After spending the entire day in the Gujin Pavilion, Qu Xiangxiang had only managed to organize about half of the vast collection. For once, she was quiet, not making a sound, wishing Mu Hanzhang would treat her like she was invisible. She stumbled out of the pavilion, exhausted, and found the sky already dark.
Lin Zheng was waiting at the door. When she caught sight of Mu Hanzhang still inside, casting the final dust-repelling spell, her face fell immediately. Pointing reluctantly at him, Lin Zheng whispered, “Is he coming with us too?”
Qu Xiangxiang’s eyes widened like copper bells. Please, don’t say something so terrifying!
“Of course not,” she whispered back, the two girls looking suspiciously conspiratorial. “Why would you think that?”
Lin Zheng pouted. “Haven’t you been glued to him all the time lately?”
“Glued?” Qu Xiangxiang was scandalized by her choice of words.
Lin Zheng glanced at the darkening sky. “Forget him. It’s getting late—let’s go.”
Qu Xiangxiang peeked back at Mu Hanzhang, torn. Would it be rude to leave without saying goodbye? But she cupped her face in her hands. Her courage had already been drained dry when he caught her reading *The Charming Widow* and forced her to spend the entire day with him.
Mu Hanzhang, however, clearly didn’t care. He shut the pavilion doors, reset the wards, and walked away without so much as a glance at her.
Cold as ever.
Qu Xiangxiang watched his back and let out a long sigh of relief. She had never felt so awkward in her life.
Lin Zheng’s eyes darted over her. “Why did he just ignore you and leave?”
Qu Xiangxiang looked at her strangely. “Isn’t that normal?”
In the original novel, unless someone deliberately provoked him, Mu Hanzhang never bothered with anyone—except Ruan Qingtao.
Lin Zheng, dazed, let Qu Xiangxiang drag her down the mountain. The fact that Qu Xiangxiang and Mu Hanzhang were even together was shocking enough. But to see her as the weaker side of the relationship—while that half-demon brat didn’t even look at her—was unbearable. How could this be? Accepting that her best friend was with Mu Hanzhang had already pushed Lin Zheng to her limits. Now she had to accept that in this twisted relationship, the useless half-demon was the dominant one. She felt suffocated. No. Absolutely not! She would never allow Qu Xiangxiang to be toyed with by that Mu brat.
Lin Zheng slammed the table in front of her, her expression righteous and furious.
“What’s wrong?” Qu Xiangxiang poked her head out from behind the menu, startled by Lin Zheng’s grimace. “Did I… order too much?”
Lin Zheng: “…” Pressing her aching temples, she muttered weakly, “No. Order more. Seeing you like this makes me feel sorry for you.”
Qu Xiangxiang frowned. “But I think I’ve gained a few pounds lately.”
Lin Zheng: “…” Hopeless.
The little inn at the foot of the mountain was small but lively. Every low table was packed. Qu Xiangxiang even spotted a few drunken goblins whose pointed ears refused to retract.
Steaming duck blood hotpot, fragrant twice-cooked pork, garlic pork slices drenched in spicy red oil, and emerald-green lettuce stir-fried in lard were carried out amid shouts, along with a basket of fresh chestnut cakes and two bowls of chilled snow fungus, red date, and lotus seed soup.
Qu Xiangxiang eagerly took a bite of the duck blood. The numbing spice burned her tongue red, making her gasp for air.
Lin Zheng, distracted by her thoughts, had little appetite. She scanned the room absentmindedly—until her eyes caught a familiar figure. She tapped the table lightly, lifting her chin toward the crowd. “Xiangxiang, doesn’t that person look familiar?”
Eyes watering from the spice, Qu Xiangxiang instinctively thought Lin Zheng meant Mu Hanzhang. She turned her head toward the noisy crowd, but no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find Mu Hanzhang’s figure.
“Which person?” Qu Xiangxiang asked. “Mu Hanzhang isn’t here, right?”
“…Can you stop thinking about him all the time!” Lin Zheng pointed into the crowd. “You don’t even recognize Sui Yu anymore? Look—that’s him!”
