The clamor of voices tangled together at her ear, unsettling to the mind.
Chu Qingxue raised a hand in a small signal, and the noise stopped at once.
Her wide sleeve stirred; her fingers picked up a handful of small spirit stones, and she passed them out one by one into each disciple's hands, the motion natural and smooth.
Lin Jin, still flat on the ground, stole a look upward and studied this peerless immortal lady in white. Something about the offhand way she handed out spirit stones gave him an odd flicker of familiarity — a little like the put-upon look his bro Chu Yang used to wear whenever Lin Jin borrowed his meal card.
He gave his head a private shake and put it down to having been knocked silly a moment ago.
How could a woman of such surpassing grace, like an immortal banished down from the heavens, have anything to do with that bro of his — the one who buried his head in his books and still hovered at the pass mark, begging for a curve?
"I will deal with today's matter."
Chu Qingxue's voice was cool to begin with, and now she softened it a shade further on purpose, something soothing about her expression. "You have all had a fright, junior sisters. Take the spirit stones and buy yourselves new robes, and get some calming pills and rest."
The disciples' anger turned to delight the moment the spirit stones were in their hands, their eyes curving into smiles.
One of the younger junior sisters, simple-hearted, threw herself forward affectionately and nestled against Chu Qingxue's shoulder, nuzzling lightly. "Senior Sister Qingxue is the best. With Senior Sister to lean on I'm not the least bit scared."
A warm body pressed up against her, and Chu Qingxue went rigid from head to foot. The instincts of the straight guy she had once been snapped to alert deep in her soul, and awkwardness and unease filled her.
It took some doing to talk the whole laughing crowd of junior sisters into leaving, and at last quiet returned to the Jade Pool.
Chu Qingxue gathered up her scattered thoughts and turned her gaze back to Lin Jin, who was slowly picking himself off the ground.
A clear shoe print was stamped on his cheek and the corner of his mouth was bruised and swollen. He looked utterly wretched, and the cheeky grin was still hanging on his face. "Immortal lady, your esteemed sect's welcome ceremony is a touch too enthusiastic. Where I come from we hold up a sign at most to greet a guest. You lot go straight to hands-on. It's really more than a man can take."
Then he looked up and met Chu Qingxue's cold, indifferent gaze, and the smile froze on his face.
Lin Jin slid smoothly onto both knees, dropped straight down, and knocked his forehead against the bluestone three times running until it was red.
"Spare me, immortal lady! I truly didn't mean to trespass here!"
He explained in a rush, his tone urgent. "One second ago I was in my room playing a game, then a sheet of golden light burst open in front of me, and when I opened my eyes I was soaking in warm water, and I looked up and saw all that pale white..."
Catching the color of Chu Qingxue's eyes turning colder, he changed tack at once, waving both hands in his own defense. "Slip of the tongue! It was mist, white mist everywhere, I didn't see a thing!
I swear it to heaven — no, I'll swear it on my roommate's final exam results. If there's half a false word in it, may he fail every subject he's taking this term!"
Something moved behind Chu Qingxue's eyes, and a certain helplessness welled up in her.
Swearing an oath on his roommate's academic career. That particular style of throwing a teammate under the bus belonged to Lin Jin and no one else.
No wonder she had always ended up scraping along the pass line in exams. And here I was thinking there was no way I could be that stupid.
Seeing that she stayed silent, Lin Jin's face went white by degrees. Certain that disaster was upon him, he hurried to lower himself further and curry favor. "Have mercy, immortal lady. I'm quick with my hands and feet — chopping wood, hauling water, serving tea, pouring drinks, there's nothing I can't do well.
Even if I don't know my way around here, I learn extremely fast. Spare my life and I'll work like an ox and a horse for you!"
Chu Qingxue looked down at him, fawning and wretched, and shock and joy and unease and worry churned inside her, a thousand feelings tangled together, very nearly bursting through the disguise she had held up for so long.
She quietly pinched her own palm, and the pain settled the confusion in her a little.
She absolutely could not let herself be exposed.
Lin Jin's origins were strange, and appearing out of thin air in the Jade Pool, which was reserved for female disciples, was suspicious enough on its own. If the sect elders discovered this visitor from another world, and if they put a soul-search technique to him under interrogation...
She herself had come here by body-snatching, a grave crime in the cultivation world. If both their secrets came out at once, the only ending was souls scattered to nothing. She could not drag her one old friend down with her.
"Where do you come from?" Chu Qingxue lowered her voice, deliberately burying every private feeling, her tone as flat as ever.
"Earth. Third star of the solar system." Lin Jin gestured with his whole body as he talked, his eyes full of curiosity. "It's a world that runs on technology, no cultivation, no spells. Say, immortal lady, is this the legendary cultivation world?"
Chu Qingxue did not answer.
It really was him. The close friend who had walked nine years beside her, skipped class with her, stayed up all night with her, shared three meals a day with her, and traded jibes with her whenever one of them landed in trouble. Three months apart and two worlds crossed, and the pair of them had met again in this absurd fashion.
Her lips trembled faintly, and she nearly blurted out that familiar name before forcing the words back down.
Doubts crowded in on her. Why had Lin Jin been carried here by that same uncanny golden light?
Had her own crossing over dragged him into it, or had he been chosen by the phenomenon in the same way?
She had crossed as a soul into the Saintess's body, while he had arrived in his own flesh. What was the reason for the difference?
But she knew perfectly well that Lin Jin was the only person in this strange cultivation world who knew where she had come from.
Only, right now, what he saw when he looked at her was nothing more than a lofty immortal lady of some immortal sect, a complete stranger.
"Get up." Chu Qingxue put away every trace of feeling behind her eyes and spoke mildly. "Come with me. I won't hurt you."
Lin Jin scrambled to his feet as though granted a pardon, clutching the can tight against his chest, and followed cautiously behind her.
He stole glances at the white-robed back moving ahead of him, so far above the dust of the world, and muttered under his breath, "This immortal lady's looks are the finest under heaven. Just a bit cold in temperament. Then again, that's how an immortal maiden ought to be. If she smiled a little more, she'd be lovelier still."
"Be quiet." Chu Qingxue did not turn her head, letting the two cold words fall behind her.
"Righto, immortal lady, not another word."
The muttering behind her stopped on command. Chu Qingxue walked on ahead, the evening wind stirring her silver hair, and the corner of her mouth curved up slightly beyond her control before she forced it back down.
Three months apart, and Lin Jin was still the same restless, happy-go-lucky creature, familiar enough to warm her chest.
But after the warmth came vexation and awkwardness without end.
The bro who had once stood shoulder to shoulder with her, joking around — and now she was in a woman's body, wearing the identity of the Sword Sect's Saintess, being addressed by him with every courtesy as "immortal lady." He was an arm's length away, and she could not even tell him who she was.
She had kept up the pretense alone for three months, and loneliness and fear had long since pressed the breath out of her.
Now Lin Jin had dropped in out of nowhere. It should have been a small comfort in her drifting through a foreign world, but what came with him was more risk and more entanglement.
The road ahead was already lethal at every step, and now there was a bro on it who needed sheltering and needed to be kept in the dark.
Chu Qingxue drew a deep breath, hid every soft feeling away at the bottom of her heart, and let that aloof air that held the world a thousand li off settle over her once more.
It seemed this hard road of playing the Sword Sect's Saintess would only get harder from here.