Yu Qingtang shook his head rapidly.
Miaoyin Xian was even more stunned. “It isn’t his?”
Yu Qingtang shook his head even faster. Before he could shake his own brain matter into an even slurry, Ye Chenyan grabbed his hand and said with absolute certainty, “It’s mine.”
Yu Qingtang’s head jammed to a stop.
For one instant, he forgot Long Aotian’s deterrent power and instinctively elbowed him. “What are you saying!”
“I’m not pregnant!” He widened his eyes and clarified to Miaoyin Xian, “I only said that just now to stall for time!”
For some reason, his ears burned. He pointed at Ye Chenyan. “What nonsense are you spouting!”
Ye Chenyan clutched his chest and even seemed a little wronged. “I thought since you said that, you must have had your reasons. I wanted to go along with what you said.”
Yu Qingtang: “...”
Suddenly, he felt a little guilty.
Miaoyin Xian could not help covering her lips with a laugh. “You two.”
Ye Chenyan leaned back against the tree trunk behind him and clutched his chest. “Sigh. That heretical cultivator was at least mid Golden Core, and his cultivation method was strange too. Even now, I still feel my blood and qi surging. It’s not very comfortable...”
He glanced toward Yu Qingtang. “And you hit me.”
Yu Qingtang: “...”
Slander. This was naked slander.
That heretical cultivator’s filthy black fog had not even broken Ye Chenyan’s skin. How could Yu Qingtang’s feather-light elbow count as an attack!
But since he was currently guilty, he cleared his throat, his gaze swaying left and right, and perfunctorily held out a hand. “Then... I’ll rub it for you?”
Ye Chenyan actually did not dodge. He simply waited for Yu Qingtang to touch him.
Just as Yu Qingtang’s hand was about to reach his lapel, Ye Chenyan lifted his brows slightly, his face full of expectation.
Then he watched Yu Qingtang perfunctorily pat the air in front of his chest. “All better, all better.”
Then he withdrew his hand.
Ye Chenyan: “...”
His expression held a bit of disappointment. “That’s it?”
Yu Qingtang’s eyes widened slightly. “What else did you want?”
“Ahem.” Miaoyin Xian’s face carried a subtle smile. “All right. Although this heretical cultivator has been acting alone these past few days, there’s no guarantee he doesn’t have accomplices. This place isn’t safe to linger in. Once everyone has recovered a little spiritual power, we’ll leave immediately.”
The female cultivators who had escaped just now were already seizing every moment to cultivate and recover their spiritual power. Yu Qingtang was about to imitate them and sit down cross-legged when Ye Chenyan handed him a bottle of pills.
“Spirit Recovery Pills.” He smiled. “I told you before. I prepared all the pills. I’ll take care of you.”
Yu Qingtang blinked and looked at the round pill in his palm.
Honestly, ever since transmigrating, he had never eaten a pill before.
Their Biehe Sect’s conditions really were not much. Cultivation depended on oneself. Breakthroughs also depended on oneself. As for that legendary life in the great sects where pills were eaten like candy, he had never experienced it.
A legendary pill. He wondered what it tasted like.
“Thank you.” Yu Qingtang obediently thanked him, then, with a bit of curiosity, put the Spirit Recovery Pill into his mouth.
In the next instant, his entire face wrinkled into a salted plum.
It was a very hard texture and taste to describe. If he absolutely had to say, it was like two pounds of lemon juice mixed with grass.
“Ahem.” Ye Chenyan could not help laughing once, then immediately restrained himself and pretended he had not laughed, holding it in until his cheeks turned red.
Yu Qingtang opened his mouth. An intense sourness shot straight to the top of his head. Physiological tears blurred his vision completely, and all he could manage was a single sigh: “So sour.”
As he spoke, two teardrops rolled down uncontrollably.
Ye Chenyan’s smile froze on his face. He seemed to panic. “You—you really cried?”
He awkwardly wiped his hands and used his sleeve to wipe Yu Qingtang’s tears. “My—my martial uncle’s Spirit Recovery Pills are just sour. He did it on purpose!”
