Chapter 20

Chapter 20: How Could She Trust Him
Quan Ye staggered back a few steps in disbelief, then fell heavily to the ground.

A man as strong as an eagle, his tears fell at once.

He stared at his own palm and muttered: “H-how could this…”

[He had clearly pulled his strength back!]

In the past, when he sparred with Yu Zhao, he usually only used half his strength. Only when he got too excited would he go up to sixty or seventy percent.

Yu Zhao would suffer some superficial wounds, but her internal organs were never hurt.

So how did he lose control this time!

“Quan Ye! You beast! You actually shattered Yu Xiao Zhao’s Dao Foundation! Go die!”

When Su Ming heard Fang Cheng Lang’s words, his body swayed. Then he strode forward, grabbed Quan Ye by the collar, roared at him, and finally smashed a heavy punch into his face.

Right after that, Su Ming threw a second punch, a third punch…

Quan Ye stayed silent, letting Su Ming hit him, his face full of regret.

“Enough, stop hitting him!”

Blinded by rage, Su Ming’s fists drew blood with every blow. Lan Zi Yu saw Fang Cheng Lang drowning in grief and, at first, had no intention of stopping him, but then stepped up to block Su Ming.

Su Ming shook him off: “Second Senior Brother, don’t stop me! I have to avenge Yu Xiao Zhao!”

“Don’t make things worse!” Lan Zi Yu said coldly, “Deal with Sixth Junior Sister’s condition first. As for Fifth Junior Brother, we’ll leave his punishment to Master.”

Su Ming lowered his hand with hatred still burning in his chest, then ran back to Yu Zhao’s side.

Cui Jue had just fed Yu Zhao a pill.

Yu Zhao’s face looked a little rosier, and her chaotic breathing slowly calmed.

Su Ming’s heart ached.

Yu Zhao’s cultivation level had fallen from the early Foundation Establishment stage all the way down to the ninth level of Qi Refining.

That meant the past three years of cultivation had all gone to waste.

He did not dare imagine how shattered Yu Zhao would be when she woke up and learned this.

Cui Jue put away the jade vial, looked at Fang Cheng Lang, and shook his head with a grave face: “Her injuries have stabilized, but the damage to her Dao Foundation is irreversible. She can only start Foundation Establishment all over again.”

Fang Cheng Lang lowered his head to look at Yu Zhao, her eyes tightly shut in his arms, and his heart filled with regret.

He clearly knew Quan Ye was impulsive and quick to anger, rough and careless in how he acted. Zhou Jin Yue had even reminded him about it just now. So why had he not stopped Quan Ye?

He was also one of the guilty!

No, not just him. Everyone present here, except their junior sister, was a murderer!

Fang Cheng Lang silently picked Yu Zhao up and walked step by step into her cave residence.

Su Ming and the others followed behind without a word.

When they entered the cave residence, everyone was shocked.

Yu Zhao’s cave residence was empty and bare. There were only a few basic pieces of furniture. It looked like a snow cave, nothing at all like a young girl’s room.

Fang Cheng Lang could not help thinking of Ye Cong Xin’s exquisite and luxurious room. A sharp bitterness rose in his eyes.

So his Little Six had been living this hard a life.

It was Su Ming’s first time stepping into Yu Zhao’s cave. For once, he felt a rare sense of guilt toward her.

He had never seen such a poor, shabby cave residence. It was like the place where some ascetic monks from a Buddhist order would live.

Yu Xiao Zhao had been living in this kind of environment.

No wonder she was stingy.

Lan Zi Yu and Cui Jue were also deeply moved in their own ways.

It suddenly felt like they did not know Yu Zhao as well as they had thought.

After Fang Cheng Lang laid Yu Zhao on her stone bed, he gently brushed her hair and said in a low voice: “Junior Sister… forget it. Fourth Junior Brother, you stay and look after Little Six. The rest of you, come with me to see Master.”

His voice held shards of ice, cold enough to pierce bone.

“Yes.”

Lan Zi Yu and the others all knew First Senior Brother was truly angry this time. None of them dared add fuel to the fire, so they quickly agreed.

