Chapter 847: The Human World

Chapter 847: The Mortal Realm

Ye Jiuyou had truly never eaten these things before.

Never mind these roadside stalls—she had never consumed any mortal sustenance at all. Even while acting as the young mistress of the Li family or assuming other high-status roles in the previous epoch, she had never partaken of those supposedly high-end delicacies; in her eyes, these things were merely garbage with a spiritual energy value close to zero.

Just as she was about to refuse, a wooden skewer impaling a cloud of cotton candy was thrust into her hand, and Zhao Changhe’s smile was warm and gentle: "We agreed you'd accompany me through the market, so you have to fulfill the duty of a companion. It wouldn't do for me to eat while you just stare, would it?"

Ye Jiuyou said testily, "I haven't even reneged on my debt to you yet, and you're already making more demands?"

Zhao Changhe smiled and said, "As a collaborator, Your Highness Jiuyou has always been exceedingly observant of her word, hasn't she?"

"Who told you I'm exceedingly observant of my word? Has no one ever told you what the God of Chaos is like?"

"Then why were you so faithful to your word with me before, even willingly abandoning other plans for it? Could it be because you like me?"

Ye Jiuyou almost spat out the food she had eaten the previous night: "Get lost!"

As she uttered that phrase, a strange, faint prick of guilt stirred within her. She had, in fact, only maintained an 'ally' relationship so faithfully with Zhao Changhe alone.

Zhao Changhe smiled: "Ye Wuming has eaten it."

In truth, whether Ye Wuming had ever eaten it was something Zhao Changhe had no clue about, but these words were far too effective against Ye Jiuyou. Those small eyes of hers instantly grew deathly cold, and she stared at the cotton candy before her with utmost gravity, as if gazing upon some great law of the Dao.

Zhao Changhe smiled: "You lack too much of the things she has experienced... from the vastness of the universe down to simple food. If you wish to trace the source and seek the truth, this will not do."

Without another word, Ye Jiuyou took a bite.

With such a massive clump of cotton candy, Ye Jiuyou had absolutely no idea how to eat it... taking a bite straight on like that, she lifted her head only to find her mouth and face completely covered in sugar.

Zhao Changhe burst into loud laughter, while Ye Jiuyou glared at him furiously.

"How does it taste?"

"Just like that. Can it even compare to heavenly materials and earthly treasures?"

"No heavenly material or earthly treasure possesses such naturally extracted, rich sweetness, and no one refines pills or medicine in this direction anyway. This is something only mortals would do."

Ye Jiuyou fell silent. She conceded this point; natural treasures certainly lacked this level of sweetness, and she had to admit it tasted quite good... it was just that eating it left one's face sticky, which was utterly miserable.

Yet she noticed that both the stall owner and the nearby children were looking at her and smiling. The middle-aged stall owner, in particular, beamed with a fond, maternal grin: "You young couple must be a young master and lady from some noble house. Young master is blessed to have a wife so beautiful and adorable."

Ye Jiuyou: "?"

What young couple? What adorable?

"Yeah, my wife is very adorable, isn't she?" Zhao Changhe, however, was shamelessly waving to the stall owner: "Thanks, uncle, we'll come back when we're free."

Ye Jiuyou flew into a rage: "Zhao Changhe!"

An aura that originally could strike terror and deathly cold into a person's very soul was now paired with a face full of sugar, looking thoroughly amusing no matter how one sliced it.

Smiling merrily, Zhao Changhe reached out, naturally wiping away the sugar near her lips, and demonstrated: "It's eaten like this."

As he spoke, he extended his tongue and took a lick, curling a small portion of the cotton candy onto the tip of his tongue.

Ye Jiuyou said angrily, "Am I consulting you on how to eat sugar?"

Zhao Changhe replied nonchalantly, "No one else knows who you are, so what do you care? Thus, Ye Jiuyou—who claims not to care at all about how others see her and acts entirely on her own even when making an enemy of the whole world—is actually afraid of the gaze of a mere sugar vendor."

Ye Jiuyou was choked up for a long while, not knowing how to respond. How could this man have so many crooked arguments?

Ignoring her now, Zhao Changhe went back to strolling through the street, looking left and right, blissfully enjoying his sugar. Ye Jiuyou glanced at him, then looked down at the cotton candy in her hand, before hesitantly extending her small tongue to take a lick.

