Looking at how earnest Su Qiuyin's small face was, Gu Ning found herself at a loss for words, with no idea how to react.
"What does she mean by that? Am I supposed to say I like men?" Gu Ning wrestled with it, and at last her gaze settled.
"Cultivation is by its nature a defiance of heaven. Matters of the heart are naturally not as they are for mortals, and one need not be bound by outward form."
Gu Ning chose to deflect, saying something that amounted to saying nothing.
Su Qiuyin, however, heard a very different meaning in it.
Her eyes flickered, and she let out a small breath of relief. Then her little face went red and she turned and flew out on her sword.
Watching the girl's retreating back, Gu Ning finally let out a long sigh.
She turned and dropped straight onto the bed, her chest rising and falling, her spirit wrung out.
Then something occurred to her, and she summoned a bronze mirror.
The mirror showed the face of a girl of surpassing beauty, a fall of jet-black hair lying smooth against her white dress.
Her eyes moved like light on water, her nose was straight and fine, and every small motion carried an air of soft grace.
The only flaw was that the face was a bit of a blank slate, an iceberg that had not changed in ten thousand years.
"Such a cold-looking face. What a waste of a good body," Gu Ning sighed inwardly.
"Still, it's standard issue for an ice beauty. And this cauldron physique is the author indulging a nasty sense of humor."
Gu Ning frowned faintly and turned over on the bed, going back through the original plot.
In the original, once Yu Ruo had Gu Ning in hand, she stuck to her constantly, and got to know Su Qiuyin in the course of collecting the pills.
After that Yu Ruo dragged Gu Ning into accepting a commission to investigate a town.
The commission was supposed to be nothing more than traces of the demonic sect appearing in a small town, worth a look.
What nobody expected was that a demonic sect Saintess was leading the party, scouting out intelligence on the protagonist's own Mystic Light Sword Sect.
In the original, Gu Ning's group ran into the Saintess, and Gu Ning and the Saintess fought each other to mutual ruin, after which the Saintess was stabbed in the back by her own subordinates and left gravely wounded and unconscious.
Which handed Yu Ruo a ready-made opportunity to farm affection points off the Saintess.
That was how Yu Ruo brought another heroine to heel, while Gu Ning became one part of the play.
Gu Ning nodded to herself. A very textbook Mary Sue plot indeed.
By rights the story should start diverging from here on.
But what caught Gu Ning's attention was that Su Qiuyin had not followed the original plot at all, and had simply delivered the pills herself.
"So even if I follow the original plot, events still change."
Gu Ning mulled it over for a while and decided she could no longer put full faith in how the original story went.
What worried her most was that after that commission, Yu Ruo and Su Qiuyin had become a great deal closer.
Gu Ning caught the wrongness in that with a keen instinct.
"Looks like this commission is one I have to take. Even if I don't go, Yu Ruo will most likely go with someone else."
"Finish it early, remove the potential threat, and why not, even if the danger rating isn't low..."
Strike first. That was Gu Ning's plan for now.
If she let Yu Ruo collect the whole set and watch her cultivation climb and climb...
She would probably end up bending under the girl's power all over again, and that was the last thing she wanted to see.
She would honestly rather just walk away, but she had seen for herself what the Mystic Maiden Violet Yin Body could do, and it was insidious past all reckoning.
Leaving it alone would likely bring serious trouble.
She had dodged Yu Ruo's assault today, but the girl was not going to let it rest.
All she could do was keep dodging Yu Ruo while hunting for a cure.
And if it truly came to nothing, then... she would just have to do it with Yu Ruo! And beat the location of the art out of her.
Gu Ning drew a deep breath, then slapped her own cheeks, the sound crisp, to shake herself awake.
"What's come has come. Since it's like this, sleep first."
Gu Ning had made her peace with it. She could not run anyway, and thinking any harder was wasted effort. Better to enjoy this hard-won bit of calm.
Out of habit Gu Ning reached for the front of her robe to undress for bed, and her hand stopped in midair as she suddenly remembered that she was not a man's body anymore.
Looking at the swell heaving in front of her, her pretty face reddened and she let out a low whimper.
"It's not like I sleep with my eyes open. What's there to be afraid of?"
