As the youth tossed stones into the water one by one, he said angrily, “Nanxi clearly didn’t do those things! What right do they have to slander him? Do they think a lie becomes the truth just because it’s repeated often enough? Why does my brother blindly listen to others instead of distinguishing right from wrong?”
While the youth continued pouring his grievances out to the water, Yunzhou listened from nearby, learning that this youth was named Ling Wanxing and the other person was Tang Nanxi. He had already mentally applied several web novel tropes he had previously read to deduce the cause of the matter.
According to the tropes, this youth named Ling Wanxing probably trusted Nanxi deeply. Either his brother had been deceived by others, or Nanxi was a “white lotus” who had tricked Ling Wanxing.
Yunzhou felt it was getting confusing and suspected neither scenario was likely, but web novels always wrote things this way.
A heartbroken youth was crying and venting to the water, while behind him in the bushes, a little fox munched on pastries and guessed what kind of ordeal he had been through.
By the time the pastries were finished and the gossip had been mostly consumed, Immortal Yunzhou’s conscience finally returned.
Hearing the youth’s heartbroken sobs still trembling and unresolved, he couldn’t help sighing that children had such fragile hearts; he really ought to comfort him.
He flicked his tail and walked toward the youth. Before he even reached him, the youth noticed him, scooped him up, and held him in his arms.
Looking at the nine-tailed white fox before him, the youth felt no greed. He knew that in a secret realm, beasts like this were very likely to have attained spiritual intelligence.
Only by willingly acknowledging a master could such creatures be taken away; taking them by force would merely earn their deep enmity. The fact that it had come to his side probably meant it was simply drawn by curiosity to watch him make a fool of himself.
How helpless he was just crying a little, only to have a fox watch him make a fool of himself. Yet this white fox was so noble and elegant that it didn’t even matter if he was being watched; in fact, they seemed rather fated.
Though it felt unlikely, Ling Wanxing still held a sliver of expectation, given that the little white fox had openly revealed itself while eating gossip. He asked, “Little white fox, are you here to comfort me?”
Yunzhou didn’t know how much the youth had imagined, but he had simply come to keep the boy company so he would stop crying. Besides, the aura surrounding the youth was very clean, and his tone carried only curiosity and expectation, making Yunzhou willing to stay with him for a while.
The youth adjusted his posture to make the little white fox more comfortable in his arms, then began telling the fox about the bitterness in his heart.
As he recounted how he and Tang Nanxi had met and gotten to know each other, Yunzhou heard what he wanted to know and realized that web novels could not be entirely trusted.
Tang Nanxi was relatively reticent within the sect and always preferred to be alone. Over time, he became out of touch with everyone else, and lacking any influential background behind him, he was frequently slandered and bullied by troublemakers.
Ordering him around and embezzling his resources had become a daily routine; malicious disciples often used him as a practice dummy or to test new spell techniques. Even when cases of theft or dishonesty came to light, the blame and framing were invariably dumped onto him. Yet no one ever came close, no one ever believed him, and any amount of explanation was met only with threats, intimidation, beatings, and kicks.
Later, an elder defying public opinion and recognizing Tang Nanxi’s talent in the sword dao broke the rules to elevate him as a personal disciple. The daily bullying and humiliation diminished, but there were still some people who could not be kept in check.
Ling Wanxing was the young master of the sect, with an older brother who served as the sect’s heir apparent; he was exceptionally doused in pampering within the sect.
By chance, while searching for medicinal ingredients in his family’s pill-refining room, he happened to encounter several disciples stealing pills. He secretly planted a few lingering-scent seals on the hems of those disciples’ robes, intending to deal with them later, but before he could act, he heard the next day that a personal disciple had been punished.
Curious, Ling Wanxing ran over to watch, only to discover that the physical evidence the pills was precisely what those few disciples had stolen the day before.
Yet the so-called pill-thieving disciple was kneeling in the main hall, being whipped repeatedly with a disciplinary whip, with not a single trace of fragrance lingering on his body.
In contrast, the actual thieves in the crowd were chuckling among themselves. Though he didn’t know what kind of grudge was at play, he couldn’t stand seeing wrongdoing rewarded with such arrogance.
