Love on the Turquoise Land

Yan Tuo was still conscious, but his senses kept distorting. The voices in his ears fluctuated between loud and soft, and the images before his eyes constantly warped. Worse was the discomfort inside his body—wave after wave, not fatal but erupting in different areas: sometimes his chest, sometimes his stomach or spleen. It was as if a wandering hand inside him was toying with his organs at will.

His memory was hazy too. One moment he was in the car, the next he was being dragged away, doused with alcohol over his head. Then he heard an unfamiliar male voice say, "This will make it more convincing, less noticeable."

The next second, his back hit a soft cushion. It felt so good—his entire body, heavy as a lead weight, sank deeper into the softness.

Then, suddenly, a chill overtook him. The kind of cold that envelops from all sides, accompanied by the sharp snip of scissors, click-clack , closing in on his throat.

Yan Tuo’s eyes flew open, and he grabbed hold of something.

He was in a hotel room.

The window was wide open, the night wind howling incessantly. To make matters worse, the air conditioner—which should’ve been blowing warm air this season—was set to cold, its vent adjusted to blow directly at him.

He lay on the sofa, a large bath towel spread beneath him, likely to keep the bloodstains from dirtying the upholstery.

What he’d grabbed was Nie Jiuluo’s hand—she was holding scissors.

Nie Jiuluo looked down at him. "What? You think this ruined outfit is still worth keeping?"

Yan Tuo slowly released her hand, his palm and fingertips lingering with the softness of her skin.

Oddly, as the temperature dropped, he started feeling better. But his body grew heavier, his limbs barely movable—any significant effort was out of the question. The strength he’d just used to grip her hand left his arm weak and sore, limp as noodles.

Nie Jiuluo ignored him and focused on cutting away the tattered fabric, strip by strip, tossing it into the trash bin beside the sofa.

Once the shirt was gone, she asked, "What about your legs? Any scratches there? Or your back?"

Yan Tuo wanted to say "no," but he wasn’t sure. Sometimes, in extreme situations, injuries went unnoticed.

Nie Jiuluo took one look at his expression and knew better than to rely on his answer.

She carefully examined his pants and cut away the fabric over his right thigh, revealing a long scratch. Then she had him turn over—his back was fine. When Mazha had pounced, he’d fallen backward, so the attack had mostly targeted his front.

With that done, she walked to the door and retrieved a bag of items she’d ordered for delivery. After rummaging through it, she pulled out a large pack of medical alcohol wipes, stacked three thickly together, and pressed them against the wound on his collarbone.

Direct contact between raw, bloody flesh and alcohol wipes was excruciating . Yan Tuo sucked in a sharp breath, his skin twitching uncontrollably as he instinctively recoiled.

Nie Jiuluo paused. "You’d better cooperate. I’m not obligated to do this."

Yan Tuo stayed silent, but when she resumed, he forced himself not to pull away. His muscles still spasmed occasionally—a natural reflex he couldn’t suppress.

By the time she finished, the trash bin was half-filled with bloodied wipes. She sprinkled anti-inflammatory powder over his deeper wounds, wiped her hands, and headed into the bathroom.Yan Tuo lay still, listening to the sound of the shower spraying inside.

When Nie Jiuluo came out, she was wringing a large bath towel in her hands. She walked up to Yan Tuo, shook it open forcefully, and draped it over his head.

Yan Tuo shivered from the cold—the towel had just been soaked in icy water. It was freezing.

But cold was still better than heat. He could still remember the unbearable discomfort from earlier when he had been running frantically, his blood circulation accelerating.

He lay quietly, even slowing his breathing. Through the towel, the light blurred into a hazy yellow glow, and occasionally, he could make out Nie Jiuluo’s figure—she had changed into the hotel’s cloth slippers, and with the carpet on the floor, her footsteps were almost completely silent.

After a while, she sat down on the bed opposite the sofa and looked at her phone.

Yan Tuo heard her say, "You’re lucky. Tomorrow’s forecast is sunny. If it were snowing or raining, I wouldn’t even know where to get the ‘natural fire.’"

If it were someone important, she might have dropped everything and flown with them to a place with ample sunlight.

Natural fire?

Yan Tuo immediately recalled what she had said before.

—"Generally, within twenty-four hours of injury, you use ‘natural fire’—that is, fire obtained from the sun using a lens, or in ancient times, a yangsui mirror—to repeatedly cauterize the wound."

