Listening to the Puppet Human slowly and clumsily read out her name, Su Xiaoyuan felt as if a warm spring had trickled across her eardrums, and her ears began to burn.
Su Xiaoyuan was not only a face-connoisseur but also a voice-connoisseur. A voice this sultry was simply deadly.
She rubbed her ears: "Is the candy good? Fu Tingyun?"
Fu Tingyun had never eaten anything else, so he had no basis for comparison.
Before he could answer, Su Xiaoyuan continued: "I've made several flavors. Kaishan says the orange one is the best. In two months, the oranges on Huanhua Island should be ripe. This year I'll pick a few more baskets, make a few more jars to give away."
Fu Tingyun glanced at the half-empty glass bottle in her hand and lowered his eyes.
This was the first candy he had eaten, but clearly it was not the first one she had fed.
"Er er." He gave a cold, clipped assessment.
Su Xiaoyuan opened her eyes wide in confusion: "What did you say? Fu Tingyun?"
"Your candy. Er er." What a poor memory—she asked the question herself and forgot it the moment she turned her head.
"Oh, oh, you mean that." This Puppet Human's reaction time was really something else.
She poured out another candy and popped it into her own mouth, muttering to herself: "It hasn't gone bad. It's quite tasty…"
When she ate candy, she would unconsciously touch it first with the tip of her tongue, very quickly—most people wouldn't notice such a subtle movement, but Fu Tingyun's eyesight was extraordinary, and he clearly saw her rosy tongue tip.
His own tongue tip seemed to taste that fresh, bright sweet-and-sour flavor again. Saliva welled up from the base of his tongue, and he swallowed unconsciously.
Su Xiaoyuan noticed nothing. She put the lid back on, cast another Spirit Incantation for freshness and preservation, then walked to the cabinet, opened the second drawer, and placed the candy jar inside.
She tapped the cat-paw handle with her fingertip: "This is all food in here. If you want to eat something, you can take it yourself, Fu Tingyun."
Inside Fu Tingyun's Spirit Manor, colorful lights began to flicker: "If you want to eat something, you can take it yourself, Fu Tingyun; if you want to eat something, take it yourself, Fu Tingyun…"
He let that line of text flicker endlessly and didn't even want to touch the drawer: "Don't want to."
When she gave the next instruction, it would naturally overwrite this one.
"You've only tried one kind. There are plenty of others—sunflower seeds, dried meat, small dried fish, and such…"
"Don't want any of them." The Puppet Human was quite adamant.
There was no need to be so emphatic if he simply didn't like them, Su Xiaoyuan thought. Having her homemade snacks go unappreciated did leave her feeling a bit lonely.
But she quickly let it go. The Puppet Human could eat things, but his sense of taste might be different from that of normal humans.
"If you don't want them, then you don't want them." She smiled good-naturedly, turned, and took a bucket to the yard to fetch water for washing up.
After fetching the water and returning to the room, only a sliver of lingering sunlight remained at the edge of the sky.
The room suddenly darkened, though not yet dark enough to need a lamp.
This was the time of day when Su Xiaoyuan missed home the most.
Sitting alone by the bed watching the sky slowly turn dark was like falling into a crevice in time, abandoned by the entire world.
Lighting a lamp would make it better, but lamps in the cultivation world burned Spirit Stones—about one low-grade spirit stone per hour—so she always economized wherever she could.
But today was a little different. There was an extra Puppet Human in the room, and suddenly it felt full and complete.
Su Xiaoyuan walked into the room, set the wooden bucket by the bed, used her Spiritual Power to heat the water until it gave off a faint wisp of steam, then took off her shoes and socks and soaked her feet in it, unconsciously stirring the water with her toes.
Fu Tingyun lowered his gaze. In the rippling clear water, it seemed two hazy, luminous moon shadows had fallen.
He shifted his gaze away without expression.
When it came time to sleep, Su Xiaoyuan felt a bit troubled about the sleeping arrangements.
This Puppet Human's presence was far too strong. If she woke up in the middle of the night all groggy and suddenly saw such a large figure standing in the room, she might get scared into a myocardial infarction.
Ideally, she'd have him lie down to sleep too, but there was only one bed, and it was so small.
Even if Su Xiaoyuan were willing to give up the bed for him, she doubted he could stretch his legs out straight.
As for driving him outside, Su Xiaoyuan couldn't bring herself to do that either—she was the kind of person who couldn't even bear to overwork a robot vacuum.
