"This sensitive-physique thing, one touch and I'm done for..."
A film of mist settled over Gu Ning's pale blue eyes. Her breathing came fast, and her steps had gone unsteady.
Watching Yu Ruo press forward step by step, her body drawing steadily closer, Gu Ning's throat bobbed and her gaze slid away.
"Senior Sister, your face is so red." Yu Ruo stretched out a slender finger until it almost touched her cheek.
"Has the illness flared up? Let me take a look~"
Gu Ning's head was buzzing.
The wrongness inside her came like waves, one after another, scouring her reason away.
Something was off.
She had spent twenty years in her past life as a straight man who had never once properly held a girl's hand. How was it that on her first day here she was being backed into a corner by a woman?
But the most critical thing was this!
Gu Ning looked at Yu Ruo's face drawing nearer and nearer, and the "harmonious harem" scenes from the original book flashed through her mind. Shame and fury shot up her spine.
No.
Absolutely not.
If she let Yu Ruo push one inch further, she would probably never get back up again.
Today it was a single intrusion of spiritual energy and she had already been reduced to this state. If the girl actually succeeded...
Once that Mystic Maiden Violet Yin Body was fully activated, how many of her brain cells would still belong to her?
She would be left drooling and babbling, abu, abu.
At that thought, Gu Ning bit down hard on the tip of her tongue.
Her eyes cleared a little.
She had to find a way to break this.
She glanced aside. And she saw it.
By the window, on the sword rack, her Azure Frost Sword lay across its stand.
It was the original owner's sword, silver-white from end to end, the hilt carved with intricate cloud patterns.
No need to cut her. Just... bash her!
Gu Ning drew a deep breath, thought back to the movements in her memory, and set her spiritual energy moving.
Her fingers twitched.
The Azure Frost Sword hummed, the blade trembling faintly, and then it lifted off the rack and carved a silver arc through the air.
Yu Ruo sensed something wrong and whipped her head around.
Too late.
Gu Ning hardened her heart, sent out a thought, and the hilt slammed into the back of Yu Ruo's neck with everything behind it.
"Uegh..."
Yu Ruo let out a short, muffled grunt, and her body dropped straight down like a puppet with its strings cut, landing right on top of Gu Ning.
She slumped against Gu Ning's shoulder, warm, disordered breath spilling over her bared collarbone.
The room went quiet.
Only Gu Ning's panting was left.
"Whew... I almost ended it right here." Gu Ning laughed bitterly.
The girl in her arms was out cold and perfectly still, and that assault that had made her scalp crawl was finally over.
But the wicked heat inside her was still burning, stuck halfway with nowhere to go, and for some reason a thread of regret rose from the bottom of her heart.
"No, no, no... what am I even thinking!"
Gu Ning shook her head like a rattle drum, flung the unrealistic thought out of her mind, and cursed herself thoroughly. She had almost been the lamb walking into the tiger's mouth!
Steadying herself, she finally noticed that she was drenched in sweat, the white dress clinging to her body, her hair plastered messily to both cheeks.
The two of them were pressed tightly together.
If anyone burst into the room right now and saw this ravishing scene, they would run away with it.
No good. She had to put herself in order first.
She had just straightened up and propped Yu Ruo upright when a voice sounded outside the door.
"Senior Sister Gu?"
The voice was soft and light, with a touch of timidity.
"What? There's another expert?!"
But there was no time to stop her. The person outside seemed to sense that something was wrong in the room, and with a creak, the door swung open.
A cool night wind came in with the moonlight and struck Gu Ning's flushed, panicked face.
"I'm done for..." Gu Ning's heart went cold.
"S-Senior Sister?" Outside stood a girl with a small, dainty figure, her hair in twin ponytails, wearing a green dress.
Su Qiuyin stood in the doorway, one small hand still frozen in the act of pushing, the other cradling a medicine box carved from peachwood.
Her eyes were round as coins, her mouth slightly open.
Senior Sister Gu's cheeks were scarlet, her hair was in disarray, her dress was rumpled, and a flushed sort of allure hung about her that could not be named.
And the newly arrived junior sister, Yu Ruo, had collapsed against her as if fast asleep.
A faint scent of orchid grass filled the room.
But mixed into that fragrance seemed to be something else, something cloying and sweet, the kind of thing that made a face heat up.
Su Qiuyin's small face reddened bit by bit.
The flush spread from the roots of her ears all the way down her neck, and her fingers tightened around the medicine box without her meaning it, the knuckles going white.