—"If a red line appears across the pupil, then that person can basically be given up on."

Twenty-four hours—that was still manageable. At most, only two hours had passed since his injury.

"That... thing, was it a Dixing Beast?"

Nie Jiuluo: "Yeah. Now you understand why I said Dixing Beasts are beasts, not people, right?"

"You... raise Dixing Beasts?"

Since he had already encountered one up close, there was no point in denying it. Nie Jiuluo corrected him: "Not ‘us.’ Don’t lump me in with them. It’s ‘them.’ At the end of ’91, Banya’s people started traveling to Qingrang. After that, they made the trip every three to five years. But only the ’91 trip yielded results—they brought back Mazha."

At this point, her thoughts drifted: That was true. Only the ’91 trip had been successful. Later, during the 2000 trip, her mother, Pei Ke, had been dragged away, and the Qingrang expeditions were temporarily halted. Jiang Baichuan had analyzed the lessons learned, which led to the current division of their manpower into the three ancient branches: "Blade, Dog, and Whip."

Yan Tuo hadn’t expected that thing to have a name—Mazha. It did resemble a locust. Even now, the memory of its face made him nauseous.

But his attention quickly focused on the timeline.

The end of 1991.

—Lin Xirou, also known as Aunt Lin, had first appeared before his father, Yan Huanshan, on September 16, 1992.

—The only thing gained from the Qingrang expedition was "Mazha."

—After interrogating Crippled Father, Xiong Hei had asked Aunt Lin, "Did the old man reveal anything about your son?"

Could a simple deduction be made from this: Mazha was Aunt Lin’s son? It had been "hunted" by Banya’s people at the end of ’91, and Aunt Lin had come out to search for her son. After some time, she had stumbled into Yan Huanshan’s coal mine tunnels?

No, no—that was absurd. Yan Tuo immediately squashed his own nonsensical theory in its infancy. Just from a physiological standpoint, the differences between Mazha and Aunt Lin were far too great.

He steadied himself. "That Mazha... can it talk?"

Talk?Nie Jiuluo thought for a moment: "No, it should be a doll voice box. To carry it around in a crowd, you'd need excellent disguise—wearing clothes, shoes, a mask, and when necessary, even making it produce sounds."

Yan Tuo wearily closed his eyes. No wonder he had felt at the time that its two cries of "Uncle" were completely unchanged in tone, as if pre-recorded.

The towel had already been warmed by his body heat and wasn't so cold anymore. Nie Jiuluo came over and lifted it: "My coat got stained with your blood. You owe me a new one."

Helping Yan Tuo had begun with an inexplicable on-the-spot "whim" she couldn't even explain herself. She didn't want Yan Tuo to think this meant any bond had formed between them—it was best to keep things clear-cut. She gave help, he provided compensation, each item accounted for separately to make settling the books easier.

Yan Tuo said, "Okay."

Nie Jiuluo took the towel to the bathroom to rewet and wring it out. When she came back to cover him again, her nose suddenly tickled, and she turned her head to sneeze.

She'd caught a chill, which was understandable: in freezing weather, with the window wide open and the air conditioning blasting cold air, it was bearable for a short while, but prolonged exposure let the cold seep into skin and bones.

Yan Tuo thought of this too: "Why don't you close the window and turn off the AC? I'm doing okay now."

Nie Jiuluo hummed in agreement: "I'll close them before sleeping. You feel okay now because the cooling is having a temporary effect, but after more time passes, even that won't help much. Before the fire treatment, you'll just have to endure."

So some crucial matters needed to be clarified while Yan Tuo was still lucid.

She abruptly changed the subject: "There's someone called Xiong Hei who kept calling you. Who is he?"

Yan Tuo hesitated: "He was with me today."

Nie Jiuluo: "The one who beat that person half to death?"

Yan Tuo's scalp prickled, afraid she might hold him responsible by association, but he couldn't deny it: "Yes."

Nie Jiuluo: "Why did he leave you behind there?"

Yan Tuo explained: "Actually, I left first. He thought I was in the way and dropped me off before starting anything, telling me to go ahead."

Nie Jiuluo didn't follow: "Then why didn't you leave?"

Yan Tuo had no choice but to be honest: "I'm always like this—agreeing on the surface, but secretly..."

He searched for a slightly more dignified term.

Nie Jiuluo: "Peeping, is it?"

