Some things may be challenging, but they are never impossible.
It’s been some time since Lu Yibei’s last ‘period’. Now that he has more than 20 days remaining as a buffer period, he’ll be able to control his transformations for now.
Although I don’t know why she has business with me, 20 days should be enough for me to find out what she’s after, he thought.
The girl didn’t specify the quality of an urban legend’s core that needed to be fed to her, which means that he could possibly find a way to gather as many cores as possible with the least amount of effort.
All things are possible! He thought positively.
Plus, the girl was somewhat right. The Night Division Records are probably the only thing that the members are allowed to read, and Jiangli’s explanations were entirely from her point of view.
If Yibei were to ask her for information about the Eclipse Society, she would simply brush him off.
However, if the girl was able to provide him with more knowledge relating to urban legends, being a goddess herself, it would be more authentic and reliable.
He pondered for a few moments and looked at the girl who sat by the sofa, surrounded by a thicket of thorns: “I accept your proposal!”
“I’ll help you collect cores and look for that person,” he continued. “In exchange, you have to teach me everything I want to know. Is that reasonable to you?”
He gripped his kitchen knife and held it firmly by his side so that the girl could see it.
“I think the both of us have trust issues. I might betray you, but I am afraid that you’ll betray me too.”
His grip on the knife hardened, and so did his gaze. It seemed to be a silent warning to the girl.
“Oh, you’re being cautious,” the girl smiled, beckoning him towards her. “A simple spell will fix this.”
He stepped forward suspiciously, never letting go of his kitchen knife.
The girl in turn eyed his knife, and she seemed a little apprehensive. She calmly moved her thicket of thorns to the side to allow Yibei some space to sit.
“Give me your hand,” the girl said, stretching out her own.
He stretched his hand out, and she gently pulled it into her own.
“Good. Now repeat after me, I…”
“…”
“You…” the girl paused as she looked downward in shame. “What’s your name again?”
“Lu Yibei,” he replied. However, he just realised that, despite their incident in the last few hours, he still didn’t know her true name.
“By the way, what is your name?”
Although he already knew her identity, he still felt that it would be better for her to confirm his suspicions.
“Jumeng,” the girl replied nonchalantly.
“Huh?” He thought he had heard it wrong and asked again, “Just to be sure, it’s Jumeng and not Jumang, right?”
“You heard me the first time,” the girl nodded, with a faint smug tone that added to her primordial aura. “Isn’t it a beautiful name?”
“I thought you were…”
“Ah!” she smiled. “How should I explain it? You’re both right and wrong, but the real explanation is much more complicated.”
“You’re not being honest, are you?” He frowned, edging the kitchen knife closer to her.
“Hey!” she peeped. “Are you not a man? It’s no wonder you’ve been single until now! After I finish the spell, I’ll tell you, okay?”
“I won’t be single when my dakimakura arrives.”
“I’m not hearing it!” She spat in disgust. “Now, let’s continue with the spell. Repeat after me.”
“I, Lu Yibei.”
“I, Lu Yibei…”
“Will be married to Jumeng today.”
“Will be married to wha… huh? Excuse me?”
“My bad. Back in my domain, I presided over too many weddings. Habits are hard to break. Now, repeat after me.”
“I, Lu Yibei, agree to establish a cooperative relationship with Jumeng. We will thrive in our blessings and weather our sufferings. Through thick and thin, we will treat each other with our hearts, and those who violate the sacred pact will never know peace.”
“This sounds like a wedding vow. And it seems incomplete! Where are the dates for the agreement, or, or…”
“What are you talking about?”
“This isn’t a spell! This is a sworn oath to you! Are you f*cking kidding me?”
“This is the spell!” the girl sighed as she rolled her eyes. “This is how it has always been, ever since I started to exist!”
“You’re not lying, right?”
“I can’t be lying,” she huffed. “Otherwise, we could go the simpler way, and I can make you my husband, but I think you know what being my husband entails. Of course, being my husband is great; you only need to spend 20 minutes a day praying to me and offering me food, and I can…”
“No, no, that’s fine. I don’t need to be your husband.”
‘Having Du Sixian as my dependent is bad enough. If I technically become her dependent, who knows what will happen to the both of us?’
“Is that all? Are you going to recite the spell, or not?” She huffed again. “If you don’t want to, I can just break the spell, and you can continue to be Operator No. 5’s little lapdog, and maybe you’ll wander around like a headless chicken; maybe that will be your peak; maybe you’ll die tomorrow when I tell them what you’ve been…”
Lu Yibei groaned and repeated her spell. As soon as he finished speaking, his eyes started to burn violently.
After a brief burst of light, his living room started to dim, and in the darkness, he could see two petite hands clasped together.
His heart skipped a beat, and a surge of electricity seemed to run down his back, beckoning the sweat beads to stain his clothes in a greasy, cold sweat.
At this moment, he saw a cloud of emerald light hovering by Jumeng’s hands, and an ethereal plant sprouted from the cloud, releasing the calming fragrance of peach blossoms in the air.
In the next moment, an orb of flame containing a drop of blood ignited the back of his hand as it floated towards the peach blossom bud.
The moment the two met, they merged. The fiery red of the flame mixed with the gentle emerald cloud, forming a dirty grey cloud in her palm.
The cloud then collapsed into black, hitting her hands like ink as it splashed out a complex sigil that submerged both of their hands.
At this very moment, an idea plastered itself onto Lu Yibei’s mind: if he or Jumeng were to break the terms of their contract, something very bad would happen to them.
The pain in his eye gradually dissipated, and soon he found himself back in the living room. He could see Jumeng still sitting in her thicket of thorns, toying with an orb of flame with her fingers, and he couldn’t help but cry out in his heart.
“She knows,” he cried out. “She must know. There’s no way she doesn’t know.”
“Hmm…” the girl muttered, snapping the orb of flame out of sight. “I didn’t expect a boy like you to be attuned to fire. Aren’t you an interesting one?”
Huh?
Does she not know?
He gulped and weakly asked, “So, that’s the spell?”
“It’s finished. It’s much more complicated, but I omitted a lot of unnecessary details.”
“Then, can I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead,” she smiled.
“Why are you called Jumeng instead of Jumang? I thought that…”
“Oh. They just call me both names. You know, language isn’t as developed as it is today, so I am known as both Jumeng and Jumang,” she smiled.
“That’s it?”
‘Woman, I smell lies in you!’
“That’s it,” she smiled, raising her arms in mock surrender.
Of course, she couldn’t tell him that she was originally a giant peach tree with a magpie’s nest that rested on its branches but was mistakenly worshipped as a hibiscus tree by a group of ancients. And somehow, she inherited most of Jumang’s power down the line.
She didn’t feel like revealing information like this to him. A girl has secrets.
“Forget it,” Yibei sighed. “If you don’t want to tell me, then I won’t ask anymore.”
