Chu Qingxue had already turned to leave, and at these words her step stopped short.
A superb idea barged into her mind out of nowhere.
Put Lin Jin into the outer sect to cultivate. Assign him the best instructor to be had, set him to studying the basic sword art, and all he needed was to master the First Form of the entry ceremonial demonstration. Then, under the pretext of testing him, he could teach the whole of it back to her, and Lin Jin would never spot a thing wrong with her.
There were only a few short days until the recruitment lecture. She needed to learn this one basic sword form and nothing more, and she could scrape through and defuse the crisis of life and death in front of her.
She turned back at once and called out in a low voice, "Lin Jin."
Lin Jin straightened instantly, his answer ringing out firm and strong, his stance more correct than it had ever been in military training. "This disciple is here!"
Chu Qingxue watched him calmly, every word clear and steady. "I will arrange an instructor for you and supply you with basic cultivation resources. But you must agree to one thing."
Lin Jin bowed his head quietly, waiting to hear what Senior Sister would ask of him.
"Within five days you must master the First Form of the sword art's basic ceremonial demonstration. If you cannot, I will expel you from the Ethereal Sword Sect outright."
She paused, weighing her words. "You come from another world. I find I would like to see what sort of showing a person from another world can make on the cultivation road. Prove to me what you are capable of."
"Once you have learned it, you will recite the entire method, the formulas, and the technique of every form back to me without a word out of place. If half a sentence is missing, or if there is anything I cannot follow, you go down the mountain all the same."
Lin Jin lowered his eyes and was silent a moment, then looked up wearing that familiar, faintly punchable grin, with an unmistakable seriousness behind his eyes. "I understand, Senior Sister. This is an opportunity, and it is a test."
He hugged the cola tighter and held his back straight.
He was thinking: I'm a transmigrator from another world to begin with. Whoever heard of a transmigrator with no talent?
Then he held out his hand. "Senior Sister, it's a deal."
Chu Qingxue glanced down at the open palm and did not take it. Her white hem cut an arc of light as she turned. "Noon tomorrow. Do not be late."
Lin Jin's answer came from behind her at once, loud and full-throated. "Rest easy, Senior Sister! If I'm late, I'm a dog!"
"Pfft."
Chu Qingxue turned her head slowly.
Lin Jin hastily pulled back his outstretched hand and snapped to a proper stand, the cut at the corner of his mouth crusted dark red, his forehead smeared with dirt, dressed in modern short sleeves and shorts, wretched and ridiculous at once.
The aloof mask she had held taut for three months split open along a hairline crack. The smile she had not managed to control still lingered at the corner of her mouth, and it stayed only an instant before she swept it away.
She drew a white jade medicine bottle from her sleeve and tossed it lightly to him. "Wipe the bruises and the blood off your face. Turning up to meet your instructor looking like that tomorrow would be a disgrace."
Lin Jin caught the bottle without thinking, and the moment his fingers touched the jade his heart lurched hard and the beat of it thundered through his chest.
He had been a hardcore 2D man. Three-dimensional women had never once caught his eye. Four years of university holed up on his bunk with anime, and he could not work up the slightest interest in a real one.
But that faint smile a moment ago, gone as soon as it came, so simple and yet worth more than everything else in the world, had set his mind shaking and then wiped it blank, his throat stopped up so that he could not get half a word out.
Chu Qingxue saw him standing there dazed for so long and frowned faintly, asking softly, "What is the matter with you?"
Lin Jin snapped back to himself and stammered, "N-nothing!"
He shoved the jade bottle into his robes and straightened up to thank her. "Thank you for the medicine, Senior Sister!"
"Spare me the excess courtesies."
Chu Qingxue dropped the line flatly and walked on, the plain white robes receding along the mountain path until she rounded the rock face and vanished entirely into the mist.
Lin Jin stayed where he was, not shifting half a step for a long while.
He murmured "So beautiful" under his breath and raised a hand to cover his burning cheek.
The jade bottle against his chest kept sending up its coolness, and inside he was still scorching.
Elsewhere, Chu Qingxue climbed the stone steps alone.
She raised a hand and touched the stiff corner of her own mouth, thinking of that moment when the smile had gotten away from her.
She drew a deep breath.
Three whole months wearing the false skin of the Sword Sect's Saintess, living every day in fear of her body-snatching being exposed and her soul scattered, every day walking thin ice. The Ethereal Sword Sect was nothing to her but an airtight prison.
Yet today, most of the weight pressing on her had lifted.
The road ahead was still danger at every turn, and the trial of the lecture seven days away hung over her head, and yet in this moment a strange thought rose in her for the first time.
