Who else in this world would hand her a cheat? The system, of course!
Perhaps because the system had been dormant for so long, she often forgot it existed, but it might have been quietly working in the background, providing her with the resources she needed for the seduction mission.
If beauty wasn't enough, add wealth on top of it.
But could money buy her a night with Fu Tingyun? How would she even go about it? Throw money at him?
Fu Tingyun was a Sword Venerable, not a male escort.
Su Xiaoyuan did want to consult the system about her seduction strategy, but since the system had just dropped such a massive cheat, who knew how long it would be dormant this time.
She tried calling out "System" in her mind, and sure enough, there was still no response.
Next time the system woke up from its dormancy, she would definitely have a proper talk with it—no more acting on its own and stuffing useless cheats into her hands.
Su Xiaoyuan whispered to Ruan Mianmian, "I think I have a rough idea where this mineral vein came from."
Ruan Mianmian's eyes went wide. "You know?"
Su Xiaoyuan nodded. "But I can't say. I'm sorry."
"It's fine, it's fine. If you can't say it, you must have your reasons. As long as you know the source and there's no problem, that's all that matters."
Su Xiaoyuan asked Shopkeeper Zhao, "May I ask where this mineral vein is located?"
Shopkeeper Zhao smiled. "Forgive me, but I cannot disclose that for now. The original owner specifically requested confidentiality.
"However, rest assured, Lady Su, that the annual output will be credited to your account. If you wish to sell the vein, our sect will also help you find a suitable buyer."
Just as she suspected—the source was unknown. The system had probably used some special means, and she had no idea if it was even safe.
"I don't need this much money. Can I return it the way it came?"
"The mineral vein is already registered under Lady Su's name."
Shopkeeper Zhao left behind three million in "interest" and departed with his escort of guards.
Knowing that the cheat came from the system, Su Xiaoyuan stopped worrying. She picked up the box and left the External Affairs Hall.
On the way back, Ruan Mianmian was beside herself with excitement. "Xiaoyuanzi, am I dreaming? That's an entire mineral vein! Any sect or noble family that holds exclusive rights to a single vein could brag about it for ten thousand years, and you have one all to yourself!"
"Xiaoyuanzi, how are you so calm?" Ruan Mianmian grabbed her arm and shook her. "You're not so happy you've gone dumb, are you?"
Su Xiaoyuan shook her head. "It's not like I have any use for that much money."
Ruan Mianmian: "How can you not like money?! I can't even imagine—if I had a mineral vein, I'd be the happiest person alive!"
Su Xiaoyuan looked at her. "When I'm… gone in the future, how about I leave the vein to you?"
Ruan Mianmian turned her head, eyeing her suspiciously. "Xiaoyuanzi, what's wrong with you? You've been off since this morning. Don't scare me, okay? What are you planning?"
Su Xiaoyuan quickly said, "Don't worry, I'm really fine. It's just that my cultivation base is low, so my lifespan is bound to be much shorter than yours."
A cultivator's lifespan was directly tied to their cultivation base. Ruan Mianmian had reached Core Formation in her early twenties, and if she kept cultivating, she could live for eight hundred to a thousand years, with no upper limit in sight.
But Su Xiaoyuan had come to this world to seduce Immortal Venerable Lingyue. All her points had been poured into beauty by the system, and her spiritual roots and meridians were only slightly better than a mortal's. If she lived out her natural lifespan, she'd probably only make it to around a hundred.
"Pfft, who wants your stupid vein!" Ruan Mianmian hopped in frustration. "If your spiritual roots aren't good enough, that's exactly why you should cultivate the Hehuan Art! Why else did you join the Yunyu Sect? Just harvest a few high-cultivation cultivators, won't that solve everything?"
"There's really no other way, I'll let you gather from me. I'll split my cultivation base with you, and we'll be together for life."
"Kaishan…" Su Xiaoyuan hugged her, her nose stinging, and couldn't help but bury her face in her shoulder and cry.
Ruan Mianmian was so startled she didn't know where to put her hands or feet: "Xiaoyuanzi, are you really okay?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Su Xiaoyuan sniffled, embarrassed as she wiped the damp spot on her best friend's shoulder with her sleeve. "I've just been feeling a bit homesick lately…"
Ruan Mianmian let out a sigh of relief: "You silly! Once you get into the inner sect, you can leave the sect's territory. Then I'll go home with you, won't that work?"
"Okay." Su Xiaoyuan curved her brows and eyes, turning her head away to quietly wipe away the tears before more could spill.
"Maybe one day you really can gather from Immortal Venerable Lingyue! You're already so rich!" Ruan Mianmian said.
