The sage was determined to die.

Ji Ying remained silent for a long while.

He glanced at the unpleasant old turtle and scoffed, "Sending out something like this to look for your nephew, this nephew isn't that important to you, is he?"

Although the old tortoise had a human face, its entire body was that of a turtle. It moved slowly and thought slowly. After looking at Ji Ying for a long time, it finally reacted: "Oh, you're that kid..."

Ji Ying was not in a hurry. She looked down at him, her face showing neither resentment nor surprise. It was as cold as a lake after a snowfall, covered with a layer of ice of unknown depth.

He tilted his head slightly and gripped the sword in his hand. Calling it a sword was a bit of a stretch; the thing looked more like a blood-soaked vine, stiffly shaped into a long sword, with many tiny white bone spurs mixed in, giving it a strange and incongruous beauty.

"I'm curious," he suddenly said, "If your shell is killed, will the memories you see here be transmitted back to your original body?"

The old tortoise took a while to slowly answer him, saying gently, "Why do you hate me? Didn't I help you?"

The human head looks kind and benevolent, even somewhat ethereal, but the tortoise body can only move slowly on the ground. Its inability to understand human speech makes it appear both eerie and disjointed.

As he crawled forward, he spoke slowly, "Oh dear, you're all grown up now, why are you still acting like a child, obsessed with things from back then?"

"If it weren't for my help back then, would you still have that literary heart?" the tortoise said slowly as it crawled forward. "Children just don't know how to repay kindness. All I did was use you to kill some strangers, why have you held a grudge for so many years?"

"A stranger?" Ji Ying responded with an "oh," her eyes devoid of any emotion. "In that case, shouldn't I thank you, sir?"

After a while, the old tortoise slowly chuckled. His voice came from a very strange place; his cheeks bulged and contracted like a toad's, and his laughter sounded like a broken bellows.

"Young people are just young people, they're so hot-tempered." The old tortoise blinked his bright yellow eyes. As time passed, his head gradually transformed into a tortoise, and his old face looked like it had been through a lot of wind and rain, with wrinkles creeping up one by one.

"Ji Ying, this is how the world should be. Only lives of value should live," he said. "You can't even remember those people's names. You're not going to seek revenge on me just because of some strangers, are you?"

The old tortoise shook his head: "The reason I protected you so strongly back then was because I valued your talent. If you dare to act so foolishly, I shouldn't have protected you in the first place."

"revenge?"

Ji Ying slowly pondered the two words, and soon scoffed. He bluntly said, "You tricked me back then, and my literary talent has never improved since. I will not be able to get rid of my inner demons until I kill you."

"I want you, and that good-for-nothing's life too," Ji Ying said. "It's a pity your true form can't hear me."

The old tortoise puffed out its cheeks and laughed with delight. "That's right, that's right, that's more like it!" it exclaimed.

"But if my true form were here, how could you reveal your true feelings?"

After saying these words, the old tortoise's expression changed. He looked towards the direction of the earthen mound not far away, and slowly climbed up. "Oh dear, so you hid Wenxin here..."