Back in the little courtyard on Luoxue Peak, Yun Xiu decided to take a bath.
Cultivators with high cultivation generally had a dust-cleansing spell, even if their clothes got dirty, a flick of a hand sign made them clean, no bathing or washing needed.
Yun Xiu didn’t know the dust-cleansing spell. She’d wanted to bathe a few days back, but the allergic red rash on her skin couldn’t touch water, so Xie Wuwang had been the one cleaning her up with hand signs.
Yun Xiu peeled off her clothes and slowly stepped into the water.
She’d picked some yuntan flowers from the spirit lake, the white petals floated in the bath barrel, their fragrance and the curling steam filling the room.
The petals had a cleansing property, a few days ago she’d even used them to wash her clothes.
So full.
Yun Xiu suddenly hiccuped, and slowly rubbed her little belly.
The last time she’d eaten this full was probably the day she’d just had the mushroom marshmallows, by evening she’d felt stuffed too.
And then she’d woken up to be told by Xie Wuwang that she’d already formed her foundation.
After resting a while, Yun Xiu slowly sank into the water until only half her little face showed, blowing bubbles.
Bathing was one of her little hobbies. Yun Xiu liked to soak alone in the water in her free time, quiet and peaceful, and let her mind go blank.
The comfortably warm water relaxed her, and before she knew it her tail had popped out, swaying gently in the water.
Something on her head seemed to be twitching too. Yun Xiu reached up and felt a pair of soft, warm fox ears.
She washed the tail and ears along the way, scrubbing them fragrant with yuntan petals, then dried them off with a soft towel, put her clothes back on, and returned to her little bed.
The fur on her tail was still damp after draining. Yun Xiu wanted to dry it with spirit energy but didn’t know how, so she could only drape it over the edge of the bed and swish it slowly, the tip toying with the little white flowers on the vine bed-canopy.
Yun Xiu fished out the black glazed mirror, meaning to check how things stood after today’s game update.
The moment she opened the backend revenue data, she froze.
Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten-thousands… three million red spirit coins.
Yun Xiu quickly converted it: three million red spirit stones was three thousand green spirit stones.
Spirit stones came in seven colors, red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, and what circulated most commonly in the cultivation world at present were still red, orange, and yellow spirit stones. Like when Feixiao ran her ride out at the monster-and-ghost-infested Liuhe Wildlands, he’d only charged ten orange spirit stones a trip.
For people of the cultivation world, virtual game currency was a first-time sight, and some worried about getting scammed topping up money, if the pricing was too steep they’d balk. Taking these consumer-psychology factors together with cultivation-world prices, Yun Xiu had priced her in-game items very low. Some people would start spending with a “it’s just a few red spirit stones, might as well mess around” mindset.
Three million red spirit stones in first-day revenue, three times higher than she’d projected. Yun Xiu was very satisfied.
After all, this game was just a casual game, and it hadn’t launched long ago, not that many people were actually playing.
Her partnership model with the Wantong Commerce Guild was like a sole proprietor working with a platform: the Wantong Guild handled promotion to boost the game’s fame and provided top-up and cash-out channels in many locations, and the guild took fifty percent of the earnings.
Simply put, she was only responsible for making the game, and the Wantong Guild handled everything outside the game, in the end they split the profits fifty-fifty.
So all told, she’d netted fifteen hundred green spirit stones today.
Yun Xiu counted on her fingers, tallying up the cost of meals, a thousand a meal, plus the money he’d spent on her clothes. She’d just checked, and a single garment from this clothing brand cost several thousand green spirit stones, even upward of ten thousand…
Mm. By this reckoning, if she didn’t eat or drink for the next two-plus months, it should just about be enough to pay it back.
Yun Xiu went silent.
Yun Xiu tipped her head back and looked at the sky.
Yun Xiu sank into deep thought.
The speed she earned money at simply could not keep up with the speed he spent it, dammit!
Yun Xiu flopped back into her pillow, pulled out the glazed mirror, and flipped through the sect missions. There were plenty of missions rewarding spirit stones, but the cultivation requirements were all too high, Golden Core stage, Nascent Soul stage, at the drop of a hat.
And you had to race others for speed, if someone else finished first, all the reward was theirs.
Taking sect missions was a dead end.
Yun Xiu looked at the next thing.
The sect’s recruitment pitch had claimed sword-cultivators had a hundred-percent employment rate, so she ought to be able to find a part-time job or something. Thinking this, Yun Xiu opened the job-hunting app.
A new job listing popped up.
【Jinling Zhenxin Apothecary sincerely seeks one bookkeeper. Salary five thousand red spirit stones a month, work hours four shichen, detailed address…】
Before Yun Xiu could even read it clearly, the listing dimmed, stamped over with a seal reading 【Position Filled】.
…That fast?
Yun Xiu tapped into the listing and saw a whole pile of applicant names below.
—「Sword-cultivator xxx」「Sword-cultivator xx」
Yun Xiu backed out, and another new listing popped up.
【Jinling Wanwei Restaurant hiring two servers, wages paid daily, two hundred red spirit stones a day, work hours six shichen, inquiries to…】
Next second: 【Position Filled】.
She tapped in, the applicant names were a screenful of 「Sword-cultivator xxx」 too.
Yun Xiu paused and scrolled up to look at the already-filled listings, and the further she read the more absurd it got.
