Iron Horses and Frozen Rivers Entered My Dreams

His consciousness kept sinking,

accompanied by a nauseating dizziness.

When Qin Yi regained consciousness, his cheek felt the cold, swaying touch of a metal surface, along with the muffled sounds of conversation drifting over from nearby.

"@#￥%...&*"

"￥)%&*@￥"

"&*%￥#@%"

"..." Qin Yi.

Again?

Qin Yi thought silently, trying to pry his eyes open a sliver to inspect his surroundings. But this time, he found that he could not even move his eyelids, and he could not understand the conversation reaching his ears.

His emotions still did not fluctuate much.

After living this long, he had grown used to a life where opening his eyes might mean dropping dead at any moment.

Though this time, he seemed unable to open his eyes at all.

Both speakers were men, but both voices were unfamiliar. As Qin Yi listened to their conversation, he began trying to identify the language.

More than ten breaths later, Qin Yi found a similar language in some forgotten corner of his memories.

"Elegant Speech," used by the Central Plains aristocracy.

During the refugee tide, influential nobles would occasionally pass through the market streets, setting up stalls to distribute alms. Qin Yi had heard the way they spoke, and it sounded somewhat similar to what he was hearing now.

Quite a few of the combined syllables matched.

So why was someone speaking Elegant Speech beside him?

Of the information he currently knew, only one person had the means and channels to place Qin Yi in this situation: Granny Meng.

Mm... his old employer was perhaps another possibility.

Though Ancient Shu had always remained isolated from the world, the mute maidservants they raised and their purchases of Central Plains spices and porcelain, all imitations of Central Plains practices, suggested that the Shu Region nobles greatly admired Central Plains culture. Coupled with the "exchange of what each lacked" among the highest-ranking nobles, it was not strange for them to speak Central Plains "Elegant Speech."

As their "black glove" at the border, his old employer should have been able to contact those nobles.

But Qin Yi did not think it was his old employer.

The cost and reward were not proportional.

If his old employer presented Calamity Seeds like Qin Yi and Ruan Su to Shu Region nobles, all he could gain would be Shu Court policy support, legal indulgence, or vast quantities of gold, silver, and land deeds.

Beyond those ordinary favors, the most outrageous and tempting thing Qin Yi could imagine for his old employer was likely a Calamity Seed cultivation method like the Disrupted Scripture.

Something like that might indeed drive his old employer to take desperate risks, yet it still did not hold up under scrutiny.

Leaving aside Ruan Su's chances of escaping, and leaving aside the organizational reforms Qin Yi had promised for Immortal Guest House,

if his old employer sold Qin Yi to Shu Region nobles,

he would essentially be pushing a monster capable of scaring him into PTSD completely into opposition, personally building it a higher starting platform.

That would be the act of an utter fool.

So it was Granny Meng?

The Central Plains Elegant Speech by his ear stopped after those brief fragments of conversation. Qin Yi continued trying to move his body, and after still failing, he simply entered standby.

He had too little useful intelligence on that mother and daughter of the Meng Family, and quite a bit of it was false information from some older sister surnamed Ruan.

The only thing he could confirm was that they had begun following the two siblings during the refugee tide.

In such circumstances, even if he racked his brains, it would be useless. He could only adapt when the time came. If there was truly no way out, then he would wait for death.

Qin Yi silently counted in his heart, measuring the time. When a quarter of an hour had passed, he abruptly realized that his body had suddenly started moving on its own.

His hands and feet shifted, his mouth opened, and finally, those immovable eyelids slowly opened as well.

What was going on?

In an instant, countless thoughts emerged in Qin Yi's mind. But once his eyes fully opened and he saw the scene before him clearly, only one thought remained.

What entered his sight was a pair of infant hands, tiny and rosy.

This was... his memory?

That portion he had forgotten due to his brain disease?

An infant's brain could not bear the immense information of a past life. Qin Yi's memories from before the age of four were entirely blank.

As he pondered, his viewpoint began to sway slowly.

The surroundings gradually entered his vision.

A moonlit night, an official road through the woods, toppled ancient trees, an overturned carriage, corpses littering the ground.

There seemed to have been an assassination here.