Zhao Changhe stole a glance at her and couldn't help but smile.

Ye Jiuyou snapped, "Is it very funny?"

Zhao Changhe smiled: "I'm not laughing at you."

"Then what is it?"

"Look there..." Zhao Changhe pointed ahead at two plump little girls around four or five years old, running down the street with heavy, thumping steps: "Seeing them makes me smile like this too."

Ye Jiuyou cast a sideways glance at him. Seeing his genuinely cheerful expression, she found it incomprehensible.

What was so funny about that?

However, she spotted a shifty-looking man approaching those two little girls from the side. With their extraordinarily sensitive perception and aura-reading capabilities, both of them instantly sensed that the man harbored ill intentions. Under their aura-reading especially, it was more intuitive than any physical evidence.

Zhao Changhe flicked his finger, and the man let out an "Ouch!" as his knee-bend was struck by something unseen, causing him to tumble to the ground.

Struggling to stand while clutching his knees, by the time he looked for the little girls, they had already caught up with their parents, clutching the edges of their clothes as they vanished into the crowd.

The man struck his palm in vexation, only to find a man and a woman appearing before him, staring down at him with fake smiles.

Just as he was about to question them, a palm as large as a cattail fan slapped brutally across his face, sending him spinning through the air for a full rotation and knocking a shower of teeth from his mouth.

The man's miserable shriek echoed down the street, quickly drawing a crowd of onlookers, but the man and woman had already held hands and slipped into the throngs of people, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

"The public security in Chang'an isn't all that great..." Zhao Changhe sighed, eating his now-diminished cotton candy.

Ye Jiuyou followed beside him, licking her sugar: "Shouldn't sending him to the authorities be more in line with what you ought to do? Why did you just slap him and leave?"

"What kind of misunderstanding do you have about me? I'm a rogue of the martial world, not the government... oh right, damn it, I think I still hold a jade token from the Demon Suppression Bureau... whatever, Chang'an isn't under my jurisdiction right now anyway. Talk to me about that after you give me your dowry."

Ye Jiuyou couldn't suppress a laugh: "And to think you still want to call yourself a rogue of the martial world... then why didn't you cut the grass and pull up the roots, Master Rogue?"

"Taking this slap from me means he'll only be able to spend the rest of his life in bed; that's about enough." Zhao Changhe sighed: "I came to walk the streets with you. If I waste time tangling with people or handing them over to the officials, drawing crowds to gawk at me, Zhao Changhe, what sense would that make?"

"Since it contradicts your original intention, why trouble yourself in the first place?"

Zhao Changhe turned his head to look at her, once again revealing that fond, maternal smile from earlier: "To protect the things that can make me smile like this... most of my battles in this life have been for this."

Ye Jiuyou's heart suddenly skipped a beat.

To protect the things that could make him smile like this... but right now, he was directing that exact smile at her.

It was equivalent to saying, "I will protect you too, just like I protect those two children."

This feeling of being relegated to the status of a child made it truly difficult to discern what emotions it stirred. By all accounts, she ought to be furious at being demeaned, yet why did her heart feel so tingly instead?

In one bite, Ye Jiuyou shoved the last remaining bit of cotton candy into her mouth and tossed the skewer away with resentment.

How could Ye Wuming possibly eat this stuff? It had no flavor at all, tasting just like chewing wax!

"Come, come, over here." Zhao Changhe suddenly grabbed her hand again, pulling her into a shop by the side of the road. Ye Jiuyou stumbled inside after him, lifting her eyes to look at the plaque above the door: "The Rouge Pavilion."

Ye Jiuyou: "?"

The Rouge Pavilion naturally sold rouge and face powder, but it wasn't limited to just those; it also held many pieces of jewelry and hairpins.

Zhao Changhe cast a glance around, pulling Ye Jiuyou over to the accessory counter, then turned around to size her up from head to toe.

Ye Jiuyou felt both awkward and annoyed: "What are you doing? I don't want these things!"

Looking at her long, straight black hair that flowed like drifting clouds, Zhao Changhe smiled: "I also feel that you don't need any ornaments on your head. This natural, long, straight black hair is the most beautiful."