While wiping her feet, she asked the Puppet Human, "Fu Tingyun, can you shut down at night? Oh right, you probably don't understand. It's similar to sleeping—you issue some kind of command, and then you don't know anything anymore."
"No."
"Then what do you do at night? Stand all night? Isn't that boring? Fu Tingyun?"
Fu Tingyun didn't even lift an eyelid. "No."
Concerning herself with how a Puppet Human gets through the night—one really had to wonder who the boring one was.
Su Xiaoyuan dried her feet, splashed the water outside the door, put the basin back on the rack, then bent down and dragged a rolled-up bundle out from under the bed.
Fu Tingyun's brow twitched. She'd even stuffed things under the bed—was there anything she wouldn't do?
Su Xiaoyuan unrolled the bundle and spread it beside the bed. It was a mat about three chi wide and six chi long.
This was a training mat she had woven from ropes twisted out of a flexible, elastic Spirit Grass.
Yunyu Sect disciples practiced the Soft Body Technique for half a shichen every morning—sort of like a plus-sized version of yoga, including all sorts of bizarre, high-difficulty poses. The bed board was too hard, making it very inconvenient to practice on, so she had experimented for a long time before finally making this yoga mat.
Although she wiped it down after every use, she still cast a Purification Art and patted it. "At night you can sleep on this mat first… Sorry, once I enter the inner sect, there'll be more space, and I'll apply for an extra bed then… Try lying down on it, Fu Tingyun."
Fu Tingyun had no attention to spare for her explanation. Right now, there were two lines of colored text in his Spirit Manor.
"You can take whatever you want to eat, Fu Tingyun."
"Try lying down on it, Fu Tingyun."
In his ears as well, two commands overlapped, cycling endlessly.
Very good. Now he knew that new commands didn't overwrite old ones—they only piled on more.
"Try lying down, Fu—" Before the cycle could repeat a third time, Fu Tingyun obligingly lay down.
"Oh right," Su Xiaoyuan said, "you didn't get to soak properly earlier. Let me cast a Body Cleansing Art on you first."
A Puppet Human probably didn't sweat or secrete grime, but after sitting in a warehouse for so long and then walking all the way back, it was bound to be dirty.
Fu Tingyun had no need for such a thing. A high-grade Puppet like him had the Stainless Mantra built into both body and clothing. Even if he rolled around in a mud pit, he'd still be spotless.
But the girl had already begun forming hand seals and chanting at him.
Her Spiritual Power was thin and weak. Fu Tingyun felt as if a dampened feather had lightly brushed over him from head to toe—a little ticklish.
"There, all clean now." Su Xiaoyuan clapped her hands, satisfied.
She took out sleepwear from the rattan chest, thought for a moment, then took out a thin blanket as well, unfolded it, and laid it over the Puppet Human's belly.
Puppet Humans don't catch colds, but without something covering her stomach, she just couldn't feel at ease.
It was time to change clothes. She met the Puppet Human's dark, deep eyes and felt a bit embarrassed. "Fu Tingyun, I need to change my clothes. Please close your eyes first."
The Puppet Human obediently closed his eyes. His long, thick lashes swept downward, casting beautiful shadows beneath his eyes and making the straight bridge of his nose appear even more prominent.
He lay quietly in the twilight glow, as if floating in motes of light—tranquil and lovely, like a sleeping beauty.
Su Xiaoyuan's heartbeat skipped. She quickly adjusted her breathing, swiftly took off her dirty clothes, changed into the sleep dress she had sewn herself, and burrowed under the blanket, leaving only her head out. "Alright, Fu Tingyun, you can open your eyes now."
The Puppet Human obediently opened his eyes.
Su Xiaoyuan had been running around all day, and her body was already exhausted, but her mind was too wired, and she tossed and turned, unable to sleep.
She poked her head out from the bed, rested her chin on the back of her hand, and by the last ray of sunset gazed at the Puppet Human's handsome profile. A sudden burst of joy welled up in her heart.
She had a doll now!
"Fu Tingyun, don't worry. I definitely won't return you…" Su Xiaoyuan made up her mind. "Tomorrow I'll go discuss with the shopkeeper whether I can buy another Puppet Human on installment. Not one that costs twelve hundred taels—nothing that nice. Two or three hundred taels would do.
"If I can enter the inner sect in three months, I'll get thirty Spirit Stones a month. After school I can take on some missions, and I can also make some candy and preserved fruits to sell. The pressure shouldn't be too bad…"
Fu Tingyun: "…"
He could tell this young girl wasn't rich, but he never imagined she was poor to such an absurd degree.
