Chapter 55
Chapter 55: Letting It Rot
Her whole body was limp, strength drained from the seams of her bones, and her spirit felt even more worn out. She barely got a few sentences out before she started yawning nonstop. Hu Qing covered her mouth. “No more. I’m going to starve.”
Shui Xin fished a brimming bowl of mushrooms from the pot and shuffled over, offering the tail end of his chopsticks. “Eat.”
Hu Qing stared at the eerie blue sheen in the bowl and said nothing.
“The rabbit didn’t die.”
Hu Qing shot him a look. “Do you have no conscience?”
“Do you think I can’t recognize poisonous mushrooms?” Shui Xin said. “I just used the rabbit to test the flavor. It likes this kind.”
He pushed the chopsticks toward her again.
So now she and a rabbit shared the same tastes?
“You eat it,” Hu Qing said.
Shui Xin rolled his eyes, then snapped his wrist and stuffed a chopstickful into his mouth.
Less than three seconds later, the blisters on his face turned green—green all the way down his neck.
Hu Qing burst out laughing, then wheezed when she couldn’t catch her breath. “You idiot. The rabbit you caught can handle small amounts of poison.”
They were born poison-resistant. Otherwise an emperor would have eunuchs taste-test poison, not rabbits.
Shui Xin rolled his eyes again and forced the mushrooms down. “If it couldn’t poison the rabbit to death, how is it going to poison me?”
Hu Qing had nothing to say to that.
“Pick one,” Shui Xin said. “Either eat. Worst case, I’ve got antidote pills. Or you get up and cook.”
That decided it. She truly couldn’t move. With just her eyes, she chose the pot of milky-white soup, and Shui Xin had to feed it to her.
“You didn’t add salt?” she asked after the first mouthful.
“Why would I carry salt?” Shui Xin said. “I don’t cook.”
Hu Qing silently finished a whole bowl of that pale mushroom soup, then listened to her stomach gurgle for ages.
Shui Xin picked two other kinds and ate them. He looked genuinely baffled. “Why are they all poisonous?”
His face had become a painter’s palette—splotchy and garish, ghostlike.
“It rains a lot here,” Hu Qing said, glancing around. “Low ground. Poison miasma breeding is normal.”
The words had barely left her mouth when fine rain started falling.
One of them sat inside the spirit skiff, the other outside. Neither moved.
A cultivator wasn’t going to die from getting rained on, and there was nowhere nearby to hide anyway. If the rain wanted to fall, let it. They’d wait it out.
They waited until night.
The rain only got heavier. They still didn’t move.
Juan Bu snapped. “What are you two competing over? Is it really that hard to set up a rain-shielding formation with a few rocks?”
Hu Qing drawled, “I really don’t want to move.”
After that, Juan Bu couldn’t bring himself to explode. Hu Qing had killed Zhe Liu by borrowing the power of heaven and earth. That kind of borrowing came with a price.
Right now, her body and mind were healing themselves, and she didn’t have the spirit to do anything else.
“You don’t want to move. He doesn’t want to move,” Juan Bu huffed. “Looks like he’s hurt just as badly as you are.”
Hu Qing only gave a lazy little hum.
Shui Xin turned his head. “What are you humming for?”
“This rain feels nice,” Hu Qing said. Her body felt dried out, like her skin was cracking. The water was a relief.
Shui Xin scooped rainwater and washed his face. “When is my face going to get better?”
“How would I know?” Hu Qing said.
Shui Xin bared his teeth. “I tried spiritual energy, pills, ointment. Nothing works.”
Hu Qing paused, then thought of Scorching Sun Blaze and the way it had raged through him. “Maybe it’s just too strong,” she said. “This isn’t so bad.”
Shui Xin looked at her like she’d lost her mind. Who had screamed “ghost” the first second she saw him?
He rubbed his cheek. “It’s not just my face. It’s everywhere.”
“Does it itch?” Hu Qing asked. She’d seen it—his scalp, his neck, his hands, every exposed patch of skin, all covered in pale blisters. No wonder she’d screamed.
The sun essence was no joke. It was like being set on fire from the inside.