“He even said that if they tasted good, we wouldn’t know to conserve spiritual power and would get careless too easily. Supposedly, the pills made by those grandmaster alchemists are all disgusting in their own ways too. Don’t—don’t cry...”
Miaoyin Xian’s gaze swept back and forth over the two of them, and she covered her lips with a soft laugh. “Little Sister Qingtang is still like a child. He even needs coaxing to take pills.”
She gently pulled Yu Qingtang’s hand over. “But he’s right. The supply pills provided by sects are all deliberately made unpleasant. Only those wandering alchemists outside the sects deliberately make theirs taste like candy in order to sell more pills.”
Ye Chenyan squeezed her hand away without a change in expression, bent down, and leaned in front of Yu Qingtang to coax him. “I’ll buy you candy-like ones in the next town, all right?”
Yu Qingtang turned his wooden face to one side. “...”
So embarrassing. He had actually been soured to tears by a single pill.
He cleared his throat and tried to clarify. “I didn’t cry. My tears just fell. It wasn’t that I wanted to cry! So it can’t count as crying. It was only tears falling.”
Ye Chenyan lifted his brows. He seemed to want to laugh, but still held it back. “Mm. Right.”
Yu Qingtang lightly elbowed him again.
Ye Chenyan looked at him in confusion. Their eyes met, big staring at big, his expression stupid enough to show he had not received the signal at all.
Yu Qingtang sighed in exasperation and leaned close to his ear, lowering his voice. “Give her one.”
He quietly extended a finger and pointed at Miaoyin Xian.
Ye Chenyan’s expression turned subtle. His gaze moved between Yu Qingtang and Miaoyin Xian, and his brows rose. “Why?”
Yu Qingtang widened his eyes in shock and tilted his head at him in disbelief.
He opened his mouth, but he could not exactly say, This is one of your future wives. He could only do his best to think up a reasonable excuse. “If her spiritual power recovers, she can help if we run into trouble.”
“That makes sense.” Ye Chenyan curled his lip and threw the entire bottle of Spirit Recovery Pills to him, pointing at the female cultivators behind him. “Then you go hand them all out.”
Yu Qingtang’s expression was complicated. “...”
He was actually unwilling!
Yu Qingtang turned and handed out the pills, wishing he could grab Ye Chenyan and shake the water out of his brain—kid, your wife is about to be gone, do you know that!
After he finished distributing the pills, he stared at the other female cultivators with a burning gaze. Seeing them swallow the pills one after another with perfect composure and without the slightest change in expression, he could not help closing his eyes.
Especially Miaoyin Xian. She ate it as if it were not a prank-level sour pill. Every movement made one feel that the pill was probably an elegant flavor, like snow lotus on an icy mountain.
Yu Qingtang spoke faintly. “Was I really the only one who looked like that after eating a pill?”
For a moment just now, he had even suspected Ye Chenyan of deliberately messing with him. Now it seemed he had probably misunderstood.
Ye Chenyan seemed to recall his expression from just now, and the corners of his mouth curved up involuntarily.
Yu Qingtang instantly looked over. “You’re laughing at me!”
Ye Chenyan denied it flatly. “I’m not!”
He cleared his throat and leaned closer. “But I can teach you. Next time you take a pill, swallow it directly. Don’t let it dissolve on the tip of your tongue.”
Yu Qingtang instinctively bit the tip of his tongue. Even now, his tongue was still sour, as if it had already been marinated through.
Ye Chenyan noticed his little movement, and his smile grew even brighter. He suggested, “Eat a few more. Once you’re practiced, you’ll be fine.”
Yu Qingtang was just about to shake his head when he suddenly sniffed. “What’s that smell?”
Ye Chenyan frowned as well, sensing something wrong. “Sulfur. And the temperature is rising too.”
Miaoyin Xian’s expression turned guarded. “Someone who cultivates a fire-attribute method is approaching. Fire-attribute spiritual energy is leaking outward. Either his constitution is special, or his cultivation method is. In Jinzhou territory...”
Her eyes flickered as if she had thought of a candidate. “Could it be him?”
Yu Qingtang froze and stole a glance at the fan pendant hanging from Ye Chenyan’s waist.
