The Voice Inside His Skull

"Xiao Yi!"

Delight and excitement lit Ruan Su's eyes. She pushed off the ground, her graceful figure pouncing toward Qin Yi like a big cat.

Not good.

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Without the slightest hesitation, Qin Yi formed a hand seal. His body was abruptly yanked backward, sending him flying back a zhang.

Ruan Su missed her target. With a thud, she tripped over the threshold and slid a fair distance across the room before stopping.

Landing slowly, Qin Yi glanced at his older sister, who had used her face as a brake beside his feet, then sighed softly and reminded her in his childish voice:

"Sis, remember to sleep in the small bed tonight."

"..."

Ruan Su rubbed herself but remained sprawled on the ground, playing dead. The tips of her ears peeking through her glossy black hair had turned red.

Qin Yi ignored her, turned around, kicked off his shoes, and climbed directly onto the earthen kang. Forming a hand seal, he began to breathe and circulate his energy, preparing to examine his body.

Once her embarrassment had passed, Ruan Su silently climbed up from the floor, patted the dust from her face, and smoothed her long hair over her burn scars. She went to sit by the bed, pondering Qin Yi's strange retreat just now, then asked in her pleasant voice:

"Xiao Yi, how did you dodge just now?"

Qin Yi did not answer. With the Illumination Ascension Seal in his left hand and his self-created seal in his right, he controlled the threads of Spirit Resonance wrapped around him, letting them emerge from his collar and greet his older sister.

Staring at the threads of Spirit Resonance, which swayed their heads like little snakes, Ruan Su reacted quickly. Surprise flashed through her eyes as she instinctively asked:

"Does that mean you can fly now?"

"Mm, but there are major limitations."

"Ah..."

Ruan Su's eyes brimmed with envy, but when she thought of her body, incapable of bearing Spirit Resonance, her gaze dimmed again.

I want to cultivate so badly, but my body can't cultivate...

Pouting, the girl sat on the bedside and swung her little legs. Lowering her voice, she muttered in a muffled tone:

"Why can't I cultivate...?"

Qin Yi glanced at his older sister and smiled as he painted her a pie to stave off hunger:

"Once my cultivation is high enough, I'll find a way to solve it for you."

At those words, Ruan Su's eyes curved into glistening crescent moons. Yet a wave of panic immediately rose from the depths of her heart, and she hurriedly changed the subject:

"Alright. By the way, why is that big sister Meng so good to you?"

"She probably has some scheme in mind."

As he answered, Qin Yi got down from the bed and took paper, ink, brushes, and an inkstone from the cabinet. He did not hide anything at all. "What exactly she is plotting is still unclear. It may be because of my family background, or perhaps because she wants to control me. But at this stage, I can't see any ill intent from the mother and daughter."

Ruan Su followed Qin Yi to the square table and sat down. She was not surprised by the mention of family background. Back in the Qin Lands, there had always been a very formidable old man at Xiao Yi's side, calling him Young Master. Instead, she frowned and asked:

"Control?"

Qin Yi spread the translated copy of Nine Songs across the table and lightly tapped it.

"Cultivation methods with flaws or backdoors left in them, or medicinal stones with toxicity. Mm... the medicine that cured your throat just now might be poisonous too, Sis."

"?"

Ruan Su's eyes widened instantly. She subconsciously clutched her throat, her voice rising with uncertainty and alarm:

"Really?"

"Not certain, but the odds probably aren't low."

"I'm going to throw away those medicinal stones!"

Ruan Su immediately stood up, ready to storm off and deal with those medicine packets they had "bought" at a king's ransom. She muttered as she went, "Should we just run away? Your brain illness is cured now, Xiao Yi, and you can cultivate too. But Sister Meng seems very strong. Can we even get away...?"

Qin Yi rolled his eyes at his older sister.

"You drank that medicine. Do you feel any discomfort now?"

Ruan Su paused, raised her hand to carefully sense herself, then shook her head blankly.

"No. I actually feel a little warm."

"Then there you have it. Even if it's poisonous, that would be in the future."