More or less. Yan Tuo vaguely acknowledged it.

"Then why did he suddenly leave when he clearly had the upper hand, without harming the other person further?"

In theory, good deeds should be done anonymously, but this was a point-scoring opportunity. Mentioning it might smooth relations between them: "I called him and sent him away."

Nie Jiuluo: "Why did you send him away?"

Yan Tuo smiled bitterly. Lying to Nie Jiuluo must be difficult—she was the type to dig to the root of things, determined to get to the bottom of the matter.

"I always thought there was a child inside. I felt... since one was already badly hurt, the other couldn't fight back, and there was a child... just let it be."

Nie Jiuluo: "What excuse did you use to send him away?"

"I said I'd walked into an ambush and was in trouble on the east side."

The answer held up. When Xiong Hei had called, he'd indeed asked: Where are you? I've searched the whole damn east side already.

"Is that Xiong Hei also a ghost slave?""No, I once saw him get three fingers bitten off, but later, they all grew back, not a single one missing. Just like Gou Ya, he's a Dixingxiao. Or to be more precise, a variant of Dixingxiao."

Dixingxiao?

Nie Jiuluo fell silent for a long moment. While her facial expression remained controlled, her heart was pounding wildly in her chest. Her tone was calm, as if she didn’t care at all: "But there was a Dog Clan member in the car who told me they didn’t smell anything unusual."

"That musky odor?" Yan Tuo also recalled, "I once overheard them talking—they really don’t seem to have a smell."

No smell...

Nie Jiuluo’s throat felt dry. She licked her lips slightly, trying to confirm further: "Xiong Hei is like Gou Ya, but Gou Ya has a smell, while he doesn’t?"

Yan Tuo said, "Gou Ya seems to be an exception. I heard them mention once that if Gou Ya wasn’t 'omnivorous,' he shouldn’t have had a smell—but I didn’t quite understand."

What a damn exception. The more she thought about it, the more terrifying it became: one exception had caused so much trouble.

"How many people like Gou Ya or Xiong Hei are around you?"

Yan Tuo’s answer sent chills down her spine: "I don’t know. The earliest one was already in my family before I was born."

After these words, the room fell eerily silent, with only the sound of wind—from the window and the air conditioner’s vent.

After a while, Nie Jiuluo stood up: "I’m going to shower. You rest first."

She took her phone into the bathroom.

Inside the shower, Nie Jiuluo turned on the spray and let the hot water pour over her head for a good twenty seconds.

Yan Tuo’s words carried a high degree of credibility.

Gou Ya and Xiong Hei were far removed from the traditional understanding of Dixingxiao. Their appearance was indistinguishable from humans, so it made sense that their "Dixingxiao odor" had disappeared.

No wonder the three-person team that entered Nanba Houtou had lost contact so abruptly. The Dog Clan’s noses had become completely useless, unable to detect the approach of Dixingxiao.

No wonder Mazha had been hesitant and unwilling to attack Xiong Hei. It aligned with the nature of beasts: unless absolutely necessary, they wouldn’t kill their own kind. Smaller creatures also instinctively feared larger ones.

Gou Ya had been detected by smell because he was "omnivorous"—did that mean he had devoured the woman from Xingbazi Village? Then what was his "staple food"?

Even more terrifying was how long they had been here. "The earliest one was already in my family before I was born."

Yan Tuo’s father had built his fortune in that era, and those who rose to prominence back then often had shady dealings. If Dixingxiao had already infiltrated his family back then, after so many years of operation...

Compared to them, Banya and his group were nothing but a ragtag militia.

...

On the 8th, they were supposed to retrieve the Lame Man at Nanba Houtou.

Tomorrow was the 8th. Could they still go?

Nie Jiuluo abruptly turned off the shower, stepped out soaking wet, wrapped herself in a towel, and grabbed her phone.

She needed to warn Jiang Baichuan.

Opening the app, she saw a message from "Natou" already waiting.

—Nie Er, with the recent string of incidents, we’re postponing the meeting on the 8th out of caution. We’ll wait and see for a few days.

Nie Jiuluo’s fingers trembled slightly. Whether they met or not, the most crucial message had to be delivered.

After a brief moment of thought, she quickly typed.

—When I left today, I saw Yan Tuo being rescued by his companions.— Followed for a while, then lost track. But heard some things.