“It doesn’t itch,” Shui Xin said. “But I’m afraid I’ll be disfigured.”
Hu Qing didn’t answer. She stared at the rain drumming on the spirit skiff, mind gone blank.
Shui Xin went blank too.
He’d used a forbidden technique. The mental strain had been worse than Hu Qing’s, and then he’d taken another burn from Scorching Sun Blaze. It felt like his brain had been baked dry.
He didn’t even know what Scorching Sun Blaze was.
After the technique, he’d fought on instinct, half-feral. Later he only remembered an unbearable heat inside his body before his mind finally cleared. He’d assumed it was backlash.
Now, though, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Hu Qing had helped him at some point.
He didn’t ask. Hu Qing didn’t ask him either.
A night passed. Their whole patch of ground had become puddle after puddle, and the rain still hadn’t stopped.
Hu Qing jabbed at him with a look. “At least put the pot away. It’s overflowing.”
“No one’s going to steal it,” Shui Xin said.
Fine.
Another day and another night of rain. The two lazybones still didn’t move.
Juan Bu almost wanted to call Bai Wen over and have him roll the pair of them somewhere else, but he held back. He wanted to see just how far their laziness could go.
One sat outside the spirit skiff, one half reclined inside it, both soaking in water. Their faces were so still they looked dead. Every now and then, one of them would flick a leg and stir up a splash, just to prove they were alive.
Juan Bu muttered, “Are you two competing in patience?”
No, Hu Qing thought. We’re competing in who can let it rot harder.
At last, the rain stopped.
The standing water began to drain away or sink into the earth. When the ground dried a little more, mushrooms burst up everywhere. A huge cluster shoved up one end of the spirit skiff like a jack.
Hu Qing was lying upside down now, head lower than her feet, and she still couldn’t be bothered to turn over.
She was that lazy. She was so lazy she didn’t even bother bailing the water out of the skiff—she just let the sun do it.
As long as it doesn’t reach my nose, I’m not moving.
And honestly, doing nothing felt good. Her mind went quiet. Nothing to think about. Nothing she could even remember to worry about.
It was strangely healing.
She almost wanted to dig a hole and bury herself.
Another day passed. The damp air only made the mushrooms around them grow fatter and taller. Footsteps sounded in the distance. When the person drew near, Hu Qing and Shui Xin finally, lazily, turned their heads.
“Ah—ahhh!”
The newcomer didn’t even get a good look before they whirled and sprinted away.
Something felt off. Hu Qing glanced at Shui Xin. “You scared them off.”
Shui Xin snorted, swept his eyes over her face, and said nothing.
Hu Qing’s heart sank. She yanked out a mirror, looked, and nearly stopped breathing.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she shouted, furious.
The face in the mirror was covered in scabs—thin red scabs packed so tightly it was disfigurement level. She didn’t even look human.
Great. One blister monster, one scab monster. That poor kid—hopefully he didn’t end up with a lifelong trauma.
“Why run?” Hu Qing muttered. “Didn’t he consider we might be senior experts? Doesn’t he want a lucky break?”
She stayed angry for a grand total of three seconds before she flopped right back into it.
It was just the marks left by dragon scales growing in, that’s all. No one was here to look. Even if someone came, they wouldn’t recognize her.
If you were willing to give up, life suddenly felt wide open.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
A lot of footsteps.
They looked up, surprised. So the runner had gone to fetch help?
What, were they going to capture them?
A group of people rushed over and stopped more than ten meters away.
“Aunt?”
The startled shout hit Hu Qing like a slap. The scabbed patches on her face suddenly burned.
That form of address was rare in the cultivation world. She was pretty sure only one person used it for her.
Which unlucky brat was this?
Shi Bai Zhou came clattering over, stopped at the edge of the spirit skiff, and hesitated. “Uncle Shui Xin?”
Compared to how certain he’d sounded when he called her “Aunt,” his voice now was full of doubt.
After all, not a trace of Shui Xin’s legendary beauty was visible.
Hu Qing couldn’t help laughing. Shui Xin was in even worse shape than she was.