Chapter 1440 - 780: Well Done, Yin Luanhuang (Double Chapter)_3

Thinking of this, Chen Yi drawled, "If you're going to be one of those heartless Immortals, then it'd be better if you never became one at all."

Yin Weiyin froze for a moment at his words, a surge of bitterness rolling up from the depths of her heart. She pressed it down and said:

"If you keep frightening me like that, I won't bother with you anymore."

"If you ignore me, what will you do?" Chen Yi frowned.

She snorted lightly. "Pick a day and ascend."

"You're something, Luan Huang Yin, now turn over for me."

Chen Yi flared up on the spot, pulled Yin Weiyin by the shoulder. The lingering aftertastes of the female crown's passion had yet to fully fade; she feigned reluctance, but an arm is no match for a thigh, so in the end she had to yield to him.

The wind cooled for a spell…

The female crown's head, with its soft, sleek hair, was pillowed in the crook of his arm. Looking at the way her body nestled against him, Chen Yi couldn't help but think she was deliberately provoking him, just so they could Dual Cultivate once more.

Some of the little schemes of his Great Yin were actually easy enough to guess; not like Zhou Yitang's plans, shrouded in mist, nor like the Little Fox's calculations, flawless down to the last bead. Yin Weiyin always left a few little tails showing, and she herself was unaware of them. At that thought, he suddenly felt the impulse to just go into seclusion in deep mountains and old forests with Yin Weiyin, not come out for ten years.

Ten years of seclusion with Yin Weiyin, and then see if Zhou Yitang and Yin Tingxue still dare to try anything.

But the thought only skimmed past. With three wives, even if one's affection for one of them temporarily outweighed the others, it was best to avoid favoring one at the expense of the rest.

In the end, the difficulty of having multiple partners lies not in possessing them, but in loving them.

Yin Weiyin did not know what Chen Yi was thinking. She kept her head lowered, just busy drawing circles, and did not touch his brows again by speaking of becoming an Immortal. She had indeed been somewhat impatient earlier, but upon thinking it through again now—since he was, in any case, still within her Five Fingers Mountain—there was no need to rush.

The candle flame flickered again, casting the strands of Yin Weiyin's lowered hair across Chen Yi's chest, like pale ink brushed over rice paper.

Curled in the hollow of his arm, her fingertips kept tracing circles—one circle, then another—seeming either bored out of her mind, or weighed down by circling thoughts.

For a brief instant, she didn't even realize she was drawing circles, her movements entirely unconscious.

After a short silence, she suddenly spoke. Her voice still carried a faint hoarseness from spent clouds and rain, yet had regained a touch of its clear chill:

"That City God Golden Body… how did it come to be, exactly?"

She'd wanted to ask while the Fierce Ghost had been present earlier. Chen Yi had, out of nowhere, become a City God—moreover, a Living City God—which she had never imagined.

Only, in front of such a petty ghostly thing, it wouldn't do to lose composure and ask.

Chen Yi turned his head to look at her, and lazily said, "With the Merit Book on me, I took in some incense, and naturally it happened."

"That's not what I'm asking." Yin Weiyin lifted her gaze; in those autumn-water eyes, the candle's flame danced. "I'm asking how you came to be a Living City God. This runs contrary to common order. Underworld offices are always conferred on departed souls, or borne by heroic spirits of great merit. You're a living Cultivator, soul and spirit intact, your allotted years not yet spent—how can you wield the City God Seal and enjoy the Incense Fire Wish Power of a region?

Could it be… you used some forbidden method, or struck some shady bargain with the underworld?"

By the time she reached the end, her fingertip paused, tension tightening in her. Clearly, she was worried.

Chen Yi heard that trace of concern in her words and couldn't help but find it amusing.

He wasn't sure what exactly she was worried about—whether it was his fate, or that one misstep might entangle her own path to Immortality—or perhaps both.

He reached out and caught the fingers that were still misbehaving, closed them in his palm, and drawled, "There was no bargain. If we're speaking of causes… it still goes back to the time we went down to Dragon and Tiger."

"Oh?" Yin Weiyin let him hold her hand, only arching a brow slightly to prompt him to continue.

"Wasn't that the year I took the Little Fox to Dragon and Tiger? We headed all the way toward the Southeast and came to a ghost town. The place was originally called Wa City; the previous City God had, for some reason, been exiled three thousand li…"

Chen Yi slowly recounted what had happened back then.

"So that's how it was." After the time it takes for one stick of incense to burn, she finally let out a soft breath. "It seems it was a chance meeting, an error of fate… Though the City God receives Incense Fire Wish Power and thus diverges from the Taoist road to Changsheng, in terms of cultivation it isn't necessarily a bad thing—as long as you don't mistake this narrow path for the Great Way."

"To me, attaining the Tao and becoming an Immortal is the narrow path." Chen Yi said so.

Seeing his unconcerned expression, the hidden worry that had just begun to fade in Yin Weiyin's heart rose up again with another layer of complexity.

He was always like this: sometimes seemingly reckless and arbitrary, yet with his own measure held firmly within; sometimes seemingly indulging her in every way, yet his hand remained tight on the Immortal path her heart was set upon.

She lowered her lashes and did not press further, only edging her body closer to him, drawing in that reassuring warmth.

"Sleep." Chen Yi pulled her a bit tighter into his arms and blew out the candle.

Darkness fell, and all sounds stilled. Only in the distance there came, faintly, the snoring of Donggong Ruoshu, and outside the window the soft rasp of the old locust tree's branches and leaves rubbing together—there, yet almost not.

And in the deeper layers of night, outside Leshan County, that band of Jianghu Guests who had booked out the inn during the day were quietly gathering before a dilapidated Mountain God Temple in the desolate wilds.

The torchlight lit up faces one by one, some grave, some excited, some greedy. They spoke in low tones, their fragmented words drifting apart on the night wind:

"The news is solid… it's in the Emei Back Mountain…"

"That treasure concerns the Jin Family. We only seek the Cultivation Technique…"

"We must get there first…"

"…I hear there are other parties coming by different routes…"

"…Best be cautious…"