He Kissed Me
He finally retrieved the shabby clothes that had been stuffed in the corner of the cabinet gathering dust ever since he discovered them.
The hand, plumped up with newly formed flesh, tightly grasped the matching inner wear. Looking at the matching outer garments hanging on the small rack, he suddenly felt a bit at a loss.
Master was right outside the screen. Should he wear this clothing or not?
He couldn’t possibly just stand here and drag it out until Master left.
Children shouldn’t drink too much tea, as it easily affects sleep and growth and development, and can also inhibit the body’s digestion and absorption of certain nutrients, leading to malnutrition.
Therefore, the refreshing and delicious mountain spring water was always prepared in Duan Wangyue’s room, which could be simply warmed with a small stove when the weather was cold.
While waiting in the outer room, Xiao Yuan was not idle either; he picked up a book on demon race foundation-building to study. Picking up his tea cup and lowering his gaze, he saw that the water had already bottomed out, and only then did he realize with a start that a long time had passed.
The book lay open on the table, its page corners slightly rolled.
The little cub was taking an unusually long time to get dressed.
Through the screen, the silhouette of the little cub could be vaguely seen. The original body’s childhood clothing looked nice enough, it was just a bit too complicated to wear.
He didn’t know what style of clothing the little cub had picked out, but if he was fumbling around for this long without coming out, he must have grabbed something difficult to put on.
Just as he was about to stand up to check out the situation, he saw the little cub emerging.
He was trying hard to keep a straight face and maintain a calm appearance, but the tips of his ears were suffused with a suspicious pale red.
His walking posture was also somewhat stiff and unnatural, resembling a shy, timid young girl.
Interesting.
Xiao Yuan sat calmly on the stool, completely lacking his previous worry that his disciple might have run into some trouble, and leisurely poured himself another cup of water.
The little dragon cub was good in every way, except for one flaw: he liked to bottle everything up inside. That needed to be changed.
Only a crying child gets candy. Stroking the corner of the book with one hand, if you want something, you have to say it.
Duan Wangyue did indeed feel rather unnatural. The tail behind him, which had previously felt distant from him, seemed to sense this awkwardness as well, no longer acting up and instead hanging obediently behind him.
After coming to a stop in front of Xiao Yuan, he timidly and softly called out, “Master.”
Aside from those two sets of disciple robes he had grabbed first, all of Duan Wangyue’s clothes had been altered by Xiao Yuan’s own hands, so he naturally knew clearly which clothes had a slit left open in the back.
The clothes Duan Wangyue was wearing were moon-white in color, simple and atmospheric in style, with a circle of auspicious cloud patterns embroidered with silver thread along the cuffs, which matched his identity as a little dragon very well.
“Come here, let me take a look.”
Xiao Yuan gently beckoned. Watching the little dragon cub awkwardly approach him, he gave a large wave of his hand and effortlessly scooped the soft little dragon cub into his arms.
Having been carried back and forth these past few days, Duan Wangyue transitioned from initial discomfort to being completely accustomed to it with seamless naturalness.
Catching the familiar, cool fragrance of wintersweet, his anxious and uneasy mood was soothed. Duan Wangyue nestled in Master’s arms, his tail swaying leisurely.
Dragons were probably a race that expressed their emotions through their tails, and whose tails were mostly beyond the control of their main bodies for the most part.
The leisurely swaying tail unconsciously wound around Xiao Yuan’s forearm, the tip of the tail twitching from time to time to assert its presence.
Noticing this, Xiao Yuan even held his breath for a fraction. Sure enough, opening a slit in the clothes and letting a disciple with a tail wear them was the correct decision.
The hour was getting late, and he would probably have to wake up early tomorrow. Xiao Yuan stood up holding his disciple, walked over to the bed, gently placed him down on the soft mattress, met his disciple’s eyes, and said softly, “Sleep.”
Duan Wangyue blinked, responding in a soft, milky voice, “Okay, Master, good night.”
“Good night.”
Outside the window, a young bamboo could not bear the weight of the fine snow pressing upon it, and a drift fell with a faint pattering sound.
Duan Wangyue looked in puzzlement at the Master sitting by the bedside who showed no sign of leaving. Not knowing whether he had recovered from his earlier awkwardness yet, his mind went blank for a moment, and he silently scooted a bit further away.
To his surprise, the moment he moved, his tail throbbed with pain. It was as if he suddenly realized something, and he whipped back the tail that had somehow wrapped around Master’s arm.
He felt as though his entire body was smoking, thoroughly embarrassed by his own thoughts and actions.
Master hadn’t wanted to sleep in the same bed with him at all; he had simply been trapped because he was tangled up in his disobedient tail and couldn’t leave.
When the tail wrapped around his arm was pulled back, Xiao Yuan felt a hint of regret. Whether due to his cultivation technique or his constitution, Xiao Yuan’s body temperature always leaned low.
Although he wasn’t cold, Xiao Yuan still liked holding something warm to warm up his hands.
The little dragon cub was piping hot, soft and warm to hold, completely suiting his preferences.
After tucking in the quilt for his disciple and turning to leave, he heard his disciple say, “Master, good night.”
Thus, Xiao Yuan suddenly recalled a parent-child interaction video he had once played for a patient back at the hospital, and he leaned down to kiss Duan Wangyue on the forehead.
“Good night.”
Xiao Yuan was raising a child for the first time as well and had no experience; everything relied on exploration and sudden flashes of inspiration.
