The Little Peacock Raises a Snake (GL) Chapter 44

In the three realms now, when most people mentioned the black flood dragon, their judgment was the same: madwoman.
It was said that three hundred years ago, the black flood dragon had privately abducted a phoenix clan fairy who had descended for a tribulation. Because of this, she offended the heavenly realm and brought disaster to the flood dragon clan. Luckily, the devil clan had come to help. Only then had the flood dragon clan avoided destruction.
At that time, the black flood dragon wanted to submit to the devil clan. The voices against it in the clan never stopped. To force her decision through, she used the devil clan’s help to kill dozens of elders and elites in her clan. That act scared the remaining clansmen out of their wits, and from then on, no one dared protest even a little.
Even so, everyone knew that if the devil clan had not arrived back then, the black flood dragon would surely have died by Black Tortoise Divine Lord Zhiming’s hand. Now, after being the devil clan’s dog for so many years, the devil clan’s internal chaos had already settled. Relying on the merits she had won for the devil clan during that chaos, she had grown arrogant and lost all sense. She personally led devil troops through the demon realm, surrounded the west side of the River of Forgetfulness, and shouted that she wanted to decide victory and defeat with Zhiming again.
“What decide victory and defeat again? She probably wants to rely on another’s power and recover the face she lost three hundred years ago, right?” Many demons who had come to watch the show thought this.
After all, even a strong dragon found it hard to press down a local snake. The earth realm was not the territory of those immortals and gods in the sky. If they truly fought, and the devil realm lost, they could still retreat to the devil realm. But if the immortal realm fell into decline, behind the underworld was the human world they had to protect. They truly had nowhere to retreat.
Only, no one expected that after the Black Tortoise Divine Lord led his people to the River of Forgetfulness, the black flood dragon showed no arrogant reaction at all. She only greeted Zhiming from afar. After that, the two sides fell into a strange deadlock. For four days straight, not even a bit of blood was seen.
It was not that there was no conflict at all.
No one knew what kind of understanding the black flood dragon and the Black Tortoise Divine Lord had. Every day, each side sent one subordinate to challenge and curse from across the river. They cursed until their faces turned red. If not for the river between them, the spit alone might have filled each other’s bellies.
“Are they fighting or not?”
Many demons who had come from far away to watch the excitement were completely confused.
Before the Black Tortoise Divine Lord came, the black flood dragon had shouted so fiercely. Why had she not shown her face again after he arrived? Could she be afraid?
On the fifth day, just when everyone thought the black flood dragon was already afraid, she flew alone to the front of the formation and stood in the air above the River of Forgetfulness. Spiritual power released around her body. She clearly looked like an unarmed woman, yet she gave off an invisible pressure, like a lonely, cold, beautiful goddess. Even the heavenly realm people on the east bank froze when they saw her, their eyes full of amazement.
In the next second, a trace of contempt showed in the woman’s brows and eyes. Without the least bit of courtesy, she shouted loudly toward the temporary heavenly camp built on the east bank of the River of Forgetfulness. “That turtle-snake Divine Lord on the opposite bank, is it convenient for you to come out and fight me today?”
This name instantly enraged the heavenly soldiers and generals on the east bank. For a time, they began yelling curses in chaos. Listening closely, there was nothing new. It was only old phrases like “wicked beast,” “how dare you,” and “stop being arrogant.” They had heard them so much over the past few days they could recite them backward.
The noise did not last long before it quieted. A black shadow flew out of the camp and stood before Qu Linyan with his hands behind his back. His expression was cold and held no anger at all. He only said lightly, “I thought you planned to keep delaying like this forever.”
Qu Linyan said, “I called you that, and you still are not angry. Black Tortoise Divine Lord truly has a good temper.”
Zhiming did not exchange more greetings with her. He went straight to the point. “For tens of thousands of years, the heavenly and devil realms have used the River of Forgetfulness as their border. Clan Leader Qu cannot truly think she has the ability to lead the devil clan and break the devil-locking barrier that leads to the human world, can she?”