Ye Jiuyou: "..."

Come to think of it, such a hairstyle of completely loose, long, straight black hair barely existed in this world. Any woman's hair would have at least a little bit of styling; even a martial heroine as exceedingly casual as Yue Hongling would tie hers into a ponytail. This kind of purely unbound, straight, flowing hair would look like a ghost to most people, yet only this madman would call it the most beautiful.

"But you can have some ornaments in other places..." Zhao Changhe tapped the counter, gesturing to the shopkeeper: "Bring that jade bracelet over for me to look at."

The shopkeeper smiled and said, "This young master has an excellent eye. This is the finest jadeite in our shop. Look at this clarity..."

With great generosity, Zhao Changhe directly tossed out a solid gold bar: "Is this enough?"

The shopkeeper's eyes nearly bulged out of his head: "Of course it's enough, more than enough."

Night Youyou was somewhat speechless. With Zhao Changhe’s current eyesight, his ability to discern impurities in objects naturally surpassed any mortal appraisal master, and mundane gold and silver were inexhaustible to him—nothing to boast about. The fact that he carried such things on him was already absurd, likely a habit leftover from his early days wandering the jianghu.

The problem was that she had no need for such things. Wearing a mortal trinket on her wrist, it would shatter at the first fight—what was the point?

If she insisted, she might as well get a similar treasure that could store items and provide protection... but she had never been interested. She hadn’t collected any in the previous epoch, and in this one, there should be no new ones. The revival of gods and demons had barely begun before this man named Zhao had slaughtered them all in his rampage...

Yet there Zhao Changhe was, taking the bracelet and grabbing her wrist to slip it on: “By rights, you should wear something like this—there are plenty in Ying Wu’s collection and the palace... but those are all secondhand goods, even funerary objects... I can’t give you that kind of thing. When we have time later, we’ll find our own treasures and carve and craft them ourselves.”

Night Youyou wanted to say she had no qualms about funerary objects—she herself toyed with corpses. But the words wouldn’t come. She stood dumbfounded, watching him put the jade bracelet on her, her mind a tangled mess.

What are you even doing? Why give me this?

Her smooth, delicate wrist was flawless—if there was any shortcoming, it was its inherent pallor, lacking vivid blood. But once the emerald bracelet was on, it suddenly added a touch of brightness to that pallor, infusing her with a human warmth that deepened by three parts.

The old shopkeeper was praising: “This young lady truly has a jade-bone ice-skin, so beautiful. The young master has a keen eye too—this bracelet suits her perfectly.”

Night Youyou twitched the corner of her mouth, looked up at Zhao Changhe, and asked, “What are you doing? Why do I need this?”

Zhao Changhe smiled. “It looks good.”

Night Youyou had to admit it did look good on her, especially complementing her skin. “But why do I need to look good? What meaning does that have for me?”

“Before, it had no meaning, because no one ever looked at Night Youyou with eyes that appreciated beauty, and Night Youyou never needed anyone to see her that way.” Zhao Changhe said earnestly, “Now there is.”

Night Youyou flared up: “Why should I let you see?”

Zhao Changhe replied calmly: “Think of it as... so that when you fall silent before the mirror, you can see in the reflection a self that is three parts alive, not forever the stillness of deathly pallor.”

Night Youyou’s heart skipped again, and she forced out: “Are you insane? Who looks at their wrist in a mirror?”

Zhao Changhe laughed, then tapped the counter again: “Shopkeeper, let me see that sapphire necklace.”

Night Youyou: “?”

I wasn’t asking for a necklace!

The shopkeeper, even more delighted, quickly brought out the necklace. A big spender! But come to think of it, this scene looked like some dandy trying to seduce a naive poor girl, one trick after another—yet where would you find a poor girl with such bearing, such jade-bone ice-skin? Strange indeed.

Zhao Changhe took the necklace and reached around to put it on Night Youyou’s neck.

Night Youyou stepped back half a pace, her palm nearly striking Zhao Changhe’s chest.

Zhao Changhe knew better than to press too hard—after all, this wasn’t about copping a feel—so he didn’t advance, only said: “Either I put it on, or you do it yourself.”