Su Xiaoyuan let out a "pfft" laugh: "Does being rich mean he'll let me gather from him?"
"That's not possible, he's richer than you."
Su Xiaoyuan: "How infuriating!"
Ruan Mianmian: "Condemn him!"
Su Xiaoyuan rubbed her eyes, took the exquisite box out of her small satchel, opened the lid, pulled out one slip and stuffed it into her bag, then shoved the remaining two slips along with the box into Ruan Mianmian's arms: "Take them."
Ruan Mianmian jumped back two steps as if scalded by boiling water: "Why are you giving me so much money?!"
"I don't have anywhere to spend it, and I'll get more next month anyway."
Seducing the Sword Venerable was a high-risk job; this money counted as injury compensation, so why not take it? She could give it to whoever she pleased.
Ruan Mianmian naturally refused to accept it, but Su Xiaoyuan, who was usually easygoing, refused to budge this time: "Go do something fun, help me spend it. For example…"
She revealed a rare mischievous smile and blinked: "Hire a few people to beat up that scumbag Song Jinshu and his male mistress."
Ruan Mianmian wrinkled her nose: "With his caliber, a million would be enough to hire someone to kill him ten times over."
In the end, only after Su Xiaoyuan's persistent coaxing and wheedling did she finally accept one slip.
…
Fu Tingyun had run into a problem.
Su Xiaoyuan was the first unsolved mystery of his life.
If she didn't like money, then why had she been so happy she spun around in circles over a Sea Essence Stone last time? But now that she had more money than she could spend, there wasn't even a smile on her face.
After returning, she had put the two ink slips into the box without even giving them a second glance.
"Fu Tingyun." She called out to him listlessly.
Fu Tingyun felt his Puppet Core throb violently.
But she only said: "I need to practice 'Eye-to-Eye Affection.'"
Fu Tingyun didn't need her to give the order; he moved the small round stool from the window himself and sat down in front of her.
The young woman looked into his eyes and began practicing with utmost seriousness, struggling to twist her features into an alluring expression.
In the past, she had made mistakes too, always failing the Formation's assessment. But when she looked into his eyes and made all sorts of strange expressions, her clear, bright eyes had always held a light, lively and spirited.
Now those eyes had lost their spark.
"Still no good, right?" She lowered her lashes.
The Formation judged it as Grade D, Level Two—a failure.
Fu Tingyun quickly tampered with the Formation, then pressed his lips together: "Grade B, Level One. Passed."
A glimmer of light flashed in Su Xiaoyuan's eyes: "Huh?"
Fu Tingyun was like a man trying to start a fire with wet wood who suddenly spotted a single spark—his entire puppet body unconsciously leaned forward.
But that glimmer of light vanished in an instant.
He soon regretted tampering with the Formation.
Because after learning she had passed, she didn't spare him another glance.
She said softly, "That's good," then turned to wash up.
After that, she just lay on the bed in a daze.
Fu Tingyun could tell from the sound of her breathing that she wasn't asleep. She was like a Puppet Human drained of Spiritual Power, without even the strength to move a finger, yet still conscious—unable to draw Spiritual Qi from anywhere.
She could still maintain her usual demeanor in front of others, but once she returned to her small room, after finishing the necessary tasks and review, she would sit by the window staring blankly, or lie around doing nothing.
She didn't seem angry with him. She would greet him when going out or coming back, but she no longer blinked those bright eyes, chattering "Fu Tingyun" this and "Fu Tingyun" that, sharing the day's trivialities—and certainly no longer lay in bed prattling on at him.
By the third day, Su Xiaoyuan's condition still hadn't improved.
In truth, she didn't look sad. She hadn't cried again since that day. If one hadn't seen how she used to be, they would think she was perfectly normal.
But Fu Tingyun had seen it.
That day, while Su Xiaoyuan was out attending class, he searched every riverbank and stream across all nine islands of Yunyu Sect, looking for a stone that looked like a cat.
Obviously, he found no exact match.
On the fourth day, he took out her easel, drawing board, brushes, and paints and placed them on the table.
When Su Xiaoyuan came back and saw them, she merely said, "You took them out again," and paid them no further attention—she didn't even flip through her old works.
That small leather-bound notebook with paper pages she always carried with her was also left on the table, gathering a thin layer of dust.
On the fifth day, Fu Tingyun brought back a "cat."
Strictly speaking, it wasn't a cat, but a Luo-Luo Beast.
Among the Three Realms, only the mortal realm had cats, but a round trip would take too long, and he wasn't comfortable leaving Su Xiaoyuan alone.