Before he could intervene, he saw Tang Nanxi collapse unconscious under the lashes of the disciplinary whip. Ling Wanxing hurriedly had someone carry Tang Nanxi away to tend to his injuries.
As for himself, he cleared Tang Nanxi’s name on the spot, directly having the memories of those disciples probed to wash away the charge of theft. Those disciples, for harming sect members, stealing, and deceit, had their spiritual roots crippled and were expelled from the sect.
As for that elder, under the charge of negligence, half of his monthly allowance was docked.
When Ling Wanxi returned to check on Tang Nanxi’s injuries, he asked him why he hadn’t bothered to defend himself instead of acting like a mute gourd wasn’t he afraid of suffocating to death?
In the young master’s mind, if you were wronged, you just had to speak up, and that would settle it.
Tang Nanxi turned his head away, unwilling to answer. Prodded by the noisy urging of the person beside him, he finally spoke in a muffled voice to explain the reason.
It was because even if he spoke up, no one would believe him. They had countless ways to prove he was in the wrong, while he could never prove he was in the right. Any amount of explanation would only become an excuse, leading to even worse treatment.
The young master was thoroughly shaken. He didn’t quite understand, his understanding was hazy yet it seemed he could comprehend it.
However, Ling Wanxing did not immediately stand on Tang Nanxi’s side because of this single incident. Instead, he made discreet inquiries and discovered that many of the terrible things said about Tang Nanxi were circulated as if everyone shared a unified script; those stories simply could not be trusted.
Through quiet observation, he found that Tang Nanxi wasn’t terrible at all. He was focused so focused that within his eyes and his entire world, there seemed to be only the sword accompanying him.
Let the rumors fly; he would stand proudly and aloofly right at the center of everyone’s pointing spears, yet no one could force him to bow his head.
Yet, having witnessed Tang Nanxi being bullied so many times even though he would step up to fight his battles Ling Wanxing still felt an instinctive urge to comfort him, even though Tang Nanxi was older than him. That must have been due to sheer sympathy.
Tang Nanxi had no idea when he had provoked the young master, yet this boy always rushed over with boundless enthusiasm to comfort him, carrying a haughty expression as he dealt with the people who made things difficult for him.
Consequently, Tang Nanxi stopped putting on a cold, aloof front. Though he didn’t express his emotions excessively, he would still soften up around Ling Wanxing, listening quietly to the youth chatter away endlessly beside his ear.
The two of them could thus be considered soulmates.
Yet this time, his brother who had just finished handling administrative affairs did not know where he had listened to those smear campaigns against Tang Nanxi. He burst into anger, scolding Tang Nanxi for his faults and lecturing Ling Wanxing about being deceived.
Ling Wanxing had wanted to argue back and thoroughly reason with his stubborn brother. But Tang Nanxi only refuted a few sentences before conceding, and even held him back.
He was furious, furious that Tang Nanxi preferred to let sleeping dogs lie rather than make a fuss, and furious that Tang Nanxi simply wouldn’t use his mouth. More than anything, he felt a deep sense of grievance, whether from having nowhere to voice his arguments or on Tang Nanxi’s behalf, he could not tell.
Yunzhou found the situation complicated, yet didn’t know how to comfort him. This slice of gossip left him feeling rather stifled; the matters inside weren’t something he should pry into with excessive curiosity. He decided to let the youth hold him a little longer as payment for listening to the gossip.
When Shi An returned from gathering herbs and tracked Yunzhou via their soul imprint, he found that Yunzhou had transformed into his true form, fast asleep in the arms of another youth dressed in cyan-blue robes and that youth had fallen asleep as well.
Shi An repeatedly told himself to stay calm. As he approached, he picked up a dead branch and tapped the youth’s sleeping acupoint to send him into an even deeper slumber.
He carefully extracted his master still in his true form, from the youth’s arms, stuffed the piece of wood in his place, carried the white fox away for a certain distance, and then flicked a strand of demonic energy to lift the youth’s sleeping acupoint so he would wake up soon.