Night Youyou breathed a sigh of relief, not thinking twice, and snatched the necklace to put it on herself. Zhao Changhe watched her neck from behind with some regret—he’d half hoped someone putting on a necklace for the first time wouldn’t know how to fasten the clasp and would need help. But someone like Night Youyou, who might as well have eyes in the back of her head, had it on in no time.

Zhao Changhe broke into that familiar auntie smile again.

Night Youyou snapped: “What are you grinning at like a ghost?”

Zhao Changhe chuckled: “Did you bring that mountain with you?”

Shopkeeper: “?”

That mountain whose entire cliff face was a soul-capturing mirror—Zhao Changhe had once lifted it and given it to Night Youyou, who used a mustard-seed technique to shrink it like a small mirror and tucked it into her ring. Of course she had it. At his question, she knew what he meant, and with a sour face, she took it out and glanced.

One look, and in the mirror she saw the astonishment in her own eyes.

Unlike the emerald bracelet that brought life to her hand, the sapphire around her neck, under her aura, accentuated a sense of stillness and eeriness, magnifying her traits twofold.

It was like a pool quietly appearing in the dark abyss, with strange flowers blooming faintly at its edge.

She could vaguely hear the old shopkeeper swallowing, and the gasps of a few young women who had just entered: “What a beautiful sister...”

Night Youyou could swear that in a million years, she had never received such praise from anyone.

Even at the cosmetics counter on the other side, an older woman called out: “Miss, come take a look over here! Try some makeup for free!”

While Night Youyou was still dazed, Zhao Changhe pressed her shoulders and pushed her over.

If he had headed straight for the makeup counter from the start, Night Youyou would have turned and left without a second thought. But now, sitting before the dressing mirror, looking at herself in the bronze glass, she didn’t know what she was thinking.

The person in the mirror seemed vaguely unfamiliar.

The older woman was cheerfully applying powder to her face, saying: “Miss, you are truly the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Your skin makes me both jealous and envious—you hardly need any makeup. But perhaps you don’t eat well, your complexion is too pale. Just a touch of pink, and you’ll be perfect...”

The young women watching behind her were scolding Zhao Changhe: “And you, sir, you look decent enough, but with such a beautiful wife, how do you feed and clothe her? Her face is so pale, her clothes so shabby... To have a husband like you, this sister must have the worst luck!”

Zhao Changhe laughed and bowed to them all: “You ladies are right. I’ll make sure to feed her well from now on.”

With that, he took a piece of lip rouge paper and held it to Night Youyou’s lips. She instinctively pressed her lips to it, and in the mirror, her bloodless mouth began to bloom, her whole face growing radiant...

Night Youyou stared at the mirror in a daze, and for some reason, a terribly jarring thought crossed her mind: It’s just like a mortician putting makeup on a corpse...

No one else thought so. They were all exclaiming: “So beautiful... They say the most beautiful woman under heaven is Tang Wanzhuang, but I think this sister is no less than her!”

“Ahem...” Zhao Changhe, who had been all smiles, finally showed a hint of awkwardness, sneaking a glance at Night Youyou’s expression.

Night Youyou’s expression was indeed not pleasant. Hearing the name of his other woman at a time like this was nothing short of grating. What was worse, someone like Tang Wanzhuang probably never used any rouge—she was naturally that beautiful—while she herself needed powder and paint to compare?

Night Youyou’s dazed mood was shattered. She let out a “hmph” through her nose.

But a young girl spoke up in dissent: “None of us have seen Tang Wanzhuang. Who knows what she’s really like? I think it’s mostly hype. How can she compare to this sister sitting right here? Besides, this sister’s clothes are all black with no style—if she changed into something else, she’d be even more beautiful. Clothes make the woman...”

Night Youyou thought to herself, that’s true. Even if Tang Wanzhuang never used makeup, she must have had fine clothes and ornaments. What’s so great about that?

Another voice chimed in: “True. They say Tang Wanzhuang is already over thirty. No matter how good she looks, there’s a limit.”

Night Youyou: “...”

Damn it, how old do you think I am?

She spoke up for the first time on her own, indignantly: “Zhao... Zhao, I want to buy clothes!”

Zhao Changhe was delighted: “At your service.”

Night Youyou looked at herself in the mirror again and thought, I must be insane.