Chapter 1492: Do you love the Dao Of Formations
Chapter 1492: Do you love the Dao Of Formations
Yang Qing’s eyes immediately returned to normal after the question.
Answering Chen Yu’s cheeky question, Yang Qing smiled. "You remind me of a friend," he said meaningfully.
"A friend?" Chen Yu echoed. Outwardly, he seemed playful and easygoing, but inwardly, there was a storm raging within him.
I was right. The feeling I felt wasn’t mistaken. He is definitely connected to one of my kin, and given the concentration of my kin’s aura on him, it makes sense they’re close. The concentration is too high for them not to be, Chen Yu thought, as his excitement grew.
Such dense residual aura, he noted, observing Yang Qing closely. It’s even higher than mine!That figure could very likely be a bound descendant. A bound descendant!! The bubbling excitement inside of him instantly exploded before Chen Yu reigned it in.
I have never met one, he thought, as his mind wandered with little effort on his part. He couldn’t stop it even if he wanted to. After all, the matter involved a fellow Jade Kin.
Yang Qing’s expression turned curious and faintly confused as he looked at Chen Yu. Chen Yu’s expression looked no different from when they’d started talking, but the moment Yang Qing had mentioned friend, he could subtly feel something strange in the way Chen Yu was looking at him.
Is it because he is a mythical race, and I struck his curiosity with my response? Yang Qing wondered. Maybe mythical races can sense one another. I am covered from head to toe in the scent of Shitong’s feathers from all the fights, not to mention we also share a nest. Maybe he could sense from that, he thought, feeling the strangeness from Chen Yu spike and grow.
That realization started affecting him, too, as he also started getting excited at the thought that he was face-to-face with another mythical race member. I wonder what race he could be? He doesn’t have that domineering air about him, so I guess I could rule out a dragon. But what if it’s a preconception? Are all dragons domineering?" Yang Qing seriously wondered.
I can’t make assumptions, Yang Qing warned himself. His left eyelid twitched just slightly as a certain rotund bird flooded his mind.
Just look at Shitong, he thought, fighting back the reflexive urge of his body to clench a fist and grind his teeth whenever that roommate of his came to mind. Surely he must be an oddity amongst Celestial Nesting Weavers. They can’t all be like him, can they? I dearly hope not, Yang Qing thought, trying to comfort himself, and when that didn’t work, his hands moved reflexively to one of the pearls on his coat.
Touching the pearl seemed to have worked splendidly to exorcise the dreadful specter that was Yang Shitong, because immediately after, Yang Qing’s mind didn’t waste much time going down the rabbit hole of guessing what mythical race Chen Yu belonged to. His spirit stones were on Chen Yu being a Luan. Yang Qing had read that they had gentle, friendly temperaments. If not a Luan, then maybe a Tree Folk. In fact, the more Yang Qing looked at it, the more the signs pointed in that direction.
There was that dense wood and water element surrounding Chen Yu. And the vast lifeforce and vitality. Yang Qing knew he was reaching with that last part, given Shitong’s case. But with the first? Well... maybe he was reaching with that, too, given the present events that had led him here.
Following the trails of a suspected kidnapper had brought him to the doors of the Vast Blue Merchant Company. And that suspected kidnapper, per his suspicions, could very well be a mythical race member. What mythical race, one might ask? Well, a Tree Folk.
A Tree Folk had led him here. Could that be affecting his present judgement, making him see signs of Chen Yu being a Tree Folk, with the evidence continuously supporting said guess, the more he observed the Jade Leaf Academy appraiser? Well, there was a chance his investigation may have coloured it... maybe.
Did he care though that his obsession with the case was starting to pour into his other unrelated affairs? The answer was that Yang Qing didn’t care one bit. Not one bit!!! He was face to face with a mythical race member. Where would he find the presence of mind to worry that his obsession with finding a kidnapper, who had kidnapped someone he’d only interacted with once, was starting to affect his judgement.
Yang Qing wasn’t worried. A healthy dose of paranoia and pettiness was already influencing his general outlook on life. What was wrong with adding a little obsession into the mix.
And what if he was right? What if, outside of the obsessive bias, Chen Yu was actually a Tree Folk? If he was then...
Yang Qing’s heart rate spiked as an audacious thought formed that he immediately dismissed, smiling wryly to himself. Surely, as lucky a run as he seemed to be on of late, surely it wasn’t to the level that he’d come face to face with the very ’suspect’ he was chasing after.
Yes, somewhere in Yang Qing’s mind came the very audacious thought: What if... what if Chen Yu was Xie Huan, the rogue cultivator with extensive skill in harvesting and all matters of herbology?
What if this Chen Yu was Xue Fang, the Guest Elder of the Drunken Dream Formation Manor?
What if this Chen Yu was also Cao Tian, the gallivanting painter whose traces appeared throughout the Hebei Kingdom?
What if this Chen Yu was also Wu Chen, the roaming appraiser with a body of work across many rank three organizations?
That last identity was what gave Yang Qing pause and put a slight dampener on his racing thoughts. It did not make sense to have two appraisal identities.
Not unless... Yang Qing’s mind started turning. Not unless the Wu Chen identity had been burned, which necessitated the creation of another.
There was nothing easier than slipping into a persona you already had experience playing. Not to mention that as an instructor from the Jade Leaf Academy, Chen Yu had access to a plethora of materials and techniques that would make his job as an appraiser considerably easier.
Despite the inner voice telling him he was thinking crazy, seeing things and connections that were not there, the more Yang Qing looked at Chen Yu, the more he felt Chen Yu could be a kidnapper. He just had that air about him now. He also has that spiritual plant and tree feel to him, Yang Qing added justifiably. Having, on occasion, been labeled a tree himself, he felt it was only fair that he had a good eye for detecting his fellow tree kin. Chen Yu was feeling kinly familiar to him.
"Fellow Daoist, could I ask you something?" Yang Qing slowly asked, pulling Chen Yu out of his own spiraling thoughts concerning the friend Yang Qing had mentioned earlier.
"Sure, anything, Fellow Daoist," Chen Yu said warmly.
The growing warmth in his voice instantly added to his tally in Yang Qing’s mental scoreboard, marking him as likely being the kidnapper. In Yang Qing’s mind, the warmer a smile became, the more it hid sketchy intentions.
Pushing his checklist to the back of his mind, Yang Qing smiled warmly in return before asking, "Do you love the Dao of formations, Fellow Daoist?"