Grinding ink with his hand, Qin Yi spoke unhurriedly. He was so calm that it did not seem like he was discussing something that might affect the lives and deaths of the siblings. "Sis, from the moment that mother and daughter set their eyes on us, we actually lost the right to choose. If she is willing to give, then we use it, and then prove our value."

The rain had just cleared. A breeze carrying faint moisture passed through the room, stirring the long hair at the boy's temples. His calm, smiling gaze gradually soothed the unease in the girl's heart, just as it had every time they had faced life-and-death danger in the past.

She answered softly, and the little room fell silent.

One hundred and fifty breaths passed in the blink of an eye.

The instant Cultivation Sight fully unfolded, Qin Yi immediately lowered his eyes to look at his lower abdomen. Yet what he saw made him unconsciously raise his brows.

There was nothing foreign there. Only Spirit Resonance flowed through his meridians as before.

Using Cultivation Sight to give himself a full CT scan, inside and out, top to bottom, Qin Yi still found nothing unusual.

What was going on?

Had his judgment at the time been wrong?

Had Meng Peijiu not tampered with his body at all? Had her panting then simply been because she craved his body?

Or perhaps—

Meng Peijiu's methods were already so advanced that he could not detect them even after entering Cultivation Sight.

Just as he was thinking,

"...What are you doing?"

An ethereal voice suddenly sounded by his ear without warning.

The little room was quiet, filled only with birdsong in the forest after the rain.

Qin Yi's heartbeat remained steady. He subconsciously glanced to his side.

Sunlight streamed through the window lattice, falling upon the girl's uninjured cheek and outlining it with a rim of light. Ruan Su, now reassured, sat across from him at the square table, her chin propped in both hands as she stared at him without blinking.

His older sister had always liked doing this.

But...

"Sis, did you say something just now?"

"Mm?"

Ruan Su tilted her head, seemingly not understanding what he meant.

"What?"

"Did you ask what I was doing just now?" Qin Yi asked more carefully.

"No." Ruan Su immediately shook her head. Watching Qin Yi hold his brush, ready to mark the translated copy of Nine Songs again, she asked curiously:

"So what are you doing, Xiao Yi?"

"..."

Recalling the voice that had sounded by his ear just now, Qin Yi considered his words briefly before answering tentatively:

"I have no ability to inspect medicinal ingredients, but I can try to examine and restore this copy of Nine Songs."

"How will you inspect it?"

Ruan Su's brows knitted together. She completely failed to understand.

"Didn't she write it down from memory? You don't even have the original text to compare it against."

Qin Yi raised his eyes, glanced at her, and smiled.

"Want to learn?"

Ruan Su hurriedly nodded.

"Mm!"

Qin Yi raised a hand, signaling for her to move her stool over, then teased:

"You don't want me getting hurt either, right, Sis? So remember to keep your distance from me."

Ruan Su puffed out her cheeks, moved the chair to the side, then knelt on it and propped herself up.

Qin Yi twirled his brush, dipped it in ink, and circled several characters in Meng Peijiu's version of "Nine Songs." He said:

"Poetry, lyrics, and songs all need to observe tonal patterns. Compared with poetry, lyrics and tunes actually have stricter requirements. For instance, a departing tone must be used here, and here we must distinguish between clear and muddy tones. Mm... among the oblique tones here, the rising, departing, and entering tones cannot be swapped for one another, because they produce different effects when sung."

Ruan Su's delicate brows furrowed even more tightly, looking as though she understood but did not fully understand. Qin Yi did not care whether she could follow, because he had never been speaking for her to hear.

Half a quarter-hour later,

Qin Yi had marked seven altered passages throughout the translated copy of Nine Songs, and had also annotated beside them the characters and words that Nine Songs might originally have contained.

When Qin Yi finished writing the final character, the voice he had heard earlier sounded by his ear once more. It seemed able to see the perfectly restored original of "Nine Songs," carrying a trace of surprise and ethereal strangeness:

"You really had never read Nine Songs before?"