"Oh right, Fu Tingyun." The girl blinked in the darkness. "Did you know? Actually, I've always wanted a BJD doll. I'd saved up the money, but I didn't dare place the order. My mom would definitely throw it away if she saw it…"
Madam Su Shengnan had never let her play with dolls since she was little, because she believed that if a girl played with dolls as a child, she'd amount to nothing when she grew up. So she only allowed her to play with educational toys.
Madam Su Shengnan also wouldn't let her keep long hair or wear skirts—a girl being vain would also amount to nothing.
"My mom was against me drawing too. She thought anyone who studied art for the art exams was a student with bad grades. So I could only wait until my parents fell asleep and secretly get up to draw. If I got caught, I'd get a scolding…"
Su Xiaoyuan had only started teaching herself by following Bilibili uploaders after getting into university. She hadn't been learning long before she transmigrated here. But after joining the Yunyu Sect, her grasp of human anatomy had advanced by leaps and bounds.
She glanced at the Puppet Human and saw that he was just quietly listening to her ramble on, and her heart felt warm.
She had always thought she was adapting fairly well and that her little life wasn't bad either—until now, when she realized she was lonely and frightened.
She couldn't say these things to Ruan Mianmian either. She didn't want to spew a bunch of gibberish and make the only good friend she had in this world think she was crazy.
Actually, she would rather not have the beauty filter and have the system stay by her side to chat with her from time to time. Because even with added beauty points, the probability of successfully pursuing Immortal Venerable Lingyue was infinitesimally close to zero.
Su Xiaoyuan poured out all the words she'd been holding in her belly, absorbed in her own enjoyment of talking. After all, the Puppet Human had no spirit intelligence and no emotions—he wouldn't understand what she was saying.
Many people like to talk to their pets or toys, or confide in AI. She hadn't understood it before, but now she finally did.
"If my mom knew what I'm doing right now, she'd beat me to death…"
Madam Su Shengnan was a force to be reckoned with her whole life. As a renowned teacher at a top high school, she had taught countless students who went on to Tsinghua and Peking University, and she'd held high hopes for her only daughter since childhood.
"But I've been disappointing my mom my whole life. Weak-willed, no ambition, mediocre intelligence, no talent for studying, didn't even get into a good university on the gaokao," Su Xiaoyuan pursed her lips. "And now it turns out even my life is this short…"
Her nose tingled and tears rolled down. "I miss my mom so much…"
Fu Tingyun was forced to listen to her rambling. Ever since his master, Daoist Master Xuji, died, he had never met anyone who talked this much.
Strangely, the girl's words weren't even coherent—most of it was meaningless sound, a string of noise in his ears: "Blah blah meow meow chirp chirp gurgle gurgle…"
Fu Tingyun suspected she was talking in her sleep, but just then, she clutched the blanket and curled into a ball, trembling faintly.
A person of high Cultivation Base could see as clearly in darkness as in broad daylight. He saw crystalline tears well up from the corners of her eyes, soaking the pillow.
She was crying.
After crying for a while, probably exhausted, her sobbing stopped and her breathing gradually grew heavy.
Fu Tingyun waited quietly for a moment, then stood up and looked down at the girl curled into a ball.
She had already fallen asleep, a tear still hanging on her cheek like a dewdrop on a petal under the moonlight.
"Eat whatever you want, Fu Tingyun. Eat whatever you want, Fu Tingyun…"
The seven-colored text was still flickering in his Spirit Manor like a row of tireless stars.
Fu Tingyun knew what he wanted to eat.
He reached out and plucked the teardrop from the girl's face with his fingertip, then put it in his mouth and tasted it.
It was a different flavor.
The Spirit Manor was finally quiet. Fu Tingyun was about to go outside to meditate.
Just then, the girl suddenly opened her eyes and stared at him blankly for a long while, as if she'd recognized him: "Fu Tingyun…"
She yawned, turned over, smacked her lips, and mumbled: "Fu Tingyun, I'm so hungry… I want to eat Lili stir-fried pork…"
The Spirit Manor, which had been quiet for less than a breath, grew lively again.
[Fu Tingyun, I'm so hungry, I want to eat Lili stir-fried pork.]
[Fu Tingyun, I'm so hungry, I want to eat Lili stir-fried pork.]
[Fu Tingyun, I'm so hungry, I want to eat…]
Fu Tingyun pinched the bridge of his nose and pushed the door open, heading outside.
Tomorrow he'd better just kill her.