Gulp, gulp.
“Splash!”
Fang Jueqian popped his head out of the water, his cheeks flushed red from the heat of the hot spring.
How could he?
Seduced his master’s wife! That was against the law!
Even if it wasn’t strictly illegal, it went against social morals and common decency!
Wait, could he have misinterpreted everything?
Qiu Haoqing’s words might have simply been an expression of his defense for the master’s wife, just phrased a little inappropriately.
That was normal enough; it was just like being a straight guy who acts a bit too much like a gay best friend. All straight guys had this quirk.
After finishing his mental pep talk, Fang Jueqian picked up the communication jade talisman once more, wracking his brain to send out a message:
【A Happy Square Pastry: Um, thanks for the advice. I will handle things on my own. By the way, how has the Dao Lord’s health been lately?】
This was killing two birds with one stone.
It subtly expressed his own attitude while mentioning the Lingxiao Dao Lord, hinting at the vast disparity in their status to dispel any possible romantic notions the other party might harbor.
Fang Jueqian thought he was being an absolute genius.
【Guileless as a Valley: What do you mean?】
What did he mean?
Wasn’t that question clear enough on its own?
Fang Jueqian was baffled.
【A Happy Square Pastry: I just meant I wanted to ask about the Dao Lord’s health.】
Fearing that Qiu Haoqing still didn’t understand, he deliberately added another line to emphasize his relationship with the Lingxiao Dao Lord:
【Ever since we met last time, I have kept the Dao Lord in my thoughts. Sometimes I even dream about him.】
This sounded a bit embarrassing, but in order to cut off any unwanted red threads of fate, an occasional loss of shame was necessary.
Fang Jueqian consoled himself with a blushing face.
One minute passed, two minutes passed.
Nearly half an hour went by, and the other person still hadn’t replied.
Fang Jueqian felt like he was about to melt in the hot spring. All his previous nervousness, excitement, and anxiety eventually dissolved into a series of drowsy yawns.
He put on his clothes, intending to go back to sleep, when the communication jade talisman finally flashed on the way.
【Guileless as a Valley: Oh.】
And then, silence stretched on with no follow-up.
Fang Jueqian: “…???”
Although Qiu Haoqing seemed to have suffered a blow and dropped offline, it didn’t have much impact on Fang Jueqian, at least far less impact than having to go to class every day.
The next day, when Fang Jueqian walked into Class Wu for lessons, he distinctly felt that his classmates’ attitudes toward him had changed.
If their friendliness towards him previously was mostly due to him being Qiu Haoqing’s distant relative, then after yesterday’s duel with He Chongtian, everyone was much more enthusiastic about him personally. Someone even invited him to go out and play during the break.
Fang Jueqian agreed; he happened to want to go out and explore some good food outside the Guiyuan Immortal Sect.
Just as his deskmate was discussing holiday travel plans with him, the noise outside the door suddenly quieted down.
Fang Jueqian looked outside and saw He Chongtian, his face immediately drooping.
Qiu Haoqing’s prediction had been spot-on, if anything, it was a bit too precise. Not even a full day had passed, and Senior Brother He, deeply feeling he had been humiliated, was already impatient to challenge him again.
Looking at Senior Brother He, who arrogantly tossed down the challenge letter with the expression of doing you a favor, Fang Jueqian felt deeply melancholy.
Recalling what Qiu Haoqing said last night, he felt like he was staring into a bottomless pit.
Yet he didn’t want to follow the method Qiu Haoqing suggested. Doing that would be far too high-profile and didn’t align with his personal philosophy of life.
So, after He Chongtian finished delivering his harsh words, Fang Jueqian mustered up his courage, picked up the challenge letter, stuffed it back into He Chongtian’s hands, and told him before he could fly into a rage:
“I admit defeat.”
He Chongtian was stunned once more, then flew into a towering rage: “Look down on me?”
Fang Jueqian tried hard to explain: “No, I just feel like I can’t beat you.” At least not without using magical items.
He Chongtian’s expression improved slightly. As if recalling something else, he let out a cold snort:
“I won’t bully you by relying on a higher cultivation level. This time, I will suppress my cultivation to the exact same level as yours.”
“Even so, I still won’t win.”
Fang Jueqian opened his eyes wide, wanting to let him see the sincerity in his gaze:
“Senior Brother He, you are too amazing. Everyone recognizes you as a genius with a Heavenly Spiritual Root. You reached Foundation Establishment at such a young age, and your future is destined to be bright. Meanwhile, I only have a Quad-Spiritual Root, and at my age, I have just barely entered the Dao. There is simply no way I can compare to you; I can only ever hope to win by pulling petty tricks. But deep down, I know I am inferior to you, so to avoid making a fool of myself in front of others, I can only admit defeat. As for the matter with the cranes, I have already deeply reflected on it. Please, Senior Brother He, considering that I just arrived and didn’t know about the history between your He family and the Crane Abyss, please do not hold it against me.”
The sincerity offensive seemed to work.
Senior Brother He froze, staying silent for a long while.
Fang Jueqian’s eyes were starting to ache from staring so wide. Just as he wondered if he needed to push a little harder, he saw He Chongtian’s face flush red as if scalded by hot water, his gaze darting around shiftily. After stammering “You” for a long time, he grabbed the challenge letter and stomped back the way he came. After walking a few steps, he turned his head and angrily flung out a single word, calling him a coward, before storming off completely.
This should mean it is resolved, right?
Fang Jueqian thought, feeling somewhat uncertain.
Anyway, for the next few days, Senior Brother He never appeared before him again. Perhaps because he had rarely seen someone who cared so little about saving face, he was too ashamed to associate with him.