【Buyecheng’s city-gate watchdog has gone missing. Now sincerely seeking two watchdogs, monthly salary thirty thousand red spirit stones, work hours all night, details…】
「Sword-cultivator xxx hired」「Sword-cultivator xx hired」
「Sword-cultivator xx」 comment: 【Do you still need someone to watch the outhouse? I feel fully qualified for the position, I have many years of gate-watching, reconnaissance, and security experience, and guarantee you’ll feel safe as houses.】
【Is this how you use this app? Sorry, here’s the thing: my kid kicked their cuju (ancient Chinese kickball) ball into the East Sea and it’s gone, and now without the ball the kid won’t stop crying. Sincerely seeking one cultivator to help fetch it back. I’ll pay five hundred thousand red spirit stones, with a bonus added if you run into monster-beasts along the way.】
「Sword-cultivator xxx hired」
「Sword-cultivator xx comment」: 【Adoptive father, do you still need a son?】
「Sword-cultivator xx comment」: 【Does your child still need a ball-boy? Think I’ll do? Or hey, you could kick me instead, adoptive father.】
Yun Xiu: “…”
Now she knew where that hundred-percent sword-cultivator employment rate came from.
The part-time path was clearly a no-go too. Never mind whether she had the hand-speed to snatch orders from them, even these wages wouldn’t be enough to pay off her debt.
Yun Xiu closed the job app, figuring the game path was still the more reliable one.
Relying on a casual game like Fluffy Match-3 alone definitely wouldn’t cut it. When she’d made the game she’d kept a shred of conscience, topping up money wasn’t necessary, as long as you patiently waited for your stamina to recover, you could play the later levels too. And the one thing cultivators never lacked was time, so as time went on, the game’s revenue would only dwindle.
Yun Xiu tapped the glazed mirror. She should make a game that could rake in cash.
And speaking of cash-raking schemes…
Obviously, that was gacha.
Poking at the glazed mirror as she pondered, Yun Xiu suddenly noticed a red dot had appeared on the messaging app at some point.
To avoid exposing herself, she’d kept this black glazed mirror on silent with notifications off.
Yun Xiu tapped in and found it was actually a message from Xie Wuwang.
She shot upright in bed, tail bristling straight up.
She hadn’t seen the friend request go through last night, and had assumed her request had long since drowned in the sea of people. She didn’t expect it to be accepted today.
Yun Xiu stared at that line on the glazed mirror, 【And you are?】, for a long while, her head filled entirely with the image of her staring at him during his lecture.
It could be summed up in four words.
—He’s. So. Good-looking.
At one point, maybe because her gaze had been too scorching, he’d turned his eyes slightly away, shifting them elsewhere so as not to look at her.
It gave her the inexplicable feeling that she was a little street hooligan, and he a decent young man from a good family passing by.
The more he dodged, the more she wanted to stare.
Yes, in a mere half-month, she’d evolved from a gloomy little mushroom who didn’t dare look at people into the audacious, lecherous bad fox she was now.
The moral scales in her heart were tipping steadily.
In the end Yun Xiu couldn’t hold back. Her fingers tapped away, quickly firing off two lines.
300-Yr-Old Innocent & Super Gullible: 【Who I am doesn’t matter.】
300-Yr-Old Innocent & Super Gullible: 【But you look a lot like someone I know.】
The other party was silent two seconds.
【…Who?】
Yun Xiu’s typing clattered away.
【My husband whom I’ve never met.】
Without waiting for a reply, she fired off another long string.
【You’re so special, you’re not like any male cultivator I know. The very first time I saw you, you gave off this sense of distance, drifting near and far like the wind.
I think you must be very lonely, all on your own.
I’ve met plenty of people who claim to be lonely, but their loneliness is just attention-seeking, moaning without any real ailment, affecting sorrow over spring and autumn, lamenting flowers in a mirror and the moon on water. I think yours is real loneliness, as if deep in your heart there’s always a stretch of darkness, and only you, sitting quietly there alone.
Often, watching you from afar, I feel there’s always a barrier around you. Just sitting there, I feel you’re about to shatter.】
Having sent one paragraph, Yun Xiu pressed on, undaunted.
【So let me get to know you, let me hold an umbrella over you, all right?】
The instant that sent, an angry red exclamation mark appeared on the glazed mirror.
…Truly a flower on a high, unreachable peak.
Not even this whole routine could win him over.
Yun Xiu hugged her tail, lay back down on the bed, and stared blankly at the exclamation mark on the glazed mirror, pondering just what method she’d need to land him.
Meanwhile, inside the Repository Pavilion on Green Lamp Peak, after reading that long string of text, Xie Wuwang was silent two seconds, then, without the slightest hesitation, deleted this person who’d come to harass him.
Then he stepped onto the cloud-stairs, turning it over carefully in his mind.
He hadn’t been in contact with anyone lately, and his contact information should only be known to Yun Xiu.
But with Yun Xiu’s timid, shrinking temperament, there was no way she could say things like that.
…Had someone made contact with her?
Xie Wuwang mulled it over a moment, and stopped walking.
When she’d entered the barrier backstage at the Mingyue Platform, she’d seemed dazed, staring off to the left for a while, as if searching for someone.
And she’d carried a faint sweet fragrance about her then. At the time he’d assumed she’d simply eaten some kind of pastry, but now it seemed that, just before stepping through the barrier, someone had gotten close to her.
Xie Wuwang spoke up. “Zhezhu, when we came to the Mingyue Platform, did you notice anyone strange?”
The sword-spirit, intently gnawing spirit stones, started, then thought carefully. “Nope. It was smooth sailing the whole way.”
It muttered, “Though, going backstage, your little disciple did ask me whether I’d seen anyone.”
Xie Wuwang frowned. That settled it, then.
The glazed mirror suddenly chimed again.
Xie Wuwang took it out for a look, it was that person’s friend request.
【Big brother, your swordplay’s not bad, but you’re too green in experience, no emotional resonance. Add me as a friend and let me give you a soul-rending, heart-shattering love, to help your Sword Dao reach the Great Vehicle and ascend to the pinnacle of cultivation!】
Xie Wuwang: “…”