Cui Jue stayed behind in Yu Zhao’s cave residence. Fang Cheng Lang dragged the limp Quan Ye away, and together with Su Ming, Lan Zi Yu, and Ye Cong Xin, headed toward the summit of Lone Moon Peak.

…

Inside the cave residence, it was utterly silent.

Cui Jue sat by the bed, staring straight at Yu Zhao’s sleeping face.

After a long time, he finally spoke softly: “Little Zhao, you don’t want to see your Fourth Senior Brother?”

There was no reply in the cave.

Yu Zhao lay there quietly, her expression calm and peaceful.

Cui Jue went on unhurriedly: “Did Fourth Senior Brother do something wrong, so you don’t want to face me?”

“It must still be about what happened in the herb garden last time. Senior Brother scolded you, so you got angry, right?”

“Fourth Senior Brother didn’t mean to blame you on purpose. I only wanted you to remember to be careful with your words and actions, and that you must not lie.”

“…”

Cui Jue, who was always cold and quiet in front of others, had more patience and life in him when he faced Yu Zhao.

But no matter how many words he spoke, the person on the bed still did not respond at all.

All his thousands of words finally turned into a helpless sigh.

Yu Zhao, eyes shut and pretending to sleep, stayed unmoved as she listened to Cui Jue pour his heart out. She even found him a bit noisy.

These words.

[She had already heard enough of them in her last life.]

Whether it was Cui Jue, or Fang Cheng Lang, or even Su Ming and the others, they only believed what they saw with their own eyes. They never listened to anyone’s explanation.

Take the herb garden incident Cui Jue had just mentioned, for example.

Because Cui Jue was an alchemist, he needed a large amount of spirit herbs, so he opened an independent herb garden on Lone Moon Peak.

The spirit herbs growing in the herb garden were not especially rare, but they were the ones an alchemist used most often. Cui Jue valued them very much.

The spirit herbs in the herb garden needed constant care, and Cui Jue often shut himself away for closed-door cultivation and alchemy, so he handed the job of tending the herb garden to Yu Zhao.

Of course, Yu Zhao did her best. To take better care of the spirit herbs, she even went to learn related knowledge on her own. For years, she had never made a single mistake.

But the day before Cui Jue entered closed-door cultivation to refine pills, he went to the herb garden to harvest some spirit herbs he needed. There, he discovered that a large number of the spirit herbs were in bad condition. Nearly half of them had already withered and died.

After a careful check, he found that the water used to irrigate the spirit herbs had been mixed with the root segments of a spirit herb called dragon-tongue flower.

The petals and leaves of dragon-tongue flower were harmless, but its roots and stems were highly poisonous.

And it just so happened that a small patch of dragon-tongue flower was planted in the spirit garden.

Cui Jue immediately decided that Yu Zhao had been careless while harvesting spirit herbs and had mixed the dragon-tongue flower roots into the water. Because of that, he called her over and scolded her.

Naturally, Yu Zhao refused to admit it.

She had taken care of the herb garden longer than Cui Jue had. She knew by heart all the things to watch out for, and the habits of every kind of spirit herb in that herb garden.

So there was no way she would make such a basic mistake.

On top of that, she clearly remembered that during that period, she had not harvested any dragon-tongue flower at all, much less left any of its roots behind. Someone must have secretly interfered and framed her on purpose.

Yu Zhao explained all her reasons to Cui Jue, but he said she was just arguing stubbornly.

Cui Jue was sure that no one else on Lone Moon Peak would go to the herb garden, and that they would not be so bored as to set her up like that.

Yu Zhao could not defend herself, no matter how she tried.

In the end, the two of them parted on bad terms.

To the reborn Yu Zhao, that incident was already something from long ago. She did not care about it anymore.

Because she had gone through things far more painful and unfair than the herb garden.

Cui Jue, who once said he treated her as his own little sister, Cui Jue, who once coaxed her to sleep himself, Cui Jue, who once taught her to recognize and plant herbs, would, one day, personally make her swallow a pill filled with deadly poison.

He had watched as she cried and screamed in pain, watched as she tore her own skin open with her nails, watched as her body convulsed and spasmed. Then he had said in an icy voice: “This is what you get for bullying your junior sister.”

[How could Yu Zhao ever dare trust him again?]

[How could she ever trust him again!]