This sect that had kept her prisoner for three months did not seem quite so unbearable after all.
Of the Ethereal Sword Sect's twelve peaks, Purple Sun Peak ranked third.
Not because the Master of Purple Sun Peak had a high cultivation.
It was because everyone knew perfectly well that the Master of Purple Sun Peak, Yue Qingshuang, was the hardest person in the sect to shake off.
The evening wind lifted a few strands of Chu Qingxue's silver hair, and she reached up and tucked them gently behind her ear.
Walking the bluestone road back to her cave dwelling, her steps were far lighter than when she had left the Jade Pool.
But the anxiety in her had not gone anywhere.
Lin Jin had appeared out of thin air from the Jade Pool's spirit spring.
That was forbidden ground, kept for the quiet rest of female cultivators.
The rumors passing privately among the junior sisters alone would be enough to bring the elders round to question her in turns.
Worse still was the lecture at the recruitment ceremony seven days from now.
She could not even recite the entry sword art's formulas from memory.
The only way out for the moment was to wait for Lin Jin to master the First Form of the basic ceremonial demonstration, then either have him demonstrate it on the platform as a newly recruited outer sect disciple, or have him teach it to her as well.
She turned over ways to place Lin Jin the whole way along the road, and every line of thought had a flaw hidden somewhere in it.
She passed through a stand of emerald bamboo nourished by spiritual energy the year round.
The bamboo leaves gave off a clear jade-green glow.
At the end of the grove stood the Saintess's cave dwelling, where she lived alone.
Purple Sun Peak sat upon an entire top-tier water spirit vein.
Night had already settled over the peak, and the purple-veined spirit grass growing along the rock faces gave off a layer of violet luminescence.
It should have been a still and peaceful night.
But Chu Qingxue had only just raised a hand to push open the wooden door.
A figure wrapped in the heavy scent of violets came rushing straight at her.
Warm arms locked around her waist in an instant.
"Qing—xue—"
The soft, syrupy drawl wound around her ear.
Chu Qingxue's spine went taut at once.
Her mind identified the arrival instantly: purple robes, hair in great waves, half a head taller than her, and that floral scent that never once faded.
This was the Master of Purple Sun Peak, Yue Qingshuang.
Danger level: maximum.
Had it been her old self from before the crossing, having a stunning, full-figured Nascent Soul beauty of the domineering-big-sister type press up against her unprompted would have given her and Lin Jin something to be excited about for a good long while.
But now she wore the Saintess's skin, and she lived every waking moment in the fear of her body-snatching being exposed.
The moment Yue Qingshuang came near, a chill would rise through all of her.
Yue Qingshuang's warm palm slid slowly along her side.
Breath washed over the tip of her ear.
"The mountain wind is cold at night and you're chilled all through. Let me hold you a while and warm you up."
Before the words were finished, that hand was working its way toward a gap in the fabric.
"Suppress."
Chu Qingxue's tone was flat.
She drew the black iron token the Sect Master had bestowed on her out of her cuff.
A thread of water spiritual power poured into the engraving.
The character for Suppress flared with spiritual light.
An invisible ripple spread outward.
A light thud.
Yue Qingshuang was blasted clean off her feet.
Her long gauze skirt tumbled through the air like a violet in full bloom.
She tapped the empty air with the tip of her toe and barely steadied herself.
A pair of peach-blossom eyes misted over on the instant.
"Hmph. Qingxue is this cruel to me every single time."
"Repel."
A second ripple spread out.
Yue Qingshuang stumbled back three steps, her eyes reddening.
"I really was only worried you would catch a chill."
"Repel."
A third shock swept through the courtyard.
She was driven straight back to the purple bamboo gate, where she clung to the frame and refused to go.
"Two sentences, that's all, and I won't touch you at all."
Chu Qingxue did not look back and walked straight into the cave dwelling.
"You've been to the Jade Pool, haven't you, Qingxue. I can smell the spring vapor on you from li away."
Her steps did not stop.
"There's a mortal's scent on you. Did you bring that man back?"
Chu Qingxue's steps halted.
Her long lashes trembled faintly.
A Nascent Soul cultivator's perception was keen past all reason, like a spirit hound's.
A single lingering trace was enough to be caught.
"That was two sentences. Elder Yue may go."
She raised a hand and pushed open the wooden door.
A desolate voice drifted after her.
"Won't you even call me Sister Qingshuang anymore?"
The wooden door closed.
Chu Qingxue set her back against the cold panel.
She let out a long breath.
She rubbed the token in her palm over and over.
Even the cool of it could not press down the turmoil inside her.
Her fingers picked at the token's edge without her noticing.
Memories of the past came surging up beyond her control.