The Young Lady Only Wants to Cultivate Immortality Chapter 12

The sun sank in the west, and the glow of the sunset blazed like fire, burning with its last inch of heat, as if to delay the impending cold night with a sliver of warmth. Weary birds returning to their nests shook their dark feathers and let out hoarse cries, also as if reminding pedestrians not to delay their steps home.
A’Ling watched the person coming towards her, through the carriages and horses, against the flow of returning traffic.
She was wearing a thin but brand-new purple silk tunic. Her silver hair was meticulously coiled into a low bun, just as in A’Ling’s memory, and there were no extra decorations on her entire body.
Only a pair of rare crimson butterfly stone earrings hung from her ears.
Crimson butterfly stones had colors like coral and patterns like butterflies. They looked pretty and unique but were not valuable.
One could find them anywhere in the Demon Realm by digging around a bit. But these stones were hard and brittle, making it difficult to drill holes and fashion them into earrings. Normally, no one would think of using these stones for earrings.
Back then, A’Ling painstakingly polished them bit by bit. It took her a month to successfully thread a pair, which she then gave to the woman in front of her.
Back then, she called her ‘mother’. This wasn’t the first gift A’Ling gave to ‘her mother’, but it was the last.
A’Ling watched the woman who had already walked up to her. The glint of tears in her eyes was exceptionally dazzling under the sun, stinging A’Ling’s eyes and making her look away. She looked down at the woman’s dirty shoes.
When she saw the thin, half-worn sole of the shoe, A’Ling frowned.
“A’Ling, are you alright? Are your injuries all healed?” Jin Siliu asked anxiously as soon as she reached her. As she spoke, she reached out to check A’Ling’s condition, just like when A’Ling was little and came home injured from outside.
A’Ling stepped back, evading her hand, and coldly watched the woman in front of her, staring until the woman’s movements paused.
Jin Siliu’s hand, frozen in mid-air, seemed somewhat flustered and helpless. She weakly clenched it but held onto nothing, and it fell powerlessly.
“I heard you were injured,” Jin Siliu explained. “I couldn’t go to the Huo family’s estate. I just, I was just worried about you…” Jin Siliu had wanted to go see A’Ling when she heard she was injured, but back then, Old Master Huo had made her swear never to step half a pace into the Huo family’s estate.
A’Ling scoffed. “Huo Zhen became your master too? If you’re so obedient, why don’t you just become his dog!”
Jin Siliu understood the sarcasm in her words. She didn’t care about A’Ling’s curses towards her, but seeing the scorn and mockery on A’Ling’s face when she mentioned her master made her somewhat displeased.
She knew A’Ling was blaming her, but she owed her master a life; she had to repay it.
“A’Ling, you mustn’t—”
A’Ling waved her hand, cutting off her words. “I don’t care which grave you crawled out of. If you want to be someone’s mother, you should ask if they’re willing first. What, do you think it’s still like before?!”
Thinking of the past, A’Ling desperately suppressed the grievance in her heart, not letting the other party see the sadness she felt at this moment.
She wondered if her heart had regressed with her age. Why had it become so fragile again?
She had thought that after being reborn, her heart should be hard and sharp, but it turned out to be all for show. Just one sentence had shattered the stone wall she had built around her heart.
The shattered stone fragments also cut open a crack in her heart.
Fine trickles of blood seeped out, forming a thin line, leading her back to memories of her bloody childhood: those precarious years when she and ‘mother’ depended on each other for survival.
She remembered that ever since she had memories, ‘mother’ had been leading her in escape. Anytime, anywhere: sometimes while eating, sometimes while playing, and sometimes, she would be hastily picked up by ‘mother’ in her sleep, protected in her arms, fleeing in all directions.
Regarding those years of her childhood, what she remembered most deeply was Jin Siliu’s embrace. It was very warm, and her heartbeat always made her feel safe, even in displacement, never worrying about being abandoned.