Sui Yu? Qu Xiangxiang bit her chopsticks, struggling to recall, until finally the memory surfaced.
A disciple of Burning Passion Valley—the unattainable “white moonlight” of the original Qu Xiangxiang.
In the novel, her feelings for Sui Yu were only mentioned in passing. She was cannon fodder, after all. But in the original’s memories, they were far deeper. Childhood friends, she had liked him since they were young. But it was obvious Sui Yu never liked her. At thirteen, when it came time to choose a master, he deliberately joined Burning Passion Valley and cultivated the Heartless Path just to escape her clinginess. His dislike for her was blatant. And, like every cliché Mary Sue melodrama, the man the villainess could never win over inevitably fell for the heroine. Even cultivating the Heartless Path couldn’t shield him from her charm.
Yet another doomed entanglement.
Qu Xiangxiang shook her head and kept eating. She wasn’t the original, and she had no intention of inviting more trouble. She already had enough.
“Strange… why would disciples of Burning Passion Valley come to Cangxuan Mountain’s territory?” Lin Zheng muttered.
“I heard from my brother that the barrier around Burning Passion Valley’s Demon-Locking Tower has weakened. They probably want to store captured demons in Cangxuan Mountain’s tower first, since we’re closest.”
That was also why Qu Xiangxiang had chosen Cangxuan Mountain in the first place. Burning Passion Valley was far wealthier—they didn’t need the Qu family’s money to renovate their dormitories.
Lin Zheng’s eyes lit up. “If Sui Yu came to Cangxuan Mountain, doesn’t that mean you still have a chance?”
Though Lin Zheng didn’t think much of Sui Yu, at least he was a pure cultivator, not tainted by half-demon blood. Compared to Mu Hanzhang, he was far better.
“Whad’you mean chance?” Qu Xiangxiang mumbled through her numb, spice-burned tongue, words slurred.
Lin Zheng pressed urgently, “Don’t you like Sui Yu anymore?”
Qu Xiangxiang drained half a pot of tea, finally soothing her tongue, and said, “Why should I like him?”
“But…” Lin Zheng frowned. “Didn’t you used to like him a lot?”
“That was before,” Qu Xiangxiang replied casually. “Didn’t you used to dislike him too?”
If she remembered correctly, Lin Zheng had always thought Sui Yu arrogant and condescending, especially toward Qu Xiangxiang, so she had never liked him either.
Lin Zheng choked, then quickly changed tactics. “At least we should go say hello?”
Qu Xiangxiang snorted, accidentally biting into a peppercorn and grimacing. “No. Did you forget what he said? ‘Even if I never marry, I would never like that useless Qu Xiangxiang.’ I’m not going to humiliate myself.”
“…Fine,” Lin Zheng said, thinking her friend was still hung up on the past. “Then we’ll ignore him.”
Just then, a loud commotion erupted in the center of the inn. Qu Xiangxiang and Lin Zheng turned to see a beautiful young woman, pale-faced, being dragged by a burly man with a beard. She cried out desperately, “No, please don’t! Don’t sell me to the *wazi* I beg you!”
“What’s a *wazi*?” Qu Xiangxiang asked, confused.
“You don’t know?” A skinny man at the next table craned his neck eagerly toward the scene. “It’s a brothel. With her delicate looks, she’d definitely be a top courtesan there.”
His words drew a chorus of lewd laughter from the crowd.
Qu Xiangxiang told herself not to meddle. This was just a book, wasn’t it?
But then she looked at Lin Zheng beside her, thought of Qu Weiran, and even Mu Hanzhang. They were all flesh and blood, not just names. She might be a useless “grass bag,” but since returning from Shiling Village, she has felt the faint spiritual current in her dantian growing stronger. She didn’t know why, but she had even managed to defeat Yun Qingqing unexpectedly.
She wasn’t confident, but as a modern woman, she couldn’t just sit by and watch a girl being dragged off to a brothel in front of her. Besides, that burly man might just be all bluster—weak inside.
She made up her mind. Standing tall, she raised Zhuoyue Whip and shouted at him: “You ugly brute—let that girl go!”