Being knocked down by the Heavenly Dao while ascending

Tang Gu's dilated pupils gradually focused.
Pei Mingyan smiled brightly and extended a helping hand to her.

Her mind went blank for a moment, and her body stopped responding. It was as if something had entered her brain.
But in just a moment, she was startled, stood up, and ran towards Xue Qingyu, "Master! Master! What's wrong with you?"

Pei Mingyan smiled helplessly, without any embarrassment. He retracted his hands and patted them, then walked towards Xue Qingyu, who was half leaning on the marble fence in the garden, lowering his head to restrain himself.
"Excuse me, is this play fun?"

Xue Qingyu still lowered his head and did not answer.

Tang Gu's momentary confusion had completely disappeared. She turned around and scolded, "Who allowed you to talk to the dean like this? Get out of here."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, you are so ungrateful. Your dean wanted to kill you just now." Pei Mingyan walked back to the table and sat in Xue Qingyu's seat. He picked up the teacup and was about to drink it, but as if he remembered something, he put the cup back and replaced it with a new one. "I just saved you from him, and you treat your savior like this?"

Tang Gu turned her head away. "It was clearly me who tightened the strings just now. What does it have to do with the dean? Although you were able to stabilize the dean's injuries, you are just a small woodcutter in the bamboo forest. What qualifications do you have to speak so arrogantly here?"

"……"All right.
Pei Mingyan nodded, "Okay, whoever wants to deal with this mess is free to deal with it. I won't accompany you any more."
He took a sip of tea, put down the cup, and turned to leave.

"Pei... Pei Mingyan, please stay." Dean Xue seemed to have finally been able to control himself. He stood up by holding the fence, signaled to Tang Gu that she didn't need to help him, and shouted "weakly".

Pei Mingyan turned around and rolled up his left sleeve. "By the way, Master, could you please take back this zither pattern as well?"

Xue Qingyu closed his eyes for a while, and the bloodstains and thin beads of sweat on his face disappeared. "Tang Gu, you go down first. Pei Mingyan and I have something to discuss."

"No, we have nothing to discuss." Pei Mingyan poked the cold Qin pattern, "Just take it off, it represents your honor. It's useless anyway. I am of low status and unworthy of your noble Qin pattern."

Xue Qingyu exhaled with difficulty, "I promise you."

The zither pattern on his arm seemed to understand human speech and began to dissipate from the center of the zither. After leaving the arm, it condensed into a ball of mist and flew towards Xue Qingyu.

Pei Mingyan turned his back and walked away with a sullen face.

Xue Qingyu, this old fox!
She pretends to be a weak and sickly beauty, but her heart is as dirty as if it had rolled in a pile of coal.

Whatever he suspects will happen. If he were really that powerful, he would have become a heavenly being long ago.
So, who could "guess" the doubts in his heart?
Xue Qingyu, that bastard!
The other party is hiding deep in his sea of ​​consciousness. On the surface, the other party is controlled by him, but in fact, the other party is "openly" listening to what he is thinking.

In other words, in front of the other party, he was just a dumpling without filling, a whole "Li Bai" (Note ①), with no secrets at all.
Just say it, is it possible for a big villain to suddenly become so obedient and cooperative?

Pei Mingyan returned to his own little house and stopped being passive. He checked all the formations around his yard one by one, and rearranged the chicken, duck and goose houses and the garden fields in the yard. When everything was ready, he finished his job as a woodcutter.

As it was getting night, he threw Xue Qingyu's jade pendant on the table, thought for a while, found a bowl, poured a few handfuls of lake water into the bowl, threw the jade pendant in, and sprinkled a piece of talisman paper in it like adding seasoning.
Then he snapped his fingers, flames started burning at the bottom of the bowl, and the water began to boil with a "crackling" sound.

Pei Mingyan smiled and disappeared on the spot.
.
On the stone platform at the back of the mountain, the moonlight was bright, and the whistling of the wind could be heard from time to time, adding a bit of weirdness to the quiet night.
There is pearly light in the cave, which seems to attract people to enter.

Pei Mingyan walked into the cave leisurely and discovered that the temperature inside the cave was actually several degrees lower than that of the open-air stone platform outside.
The light of the night pearl is slow and not dazzling, but it is just enough to see the scenery in the cave clearly. I don’t know if it is an illusion, but the marine life on the top of the cave has actually moved.

Live?
Thinking of this, Pei Mingyan hit the mountain wall.
It is soft and elastic. With a little force, I can press that layer of unknown substance down a little. Once I let go, the concave place will quickly swell up. If I look closely, I can see this thing expanding and shrinking like breathing.
It turns out that there is a mucous membrane on the surface of the mountain wall, filled with water in the middle. Marine life is confined in the two layers of mucous membrane, and the inside and outside of the mucous membrane are interconnected. The air outside can enter, but the water inside cannot come out. Therefore, the marine life inside can indeed move and be lively.

Who said that the ancients were not smart? Look, they even built an “aquarium”.

Pei Mingyan looked at it carefully and confirmed that this thing did not emit poisonous gas and was not some advanced formation, so he did not stay and walked straight inside.
There was wind blowing out of the cave, like a ghost wailing, and the green light of several night pearls gave it a rather eerie feeling.

