"N... no."
"This lowly one would never dare. It was... it was the Fourth Enshrined Elder and the Lord Holy Son who said it."
Long Tao had gone corpse-white, his whole frame shaking, head bowed so he wouldn't have to meet those long, narrow phoenix eyes.
"Hey. Chin up. Don't be so spineless — weren't you announcing your grand enlightenment a minute ago?"
A hand clapped his shoulder out of nowhere, a teasing voice at his ear. He turned — into that sunny, devastating face. Who else but Luo Fanchen, strolling over?
"Watch your mouth, and pay your respects to Her Holiness, quickly!"
Long Tao was about to cry from sheer fright.
How could he not be afraid? A saying had circulated across the Soul Martial Continent forever: better to offend King Yama than to provoke the Female Pontiff. That was how fearsome Di Weiyang's renown ran.
"The Fourth Enshrined Elder. Heh." At the words, a thread of cold light crossed Di Weiyang's phoenix eyes, her voice flat. "How would a leftover of the old era judge the heaven's-pride of the new one?"
Long Tao's brain stalled. He'd assumed that his "slap their dog faces someday" speech, overheard by the Pontiff, meant he was thoroughly cooked.
Instead she seemed not to care at all — contemptuous of the Enshrined Elder, and if anything... favorably disposed toward Luo Fanchen?
Then his thoughts caught. No — what that sentence implied went well beyond "favorably disposed."
Luo Fanchen, for his part, stood neither servile nor defiant, meeting that peerless face which awed without anger — and quietly marveled.
What a Pontiff indeed.
Beauty without equal was the least of it; dominance rolled off her in waves. Even Enshrined Elders — level ninety-five at minimum — didn't rate in her eyes, dismissed as leftovers of the old era.
"Hey — aren't you scared of my teacher?" The girl's violet ponytail swung as she asked in open wonder.
"Why should I be?" Luo Fanchen asked back.
Her cherry lips parted, giving a glimpse of two adorable little fangs. The question had short-circuited her completely.
Wasn't he SUPPOSED to be scared?
She'd watched the high and mighty wilt under her teacher's presence — exactly like this little deacon and the villagers around them: mice before a cat, hearts scrambling, afraid to lift their heads.
By now it wasn't just the Holy Maiden who was curious; even the Pontiff felt faint surprise.
After years at the summit, backed by terrifying strength, the people who dared hold her gaze could be counted on one hand. This young man was genuinely different.
Stranger still — the Pontiff, famously face-blind, indifferent to anyone's looks, caught herself vaguely thinking that the youth before her was unreasonably, almost supernaturally handsome, as if some peculiar magnetism poured off him.
The corner of Luo Fanchen's mouth rose in a clean, easy arc. "I walk upright and stand straight, and nothing I do shames my conscience. Though the Pontiff herself descend — what is there to fear?"
The violet-haired Holy Maiden lost focus at that smile — how does a man this good-looking even exist? — and her rose-petal lips moved.
"Aren't you afraid my teacher might raise her hand against you?"
Luo Fanchen spread his hands and smiled.
"If I'm afraid, I die. If I'm not afraid, I die. So why be afraid?"
"Besides — if you two meant me harm, you'd hardly waste this much talk. You'd have simply struck."
Beside him Long Tao's palms flooded with cold sweat. We're dead. That's open lèse-majesté, gall past the heavens — does he WANT to die?
Brother — no, GRANDFATHER! You're a true warrior, going toe to toe with the Female Pontiff herself, giving no face at all?
We don't have to be lapdogs, fine, but would two words of flattery kill you? There's no need to be THIS unbending — burn away her goodwill and we're just waiting for the axe!
The violet-haired Holy Maiden's mouth fell open. She turned to the frost-cold Pontiff at her side, marveling. "Teacher, you were right. This one really is different — nothing like the other men in the Temple."
The Pontiff's cool thin lips stayed sealed. She didn't answer — but a few degrees of approval entered her eyes.
Nothing in this life disgusted her more than bent spines and fawning faces. This would-break-before-bending attitude of Luo Fanchen's suited her heart exactly.
After a moment's thought, she spoke:
"I, thirteenth Female Pontiff of the Divine Temple of Light, Di Weiyang — ask: are you willing to take me as your teacher?"
Long Tao, nerves already strung to snapping, simply blue-screened — as if struck by lightning where he stood.
Holy hell!
What — an APPRENTICESHIP?
He hadn't misheard, had he?
The Female Pontiff had decided to take Luo Fanchen as her disciple?? This did not match the "we both die here together" script he'd been drafting!
Didn't the legends say the Pontiff was cold as still water, disliked strangers — and men most of all?
The villagers were exchanging looks, each seeing their own bulging eyes mirrored in their neighbors'. Too terrified to speak all this while — that didn't mean they hadn't heard everything.
This Luo Fanchen was beyond belief.
Three sentences of open defiance, and the Female Pontiff wants him as a disciple?
"Why?" Luo Fanchen asked, calm as ever.
HOLY HELL!
Long Tao seized two fistfuls of his own hair and pulled, eyes gone red to the rims.
Brother, have you lost your mind?! The Female Pontiff offers you her lineage and you HESITATE? You should be kneeling in gratitude with flowers blooming in your chest — what is there to think about?!
The villagers' jaws had long since hit the ground, minds all running the same thread:
Was he... always this fearless...?
...Actually, yes. Now that they thought about it — fearless since he was knee-high. Most of them still remembered: eleven years old, and the boy walked into the mountains alone to hunt, and walked back into the village covered in wounds, dragging a gray wolf by the scruff.
