned there, feeling a bit dazed. Her nose was filled with Sima Jiao’s scent—everyone has a unique smell that they might not notice themselves, but others can. Sima Jiao’s scent carried a slight fragrance of blood-coagulating flowers, mixed with another indescribable smell. At his neck, where blood flowed, the scent was stronger, as if emanating from his blood.
In this world, perhaps only she had been so familiar and close as to smell his scent this way. Liao Tingyan naturally raised her head and kissed Sima Jiao’s chin. Sima Jiao lowered his head and kissed her back. The two naturally exchanged a kiss.
When they parted, Sima Jiao still lowered his head and lightly pressed his lips against hers, looking as if all his fur had been smoothed down, his hand unconsciously caressing her back.
Afterward, Sima Jiao indeed didn’t try to tear off the bandages on his hand anymore, only occasionally glancing at his two hands with some displeasure. The way he held his fingers out reminded Liao Tingyan of “Princess Returning Pearl” that she watched in childhood; Zi Wei’s hands were once wrapped the same way.
She wanted to laugh but then couldn’t. If it were someone else with such high cultivation, this kind of injury would heal quickly after taking some spirit pills, but Sima Jiao couldn’t.
She remembered the small pill that had saved Sima Jiao from the brink of death last time. She wondered what it was made of to be so effective.
Sima Jiao: “That was a secret medicine from the Shangyun Buddhist Temple. There’s only one in the world. If the Sima clan didn’t have some connection with Shangyun Buddhist Temple in the past, and if I weren’t the last person of the Sima clan, that secret medicine wouldn’t have been given to me.”
Liao Tingyan: “Did I speak out loud?”
Sima Jiao: “You did. And I’ve told you not to worry. I won’t die before you.”
Liao Tingyan: “…” Can this straight man still speak properly?
She sat up: “You specifically chose this place for me to undergo the thunder tribulation, and previously you specially crafted such a powerful defensive treasure, and even came here yourself. You knew early on that this thunder tribulation wouldn’t be simple, didn’t you?”
Liao Tingyan had guessed earlier that perhaps it was because she wasn’t originally from this world that the thunder tribulation here was particularly targeting her. Later, seeing Sima Jiao’s prepared manner, she thought that it might be because she had leveled up too quickly, skipping all the previous tribulations, making this one so intense.
But Sima Jiao’s answer wasn’t any of her guesses.
He said: “Because your soul has merged with mine, carrying my aura, you face the Nine-Nine Thunder Tribulation.”
Liao Tingyan: “I see.” Wasn’t there also the tradition of unforgivable villains being struck by lightning? It seems this was truly a villain’s treatment. Liao Tingyan’s attitude remained calm.
Sima Jiao: “Fortune and the Way of Heaven are complicated to explain, but the Sima clan’s near extinction today is related to that mysterious fortune and the Way of Heaven. ‘It’ wants to exterminate the Sima clan, to kill me.”
Liao Tingyan: “…Ah.” So it was extermination of the nine clans, one person commits a crime, and relatives suffer collective punishment.
No wonder during the earlier thunderbolt, this ancestor was almost giving the middle finger to the heavens.
Liao Tingyan still felt something was wrong. “I remember the Gengchen History mentioned that many years ago, the Sima clan had many powerful immortals who ascended to become gods.” If so, the Sima clan couldn’t be considered extinct.
Sima Jiao laughed loudly, full of sarcasm, dismissive of the Gengchen History she mentioned. “Ascending to become gods is just the biggest joke in the world.”
“In the past, whenever an immortal ascended, the world would be filled with spiritual energy. Do you know why?”
Liao Tingyan recited the standard answer from textbooks: “Because when immortals ascend, the gate between the divine realm and the lower realm connects, and spiritual energy flows into the mortal world.”
Sima Jiao said directly: “It’s because those ascending immortals never actually reached the divine realm. Instead, they dispersed in the world, their souls and bodies turning into pure spiritual energy, nourishing this world.”
Liao Tingyan was stunned. Wait, was this an earth-shattering secret? And he just revealed it?
As if in response to Liao Tingyan’s thoughts, rolling thunder clouds gathered above again, with rumbling thunder seeming to warn them.
Sima Jiao completely ignored it and continued: “This was confirmed by the last person of the Sima clan to ascend. Otherwise, why would no one dare to ascend for many years afterward?” And why else would the Shi clan fearlessly scheme against the remaining Sima clan members, confining them, step by step usurping their position?
It was all because the Shi clan learned from Sima clan elders that many of the so-called ascended Sima clan gods could never return.
All the glory and splendor was a joke.
Liao Tingyan covered Sima Jiao’s mouth with her hand. “Alright, I understand. No need to say more.” If he continued, that thunder would likely strike again, and his hands were still injured.
Sima Jiao pulled her hand away, staring into her eyes, and asked: “Are you afraid? Afraid that I’ll implicate you?”
For whatever reason, he didn’t use his truth buff.
Liao Tingyan: “I’m not afraid, it’s just… will all my future thunder tribulations be like this?” If not for being in this special Thunder Echoing Valley, outside, it would probably destroy two mountains.
Sima Jiao: “With me here, you’ll be fine.” His face suddenly turned fierce, his hair bristling.
Liao Tingyan stroked his hair in return: “I’m thinking, since undergoing thunder tribulation is so troublesome, I shouldn’t raise my cultivation too quickly.” This way, if she slacked off and didn’t cultivate, the psychological pressure wouldn’t be so great.
The joy of secretly not doing homework versus legitimately not doing homework due to special circumstances felt different. With the latter, she could completely let go of the burden and immediately feel at ease.
Liao Tingyan secretly felt pleased. By the way, she inwardly shouted loudly, let’s forget about dual cultivation too. Dual cultivation makes cultivation level rise too quickly.
Sima Jiao: “…”
Liao Tingyan thought for a moment and asked all her questions at once, otherwise she’d be too lazy to ask again later. “Ancestor, what level have you reached in your cultivation?” It seemed no one could gauge his exact cultivation level.
Sima Jiao still didn’t conceal anything and directly said: “If not for the Fengshan Spirit Fire within me, after passing through the tribulation thunder just now, I would have immediately ascended—and then, both my person and soul would have turned into pure spiritual energy to nourish all living beings in the world.”
This man had reached the cultivation level.