The white-robed young man, kept up all night by her thrashing, leaned against the side of the soft chair, propping his cool, pale chin on one hand. He lifted his gaze to her slowly, a lazy, tired look in the dark eyes beneath his crow-black lashes.
Not much nerve, but plenty of strength.
Xie Wuwang looked at the stiff little spring roll on the couch and drawled, unhurried, “And if I said it was?”
Yun Xiu fell silent.
Silence.
A long silence.
At last she spoke in a small voice. “Don’t worry, I understand the rules of the trade, I won’t tell anyone. If you really can’t rest easy, you can lock me up in a little dark room.”
“But Master, can we discuss one thing, please don’t use candles. I once saw someone playing with that and accidentally burned all their hair off, and I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to Little Peach and the others…”
Xie Wuwang: ?
A vine lifted up and abruptly bopped her on the head.
Yun Xiu let out an “Ow.”
Xie Wuwang said in exasperation, “What sort of nonsense is running through your head? These vine tendrils are only to stop you from scratching the red spots on your body in your sleep.”
The vines wound around her loosened, circle by circle, drifting off to hang along the edge of the couch, transforming into a bed canopy. Slender tendrils draped down, blooming small, fragrant white flowers amid the room’s heavy medicinal scent, swaying gently in the breeze.
They shaded the daylight, and light and shadow fell half-bright, half-dim across her face, with the leisurely ease of a nap in a quiet forest glade.
Yun Xiu poked at a little white flower with her finger. “Did you make these?”
“Mm.” Xie Wuwang rose from the soft chair and answered offhandedly. “I have a wood-element spiritual root.”
That explained it, Yun Xiu realized, no wonder Luoxue Peak was covered in flowers and plants, no wonder there were so many cloud-udumbara flowers in the spirit-lake, no wonder he always carried a scent of white sandalwood.
Oh, right, and his sword was even named Zhezhu.
Yun Xiu grew curious. “Then what spiritual root do I have?”
“Not yet known. It has to be tested with a spirit-inquiry stone. There’s no rush, I’ll take you to have it tested in a few days, once you’ve recovered.”
Yun Xiu perked right up. Wasn’t this just gacha rolling in a game? She started secretly calculating: a single-element spiritual root was SSR, dual-element was SR, triple-element was R.
If she whaled out on—no, wait, this didn’t seem to have a ten-pull pity system to guarantee a gold.
Then it was hopeless. As a cannon-fodder side character she was definitely an R card. Nothing to look forward to.
Yun Xiu lay back down.
Seeing her wilted state, Xie Wuwang gave a soft laugh. “Don’t fret too much over spiritual roots. The road of cultivation is long, talent isn’t more important than effort.”
Yun Xiu’s keen nose picked out a fresh, savory fish smell amid the room’s medicinal scent. Her stomach growled, and she shot upright, there was a pot of fish soup on the table, and the young man was unhurriedly lifting its lid.
Yun Xiu’s eyes lit up on the spot, sparkling.
“Eat, then drink your medicine,” Xie Wuwang tossed out lazily, sitting back in the soft chair to keep turning his scroll.
She didn’t know what kind of fish it was, but the meat was tender and boneless, and Yun Xiu polished off the entire pot in no time, thoroughly content, her bright eyes narrowing like a little fox that had successfully snuck a treat.
Xie Wuwang read with his eyes lowered, turned a page with his index finger, and asked idly, in passing, “How was the taste?”
Yun Xiu cupped the little medicine bowl. This time she’d learned her lesson and sipped it mouthful by mouthful. “Mm… not that good. The flavor’s kind of weird, maybe the seasoning was off. Master, next time let’s not buy from this place, the last one was better.”
She wasn’t a picky eater, though, as long as it was edible she’d finish it. Even mediocre food she wouldn’t waste.
Xie Wuwang’s page-turning stalled for an instant, then he answered calmly. “Mm. Understood.”
Having finished her medicine, Yun Xiu rested a moment, patted her little face, and fished two glazed mirrors out of her storage pouch, handing one to him. “This one’s from You Yujing, he asked me to pass it along to you.”
Xie Wuwang looked up. “What is this?”
Yun Xiu recalled You Yujing saying glazed mirrors had only caught on in the last hundred years or so, and Xie Wuwang had just come out of five hundred years of seclusion, so it was natural he wouldn’t know. She quietly explained what a glazed mirror was for.
Then she demonstrated on the spot. “Like this, you register first and tap in your info… I’ll set your name as ‘One’ for now, and you can change it later… then you add friends…”
“There. Now I’ll send you a message on my end, and you’ll receive it.”
Xie Wuwang looked at the glazed mirror in his palm.
Nine-Meals-A-Day: 【Master, can you see this?】
Xie Wuwang looked up. “Nine-Meals-A-Day… what does that mean?”
Hearing her screen name read aloud to her face, Yun Xiu instantly wanted to find a crack in the ground to crawl into. Toes curling into the floor with embarrassment, head down, she stammered, “…It’s, it’s, um… it means eating nine meals a day.”
“Of course it doesn’t mean literally eating nine meals. It’s just… a kind of exaggeration…”
The young man overhead let out a sudden laugh. “I see.”
…She wanted to die even more now.
Yun Xiu clutched the glazed mirror. To prevent any recurrence of such disastrous incidents, she resolved to turn over a new leaf and tapped at the mirror again.
And so Xie Wuwang watched the five characters in the chat box turn into two.
—”Yun Xiu”
Xie Wuwang studied it for a few seconds, looking thoughtful, then lifted a finger and lightly touched his glazed mirror.
Head down, Yun Xiu watched with her own eyes as the “One” in her glazed mirror became “Xie Wuwang.”
