You Have a Mother Too?

Hu Jiujiu's voice was soft, with the faintest tremor in its trailing note, like a fine string lightly plucked.

Then she raised her eyes and glanced at Yao Chen. Deep within those golden eyes, a faint ripple spread.

The ripple quickly vanished, and she returned to her usual carefree self, but Yao Chen had still caught that brief flash of genuine emotion.

Yao Chen lifted his head and looked seriously at Hu Jiujiu, remaining silent for a moment.

"You have a mother too?" he asked.

The moment the words left his mouth, Yao Chen felt that something was off, but it was too late to take them back.

Sure enough—

"Hey, that's discrimination!"

Like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, Hu Jiujiu instantly sprang up. Her fox ears shot upright, and her tail puffed into a ball of fur behind her.

With her hands on her hips, she glared furiously at Yao Chen, real anger burning in her eyes.

"So only you're allowed to have a mother?" Her voice rose by at least an octave, and her words came rapidly. "I may be a demon, but I was born from a mother too! Did you think the Demon Clan all popped out of cracks in rocks? Or fell from the sky? Say something! Go on, say something!"

She stepped closer and tipped her face up toward Yao Chen, her foxlike face plainly declaring, "You'd better give me an explanation today."

"No..." Yao Chen hurriedly waved his hands, instinctively touching his nose, his face full of apology.

He knew that what he had said was indeed inappropriate. Though he had only been curious and surprised, it had come out as if he were questioning whether the Demon Clan even had mothers.

"That wasn't what I meant," he explained earnestly. "It's just... I know too little about the Demon Clan."

"Fine, I won't hold it against you. You're obviously a fool, or you wouldn't have been driven out of the Yao Clan."

Hu Jiujiu spoke haughtily, hands still on her hips and chin slightly raised, though a sly smile hid in her lively eyes.

The firelight shone across her fair little face, stretching her shadow long as it swayed over the grass behind her.

Yao Chen's face turned green, then white at her words. His lips moved a few times as he tried to argue, but he swallowed the words back down.

He gave a sullen snort, turned around, and poked at the campfire, viciously stabbing the burning logs with a branch and sending sparks flying.

Seeing him at a loss for words only made Hu Jiujiu more pleased. Her eyes rolled around as though she had thought of some brilliant idea.

She skipped over to Lin Yu. Her skirt fluttered faintly in the night breeze as she plopped down onto a rock beside him and leaned closer. "Lin Yu, why don't you come to my home? I'll have my father grant you the title of master alchemist. Our Demon Clan has lots of medicinal herbs. Whatever you want to refine, you'll never have to worry about lacking materials."

Her eyes shone as she spoke, filled with heartfelt anticipation.

The Demon Clan possessed vast lands and abundant resources. Who knew how many heavenly treasures grew within the Ten Thousand Mountains? Rare medicinal herbs that human alchemists desperately sought might be nothing more than common weeds growing throughout the mountains there.

If Lin Yu was willing to go, her father would surely value him. Then they could stay together every day.

Lin Yu felt a little embarrassed by her enthusiasm. He scratched the back of his head and smiled honestly. "Hehe, Sister Little Demon, I want to go to the Pill Tower. Once I become an Eighth-Grade Alchemist, I'll visit the Demon Clan."

Hu Jiujiu pursed her lips when she heard that, a small sense of disappointment rising in her heart, but she quickly cheered up again.

An Eighth-Grade Alchemist was not a level one could reach so easily, yet for some reason, she felt that Lin Yu would definitely succeed.

"All right, then." She stood up, brushed the grass clippings from her skirt, and pointed toward the river glimmering silver beneath the moonlight in the distance. "It's getting dark. We'll rest here tonight. Tomorrow, we'll build a raft and head downstream. We'll travel a thousand miles in a day, hehe."

When she spoke of traveling downstream and covering a thousand miles in a day, Hu Jiujiu seemed to think of something and suddenly smiled.

There was longing and hope in that smile, as if she could already see the raft racing through the rapids, green mountains flying backward on both shores, and cool spray splashing against her face.

Or perhaps she was thinking of the person sitting beside her, of them shouting and laughing together beneath the sunlight.

The mountains at the horizon soon swallowed the last traces of the sunset.

Night descended like spilled ink, pouring down from the heavens and swiftly soaking the entire forest in darkness.

Hu Jiujiu had played far too wildly by the river that evening. One moment she had been splashing through the water, the next chasing little fish, soaking more than half her skirt and exhausting herself.

Wrapped in Lin Yu's outer robe, she curled up beside the campfire with her head resting on a piece of deadwood. Her eyelashes trembled faintly, and a barely visible smile lingered at the corner of her lips, as though she were having some sweet dream.

The firelight danced over her face, making her cheeks glow red. She looked incredibly well-behaved, utterly unlike the mischievous little demon girl from the daytime.

Yao Chen and Lin Yu had agreed on a schedule for taking turns keeping watch. Yao Chen would take the first half of the night, while Lin Yu would take the second.

The night gradually deepened, and the campfire grew weaker and weaker until only a pile of dark red embers continued to give off warmth.

Even the insects gradually quieted, as if the entire forest had fallen asleep.

Yao Chen sat by the campfire. At first, he could still keep himself alert, occasionally adding a few branches to the fire, but at some point, a heavy wave of drowsiness surged over him like the tide.

The drowsiness came without reason. Yao Chen shook his head hard and slapped his cheeks, trying to wake himself up, but his eyelids felt as though they had been filled with lead, too heavy to lift.

His thoughts became hazy, his awareness seeming to be slowly pulled out of his mind.

Strange...

Before the thought could fully take shape, Yao Chen's head suddenly tilted to one side, and he collapsed limply onto the ground, falling into a deep unconscious sleep.

The firewood in his hand rolled onto the ground with a faint dull sound, and then everything returned to silence.

At that moment, a tall figure appeared silently beside the campfire like a phantom.

The figure arrived without warning, as if it had condensed out of the darkness itself. The faint glow of the fire fell upon him, yet seemed to be swallowed by something, leaving even his shadow indistinct.

The air around them seemed to freeze for an instant, and the insects fell silent.

"Hm? Soul-Losing Grass?"

Suddenly, Hu Jiujiu, who had been asleep, sprang to her feet.

Her beautiful eyes shone astonishingly bright in the darkness, without the slightest trace of sleepiness.

A jade ornament hanging from her waist was now giving off a faint glow of green jade.