Gu Ning lied to herself and went to sleep.
***
At dawn, a tall, willowy, slender figure stood before the gates of the Commission Hall.
Plenty of disciples came and went through the doors, marks and cuts on their faces and bodies as though they had come through a hard fight.
Around this girl, though, a vacuum seemed to have formed, and disciples went around her.
The girl was Gu Ning. She had woken, followed her memories, and come to the Commission Hall to take a commission.
"Am I really that frightening?"
Gu Ning felt the eyes on all sides and frowned faintly, at last learning firsthand what it meant to keep the whole world at arm's length.
"So that's the sect master's personally taught disciple? Look at that presence. She has to be at least Golden Core."
"Have you heard? I've got inside word. Last night Junior Sister Yu was carried out of Fairy Gu's room on someone's back, and her clothes were all in disorder."
"Get lost, get lost, get lost. I told you to lay off the dirty prints. Careful, or Senior Sister will chop us up like tofu."
"Heh heh. You can't outrun me, want to bet?"
Not far off, a few disciples were whispering, and Gu Ning heard every word of it clearly and turned her eyes on them.
To those few disciples, that one look was like dropping into an ice cellar, and their lips went faintly purple.
The well-informed one came back to himself out of his fear, found that there was no longer anyone standing around him, swore under his breath, and fled in a rout as well.
Gu Ning shook her head helplessly, turned, and walked toward the Commission Hall.
She had barely taken a step when a commotion broke out behind her.
"Senior Sister Gu!"
A familiar voice, soft and sweet, and it made Gu Ning's back go tight.
She turned and saw Su Qiuyin trotting toward her through the crowd.
The twin ponytails bounced with every step, and she was clutching a small cloth bundle to her chest.
The girl ran up to her, breathing a little hard, her cheeks tinged pink.
"...Qiuyin?"
"Is Senior Sister going to the Commission Hall?" Su Qiuyin looked up, her eyes bright as glass. "Perfect, I'm here to take a commission too. Let's go together."
Gu Ning's eyelid twitched.
A bad feeling rose in her. The plot had most likely gone off course again.
But all she could do was feign composure and smile faintly.
"Naturally you may. Though Qiuyin, as an alchemist, you are no fighter. Most commissions would be beyond you, would they not?"
Gu Ning was still nursing the fantasy of shooing her away.
"That may be so, but how will I know unless I try?"
Su Qiuyin pressed her lips together, her small fists clenched, as though she had made some tremendous decision.
Seeing it was no use, Gu Ning turned helplessly and kept walking.
Su Qiuyin followed, half a step behind, like a well-behaved little tail.
"Good thing she didn't notice..."
The girl let out a small breath of relief and muttered under her breath.
After hearing Senior Sister's answer yesterday, she had been too excited to sleep all night and had earned herself a pair of dark circles.
Inside the Commission Hall stood a great vermilion chamber, and in the very center hung an enormous jade slip with commissions of every color scrolling across it.
Blue for daily commissions, gold for bounty commissions, red for urgent commissions.
Daily commissions were mostly gathering herbs, tending the medicine gardens, raising spirit beasts, work with no danger in it, and the pay was only a dozen or so spirit stones.
Gold and red carried the risk of injury and even death, and the pay went up to match.
Disciples clustered in twos and threes before the jade slip choosing, and some stood at the counter registering with their medallions.
Gu Ning's gaze swept across the jade slip and settled at once on that gold line in the middle.
"Traces of the demonic sect suspected in Cangwu Town. Disciples of Foundation Establishment and above required to investigate. No limit on numbers. Reward, three hundred spirit stones."
That was the one.
In the original plot, Yu Ruo took this commission and brought Gu Ning along.
Now that she had come early, she meant to take it out from under her.
"Senior Sister means to take that one?" Su Qiuyin followed her gaze and pressed her lips together.
"I was planning to take that one too..."
Su Qiuyin had not finished when a fair, slender hand reached in from the side.
Those fingertips landed neither too early nor too late, coming to rest squarely on the back of Gu Ning's hand as she reached for the medallion.
Warmth spread from the contact, and every hair on her body stood up.
"Senior Sister. What a coincidence."