Later, as she gradually grew up, the life-threatening crises became fewer and fewer, and they gradually managed to stay in some places for a period of time.
Although they had to move every so often, and they never accumulated any possessions, their residences always empty, A’Ling was still very content.
As long as she could be with ‘mother’, she felt that any place was home.
Jin Siliu was not a gentle mother, and A’Ling was not an obedient child. Her childhood experiences made her exceptionally bold and exceptionally prone to causing trouble.
She grew up being beaten by Jin Siliu, but back then, A’Ling thought it was all because ‘mother’ loved her.
She remembered one time she desperately wanted a sugar figurine that looked very much like her, and she fussed about not wanting to travel. That time ‘mother’ beat her severely, and only carried her after she was beaten into submission, taking her to a new place.
A’Ling didn’t speak a word to her ‘mother’ for several days because of this. And for those few days, her ‘mother’ came home later each day; each time she returned, the soles of her shoes were half-worn away.
A few days later, her ‘mother’ came home with an injured face, and carefully took out a sugar figurine wrapped in oiled paper from her embrace. “Here, for you. Don’t be so willful again in the future.”
That sugar figurine, even when it melted, A’Ling couldn’t bear to eat. She carefully stored it in a found glass jar.
Later, A’Ling learned that her ‘mother’, in order to buy that sugar figurine, had snuck into the docks to carry sandbags. She was later discovered to be a demon and was almost beaten to death.
Injured as she was, she still walked over thirty li to the sugar figurine stall A’Ling had fussed about, and bought the sugar figurine she had longed for.
After that, A’Ling never fussed about wanting anything again. That day, as she applied medicine to her ‘mother’s’ worn and broken soles, she also swore in her heart that she would buy many shoes for her ‘mother’ in the future and never let her wear shoes with no soles again.
A’Ling struggled out of her memories. She looked down at Jin Siliu’s brand-new dress, and beneath it, the shoes with half their soles worn away. Her heart ached dully.
She didn’t know where she borrowed this dress from. She had always been a strong-willed person.
“A’Ling, it’s my fault. It’s only right for you to hate me and blame me,” Jin Siliu said. “It was just me who swapped the children. It has nothing to do with the young mistress.”
“A’Ling, since you’ve already returned to the Huo family,” Jin Siliu continued, “if everyone gets along in the future, why not let go of this now and get along well? The young mistress is also an excellent person.”
“A’Ling, you are also a good child,” Jin Siliu added. “You two will surely become good sisters.”
The blood-seeping crack in A’Ling’s heart, with each utterance of ‘A’Ling’, was gradually ripped open into a larger fissure.
A bloody mist filled her entire heart, and A’Ling’s vision also turned crimson. “Enough!” she screamed.
She actually still held a sliver of hope, truly believing she was here to care for her. It turned out she was still doing it for Shi Qingqian.
Let her guess: when Jin Siliu heard that she had injured Shi Qingqian, and that she herself had been injured by Huo Zhen, was she more worried about her injuries, or about Shi Qingqian being hurt by her?
A’Ling let out a bitter laugh. Why did everyone like Shi Qingqian? What was so bad about her?
She was the one who grew up with Jin Siliu. She could understand and accept Huo Zhen liking Shi Qingqian, but why was Jin Siliu like this too?
“Why? Why!”
What was so bad about her? She didn’t care if her ‘mother’ was human or demon. She didn’t care about not having a stable home. She cared even less about living in poverty.
When she was ten, they couldn’t hide in the human realm anymore. Despite fearing the Demon Realm, she still went to the Demon Realm with ‘mother’.
As a human child, she even risked becoming food for demons.
She had to hide in a dirty and messy storage room every day. Her happiest time each day was waiting for her ‘mother’ to return from work, and sharing a single meal together.
Her ‘mother’ would braid her hair, teach her to read and write, and when she got paid, she would hold her on her lap and ask if there was any gift she wanted.
After the sugar figurine incident, A’Ling never made any demands again, only hoping ‘mother’ would spend more time with her was enough.