Wu Tianlong had followed that thing here!
But the timing was a little wrong. The interval was too short. Miaoyin Xian had only just swallowed the Spirit Recovery Pill, and Ye Chenyan had only just finished a fight...
In the plot, this Wu Tianlong appeared to be mid Golden Core on the surface, but he had long since hidden his strength and secretly broken through to full Golden Core, waiting to shock everyone at the Qingzhou Golden Core Competition. He counted as one of the stronger mini-bosses in the early stage.
It should be fine... right?
Yu Qingtang looked at Ye Chenyan worriedly.
Ye Chenyan seemed to sense it too. He lifted his silver battle spear and stood before the group, asking loudly, “Who goes there?”
There were a dozen or so cultivators in the group. They stood on a huge plantain-leaf fan, looking down at them from above. One of them held a geomantic compass.
Miaoyin Xian frowned slightly and instinctively stepped back. She quickly put on a veil, seeming not to want to be seen.
Yu Qingtang cooperated by taking a step forward and blocking her. His figure was taller than the average female cultivator’s, and although he could not cover her completely, he could still block most of her.
Miaoyin Xian froze, then thanked him quietly. “Thank you.”
However, the other party did not seem to have come looking for Miaoyin Xian.
Yu Qingtang sensed a gaze falling on him, sizing him up and down carefully. Then came a contemptuous laugh. “That’s her?”
“Yes.” A somewhat familiar voice came from the plantain-leaf fan, carrying a bit of delight. “It’s her! Big Brother, I want her!”
Yu Qingtang looked up in astonishment and only then realized that among that group of cultivators, Wu Tianjiao was also huddled there.
He could not be blamed for failing to recognize him at first glance. At the moment, this thing had black bruises around his eyes, and one side of his face was swollen high, far more miserable than when Ye Chenyan had let him go.
Yu Qingtang widened his eyes. “Are you people trying to scam us? We didn’t beat him up like that!”
“Of course I know that.” Wu Tianjiao scoffed, not ashamed in the slightest. “My big brother did!”
There was even a bit of pride in his voice. “But I already took the beating, heh-heh. Little beauty, you can’t run away now!”
Yu Qingtang stared blankly for a moment, his expression complicated. “...Don’t tell me you also fell in love with me at first sight?”
Wu Tianjiao’s face suddenly flushed bright red. “No-nonsense! What love at first sight? I’m only greedy for beauty and want to ruin you, that’s all!”
Yu Qingtang extended a finger and scratched his chin. “Who talks about themselves [N O V E L I G H T] like that?”
“Trash.” Wu Tianlong looked far more like a proper person than his younger brother. His muscles were quite powerful, and his expression was cold as he tried to drag the mood back on track. “You can’t even snatch a Golden Core female cultivator.”
“You. The Jinzhou Wu family has taken a liking to you. That is your honor. From today on, you are my brother’s maidservant.”
He arrogantly extended a finger and pointed down with a flare of firelight.
Yu Qingtang only vaguely saw that there seemed to be a character on his finger. In the next moment, a pressure like Mount Tai crashing down descended.
With a clang, the silver battle spear struck. Ye Chenyan’s full-strength blow knocked back the finger descending through the air, but the other man’s hand merely swayed slightly.
Miaoyin Xian shielded Yu Qingtang behind her, flipped her hand, and manifested a silver-white guqin. No longer caring whether her identity was exposed, she flew up. “Young Master, be careful. His cultivation is deep, and the people behind him have formed a Fire-Bathing Formation. He is now standing at the array eye and gathering everyone’s power. A Nascent Soul might be able to fight him.”
“We cannot clash head-on. I will support you from the flank.”
Yu Qingtang looked up with lingering fear and let out a breath of relief.
Although the enemy had come at the wrong time, and the reason they had come was also very wrong, at least these two were fighting side by side.
Next, as long as he handed over the zither...
Yu Qingtang had only just pulled out the Dragon-Crane Zither when, above him, the two sides exchanged a single move.
Then Miaoyin Xian flew backward, barely caught by the other female cultivators.
Yu Qingtang froze.
Why are you the one flying, Fairy!