My Enemy Became My Cultivation Companion-Chapter 727 - 466: Long-Awaited Reunion (Two in One)
The distant mountains are draped in snow.
The cedar trees stand tall and straight, their cold shadows enclosing a small grave. Yin Tingxue's figure was wrapped in a bright red cotton jacket, as the Bodhisattva stood solemnly atop the stele. Her palms pressed together, she recited sutras for the journey to the Western Paradise. After some unknown time, a drop of dew rolled down her cheek, cold as if falling into water.
Snow started falling here as well.
After Yin Tingxue finished her blessings, she brushed off the slightly grayish snow atop the Bodhisattva's head and tucked it into her chest. This faceless, ugly Bodhisattva was a gift from her husband at their wedding. She carried it in her embrace at all times, seldom placing it aside. Thus, at this moment, the ugly Bodhisattva still carried a trace of warmth and did not bite with chill.
From the edge of the slope, the yellow dog barked at her anxiously, shrinking back timidly, hesitant to leap forward.
"I'll come up now."
Yin Tingxue replied softly and walked over, clutching the Bodhisattva. The small grave grew farther away. When she climbed up and turned back around, all she could see was the shadow amidst the cedar trees. She silently uttered, "Namo Amitabha Buddha." The grave held a small dog. When Huang Niang had ascended the mountain, she was already the mother of several puppies. Yin Tingxue had given the puppies away, save one frail little one too weak to nurse, which she had tried her best to raise, squeezing out milk from the mother and feeding it. Yet in the end, it didn't survive the spring.
Though Yin Tingxue had wanted to save it, she had been powerless back then. At that time, she didn't know Taoist skills. Now everything was different—half a year had passed, and she had attained the Golden Core.
But the past was the past.
This wasn't Yin Tingxue's first encounter with death. She had long understood that birth, aging, sickness, and death were natural rhythms of the world. Thus, she buried the little dog in the earth, marking the spot with a small grave. From time to time, she would come to pay respects. Even though the frail puppy was forgotten by its own kind, she still remembered.
Situated in the northern corner of Yin Sword Mountain, Cangwu Peak faced the northern slope. As autumn deepened, fine snow began to fall. One person and one dog traversed the mountain path between two clusters of cold cedar shadows, eventually arriving at the entrance of her home.
A pale white layer had settled upon the eaves, and traces of it decorated the window lattice. The dim, somber sky carried hues of gray. As Yin Tingxue reached out her hand, the snow melted under her touch, fragile in its warmth. She murmured softly, "Snow is a girl."
Having spoken, she hopped a little in the snow. Her thick cotton jacket puffed and bounced as expected, and she added naturally, "That's why I'm called Tingxue."
Huang Niang wagged her tail joyfully and hopped alongside her.
The door creaked open, ushering a chill that pierced to the bone. A house inhabited by only one always turned cold quickly. Without the warmth of human activity, it was even colder than the outside. Yet Yin Tingxue had grown accustomed to it and did not draw her neck inward.
Though she had attained the Golden Core, she rarely resorted to Taoist skills.
Dim light filtered through the window lattices. The tea table was pristine, while a porcelain bowl looked as though cloaked with a thin mist, ethereal and subdued. The corners of the room were shaded and tranquil, rendering fears of ghosts long since relics of childhood. Yin Tingxue guided Huang Niang back to her nest before bypassing the front hall and returning to her bedroom. A screen painted with sprawling mountain views stood in her way; she skirted around it and perched on the edge of the bed. The chamber had been meticulously tidied, leaving nothing but her solitary presence.
Doesn't being alone feel lonely?
Yin Tingxue didn't know. Yet suddenly, she recalled a question posed during her trip with Chen Yi to Yintai Temple. She cupped the warm, ugly Bodhisattva in her hands.
Her fingertips glided over the Bodhisattva's edges, as she stared at it motionlessly.
When will he return?
Yin Tingxue still didn't know. She felt herself longing for him, yet dared not overthink. The more she let thoughts of him linger, the harder it felt he would come back—because he enjoyed teasing her far too much... 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
The room was quiet. A chessboard lay flat on a table, its black-and-white stones silent inside their box. Unbidden, she recalled her days as the Purity Saintess, trapped within the tower. Then, every maid and attendant had been dismissed, leaving her to sit idly from morning's first light till nightfall, an existence suffocatingly dull and one she now feared even as memory.
She didn't know what she was waiting for—only that she kept waiting, endlessly waiting.
Even now, she sat quietly alone.
It was somewhat like the past...
Yin Tingxue drew a breath, clutching the ugly Bodhisattva tightly as she lay sideways upon her bed. She remembered. Though unaware of what awaited, she secretly hoped she was waiting for her mother to return—not the mother plagued by deteriorating illness, but the one who lived years ago in Yintai Temple. Back then, her hair was styled in elegant coils, and her hands held vibrant, glistening candied hawthorn sticks… Yet for all her waiting, it seemed her mother would never come back.
"Won't he come back either?" Yin Tingxue murmured unexpectedly aloud.
Frost formed on the paper windows of the room, conjuring memories of her confinement in the tower. She had spent time sketching words upon frost to stave off boredom. Her life as the so-called "Purity Saintess" hadn't truly extinguished—it seemed to whisper faint sighs into her solitude, where now Yin Tingxue also idly traced words upon frost.
Everything bore resemblance to the past.
This resemblance sent a chill through Yin Tingxue.
The young woman paused her hand, as if deliberately severing ties to former days. Returning to the bed, she left her cotton jacket on, wrapping herself snugly in her bedding. Her body grew warmly content yet faintly insubstantial, as though unreal.
Yin Tingxue groped at the edge of the pillow, pulling forth a small paper flower. Nestled within her bedding, her gaze fixed unbrokenly upon it,
Until, much later, she murmured:
"Will you not come back?"
...…
A few days later, Yin Sword Mountain received a visit from a fellow Taoist from afar.
The sect leader of Yin Sword Mountain's current generation was known as White Jade Immortal. Though she had reached her twilight years, she bore white hair like an ageless youth, her face void of any trace of wrinkles. Her name registered within the sect's genealogy as An Kang. Though she bore the surname An, her relation to the An clan of Danyang was tenuous at best, even more so given the severance of worldly ties among those who pursued the Tao. The distant connection had grown so faint it could scarce be called a bond, leaving behind only a title.
Among all households and surnames under the heavens, fellow cultivators meeting one another are obliged to act courteously. The Taoist way inherently values kinship over vanity, spurning worldly ladders of high and low for mutual joy between hosts and guests. Upon receiving the invitation, White Jade Immortal An Kang learned her visitor hailed from Longevity Palace and approached the matter with utmost respect.
