The years I was in the human world

It is not easy to find a person whose past was like a mayfly, born and died in the evening in the tens of millions of years of human life. What's more, no one knows Xiao Fengzhuo's old name.

The front yard of the palace was overgrown with weeds, tattered lanterns were blown to and fro by the wind, the paper on the windows was scattered all over the place, and the corners were covered with thick spider webs. When the wind blew through the hall, the whole house made a humming sound, which was creepy for no reason.

Lu Zhouxue walked around the palace and found nothing. He thought he had found the wrong place again and planned to leave after his spiritual power recovered enough to use the Samsara Mirror again. At this time, a crisp voice sounded behind him: "Who are you?"

Lu Zhouxue turned around when she heard the voice, and saw a girl in tattered clothes standing behind the dry grass. The girl was tall and thin, and her arms exposed from her sleeves were as thin as bamboo poles, covered with deep and shallow scars. Her clothes were patched again and again, and she looked even more dishevelled than Peacock back then.

"I'm a Taoist priest who comes to catch ghosts. Why are you here alone?" With the experience of Peacock, Lu Zhouxue was not very enthusiastic towards the miserable girl in front of him, but he was not cold either. He squatted down and waved at her, "Come here."

"Taoist? Humph, you are hiding your head and showing your tail. I think you are an assassin." Unexpectedly, the girl stood still and snorted coldly. Her eyes were full of vigilance and her expression was a little sinister. It was totally not the reaction of a child of this age. "Who ordered you to do this?"

Lu Zhouxue touched the mask on his face, thinking that this little girl was quite cautious. Looking at the wolf-like little girl, he rarely showed interest. He put his hands on his knees and said, "Since you know I am an assassin, you still dare to show up. Aren't you afraid that I will kill you?"

"I'm not afraid of you taking action, I'm just afraid that you'll do something shady and make my mother and I suffer." The girl said, revealing her hands behind her back, holding a lit candle. "If you dare to take action, I'll immediately set it on fire."

"This place is overgrown with dry grass, which can catch fire easily. When the flames soar into the sky and attract the imperial guards, you will never get out alive." The candle was of poor quality. It dripped wax as it burned, and all the wax fell on the girl's hand. However, he did not feel any pain and stared at Lu Zhouxue.

The candlelight illuminated the girl's face, allowing people to see the strong cruelty in his eyes - if Lu Zhouxue dared to make a move, he would really dare to set her on fire. Who knows how much suffering he had endured to develop such a character. Lu Zhouxue sighed in his heart and suddenly couldn't bear to tease him anymore.

"I'm not an assassin, and I don't want to harm you or your mother." Lu Zhouxue said. As if to increase his persuasiveness, he thought for a moment and took off the mask on his face, revealing half of his face covered with scars. "As for covering my face, it's just because I look ugly and I don't want to disturb others."

His face was actually quite handsome, but half of it was marred by scars, which made it look scary. However, the girl was not afraid. Instead, her tone softened a little because of his words: "Since he is not an assassin and he is not here to kill, then he is here for money?"

"Since he can appear here without anyone noticing, he must be very skilled. Why does he come to this cold palace instead of going to the emperor's or concubine's palace?" the girl asked coldly. Although she was not so alert anymore, she still held the candle tightly in her hand.

Did he enter the palace by mistake? I don't know which dynasty it was, Lu Zhouxue thought. No wonder the little girl didn't believe him just now. Which Taoist priest could catch a ghost in the palace? But now his spiritual power has not recovered yet, so he must rest here for a while. How can he dispel the girl's suspicion so that he can stay and wait for his spiritual power to recover?

Lu Zhouxue thought about it, looked around the deserted courtyard, and then chose a dead tree next to the girl. He raised his hand and shot a stream of spiritual energy at it. The girl's face changed, thinking that he was coming for her, and she threw the candle in her hand directly into the dead grass next to her.

"You girl...ah..." Seeing his reaction, Lu Zhouxue sighed helplessly, raised her hand and sent another stream of spiritual energy over. The fallen candle was wrapped in the spiritual energy and sent to the garden lamp that had been abandoned for a long time. The dim flame lit up, illuminating the dead tree that was beginning to sprout and grow again.

The girl widened her eyes in surprise, and then she felt something hit her head. He looked up and saw that the dead tree had come back to life. Kapok flowers were blooming on the branches. One flower fell on his shoulder. He picked up the flower blankly and turned to look at Lu Zhouxue: "What on earth are you...?"