So he made the trip in a single day, going to a neighboring continent to catch a Luo-Luo Beast—three hundred years old, spiritually awakened, not yet able to take human form. Its true form was a full size larger than Su Xiaoyuan's entire courtyard plus house.
But since Immortal Venerable Lingyue said it was a cat, it had to be a cat.
He forced it to transform into a flat-faced cat, according to Su Xiaoyuan's drawing.
But he was clever enough to let it keep the stripes and colors of its original fur—if it were an identical yellow cat from the drawing, it would be too deliberate.
Under Fu Tingyun's coercion, the cat squatted obediently at the courtyard gate for a whole day, and when it saw the little female cultivator in pink, it squeezed out a "meow" that brought shame upon all divine beasts.
The moment Su Xiaoyuan saw the cat, her eyes suddenly lit up. She immediately crouched down to stroke its head: "What a strange little kitty! How did you end up here? Oh, I know."
Fu Tingyun: Know what?
Su Xiaoyuan could tell at a glance that the cat was sent by the System. No matter how abundant the resources or how talented the people of the cultivation world, it probably couldn't produce a tabby and British Shorthair mix.
Was this some kind of end-of-life care?
But she would die in less than a year—she wasn't suited to keeping any pet.
She went back inside, dug out a jar of unsalted dried small fish that had luckily escaped Fu Tingyun's poison, found a ceramic plate that had also luckily escaped Fu Tingyun's poison, dumped them all in, and carried it outside to set on the ground.
She squatted to one side and watched the cat finish the dried fish, resisting the urge to pet it: "I'm sorry, I can't keep you. Go back to your original owner."
The next day, when Su Xiaoyuan came home from class, that cat had returned—this time with a lame front leg, as if it had been bitten by some wild beast.
Su Xiaoyuan hurriedly carried it inside, carefully cleaned the wound, applied medicine and bandaged it, gave it water and food, and cared for it for three days. When she saw it could walk on the ground, she carried it outside: "Be more careful next time, don't get bitten again."
The cat still lingered in front of her door every day, so Su Xiaoyuan had no choice but to cut a cat door in the courtyard gate, place food and water bowls in the yard, and half-reluctantly took it in as an outdoor cat.
Fu Tingyun discovered that she didn't actually dislike that "cat," yet she never held it, almost never touched it. While he was secretly pleased, he also disdained the cat for being too useless.
With the cat around, Su Xiaoyuan was a bit busier, but she still hadn't returned to how she used to be.
Fu Tingyun's irritability grew by the day.
If directly burning a Spirit Vein could rekindle the light in her eyes, he would do it without hesitation.
But he couldn't.
You can force a person to die, but you cannot force a person to be happy again.
That night during meditation, he came to the corner where that wisp of red thread was hiding—since that night, it had never come near him again.
"What must I do to make her return to how she was before?" he asked it.
It curled itself into a ball, tucking the thread's end firmly inside the coil.
Fu Tingyun felt a surge of impatience: "Come here."
The thread-ball instead shrank further into the corner.
Fu Tingyun stepped into the formation and forcibly grasped it in his palm.
The thread-ball shrank smaller and smaller, almost reverting to a drop of blood.
"Do you hate me that much?" Fu Tingyun felt the blood drop thrashing wildly in his palm, as if trying to escape.
"Hate me all you want." He slightly tightened his hand.
Just then, he suddenly heard a faint gasp from the room.
He quickly released his hand, and the blood drop shot into the corner, pressing against the formation pillar and going still.
Fu Tingyun immediately emerged from meditation and rushed into the room.
He saw the young woman lying face-up, legs bent, her forehead glistening—covered in cold sweat.
The smell of blood emanated from the bedding.
"Did I hurt you?" For the first time in his life, Fu Tingyun felt at a loss.
"No…" The young woman's voice was faint as gossamer, clearly in extreme pain.
He had only enclosed the blood drop in his palm without using force—who would have thought she was so fragile that a mere touch could injure her like this.
A thought flashed through his mind.
Was she going to die?
Had he accidentally killed her?
His heartbeat suddenly fell into disarray.
"Where are you hurt?" Fu Tingyun lifted the blanket, his nostrils flaring slightly as he searched for the source of the blood smell.
"It's really not an injury!" She sounded somewhat annoyed, reaching out to grab the blanket.
Fu Tingyun relaxed slightly—she still had the strength to fight for the blanket, so the injury probably wasn't too severe.
He yanked the blanket completely off, flipped her whole body over, and discovered a small patch of crimson on her undergarment. He frowned: "Still saying you're not hurt—you're bleeding."
Tears streamed down Su Xiaoyuan's face: "I told you it's not an injury, it's menstruation—it's my monthly period, gui shui… you Puppet Human really are… really!"