“I was thinking…” Qin Jiu hesitated before continuing, “How did a female ghost like you end up taking a liking to me? I’m just a demon catching Daoist. Aside from a few techniques for catching demons, I’m an ordinary person.”
“That?” Tang Guo said as she reached up and pinched Qin Jiu’s cheeks with both hands. “Because I think you’re adorable. And Ah Jiu is not ordinary at all. For example, this face is very handsome. And your strength among demon catching Daoists is quite impressive. Ah Jiu, you’re too modest. With your looks, if you stood in the street and shouted for a bride, plenty of beautiful women would volunteer.”
It was the first time Qin Jiu had ever been sincerely praised like that. Even his family had never thought there was anything particularly good about him.
It was only after following his master that his life improved.
But his master devoted himself entirely to cultivation. Aside from teaching him Daoist arts, he rarely conversed with him. Over time, Qin Jiu developed a distant temperament and was often described as somewhat aloof.
“After twenty years, where will you go?” Qin Jiu asked.
Tang Guo smiled. “I don’t know. Perhaps the ghost realm. If a soul does not reincarnate, it eventually goes there.”
“Do you really think I’m good?”
The system quietly thought that something felt reversed here.
“Actually, a romance between a human and a ghost is not impossible. I don’t mind such things,” Qin Jiu said. “If you don’t mind either, we could try?”
Tang Guo’s lips curved. “Really? So you mean you like me too?”
“I suppose I do,” Qin Jiu said firmly. “I can’t bear to see you unhappy. I want to indulge you in everything. That should be liking someone.”
“That’s exactly what liking is. Ah Jiu, you really are a big sweetheart.”
Big sweetheart?
What kind of term was that?
Qin Jiu’s expression stiffened.
Then Tang Guo boldly rested on his back again. Her form gradually solidified, and the original chill carried a hint of warmth. He was surprised by the change.
“Ah Jiu, are you sure you won’t regret it? You and I only have twenty years.”
“When I, Qin Jiu, make a decision, I don’t regret it. Twenty years is enough to do many things.” She had said she would go to the ghost realm afterward.
If she could not come out conveniently, he would go find her instead, Qin Jiu thought to himself. After acknowledging his feelings, he felt much lighter, and the smile on his face lingered.
So that feeling that had surged within him earlier was because he liked her.
In the time that followed, the two of them traveled through many remote villages and witnessed countless cases of women being trafficked.
Tang Guo did not kill again. Instead, she exposed the trafficking villages and secretly crippled the criminals. She rescued girls who had just been brought in. As for women who had lived there for years and refused to leave, she did not interfere or pity them.
If the truth were not exposed, sooner or later those women would become accomplices in harming innocent girls.
“Is it because of your own experience that you decided to do this?” Qin Jiu asked one day as he and Tang Guo sat hand in hand on a hillside, looking down at a small village below.
They had just arrived. That village, too, relied on abducting and buying women as wives.
Tang Guo leaned against his shoulder and shook her head. “No.”
“Then why?”
“Since I’ve come here, I want to do something. Leave something behind. Make this life a little more meaningful.”
Discover more from Lilly Translations
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.