Strangely, there was no more sound in the cave.
Could it be that he was late? Thinking of this, Pei Mingyan quickened his pace, hesitated for a moment at the fork in the road, and threw a small object to the other road.

The further you go inside, the stronger the salty and fishy smell becomes, and when mixed with the fragrance of flowers, there is an indescribable taste.

After a sudden turn, as if the ground had sunk, there was no road under my feet and a huge sinkhole appeared before my eyes.
The salty smell of the sea water became stronger. Pei Mingyan looked down and, as expected, the sinkhole was full of blue sea water.

Pei Mingyan touched the ring on his waist, and a row of bamboo rafts came out, dropped vertically, and floated on the sea.

Pei Mingyan flew down and stood on the bamboo raft, as if he had made an appointment with someone, and said, "I'm here."

The calm sea surface suddenly began to ripple, and a figure slowly rose from the water, with only the upper body exposed, while the lower body was still soaked in the sea water.
The face was already bloody and the wound had not healed. The disguise that originally occupied half of the face had long since disappeared. Pei Mingyan glanced at the water and suddenly said, "Is this the reason why you stay away from people and live in the mountains?"

The man seemed to smile, which pulled the wounds on his face, causing several places to tear further and bleed. He seemed unaware of it and still maintained his smile.

This look is actually extremely scary. If it were a timid person, he might turn into a screaming chicken.
Pei Mingyan did not look at him strangely, but just stretched out his hand towards him, as if trying to pull him up.

The man smiled bitterly, shook his head and said, "My body cannot leave this sea of ​​water."

Pei Mingyan paused, "Then this morning..."
"I see. You let the sea gush and carry you up there, just so I could see."

"I...I've been waiting for someone from the Mei family."

"Mei family?"

The man laughed at himself and said, "How many Mei families are there in this world?"

Pei Mingyan waved his hand, and the person floating in the water was wrapped by a force and floated up a few inches. It was seen that the lower half of the person was actually a fish tail.
He withdrew his hand, and the fish tail sank again. "I have never heard of the Mei family taking in people from other tribes."

The other party didn't mind Pei Mingyan's actions just now. The scar on his face began to heal, and a thin layer of white particles stuck on it, as if it had grown together with the flesh and blood.

The man smiled apologetically, jumped up, and sank into the sea. In two breaths, he jumped out of the water again.

Pei Mingyan's fingers were trembling. "You are a member of the Mei family."

"It was fifty years ago, but fifty years later... maybe not," the man replied.

Pei Mingyan looked at his face. The wound that was about to heal was now bloody again after being soaked in sea water.

The bamboo raft sank a little, and Pei Mingyan said, "You are using this method to stay awake."

"Correct."
The man stretched his hands out of the sea and placed them in front of his eyes, as if looking at his hands.
All I saw was that he had fins on his elbows and webbed fingers on his hands, and there was no sign of forgery at all.
If it weren't for the facial injury that could not heal in sea water, almost no one would suspect that this person was not a marine creature.

"There is no record of missing persons in the Mei family's records." Pei Mingyan explained to him, "Looking at your face... someone must have peeled off your skin and pretended to be you to get away with it."

The man smiled and said, "This is exactly why I have survived until now. The Mei family has lit a soul lamp for each disciple. Once I die, the Mei family will immediately notice me."

"Him?" Pei Mingyan asked, "Who is he? Xue Qingyu's master?"

The man nodded hesitantly, "Their clan is particularly good at disguising themselves, so maybe the person I saw is not the real him." He smiled and immersed himself in the sea again, "You have also seen my appearance. It is said that the human skin mask has disappeared from the world. In fact, they have always been there, but they are disguised too well and no one can see through them. You should have also seen the guardian Murong in the academy. She can disguise herself as various species, but she is far inferior to him."

Pei Mingyan explained the difference: "He can transform people into a fusion of two races."

"Yes. I was originally just an ordinary fortune teller of the Mei family." He soaked in the sea water again. "Mei family fortune tellers can choose their masters, but they must leave a mark in the Mei family... He is good at disguise, and that mark is the only way to find him."

Pei Mingyan took a half step back, covering his forehead, and began to think about the book and reality. If so, then what was not stated in the book - why was the Mei family wiped out?
Is it really because Mei Shanxue saved Fang Qing?

Perhaps among the things that are not written in the book, there is such an incident, in which Fang Qing was fighting with the villain and accidentally ran into "Old Wu". With no other choice, Old Wu decided to try his luck and told Fang Qing the news.

Fang Qing was later rescued by Young Master Mei, so the person behind the scenes thought that he was about to be exposed, and asked Xue Qingyu to act as soon as possible.
Mei Shanxue was a prodigy at that time, but his cultivation progress was not as good as his now. However, Xue Qingyu at that time was not only healthy, but also in his prime. Mei Shanxue was naturally no match for him and was defeated in the end.

There's just one problem.
Although Mei Shanxue was young at that time, he would not necessarily lose. Why did that man let Xue Qingyu take action?
Is it because they are sure that Meishanxue will lose, or is there another reason?

(End of this chapter)