Her gaze rested for a breath on Gu Ning's flustered face, and those originally clear, guileless eyes darkened.
A sour feeling, like an undercurrent churning up from the bottom of a pool, flashed through the depths of the girl's eyes.
Su Qiuyin. Alchemy prodigy, only eighteen and already able to refine Golden Core grade pills, and in the original novel also one of the harem, of the foolish and easily deceived variety.
Looking at the box in the girl's hands, Gu Ning recalled that because of her physique, the original owner had asked Su Qiuyin to refine spirit-calming pills.
But shouldn't she have been the one to go and collect them?
"Junior Sister Su, what brings you here so late?"
Gu Ning chose to play dumb, watch how the girl reacted, and then work out a countermeasure.
As she spoke, she smoothed the loose strands stuck to her face and straightened her disordered collar.
While she was at it, she glanced aside to confirm that Yu Ruo was still unconscious, and only then did she relax.
She was not sure what the relationship between those two was either. If Yu Ruo woke up and the pair of them ganged up on her, this scrawny frame of hers would never hold.
Su Qiuyin's lashes trembled.
She did not cry out. She only lowered her head, looked at the peachwood medicine box in her hands, and said quietly.
"The spirit-calming pills Senior Sister asked me to refine... I've finished them." She glanced at Yu Ruo on the floor, then ventured a question.
"And Senior Sister Yu is...?"
Here it came!
Gu Ning kept her face perfectly still while her mind spun eight hundred circles.
Say what? Say the girl tried to take liberties with her and got knocked out with a sword? No, far too outrageous, and Su Qiuyin might not be able to accept it.
"Junior Sister Yu came to my room tonight. The conversation was pleasant, so we had a few cups."
Gu Ning's tone was flat. "She cannot hold her wine and drank herself under."
Su Qiuyin said nothing.
Her gaze moved off Yu Ruo and settled on the floor.
Spotless. No wine jug, no cups either.
Then her nostrils flared lightly, catching the scents in the air like a small cat.
There was no smell of wine anywhere. All that was left was the orchid fragrance on Gu Ning, at its thickest.
And the smell of a lie...
Su Qiuyin's eyes darkened.
Her fingertips dug soundlessly into her palm, then let go.
"I see..." Her voice was very light, and nothing could be read in it.
Gu Ning felt a prickle of unease.
Had the heroine bought it or not?
She could not tell.
"Since Junior Sister Yu is drunk, have the patrolling disciples see her back."
Su Qiuyin set the box on the table and took a voice-transmission talisman out of her storage pouch.
Before long, a young woman who knew Yu Ruo came to collect her, and only the two of them were left in the room.
Gu Ning could not sit still.
The original owner and Su Qiuyin had been friends, connected only by the alchemy work.
If anything, it was afterward, when both were angling for Yu Ruo's favor, that the faintest edge of rivalry crept in and the friendship soured.
"Gu— Senior Sister." Su Qiuyin spoke up to break the awkward air. "Since the pills are refined, then the promise from before..."
"Promise? What promise?"
A string of question marks ran through Gu Ning's mind.
"Didn't you say you'd agree to one condition for me?" Su Qiuyin was growing anxious, thinking Gu Ning meant to renege, and her small face pressed forward without meaning to.
Then, realizing she had forgotten herself, she ducked her head with a small whimper and drew back.
"Or was Senior Sister only making sport of me, and means to go back on it..."
"No, no, no. What I promised I will of course carry out. Speak, Junior Sister."
Gu Ning agreed to everything. She had no wish to show a crack, much less to end up on a register of oath-breakers.
"It's... it's that I want you to help me find my birth parents."
Su Qiuyin rubbed the hem of her dress with a fingertip as she made her request.
Hearing this, Gu Ning went blank for a moment, her brow drawing together as she sank into thought.
Was Su Qiuyin's backstory the kind where the orphan of a bitter childhood is abandoned by her family, taken in by an immortal, and then awakens a talent that outstrips everyone?
If she picked up this side quest, wouldn't the affection points come rolling in and her survival odds go straight up?
No sooner said than done!
"If it is Junior Sister's request, then of course I will keep my promise. Rest easy."
Gu Ning smiled faintly and agreed.
A smile surfaced on Su Qiuyin's face and she thanked her hurriedly, turning to trot out of the room, only to stop at the door for no reason at all.
She bit her lip, turned back with a complicated expression, and asked a question out of nowhere.
"Senior Sister Gu... do you like girls?"
Gu Ning's face froze.
"Huh?"