— The one who severely injured Lao Dao was a Di Xiao.

No need to spell it out too clearly—Jiang Baichuan would "thoroughly" figure it out.

The message was sent but showed as "unread." With all the chaos that night and Lao Dao being rushed to the hospital, they must be swamped.

At least the most important message had been delivered. Nie Jiuluo let out a long sigh of relief.

Before bed, Nie Jiuluo closed the window and turned off the AC—she was freezing.

But that wasn’t enough. She rummaged through her bag, found a roll of wide tape, located the edge, and tore it open with a sharp rip: she needed to tie Yan Tuo up in case he went berserk in the middle of the night.

Seeing the long strip of tape being pulled out, Yan Tuo guessed it was meant for him. He silently submitted. Before sealing his mouth, Nie Jiuluo asked, "Need some water?"

Yan Tuo shook his head.

No, he didn’t. He remembered the symptoms were called "taking root and sprouting." He didn’t want to provide moisture for those roots and sprouts. Besides, if he drank water, what if he had to get up at night?

Before turning off the light, he saw Nie Jiuluo leaning against the headboard, using the hotel’s in-room magazine as a writing pad. She wrote something on a pale golden strip of paper, folded it a few times, and shaped it into a star before tossing it toward the open suitcase nearby.

Almost at the same moment, the light went out. The star traced a faint, glowing arc in the air, like a shooting star.

Yan Tuo closed his eyes and made a wish.

He wished that tomorrow’s Tian Sheng Huo would go smoothly, and whatever roots or sprouts there were wouldn’t wreak havoc on him.

Nie Jiuluo was right—the cooling effect was temporary. Before the fire treatment, there was still suffering to endure.

After lying down, that sensation returned. It was as if there was a furnace deep inside his body, slowly heating his blood. At first, it was bearable—just uncomfortable. But then, the blood grew hotter and hotter, until he was drenched in sweat. When he closed his eyes, it wasn’t darkness he saw, but a scalding crimson, with bubbles of boiling air rising endlessly within it.

Yan Tuo tried his best to endure. He knew Nie Jiuluo didn’t particularly like him. Being saved by her was already lucky, and tomorrow he still depended on her for the Tian Sheng Huo—he didn’t want to disturb her sleep or provoke her temper.

As his body temperature continued to rise, hallucinations set in.

He saw scenes of brutal slaughter—it must have been a long, long time ago, because the people wore animal hides and leaves, their hair wild and unkempt. They tore at each other with teeth, smashed with stones, stabbed with spears—blood and flesh flying, guts spilling. The wounds felt as if they were inflicted on him. His body convulsed violently, but he forced himself to suppress it. With his mouth sealed, he couldn’t even gasp for air. His eyes were bloodshot, bulging almost to the point of bursting.

Then he saw the sun—a massive, blood-red sun, dripping like molten lava, covering almost half the sky before slowly rolling like a wheel into darkness. All around, there were desperate, agonized wails.

Then came pitch-blackness—the kind of black where the sun had died, where you couldn’t see your own hand in front of your face. Gradually, pairs of eyes emerged in the darkness—countless, densely packed, advancing toward him one after another. Yan Tuo scrambled backward in panic, drenched in cold sweat, fleeing blindly.

A sharp screech—he had knocked the coffee table out of place.

The sound startled him into a cold sweat and briefly snapped him back to reality. The coffee table was some distance from the sofa. If he had managed to move it, how much noise had he been making?

From the bedside came the sound of fumbling, then the bedside lamp flicked on. Nie Jiuluo yawned, got up, and shuffled to the bathroom in her slippers.

Probably just a midnight trip.As she passed by the sofa, she paused for a moment.

Yan Tuo kept his eyes shut, playing dead, motionless as if sound asleep—those noises you just heard were all in your head, just illusions. There was no movement at all; the coffee table had always been placed like that.

Nie Jiuluo went into the bathroom.

He heard the flush of the toilet, the running of the faucet, and then she came out again.

With his eyes closed, Yan Tuo almost convinced himself he was truly deep in slumber.

Suddenly, a cool weight draped over him—a large, freshly wrung-out bath towel had been dropped onto his body.

Before he could react, the lights went out again. Nie Jiuluo climbed into bed, the covers rustling as she pulled them up, the mattress creaking a few times before silence returned.

Yan Tuo didn’t move.

He thought lying like this was just fine—perfect, even.