Oh. My. Fate?! (BL, Volume 3, Part 1)

537 A Dark Place

While Qiu Ling was still trying to figure out how to get out of his inner self, somebody else was trying to get in. Both of them were in a bit of a pinch regarding this matter.

Jing Yi completely lost his orientation as soon as Leng Jin Yu used his spiritual energy to guide his consciousness to enter Qiu Ling's inner self. One moment, he was still lying on that bed and the next moment, the whole room seemed to be spinning around him, and suddenly he found himself in complete darkness.

He opened his eyes as wide as he could, trying to see something but there was nothing there. Panicking for a moment, Jing Yi had to take a few deep breaths to calm down. "Stay calm. This is probably completely normal when you enter somebody's inner self. There's nothing strange about that. Who knows? Maybe it's actually night here."

He tried to convince himself that this definitely had to be the reason and just didn't try to orient himself with just his sight anymore. Instead, he did the same thing he had done back in the forest when he had gotten lost and tried to listen for any indications of what was happening around him.

To his horror, he had to find out that he couldn't hear anything either. It was as if he had actually reached still not reached the place but was instead just nowhere at all with nothing around him. That kind of discovery really didn't help his nerves.

Pressing his eyes shut, he reached out to the front, trying to see if there was anything he could touch to get a feeling for where he was. This had to be something after all, right? Unfortunately, he was once again met with emptiness. Silently cursing to himself, he turned in a circle, trying to figure out if there was anything else.

Having completed one circle around himself, Jing Yi gave up with a sigh. He had somehow landed in a spot where there was nothing around. Shaking his head, he carefully made a small step forward in the direction he was facing in and then hesitated, opening his eyes wide again to try and see if anything had happened.

When he realized that things around him were still exactly the same, he took another step, widening his eyes as far as possible in the hope that he would still get a glimpse of something out there.

Nothing changed for quite some time while Jing Yi made his way forward like that. But, at the very least, he noticed that the ground below his feet seemed quite normal. It was a bit like what he was used to from when they had been traveling outside and walking on the mountain path: It was ragged with small stones lying everywhere, scrunching below his feet when he took a step. As for why it was so silent ... He wasn't quite sure right now but he would certainly be able to figure it out sometime soon.

Jing Yi wasn't wrong about that. It took him quite some time but, finally, there was a bit of light in the distance. Jing Yi almost felt like he imagined it but since he was already on the way, he just continued to walk toward that spot. The closer he got, the more he realized that he wasn't actually looking toward a light. Instead, it should be said that he was walking toward a place where the darkness wasn't as all-encompassing as it had been at the place where he started at.

He felt a little puzzled by that. Just what was going on here? He had thought that this place was supposed to be shaped by the things that were important to Qiu Ling. So why was there nothing here? Was this normal? Or could it be that this had something to do with Qiu Ling as well?

He furrowed his brows at that last thought. No, he just couldn't imagine that. Qiu Ling was that kind of happy and lighthearted person that seemed to be the total opposite of this darkness.

Sure, he had also had his moments where he showed him a different face but that was really rare. And normally, it was prompted by something that had really thrown him for a loop like back when he had rejected his marriage proposal and told him that they really weren't meant for each other. That was the only time he had really broken down. Well, there might also have been a few times when they traveled together where he had also seemed a little lost.

But this ... This was on a completely different level. He really didn't want to think that this had anything to do with Qiu Ling's memories or feelings. No, he just refused to believe it.

Even though Jing Yi thought so, it couldn't be denied that everything that was found in somebody's inner self was indeed tied to that person. The darkness Jing Yi had landed himself in ... It was inevitably part of Qiu Ling's life experience. There was no use denying that.

Qiu Ling probably would have been happy if he knew that Jing Yi was unable to figure it out and that to Jing Yi, this was just some mystery about the ways of the cultivation world and nothing he would spend more time trying to figure out. It wasn't that strange. After all, to Jing Yi right now, it was much more important that he managed to find a way to find Qiu Ling. And that meant, first of all, getting out of this darkness. After he managed to do that, he could think about everything else.

Thus, Jing Yi just marched on, slowly getting closer and closer to that place in the distance where things didn't seem to be as dark. In the end, when he made it outside, the place actually seemed much brighter than it really was because of the long time he had been exposed to the darkness.

Thus, Jing Yi thought that there was an idyllic scene in front of him with a green little valley with a hut in the middle. It really did seem picturesque. Seeing that and knowing that he must've been right about what he thought before a that's that darkness definitely couldn't be an actual part of Qiu Ling's inner self, Jing Yi smiled to himself.

As expected, even Qiu Ling's inner self was this kind of beautiful place. He hadn't expected anything else from his fiance.