Yun Xiu: “……”
Great. They were the first master-and-disciple pair to go online under their real names.
Screen names lost.
Yun Xiu wilted completely.
Cursed. From now on she could never happily surf the net again.
Once Yun Xiu had finished her medicine, Xie Wuwang closed his book with his long fingers. “I have some matters to attend to these next few days. I’ll be out during the day and back at night. Take your medicine on schedule, stay put inside Luoxue Peak’s ward, and don’t go outside.”
Yun Xiu nodded, her little face solemn. “I promise there absolutely won’t be any problems this time!”
Xie Wuwang gave her a light glance, said nothing, and left the little courtyard.
Yun Xiu had a fair idea of what he was busy with. It had been a while since the Lingyun Sect’s new recruits enrolled, and the SpiritNet was now flooded with news about the Sword Venerable’s dao-lecture assembly. It was only days away.
Yun Xiu twisted open the little glazed medicine box to apply the ointment. She still couldn’t reach her back, so she smeared it around haphazardly a few times, put her clothes on, and took out her glazed mirror.
She’d already seen a long string of messages from You Yujing earlier, though she hadn’t tapped in to read them.
Yun Xiu opened the message box and was nearly dazzled by a full screen of apologies, the gist being that he was sorry, it was all his fault, and how was she now. After reading through them, she replied.
You Yujing: 【!】
You Yujing: 【Junior Sister Yun, you’re finally awake! How are you now? Still feeling awful?】
Yun Xiu was speechless. She was the one who’d beaten people up, how had it turned out looking like she was the poor unlucky soul who’d taken the beating?
Yun Xiu: 【I’m fine, Senior Brother You. How’s that disciple doing?】
You Yujing, ordered to stay put at the infirmary, glanced casually at Xu Shaoqian on the sickbed. The boy was wrapped up like a zongzi and hadn’t woken yet.
He wrote back: 【He’s fine, just a few broken bones. The healer says he’ll be able to get out of bed in a couple of days.】
Yun Xiu: “……”
That did NOT sound the least bit fine!?
Yun Xiu wilted further on the spot, curling into the corner of the couch, poking at the little white flowers on the vines while conducting a grave self-reflection.
Whatever the case, she was in the wrong for hurting someone. She had to make amends and apologize.
Yun Xiu rummaged through her storage pouch, only a few spirit stones, poor as a church mouse.
As for gifts…
All she had were the flashy magic artifacts the Lingyun Sect elders and senior uncles had given her, plus the Hehuan Sect’s supreme treasure, the Love-Thread Snare.
Gifting a Hehuan Sect treasure would get her killed rather quickly, so that was out of consideration.
Yun Xiu opened the gift boxes, hoping to pick out one of the less conspicuous items, but there wasn’t a single one, every last one was an eyesore.
The one normal gift she’d had, she’d eaten yesterday.
Yun Xiu fell silent.
Nothing shows a thing up like a comparison.
By contrast, Xie Wuwang’s taste was far more normal. Yun Xiu pulled the hairpin from her hair, its tip was a jade cloud-udumbara flower, and in the flower’s heart slept a little rabbit hugging a petal.
She tidied her hair, pinned it back, and used the glazed mirror to ask You Yujing what Xu Shaoqian liked.
You Yujing was baffled: 【Junior Sister Yun, why are you asking this?】
Yun Xiu: 【Hurt someone, so I need to make amends and apologize.】
The flower on You Yujing’s head gave a little wobble. Junior Sister Little Yun really was cold on the outside, kind on the inside. He thought about it.
【That guy’s from Qianyue Palace, so he’s got no shortage of artifacts, spirit-plants, or spirit stones. He just loves training with his sword, and sparring with people.】
Every single day he squatted at the debate platform, grabbing any passerby he could to fight, which only made the already-deserted platforms more deserted.
Yun Xiu was stumped. He liked sparring, did she have to fight him again once he recovered?
…That definitely wouldn’t do.
So Yun Xiu opened the search app, meaning to look up what sword cultivators liked, and immediately saw herself on the front page.
Title: 【Full Footage: Sword Venerable Wuwang’s Disciple Takes On Two at Once at the Debate Platform】
She tapped in. Someone had recorded her fight from a great angle, high-definition, uncensored, over a million views.
Yun Xiu: !?
She opened another app. The front page was all her, too.
The Cultivation Forum had several hot threads pinned at the top, all debating her background, no one had ever seen her before.
With a trembling finger, Yun Xiu tapped into the video and watched it through. At the start she was still wearing the veiled hat, so her face couldn’t be seen.
Then came the shoulder throw, and the veiled hat fell to the ground and got trampled to pieces.
Yun Xiu’s dao-heart shattered right along with it.
Great, great, great. First came real-name internet, and now she couldn’t even leave the house.
Heart cold as ashes, Yun Xiu crouched in the corner of the couch playing mushroom, and out of habit reached to pull out her phone to calm down with a round of Fluffy Match-3, only to find the glazed mirror had no game apps.
All Yun Xiu could do was stare blankly at the video.
Her dazed gaze fell on a line of small print in the lower-right corner by the uploader’s handle, and abruptly paused.
“IP, Jiuli, Lingyun Sect”
Yun Xiu sank into thought. “IP” stood for “Inte Protocol”, the abbreviated “IP” here roughly meant a network address. But did the cultivation world even have English?
Or was the author of this book she’d transmigrated into just lazy, and had lifted it straight over?
No, wait, Yun Xiu suddenly remembered that time in the underground labyrinth of Baihua City, when she’d heard the city lord say the name of the great personage who’d helped them was “Lei Feng.”
She’d been too dizzy with hunger to pay attention at the time, and afterward so much had happened that she’d forgotten about it.
So… besides her, could there be other people who’d transmigrated into this book too?