A’Ling also asked who her father was. Her ‘mother’ said her father was a cultivator, and after he found out ‘mother’ was a demon, he wanted to kill them both.
A’Ling comforted her not to be sad, saying she would protect ‘mother’ when she grew up and absolutely wouldn’t let that man harm ‘mother’.
Later, when A’Ling turned sixteen, ‘mother’ suddenly said one day that she would take her to meet her father.
A’Ling also wanted to know what her father looked like. She worried ‘mother’ would be scared, and swore that unless she died, she would never let her father kill her.
Thinking of this, A’Ling tightly clutched the clothes over her violently aching heart, her eyes filled with mockery.
Unexpectedly, the one who wanted to kill Jin Siliu turned out to be her.
“She hated, she hated intensely!”
Her ‘mother’, whom she had always thought of as depending on each other for survival, had originally intended for her to die in Shi Qingqian’s place!
A’Ling closed her eyes tightly, glad that she wouldn’t cry. Even after two lives, thinking of these things still made her sad enough to want to cry.
She cursed herself in her heart for having lived so many years in vain.
The strange scene between them attracted more and more curious glances from around them. A’Ling saw Gu Jingyang standing quietly in a corner still illuminated by the afterglow beneath the academy’s majestic entrance.
In the shadows beside her, there was also Shi Qingqian, who rarely showed any expression.
A’Ling saw Shi Qingqian’s furrowed brow, filled with disgust. She couldn’t help but let out a cold laugh and looked at Jin Siliu beside her.
Jin Siliu probably also saw Shi Qingqian, looking like a devout believer who had seen their god. She was almost on her knees.
But that deity didn’t even spare a glance.
A’Ling untied the money pouch from her waist and threw it at Jin Siliu. “Take the money and get lost. If you ever dare to appear before me again, I’ll break your legs.”
“A demon daring to come to Hongjian Academy so boldly,” A’Ling continued, “I advise you to be careful. Don’t get your demon bones extracted. Look at your current state; even your master, if she were alive, would despise you.”
“And your young mistress,” A’Ling spat, “just you wait. Sooner or later, I’ll trample her underfoot. Be my sister? That kind of trash isn’t worthy!”
A’Ling no longer looked at Jin Siliu. She resolutely turned around and ran towards Gu Jingyang. In this life, she didn’t need their affection; she wanted to become strong, very strong.
She found Gu Jingyang bathed in a holy light under the sun. She strangely remembered the phrase Gu Jingyang said in the carriage this morning: ‘letting go of others is also letting go of yourself.’
A’Ling let out a light laugh. Nice dream. She certainly wouldn’t let these people off the hook, and she wasn’t planning on letting herself off the hook either.
She wanted to become strong, strong enough to be dazzling, so that no one could ever ignore her again.
“Let’s go,” A’Ling said, lifting her chin towards Gu Jingyang.
Gu Jingyang glanced at Jin Siliu, who was still standing in the distance. “Are you two done talking? I’m not in a hurry.”
A’Ling shook her head. “She’s not looking for me. Let’s go.”
As she spoke, she glanced at Shi Qingqian, her eyes filled with disdain. Even if Jin Siliu wronged everyone, it was all for Shi Qingqian, yet Shi Qingqian could truly be so indifferent, it was utterly heartless.
Gu Jingyang glanced at Shi Qingqian’s face, which was darkening with the dusk, finding it deeply interesting. It was the first time she had seen so many expressions on Shi Qingqian’s face.
Before she could examine more closely, A’Ling dragged her away. “Don’t delay me from making money.”
That pouch of spiritual stones was given to Jin Siliu, and her purse was empty again. Without spiritual stones, how could she buy spiritual materials? Without spiritual materials, how could she refine elixirs? Without elixirs, how could she quickly form a Core?
And her Wandering Amethyst Gold Whip, she wanted to quickly refine it, and then brutally whip Huo Zhen.