That didn’t matter; Fang Jueqian soon welcomed a brand-new challenge.
Having successfully entered the Dao, he finally became the absolute bottom-ranked student among the forty-some students in Class Wu.
The head teacher had heard of his exploits and held him in high regard. In her words, although his foundation and natural talent were average, his state of mind was well-rounded, and if he encountered a stroke of good fortune in the future, he might even surpass others from behind. Because of this, she repeatedly exhorted him to work hard.
Fang Jueqian also wanted to make some progress. After all, the pressure of being dead last in the entire class was still pretty high; in his past life, he had always been an average student and had never received this much focused attention.
Thus, he cultivated very diligently, even using his evening bath time for studying. But while meditation could be supplemented with time, cultivation techniques were just like math problems: if you didn’t understand them, you simply didn’t understand them.
One night, after venting his frustration by posting three consecutive complaints about cultivation on the jade talisman’s space-like feed, Qiu Haoqing, who had been out of contact for a while, took the initiative to reach out to him and resolved a puzzle that had plagued Fang Jueqian for hours with just a single sentence.
Fang Jueqian was shocked, instantly feeling a surge of deep admiration for this academic deity.
【A Happy Square Pastry: Big shot, you are amazing!】
【Guileless as a Valley: Heh.】
【Guileless as a Valley: So many days have passed, why are you still at the first layer of Qi Condensation?】
What did he mean by so many days and still?
He had been working very hard all these days, alright? You could not look down on his efforts just because he kept pacing in place.
It took a lot of courage to keep pacing forward even when you knew you were stuck in one spot.
Fang Jueqian grumbled angrily in his heart, but didn’t dare to send out a single word of it.
【A Happy Square Pastry: Cultivation techniques are so hard. I just don’t get them at all.】
Qiu Haoqing stopped talking. Probably thinking he was an idiot.
Fang Jueqian thought despondently.
Before transmigrating, he never would have imagined that one day he wouldn’t even be able to understand a textbook.
But the textbooks in this world were truly profound, resembling complex and obscure classical Chinese reading comprehension, except many times harder, and completely without standard answers.
Even though Fang Jueqian had crammed a portion of linguistic knowledge through private tutoring and borrowed his deskmate’s notes to study painstakingly, he still found himself completely at a loss during cultivation.
This wasn’t a matter of not understanding why one plus one equals two; it was a problem of not even knowing what one was, what two was, what a plus sign was, or why the mechanics worked the way they did.
The communication jade talisman lit up again.
【Guileless as a Valley: Half an hour.】
Fang Jueqian: “?”
【Guileless as a Valley: Tonight only.】
Fang Jueqian froze, but the next second, it felt as though someone had given him a gentle knock on the head:
【A Happy Square Pastry: Do you mean I can ask you questions?】
【Guileless as a Valley: Mm.】
【Guileless as a Valley: Thirty breaths have already passed. How much longer do you want to waste?】
Here was a genuinely good person!
Filled with immense gratitude, Fang Jueqian wanted to avoid wasting any more time. He immediately took a photo of the cultivation manual sitting on his desk, sent it over, and asked him with nervous trepidation:
【A Happy Square Pastry: Can we start from the very first sentence? I am afraid I might misinterpret it.】
【Guileless as a Valley: …】
Fortunately, the big shot didn’t fly into a rage.
Fang Jueqian’s cultivation manual was marked up in complete chaos, with every nook and cranny crammed with textual notes and phonetic guides he had copied from various sources.
Since his pen was made of carved charcoal, a careless smudge would leave grey streaks everywhere, making it look thoroughly unappealing.
However, this also disguisedly provided the big shot with a neat list of his pain points and questions, which was still much better than a blank page.
Qiu Haoqing began his explanation, literally going sentence by sentence.
Moreover, what surprised Fang Jueqian the most was that he could completely understand the explanations.
Ever since transmigrating, the biggest obstacle plaguing Fang Jueqian’s cultivation was that he couldn’t understand the books or follow the lectures.
He wasn’t a native resident; he didn’t have decades of cultural accumulation. Issues that the students in Class Wu grasped instantly were completely incomprehensible to him. In class, he was often in a state of half-understanding and constantly dozing off.
And because his educational background led to a different way of thinking, even when he asked his classmates, he often ended up talking past each other in mutual confusion.
Yet Qiu Haoqing’s explanations had none of these problems. He could grasp Fang Jueqian’s overly novel train of thought, one that belonged to someone from another world. With just a few concise sentences, he could cut straight to the core of the matter, giving Fang Jueqian a sudden sense of clouds parting to reveal the bright sun.
This introductory manual on Qi Condensation was barely over eight thousand words, yet their session of teaching and learning took a full two or three hours.
When the very last doubt was finally answered, Fang Jueqian put down the communication jade talisman and read through the text from the beginning once more, pleasantly surprised to find that words which previously felt like heavenly scripture could now be read smoothly and without obstruction.
Incredible!
Fang Jueqian’s reverence for Qiu Haoqing was as endless and rolling as the great river.
He poured out his gratitude to the big shot:
【A Happy Square Pastry: Senior Brother Qiu, thank you so much! You have been a huge help this time.】
But after sending this enthusiastic message, there was no reply for a long time.
Just as Fang Jueqian wondered if Qiu Haoqing had gone off to rest, the other party finally responded.
【Guileless as a Valley: Senior Brother Qiu?】
Fang Jueqian came to his senses. Ah, it was about the form of address.
【A Happy Square Pastry: Did I use the wrong title? I am not very familiar with these things. What do you think would be a better way to address you?】
Qiu Haoqing vanished again.
After a long pause.
【Guileless as a Valley: Dumb as a pig.】
Fang Jueqian: “…???”