Qu Linyan smiled with a bit of provocation. “How would I dare? I only heard that Divine Lord is about to marry that silly bird who stabbed me eight hundred years ago. I thought I had a little history with you both, so no matter what, I should send a great gift. But the immortal realm is not somewhere I can go whenever I want. So naturally, I could only trouble Divine Lord to personally make this trip.”
Zhiming said coldly, “Black flood dragon, three hundred years ago, I spared your life. Why must you look for suffering again?”
“Eight hundred years ago, the Heavenly Emperor also said he spared my life. Three hundred years ago, he still sent you to destroy my flood dragon clan. If the devil soldiers had not arrived in time, would you truly have spared me? Or do you think I should thank you for looking down on me that day and not using your full strength to kill me from the start?” As Qu Linyan spoke, fire rose in her eyes, and she said angrily, “Why should I need you to spare me? Just because you immortals stand high above us, you can decide my life and death however you like?”
“Zhiming! Do you think I am still as weak and easy to bully as I was three hundred years ago?” After Qu Linyan spoke coldly, she stretched her right hand forward, and the Cloud-Tangling mace appeared in her palm. “The wedding gift has been ready for a long time. If you do not dare come forward and take it, I will deliver it right here!”
As soon as her voice fell, the dark green water of the River of Forgetfulness beneath Qu Linyan’s feet suddenly swirled into waves several zhang high. It turned into a blue flood dragon that rose into the air, carrying a thread of thick blood-colored smoke as it growled again and again in the dim world. Suddenly, thunder tore through the clouds. A moment later, heavy rain arrived. For a time, heaven and earth by the River of Forgetfulness changed color.
Someone cried out, “The water of the River of Forgetfulness gathers countless resentments. Quickly use spiritual power to protect yourselves!”
The rain cut across skin like needle stabs. Thousands of devils and heavenly soldiers were startled into raising spiritual power to protect their bodies. Then they charged toward the enemy army on the opposite bank.
As the heavenly and devil armies clashed, Zhiming stood in midair without a single drop of rain touching him. He steadily stepped half a pace forward and said in a low voice, “You overestimate yourself.”
Ancient texts had once recorded: northern water, Ren and Gui, the trigram Kan, its image Black Tortoise, god of water.
Controlling water before the Black Tortoise was no different from showing off an axe before a master carpenter. It was laughable.
As the wind and clouds changed color, his expression did not move. He only lifted his hand slightly, and the pouring rain twisted into pillars of water. While everyone was shocked, he raised spiritual power in his palm and flipped his hand downward. The pillars of water instantly froze into ice. Their lower ends sharpened into spikes and tilted slightly, flying quickly toward the blue flood dragon of the River of Forgetfulness.
Qu Linyan swung the long mace in her hand. Dark red mist surged from the tip of the Cloud-Tangling mace into the dark clouds at the edge of the sky, drawing lightning down onto the blue flood dragon. A burst of blinding light lit the dim world. The blue flood dragon of the River of Forgetfulness seemed to open a pair of blood-red eyes. It shook the dark red mist around its body outward and blocked the dozen ice pillars ten meters away. In the next second, lightning touched each giant pillar and shattered them all. The blue flood dragon flew from the broken ice, roaring as it charged toward Zhiming.
Zhiming stepped back half a pace. His right hand drew a seal before him. The spiritual light seemed weak, but when he pushed it forward, it raised a huge blue barrier and stopped the River of Forgetfulness flood dragon several meters away.
In an instant, the river water beneath Zhiming’s feet suddenly moved strangely. Like vines, it climbed and stretched upward with great speed. In one move, it wrapped around his ankles. Thorns grew from the water vines, but no matter what, they could not pierce even half an inch into his skin.
Zhiming frowned slightly, gathered spiritual power in his left palm, and pushed forward hard. “Break!”