Infant Qin Yi's gaze locked onto the only living thing in sight.

It was a man half-kneeling beside a headless female corpse. He wore a sky-blue scholar's robe, its surface embroidered with faint golden patterns of strange beasts, utterly untouched by dust.

Hah... so this was where it happened.

Qin Yi had always remembered that he had once seen a man who could slash out more than a dozen sword shadows with a single sword, but he could never recall where he had seen him.

The man in scholar's robes half-knelt upon the official road. His state resembled that male ape from before, standing silently beside that headless, graceful female corpse... Though she was not exactly headless, because her head lay beside her. Her veil had been severed along with her neck, and the glimpse of half her face was stunning as a startled swan.

It should have been winter, and the woman should have only just died. The large amount of blood flowing from her severed neck still steamed with heat.

Qin Yi rapidly absorbed the information in his field of vision.

From clothing to decorations, then to these people's faces—but there was no useful information at all. Neither the surrounding corpses nor the man in scholar's robes bore any emblem-like markings that could prove their identities.

He could not even determine whether the beheaded woman and the scholar-robed man had come to save him or kill him.

In the silence,

the scholar-robed man abruptly turned his head, his indifferent gaze falling upon him.

Qin Yi instinctively assumed that the man was looking at whoever held him. After all, the woman's severed head could not possibly have been the work of an infant like him.

But their gazes collided,

and—

the scholar-robed man carried towering killing intent.

Though he did not know why the other man targeted an infant like him, he had at least confirmed who was friend and who was foe.

In this memory, the person holding him was indeed an ally.

So Qin Yi thought.

After their eyes met, before he had time to examine the man carefully, a nauseating, dizzy sensation—like his heart was being clenched—interrupted Qin Yi's thoughts.

His vision gradually turned red, and liquid flowed from his nose and mouth.

It should have been blood.

Even as an infant, he seemed to already possess the same detached calm he had now. Despite such agony, he did not let out even a single cry.

Qin Yi within the memory cared even less about the sensation of imminent death. Instead, a trace of curiosity arose in him.

With only a glance, he had been pushed into a near-death state.

How had he done it?

Was this scholar-robed man also a Calamity Seed?

Considering the Disrupted Scripture from before he fell unconscious, as well as the rich girl's claim that she could sever a tree, this might also have been some unknown technique.

This information was important.

The martial strength of this world was no longer limited to the physical level.

The memory reel continued forward.

Everything in his vision rapidly shrank. A sense of weightlessness suddenly swept over his entire body—the man holding him had directly thrown him into the night sky.

Uh...

Did both sides want him dead?

Looking at the distance of at least a hundred meters from the ground, Qin Yi reasonably doubted the situation in this memory. But when he saw what was below, he understood the motive of the man holding him.

The man was powerfully built, his long hair scattered down his back. He wore heavy black armor, but at this moment, he had only one arm left. A broken sword had pierced through his armor and lodged in his abdomen, while blood sprayed uncontrollably from the side where his arm had been severed.

The two had fought.

Their speed was incredibly fast,

so fast that even from this VIP viewing platform in midair, Qin Yi could not see clearly. He could only make out that streaking sword-light which had left an impression even through his brain disease.

The clear radiance of the full moon spilled over the forest canopy,

and the sword light was like winding streams, flowing outward in every direction from the scholar-robed man. At a certain moment, it abruptly spread, ultimately staining the area with a resplendent sky-blue forbidden zone.

Wherever the sword light reached, century-old trees were sliced apart like tofu. The ground began to cave in beneath the sword marks, and the cry of swords piercing the heavens even formed rippling waves of sound that spread outward!

And just as that spectacle was about to reach its peak,

Bzz—

everything suddenly froze.

The sword cries,

the stream-like flowing sword shadows,

that sky-blue spherical forbidden zone,

all halted for an instant like an illusion, then vanished.

At the center of the sunken road,

the black-armored giant, bathed in blood, panted rapidly. His remaining arm held out the corpse of the scholar-robed man, whose head had been crushed in his grip. As he casually tossed it aside, his body swayed involuntarily, yet he still forced himself to remain standing despite barely being able to do so, looking toward the infant plummeting rapidly toward the ground...