"Ning'er, your master examined this spirit pet for you." Qingxiao handed the spirit beast pouch back.
"It carries the bloodline of an ancient spirit beast. A spirit pet not easily come by. Past Foundation Establishment it will take human form of its own accord, and it can assist your cultivation."
Qingxiao smiled faintly, every word of it saying how precious Dumpling was.
"Yes, Master. Your disciple will raise it well and treasure it." Gu Ning hung the pouch at her waist. "Does Master have anything else to instruct?"
All Gu Ning wanted was to grease her heels and get out.
Qingxiao's face reddened, and she said.
"Ning'er, only remember to come back here tonight. That will do."
Her tone was earnest, as though nothing said before had mattered half so much as this.
Gu Ning pressed her lips together, nodded her agreement, and left as though fleeing.
Qingxiao watched her disciple's retreating back, and the instant it passed out of sight, the composure she had counterfeited could hold no longer and came apart.
"I actually said such a thing out loud..." Qingxiao's face felt scaldingly hot, her chest rising and falling hard. "I have most likely gone genuinely mad."
The cold and stately sect master of the Sword Sect was pacing her room in agitation like a girl in the grip of her first spring.
***
"Whew—"
Gu Ning had walked a good two li, and seeing nobody about, finally let out a long breath.
"Sleeping with Master at night, what kind of bizarre request is that!"
It struck her as absurd. Was the master in her memory not the woman who held everyone a thousand li off?
Man or woman, no exceptions.
Heaven and man went to war in Gu Ning.
Before long, though, Gu Ning had hypnotized herself.
"Maybe Master is just lonely?"
Sealed away too long, missing her disciple. Perfectly normal.
"Right! That has to be it."
Gu Ning talked herself round. It was only ordinary company for the night, after all. Nothing serious could come of it.
She patted her own chest to reassure herself.
Once her mood had settled, Gu Ning patted the spirit beast pouch at her waist and called Dumpling out.
A ball of cotton came rolling out.
Except that it was clutching a head of cabbage and taking huge bites out of it.
Gu Ning raised an eyebrow, displeased.
Here I was, scared out of my wits, and this dog is sitting pretty gnawing a cabbage?
Seeing that it had been let out, Dumpling abandoned the cabbage in its paws and looked up at Gu Ning.
"Master, is it mealtime? I've about finished digesting the spirit herbs, and this cabbage is genuinely beneath me."
As it spoke it kicked the half-gnawed cabbage away in distaste, and looked at Gu Ning with shining eyes.
"Don't you produce your own spiritual energy? You shouldn't need to eat at all," Gu Ning said, at a loss.
"All I can do is catch spiritual energy out of the air, enough to keep from starving to death. I nearly got drained dry in that secret realm." Dumpling said it while stroking its round little belly.
"Look how thin I've got."
Gu Ning saw straight through this dog and its running mouth.
She stopped paying it any mind and turned her thoughts elsewhere.
"I wonder how Qiuyin is. I should go and find her, and ask after Tao Yao while I'm at it."
That said, she took Dumpling by the scruff of the neck in one hand and stepped onto the Azure Frost Sword.
"Hey, hey, hey, I'll stop eating, all right? Put me down!"
Gripped by the scruff of fate, Dumpling thrashed about in midair.
Gu Ning paid it no attention, and one person and one dog rode the wind away, dwindling to a single point of cold light.
Before long they reached the peak where the Nourishing Origin Terrace stood, the domain of the alchemy inner disciples.
The Mystic Light Sword Sect had a number of factions within it. The Nourishing Origin Terrace for alchemy, the Hidden Edge Pavilion for forging, the Spirit Sword Hall for sword cultivators.
Of them the Spirit Sword Hall was by far the strongest.
Qingxiao had come out of the Spirit Sword Hall.
Gu Ning and Yu Ruo both cultivated within it as well.
Gu Ning, in white, came down at the mountain gate like an immortal, drawing stares and murmurs from the disciples passing by.
She had sent Su Qiuyin a voice transmission a moment ago and assumed the girl would come out to meet her.
"Something has probably held her up."
Thinking that, Gu Ning walked on toward the Nourishing Origin Hall.
Since Su Qiuyin was the personally taught disciple of the Terrace's head, she ought to be living with her.
Before long Gu Ning reached the Nourishing Origin Hall and went in.
And inside she saw one very small figure, hair in twin ponytails, crouched on the floor with its back to the door, picking something up.
"Where did this child come from?"
Gu Ning assumed it was some elder's child who had wandered over here to play.
So she walked over.
"I really am careless. I've dropped the pills on the floor again..."
The absorbed little girl did not notice Gu Ning coming up behind her, and mumbled away to herself.
Splat—
Gu Ning simply scooped her up.
"Eek!!!"
Su Yao could hardly have expected someone to lift her off the ground out of nowhere, and she shrieked.
The pills in her hands went back onto the floor.
Gu Ning had not expected quite so violent a reaction, and was rather surprised.
She looked at the face. About fifteen or so, an oval face, flushed pink and very cute.
Except for a touch of shadow under the eyes, which suggested she was not sleeping enough.
Gu Ning looked at that smooth cheek and could not stop herself poking it, thinking.
"Don't tell me the Nourishing Origin Terrace employs child labor?"
But from behind Gu Ning came a familiar voice.
"Senior Sister Gu? And... Master!!!!"
"?"
Gu Ning looked at the soft, squashy little loli in her arms, then looked up at Su Qiuyin standing in the doorway.
"Master?!"
Gu Ning's brain crashed.
This was Su Yao, head of the Nourishing Origin Terrace? The first alchemist in the sect?
How was she the size of a child!
And Su Yao plainly had not caught up with events either.
She was only aware of being seized by the scruff of the neck and then lifted up like a doll.
Su Yao's face went from pale pink to crimson, her mouth working a few times, and she looked at Gu Ning in bewilderment.
"S-Senior Sister Gu, why are you holding my master?"
Su Qiuyin looked at Gu Ning in confusion.
The corner of Gu Ning's eye twitched, and she then set Su Yao unhurriedly back where she had found her.
"Elder Su..."
She forced the three words out dryly, her voice thin with guilt.
Only then did Su Yao speak, drawing a deep breath in an attempt to arrange herself into an elder's dignity.
But with the flush still lingering on that doll's face, it looked more like a child playing at being a grown-up.
"So you're... Gu Ning?" Her voice was soft and gluey. "Qingxiao's icicle-faced disciple?"
"I am."
Gu Ning's cold face was having trouble holding. The original owner had seen Su Yao only a handful of times, and always at a distance and from behind, but nobody had told her the woman was a little loli!
"What exactly... did you just take me for?" Su Yao put both hands on her hips and glared up at her.
Seeing that things were going badly, Su Qiuyin hurried over on her two short legs.
First she circled Su Yao once in a fluster, and only after confirming that her master had not lost an arm or a leg did she hold out the herbs in her hands.
"Master, these are the herbs you wanted."
Su Qiuyin planted herself between the two of them, so that Su Yao's interrogation could go no further.
Su Yao looked at her own disciple's small face and snorted through her fine nose.
"Very well, very well. No blame where there was no knowing." Su Yao said it while staring at Gu Ning's face. "Though you really were cast from the same mold as Qingxiao, girl. The first time she met me she also assumed I was some family's lost child, hauled me up off the ground, and asked me where my home was."
Master and disciple indeed. They even make the same mistakes!
Gu Ning let out a breath.