In that instant, a huge stream of spiritual power surged toward the blue flood dragon before him like mountains and seas collapsing. The blue flood dragon instantly shattered into thousands of blue water droplets. But they did not fall. They froze in midair and turned into flying needles, all shooting toward Qu Linyan.
“Finally willing to be serious?” Qu Linyan gritted her teeth and smiled coldly. She drove the blood mist forward to block, knocking down all the flying needles. She herself rushed before the bound Zhiming, lifted both maces, and smashed downward with all her strength.
But in the next second, the water vines that had been binding Zhiming had already tightly tied Qu Linyan’s wrists. The sharp thorns on the vines pierced into her skin almost instantly, and blood flowed from the wounds.
Zhiming lifted his eyes and looked at Qu Linyan through the layer of dark red mist. Seeing the violent energy in her tear-filled blood-red eyes, he could not help remembering how she had looked three hundred years ago, covered in wounds yet unwilling to retreat even half a step.
A moment of pity made him stretch out his right hand. Enduring the pain, he reached through that layer of already out-of-control blood-colored poison mist. His rotting fingertips lightly touched the space between her brows.
“Purify.”
Spiritual light bloomed from between her brows into a night-blooming flower. At that moment, all the blood-colored poison mist around them was drawn into it.
The flower opened in pure white for only an instant before it turned dark red as blood and withered petal by petal.
At that moment, the bottomless violence in Qu Linyan’s eyes scattered like smoke with those blood-colored petals. In the end, it vanished completely in this dim world.
When their eyes met, a trace of a smile rose at the corner of Qu Linyan’s eyes. “Is Divine Lord trying to save me?”
“Go back. You are not my opponent, let alone heaven’s.” Zhiming advised in a low voice, “Those devil clan members who have been blocked by the heavenly realm generation after generation at the River of Forgetfulness and have never stepped even half a pace out of the earth realm cannot give you everything you want.”
Qu Linyan smiled faintly and asked back, “Why not kill me? Three hundred years ago and three hundred years later, you both wanted to leave me alive.”
Zhiming did not speak. He was about to cast a spell and push the demon woman before him away, but his vision suddenly went black for an instant.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw, at the end of the sky, a purple phoenix flying far away. Her back was lonely, yet it took up all of his sight.
“Yunni…” He instinctively reached out, wanting to make her stay, but he grasped only emptiness.
No. Yunni had long since vanished.
When he came back to himself, the River of Forgetfulness was gone, and the immortals and devils no longer existed. Between heaven and earth, only endless blood remained. Qu Linyan, who had clearly been bound before him, had somehow broken free and appeared behind him.
He turned alertly. Without thinking, he tried to move spiritual power to protect himself, only to find he could not activate even a thread of it.
Zhiming frowned. “A dream?”
“Not too stupid.” Qu Linyan curved her lips. Looking at the pure white flying shuttle in her hand, she covered her lips and laughed. “With my strength, I still cannot break your protective spiritual power. Unfortunately, three hundred years ago, I saw in your eyes that you did not want to kill me. I did not expect that three hundred years later, with only a small trick, you would truly step into the trap.”
Zhiming lowered his eyes and looked at his bloody right hand. He understood. “Your body actually contains Tearstain poison.”
“Yes. If not, how could I have broken through Divine Lord’s heart defense and pulled you into my dream?” After Qu Linyan spoke, she lifted her right hand. With ease, she strangled Zhiming from afar and gritted her teeth. “Zhiming, are you immortals not always so impressive? Now it is different. Everything here is controlled by me. I am the only god here! Now, do you still think I am no match for you?”
But Zhiming seemed as if nothing had happened. He quietly closed his eyes. “A god’s soul does not fear dream power. You cannot kill a god in a dream. You cannot even hurt me at all.”
Qu Linyan did not believe him. She was about to use force, only to discover that the more strength she used, the closer the dream came to collapsing.
Could it be true that no one could kill a god in a dream?
She refused to believe it.
If she could not hurt his body at all, what about his spirit?