Luo Fanchen ignored the murderous envy radiating from all sides. As a transmigrator, wariness toward this world was stitched into him. There is no free lunch under any heaven, and no one is good to a stranger without a reason.
The naive ones were all dead.
He needed to know why she would take him as a disciple — because on the surface, his martial souls looked like trash. How monstrous they actually were, only he knew.
The violet-haired Holy Maiden bared her little fangs at him, mock-fierce. "Oooh, you infuriating — I have the sudden urge to bite you to death!"
"Do you have any idea how many heaven's-pride heroes dream of entering my teacher's gate? Like carp swarming a river crossing! Even that Holy Son who was breathing fire at you earlier knelt outside my teacher's door begging for three whole days."
"And teacher never spared him so much as a glance."
Handsome as Luo Fanchen was — and she did rather like the look of him — right now she honestly wanted to crunch him in one bite. He had no idea how rare it was for her teacher to open her golden mouth at all.
The Pontiff's face was an iceberg, empty of expression.
"You want a reason?"
"Yes." Luo Fanchen nodded, standing his ground.
"WHOOSH!"
The summer sun blazed overhead — and the temperature plunged.
Everyone shuddered as one, dread naked on their faces.
An emperor's wrath lays out a million corpses.
The Pontiff's proud figure radiated a pressure deep as the abyss, cold as any hell, phoenix eyes fixed on Luo Fanchen without one grain of feeling in them.
"I, Di Weiyang, have never in this life explained myself to anyone."
Long Tao and the villagers felt needles up every spine. That pressure wasn't even aimed at them, and still their skin iced over.
All they could do was stare desperately at the silent Luo Fanchen. Brother — ancestor! Say something! For the love of heaven, SAY SOMETHING!
The violet-haired Holy Maiden's heart dropped too. Her teacher looked genuinely angry this time. No one had ever defied her teacher. No one.
And then, at the moment past all salvaging, no one expected Di Weiyang to speak again:
"But. Today, I will give you one."
"This Pontiff..."
"...has taken a liking to you."
"Is that reason enough?"
The cold, imperious words fell — and the square went silent as the grave. Never mind Long Tao and the villagers; even the Holy Maiden's lips had parted in blank disbelief.
Everyone was numb.
Impossible. The Holy Maiden knew her teacher — principled to the bone; if she said no explanation, there was no explanation. Ever.
What was HAPPENING today?
"Enough."
Luo Fanchen bowed his head and knelt in the formal rite of apprenticeship.
"Your disciple Luo Fanchen greets his teacher."
Di Weiyang inclined her head — and for one instant, the corner of her lips lifted into a bloom of such grace that the world itself seemed to dim around it. Every soul present stared, struck dumb.
"A flawed talent can yet be mended. A flawed person, no medicine cures."
"Luo Fanchen — that Fourth Enshrined Elder is blind. But in this Pontiff's eyes, you are excellent."
Luo Fanchen caught that fleeting glimpse and his heart actually skipped — but the smile was gone as fast as it came, the frost settling back in place.
The rite done, he quietly let out a breath.
Did he truly not fear death?
Please. Only green fools don't know their own mortality, and Luo Fanchen was no saint — he treasured his little life dearly. In the face of death, his moral baseline could be remarkably flexible.
The truth was, he thought before he did anything. And the facts had just proven he'd gambled right.
First: he genuinely needed her reason, to judge what she wanted a disciple FOR. Caution is how you live long.
Second: his little wife Su Jiu'er was the Demon Empress — even if she couldn't win the fight, she could certainly grab him and run.
Third: who had he been in his last life? A certified grandmaster of the female heart, fluent in every temperament a woman could have.
With an ice-queen's proud, cold nature, the softer and more spineless you act, the less she can stand the sight of you. Flinch from a queen's gaze and you've already been discarded — in a queen's eyes, the weak are all just subjects.
To win a queen, you must out-will her — stronger, more domineering. Not in that brainless, chest-thumping edgelord-protagonist way, of course; the fine technique involved... well, the details would fill a book.
Luo Fanchen shook his head.
Hell's bells. What WAS he thinking about?
Occupational disease from the last life flaring up, most likely. He harbored no treasonous designs on his own master — none whatsoever. Absolutely not at present.
The urgent business was getting his cultivation onto the proper track, working out what his two martial souls really were, and finding where the sheepskin map pointed.
Su Jiu'er had never told him much about soul masters; with his awakening done, he was stepping into wholly new territory.
Ah, this world — the weak had no rights, and without strength you couldn't move an inch. Word was that evil soul masters worked their wickedness in the dark, too. Thankfully he now had a Demon Empress wife and a Female Pontiff master; his personal safety had been... somewhat secured.
"Senior Brother Fanchen~ I'm Bai Yingyue. Just call me Yingyue from now on!"
The girl skipped over on those long fair legs in their black boots, violet ponytail swinging, voice bright as a bell.
Luo Fanchen's mouth twitched. "Senior Brother? Shouldn't you be my Senior Sister?"
"Aiya, same difference, same difference! Being the senior is such a hassle — I've always wanted a Senior Brother to dote on me anyway."
Bai Yingyue stuck out her tongue — then seemed to remember something, and her breath quickened.
"Oh, right! That dragon blood the Fourth Enshrined Elder gave you — throw it away, quickly!"
"Throw away the dragon blood? What do you mean?" Luo Fanchen frowned, puzzled.