"I am a Taoist priest traveling around the world, and I accidentally entered the imperial palace..." Lu Zhouxue's explanation was still nonsense, but with his trick of bringing a dead tree back to life, no matter how smart the girl was, she was just a teenager, so she no longer suspected that he had bad intentions, and just asked him to rest and leave as soon as possible.

Even though Lu Zhouxue showed off his skills in front of her, the girl's attitude was still unexpectedly cold. After telling Lu Zhouxue to leave as soon as possible, she turned and left. She was indifferent to everything, which was really not the attitude that a girl of her age should have.

Lu Zhouxue followed her with worried thoughts. The girl ignored him and went around to a side hall. Although it was just as dilapidated, there were much less weeds in front of the door, and you could barely see any signs of someone living there.

"Why are you following me?" There was a rusty iron lock hanging on the palace door, and the girl asked casually while opening the door.

"Why do you want to lock the door?" Lu Zhouxue did not answer his question, but pointed at the lock on the door. This place was remote and desolate like a haunted house. He didn't understand why there was any need to lock the door.

"If you don't lock the door, someone will run around." The girl said as she untied the iron lock and put it in her pocket. As soon as the door opened, a crazy woman with bared fangs and claws pounced on the girl from inside. Her hair was messy like a female ghost, which scared Lu Zhouxue.

The girl grabbed the woman's arm as usual and pushed her back into the house. The woman didn't obey and struggled violently in the girl's arms, saying crazily: "Qinlang, is that you, Qinlang? You finally came to see me... Woo woo woo, you finally came..."

"He's here, right in the front hall." The girl said these lies coldly while pushing the woman onto the bed. Her expression was terribly sarcastic. "Be good, I'll let you go see him if you don't. Otherwise I'll tell him you're crazy and make him never dare to see you again in his life."

The threatening words were as effective as ever. The woman soon stopped making trouble and shrank on the bed, looking at the girl timidly. She said, "Su Qing, I'll be obedient, I'll be obedient. I'm not crazy. Don't scare him away."

"Turn around, I'll comb your hair." The girl patted the bed, motioning the woman to turn around, and then took out a comb from her arms, carefully combed the woman's messy hair, and then used her nimble fingers to tie it into a snake bun.

"What is your relationship with her?" Lu Zhouxue watched the interaction between the two and felt an indescribable weirdness in his heart. The girl clearly didn't want to care about this crazy woman. Her words were cold and even hateful, but her actions of taking care of her were very careful and meticulous.

"What's the relationship? She's my mother. Why, she doesn't look like me?" The girl saw Lu Zhouxue's surprised expression, tilted her head in amusement, looked down at her patched dress, and said self-deprecatingly, "Of course she doesn't look like me. Whose 'princess' lives like me?"

"Stay quiet. If you mess up your hair again, you'll never see him again in your life." The girl combed her mother's hair, warned her, and then pulled out an old wooden basin from under the bed. She took the dirty clothes to the well in the backyard to fetch water to wash the clothes.

Seeing that he had locked the door again, and thinking about the crazy woman inside, Lu Zhouxue couldn't help but ask, "Are you okay after deceiving her like that?"

"What could possibly happen? The emperor has left her here for more than ten years, and she's been crazy for more than ten years, but now she's alive and well, isn't she?" The girl said nonchalantly, throwing the wooden barrel into the well. "She asks me every day, and when she can't see anyone, she makes a scene, like a female ghost trying to drag me down."

"At first I told her that the emperor would not come and he didn't want her anymore, but then she got even crazier and started clamoring to get out." The cold well water was poured into the wooden basin. The girl rolled up her sleeves to her shoulders without hesitation, squatted down and began to beat her clothes.

"You know, I used to like watching her get upset, but after a while, it became boring, so I lied to her. As long as she was obedient, I would let her see the emperor." The girl laughed as she spoke, "And she believed it. Hahahahaha, she didn't even think about it. If I had that ability, why would I still stay in this cold palace and suffer."

"What's your name?" Lu Zhouxue asked. He looked at the girl's hands washing clothes. They were so thin that they seemed like they would break if she put too much force. He couldn't bear to watch and reached out to wring out the water from his winter clothes. "How old are you now?"

"It is not a gentleman's behavior to ask a girl's name and age without permission, 'Master.'" The girl took the winter clothes that Lu Zhouxue had wrung and hung them up. It was a rare joke for her. The teasing tone inexplicably reminded him of Xiao Fengzhuo.

