Gu Ning looked down at Dumpling, its face full of doubt and plainly reading "am I allowed to say no."
A thread of displeasure rose in her.
What am I, some old demon who kills for the pleasure of it?
She glanced down at herself without thinking.
White robes like snow, black hair like a waterfall, an air that did not belong to the mortal world.
Back when she pulled gacha in her past life, not even the SSR card art had been as good-looking as this face.
And this cowardly, insufferable dog actually had the nerve to turn its nose up at her?
A flicker of wounded pride went through her.
That said, she folded both arms across her chest, and the two soft shapes there rose with the movement.
She tipped her head slightly and said, with a great deal of meaning.
"Heh. Suit yourself, then."
"A dog like you with a mouth running like a train off its rails is as common as the Pikachus by the roadside. I could pick up any one of them."
And with that she turned to leave.
And in the turn, Dumpling caught sight of a medallion hanging at her waist.
A single character was carved on it. Sword.
"That... isn't that the Mystic Light Sword Sect's Sword Immortal token!"
Dumpling's eyes went abruptly round, and it hurried to call Gu Ning back.
"You're a Sword Immortal?"
Hearing Dumpling's voice, Gu Ning stopped, turned side-on, took up the medallion, and said it as though it were nothing.
"I am the Sword Immortal's disciple. What of it?"
By rights only each generation's Sword Immortal ever received this token. It was a mark of standing.
But Gu Ning's gifts were extraordinary, and her attainment in the sword dao ran close on her master's heels.
That, and her master Qingxiao spent most of her years in seclusion.
So the sect had handed the thing into her keeping.
Gu Ning looked at the medallion with its gold thread on a red ground, and a certain elegant figure rose in her mind unbidden.
Master and disciple might have been cast from the same mold. Cold, sparing of words, and unapproachable.
When the two of them stood together they could freeze ice crystals out of the surrounding air.
"In the original book, Qingxiao apparently... whoa!"
Gu Ning had sunk into thought, recalling the plot concerning Qingxiao.
A ball of white hurled itself at her, and an instant later there was a fluffy ornament attached to her leg.
Dumpling's four short legs were locked around her calf in a death grip, its dog face buried in her hem.
"Boo hoo hoo, why didn't you say so, my ancestor. Do you know I nearly kicked over my own rice bowl?"
Dumpling wiped snot and tears alike all over her skirts.
Sword Immortal. As if it did not know what that title meant.
Eighteen years ago, when the sect was destroyed.
It had seen from a long way off a tall figure standing before the sect's grand formation, and that figure had lightly delivered a single stroke of the sword.
One stroke, and heaven and earth changed color, and the grand formation was split into pieces on the instant.
At the time it had been too frightened to squeeze out two drops. Call that a clean job.
"I'll do it! I'll be your pet, and you can use me as a broom for all I care!"
Dumpling's face was all eagerness, terrified of letting a chance at free food and lodging slip past.
Gu Ning was left blinking at this hundred-and-eighty degree turn.
But looking at the state of it, she frowned and tried to pull her leg free.
Only to find Dumpling was holding on for dear life, both paws hooked like grapples.
"S... sensible of you."
Gu Ning could only sigh. She had not expected the Sword Immortal's name to make it throw itself at her.
So saying, she produced a beast-taming contract to bind Dumpling to her.
Before Gu Ning could even work the technique, Dumpling's paw came down on the contract paper.
Splat—
As the paper lit up, the spirit patterns became two threads of light and sank into the space between each of their brows.
Gu Ning turned a thought over, and the link between the one person and one dog grew close. She could watch Dumpling's condition at any moment.
She had her first spirit pet.
Yu Ruo had watched the whole of it from one side, her crimson eyes shifting.
Ripples went through her.
This cold senior sister of hers seemed very different from before.
She had gone from Qi Refining to Foundation Establishment in under a year in the sect, and her fellow disciples looked up at her for it.
She had thought that gave her the right to hold herself high, that she had ground enough to look down on everyone.
But that was only what she thought before she met Gu Ning.
Gu Ning was two years older than her and already mid Golden Core, crushing everyone of her own generation.
And being the sect master's personally taught disciple, and the name of the next-generation Sword Immortal, pressed down until it was hard to breathe.
Only then did Yu Ruo discover that between her and a true daughter of heaven.
There was a gulf that could not be crossed.
She would not accept it, and resentment toward Gu Ning grew in her.
But when she happened to discover Gu Ning's Mystic Maiden Violet Yin Body, everything took on another meaning.
That cold face wearing a coat of pink, those phoenix eyes filmed with water, that voice no longer icy but pitched to a soft, tingling whimper.
And only she knew it, and it was shown to her alone...
Was Gu Ning not a gift prepared specifically for her?
As for the matter of sex?
Nonsense, and nothing more.
If the old Gu Ning had two faces, an ice block when the physique lay quiet and a hissing cat that enthralled anyone watching when it woke.
Then the present one still had the cold temper, but with a thread of defiance added to it, and a certain spoiled prickliness.
It made Yu Ruo's heart still less willing to wait.
Which also made her regret more bitterly that she had not succeeded last time.
It had put her senior sister on her guard.
Even having cured her poison this time, that guard had not weakened at all.
"It seems this calls for a longer view..."
Yu Ruo murmured.
Gu Ning had no idea what was going through the mind of the person behind her.
Had she known, she would have wanted nothing more than to flee to the ends of the earth on the spot.
"Congratulations to Senior Sister on gaining a spirit pet. Though..." Yu Ruo came over. "We should return to Cangwu Town and rejoin Senior Sister Su, and go on searching for the demonic sect's traces."
Gu Ning took her hand off Dumpling, and hearing Yu Ruo's words, realized that Yu Ruo did not know Tao Yao had already been subdued.
"That will not be necessary. The demonic sect disciple for this commission has already been escorted back to the sect by Su Qiuyin."
Gu Ning said it to Yu Ruo.
"Oh? Has she?"
Yu Ruo blinked at that, not having expected the commission to be finished already.
Watching Yu Ruo come off worse, Gu Ning felt rather pleased with herself.
Heh heh. I took your right-hand woman right off you.
Though it had been a rather winding road...
Remembering Yihe Court, Gu Ning's pretty face went faintly red, and to keep Yu Ruo from noticing anything.
She coughed lightly and said.
"If Junior Sister Yu has no other business, let us return to the sect."
Yu Ruo nodded, though she could not shake the sense that there was a secret here she had not been let in on.
"I shall look into it once we are back..."
Yu Ruo did not intend to let a single scrap of information about Gu Ning slip past her. It mattered a great deal to her.
Before long two streaks of sword-light tore up from the ground and shot away toward the horizon.
***
In under two hours, Gu Ning and the others were back at the sect.
They had barely landed when a disciple spotted the two of them.
Seeing clearly who had come.
The disciple's face lit up and he hurried over to greet them.
"So it's Senior Sister Gu. You're back at last."
Seeing the urgency in his face, Gu Ning grew curious.
"Has something happened?"
"Senior Sister will not have heard. The day before yesterday, after Junior Sister Su and the others escorted Tao Yao back to the sect, she said that you and Junior Sister Yu had entered a secret realm."
"An elder took people out there and found the realm sealed shut, and there was nothing to be done."
The disciple's whole face was relief.
"But it's good that you and Junior Sister are unharmed, otherwise the sect master would have..."
Gu Ning listened to the whole account and was about to speak when a clear, lovely voice sounded behind her.
"Disciple."
Gu Ning started, pressed her lips together, and looked at the tall figure behind her.
"?"