Tearstain poison could strengthen the deepest pain in a person’s heart by a thousand or ten thousand times. She refused to believe the heart of a heavenly god had no weak point.
“Then I want to see what kind of beauty this Yunni from Divine Lord Zhiming’s mouth is.” After Qu Linyan spoke, she pressed her palm to Zhiming’s forehead. In an instant, black-red spiritual mist wrapped around them both.
At that moment, countless memory fragments entered Qu Linyan’s eyes.
The turtle-snake Black Tortoise was one of the Four Symbols. Since cultivating into a god, more than ten thousand years had passed. The years he had lived through were especially long. Yet amid those changes of seas turning to fields, Qu Linyan saw at one glance the figure she had dreamed of for three hundred years.
Yun Su suddenly turned back among the sea of clouds and waved with a smile. Her blue clothes rose with the wind. In that one moment, she outshone ten thousand scenes.
“I did not know you were still alive…”
Qu Linyan took half a step forward in a daze, wanting to reach out and touch her. But the phantom before her eyes shattered at a touch.
“Um… I heard people say Divine Lord once descended with me for a tribulation?”
“Divine Lord is different from before. Northern Xuan Palace does not seem as cold and quiet as before either.”
“Divine Lord treats me so well, but I do not know how I should answer…”
“Zhiming, Zhiming… Can I call you that?”
“Zhiming…”
Why was it all him?
Why were her eyes full of him? Why did she always call his name?
What about me? What am I? What do our promises count for?
The sudden pain like knives twisting in her heart made the dream collapse instantly.
Zhiming opened his eyes and formed seals with both hands. He controlled water like a prison, trapping Qu Linyan layer after layer.
But in the next second, Qu Linyan suddenly opened a pair of blood-red eyes, like a killing god crawling out of a blood prison.
“She is mine!” She gritted her teeth as she spoke. Suddenly, she used all her strength to break free of the powerful restraints. Her five fingers turned into claws and stabbed straight toward the vital point of Zhiming’s heart. The fierce resistance caught him off guard. For a moment, he could not react in time. In his hurry, he turned sideways and avoided the fatal spot, but his left shoulder was pierced through.
“Give her back to me!” She spoke almost madly. Her sharp claws pulled from Zhiming’s shoulder, tearing off a piece of shoulder bone with skin and flesh.
The person who had made vows with her, whether alive or dead, could only belong to her alone.
As long as she still had one breath left, no one could steal that person from her side.
Zhiming gritted his teeth and covered the poisoned blood hole in his shoulder. Facing Qu Linyan’s nearly mad attacks, he only defended and did not attack, retreating step by step.
Unable to break him after attacking for so long, Qu Linyan grew even angrier.
Why? Why could Tearstain poison not control his mind? Did his heart truly have no grief or worry…
“Black flood dragon, enough! She does not want to kill you. That does not mean I do not dare kill you!”
She does not want to kill me… She still has me in her heart…
That instant of distraction slowed Qu Linyan’s attack slightly. Zhiming turned his hand and seized her throat, saying coldly, “Black flood dragon, Tearstain Flower poison is useless against me. I will give you one last chance. Take these devils and withdraw from the River of Forgetfulness at once. If you want to die here and never see her again, I can also fulfill that wish!”
Qu Linyan said nothing.
Zhiming said, “Think clearly!”
For the first time, Qu Linyan saw killing intent in Zhiming’s eyes. The Tearstain poison that had removed every obstacle for her over the past three hundred years could not invade his mind. She had lost the ability she relied on most. Reason told her that at this moment, she could only compromise.
Seeing Qu Linyan’s eyes gradually regain reason, and seeing a trace of retreat in them, Zhiming released her in an instant and pushed her hard away.
“She is my wife… the wife I bowed to Heaven and Earth with, the wife I shared a wedding chamber with. I will definitely bring her back to the earth realm!” Qu Linyan clutched her chest in pain, her brows tightly locked, and gritted her teeth. “This time, I will protect her!”