"I'm not a gentleman at all." Lu Zhouxue said subconsciously while sitting on the steps with his chin in his hand. Only after he finished speaking did he realize what he had said.

"Then you are really honest." The girl looked at him with a half-smile, hung the clothes in her hands, picked up the wooden basin and went straight into the kitchen, leaving only one sentence behind her, "Just call me Su Qing."

Lu Zhouxue thought the name sounded familiar, but he couldn't remember when he had heard it before, so he didn't ask any more questions. He followed. Su Qing was sitting by the stove, making a fire. When she heard him coming, she stuffed a piece of firewood into the stove and asked without even looking up, "Are you eating?"

"No need." Lu Zhouxue shook her head.

"Yeah, okay." Su Qing nodded without saying anything. He stood up and took out a burlap bag from the stone vat beside him. The bag was deflated and there was not much stuff in it. He didn't mind and added a ladle of water to it and started to cook porridge.

Lu Zhouxue looked at the grains mixed with bran and beans in the pot and couldn't help asking, "Is this what you eat?" After all, she is a princess. Even poor families only eat bran in years of famine. How could a princess in the palace eat this?

"It's good to have this. When I was young, my mother was crazy, and the palace servants flattered the powerful and bullied the weak. I sometimes went hungry for nine meals in three days." Su Qing smiled and added a handful of firewood to the stove. "If you choke, you can get out."

"No need - I have some cakes here, you can take some." Lu Zhouxue shook her head, thought for a moment, then lowered her head and took out a bag of cakes from her sleeve.

"Thank you. I don't think you look like a Taoist priest. You look more like an immortal who has traveled to the human world." Su Qing didn't bother to be polite with him. He took the package of snacks, casually placed it on the stove, left a sentence "Help me watch the fire" and left.

Lu Zhouxue naturally didn't need to watch the fire himself. He folded a piece of talisman paper into a paper man in his sleeve, threw it in front of the stove, and started the fire. He looked at the mess in the pot again, and simply flicked his sleeves and replaced the pot of white rice for Su Qing.

After finishing all this, after a while, Su Qing came back from outside holding a black cat. The cat had a small cloth bag in its mouth, and the contents were the same grains and bran as in the sack before.

Su Qing hid the contents of her pocket in the stone jar, then went to look at the stove. When she saw the white rice in the pot, she was stunned for a moment, then asked, "Where is the pot I had earlier?"

"Here." Lu Zhouxue pointed to the earthenware jar next to the stove.

Su Qing pulled out a jar from somewhere, poured the white rice in the pot into it and hid it, then poured the coarse grains in the jar back into the pot and continued to cook. Lu Zhouxue didn't understand her behavior: "What are you doing?"

"…Someone will come today, and we can't let them find out that there is white rice in the cold palace." Su Qing explained, and then he poured the almost cooked porridge into two bowls, picked up one of the bowls and drank it, then casually put the cakes on the stove into his arms, and took the bowl back to the side hall where his mother was imprisoned.

"It's time to eat." Su Qing casually put the bowl and chopsticks on the table, took out the cake from his arms, opened it and stuffed it into the woman's hand, and said in a cold tone, "Eat it up, or you'll be in trouble."

"You only ate that little, aren't you hungry?" Lu Zhouxue asked when she saw him give all the cakes to your woman and didn't eat a single bite. Until now, his vigilance towards every seemingly miserable stranger because of Peacock has faded, and facing Su Qing, he even felt a little bit of pity.

"Someone brought food to me today, so I'll eat that." Su Qing wiped the mouth of his mother, whose face was covered with pastry crumbs, without explaining why he ate the food sent by the palace servants but let his mother eat bran and coarse grains.

"Xiao Su, who are you talking to?" The woman asked fearfully, holding the bowl. She looked around cautiously and shrank even more. "Is there something?"

The woman's question startled the other two. Su Qing was the first to react. He pointed at Lu Zhouxue and asked, "Can't you see him?"

“Where, where is there anyone…” The woman became more and more frightened, “Xiao Su, don’t scare me.”

"Well, no one is here. I'm just teasing you." Su Qing nodded and dealt with the woman casually. She turned her head to meet Lu Zhouxue's gaze. She smiled, half jokingly, half self-deprecatingly, "It seems that only I can see you. It seems that I'm crazy too. Crazy concubine and crazy princess, that's good."