Believing he had given a reassuring bedtime kiss to the little cub who didn’t dare sleep alone, he returned to his own room, lay down, and prepared to sleep.
Duan Wangyue was somewhat dazed. He didn’t know how much time passed, as his sensitive hearing told him that a few more clusters of snow had dropped patter-patter from the bamboo, before he finally snapped back to reality.
He reached out and lightly touched the forehead that still seemed to carry a trace of cool softness. The moment his fingertips brushed against it, he pulled back abruptly as if scalded.
Master, he…
His crow-feather-like eyelashes fluttered, concealing the emotions in his eyes.
He kissed me.
This was the first time anyone had ever kissed him. The feeling was quite nice.
Early the next morning, Xiao Ziyu’s communication paper cranes piled up like a small mountain on the table. Seeing yet another paper crane fluttering its paper wings and flying over tremulously, Duan Wangyue chewed the fermented rice dumplings in his mouth and mentally counted: ninety-nine.
Was First Senior Uncle that worried that Master wouldn’t go to that so-called disciple-recruitment grand assembly? In the time it took to eat just this one breakfast, he had already transmitted nearly a hundred paper cranes.
After finishing the dumpling in his mouth, Duan Wangyue scooped another spoonful into his mouth, his eyes squinting into crescent moons of pleasure.
Even Qin Ke, who had grown familiar in Xiao Yuan’s quarters, had a small teacup of spiritual rice and was eating happily on the table.
Seeing the paper crane mountain wobbling precariously, Xiao Yuan finally summoned one paper crane to check. If his Senior Brother Xiao Ziyu lived in the modern world, he would definitely be an expert who could spam hundreds of identical messages on WeChat in a split second.
That entire pile of paper cranes in the mountain transmitted only one matter: telling him not to forget to go to the disciple-recruitment assembly.
Compared to the very first paper crane he received in the morning, it had not a single word more, nor a single word less.
The hundredth paper crane fluttered tremulously across the barrier. Holding his disciple, with the little red bird snuggled in the disciple’s arms, Xiao Yuan teleported right to the paper crane mountain gate, intercepting the paper crane just in time to keep it from landing on the pile and adding to the burden.
The Sword Sect’s once-every-five-years disciple-recruitment grand assembly was naturally magnificent beyond compare. The trial content for each recruitment assembly varied, but only one content remained identical: the Stairway to Immortality.
Only after passing all nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine steps of the Stairway to Immortality did the journey truly begin.
The remaining trial contents were designed by the peaks’ lords of the first through sixth peaks. Despite the eager mortals flexing their muscles in great numbers, fewer than a hundred were ultimately accepted into the Sword Sect.
The harshness of selecting disciples made it the only immortal sect in the realm of cultivation, and also the only sect whose disciples within the same cultivation realm could fight ten opponents and still retreat unscathed.
Right now, outside the Stairway to Immortality, numerous mortals hoping to step onto the immortal path were gathered. The dispatched disciples stood on flying swords high in the air, listening to the excited chatter of the mortals below, and silently exchanged glances, all seeing mutual commiseration in each other’s eyes.
One of the trial checkpoints for this disciple-recruitment assembly had been set up by the Sixth Peak’s Lord, Immortal Lord Qingyuan.
It was said that the Sect Master had promised numerous benefits, coercing and bribing him into it.
In past years, Immortal Lord Qingyuan would only watch and never participated in these things. At first, the two of them felt that Immortal Lord Qingyuan was simply infinitely better compared to those peak lords who set up life-or-death trials.
That was until they had the fortune to hear senior brothers and sisters who had happened to encounter Immortal Lord Qingyuan’s checkpoint say that the terror of those other peak lords fell far short of Immortal Lord Qingyuan’s.
Immortal Lord Qingyuan used to participate in designing checkpoints alongside others, but after the number of disciples he accepted dwindled lower and lower, he stopped participating much, only joining once out of every ten recruitment assemblies.
The two greeting disciples evidently thought of this twist. Looking at the mortals below full of yearning reverence for the immortal gate, well, how should they put it? Viewed from another angle, they were actually quite lucky.
When Xiao Yuan brought his disciple to the First Peak, Xiao Ziyu and the other peak lords were gathered together folding paper cranes. While folding, a pretty young maiden said, “Doing this, will it really call Junior Brother Ah Yuan out from the Sixth Peak?”
She was none other than the Fourth Peak’s Lord, Yaoyu. All the disciples housed in the Fourth Peak were female, specializing in spirit beast breeding and beast taming.
“Call him a few more times, and he’s bound to come out.”
The Fifth Peak’s Lord, Shang Qijiu, snapped open his folding fan. The umbrella surface painted with a landscape scene covered his mouth and nose, revealing only a pair of upturned phoenix eyes, the outer corners of each eye dotted with a reddish-crimson micro-mole.
“If he still won’t come out, we can go to the Sixth Peak and cut down an Yixue plum tree.”
“Cut down what?”
Shang Qijiu snapped his fan shut with a snap, his wrist turning to transform the fan into a paper crane, and blurted out, “We can lure him out of the Sixth Peak.”
He had been craving the Yixue plum trees on Xiao Yuan’s peak for a very long time. Making fan ribs out of them would definitely look gorgeous, and they possessed a pervasive, subtle fragrance throughout their entire body.
It was a pity his Junior Brother guarded those Yixue plum trees so tightly. He had drooped over them for ages without managing to get a single branch.
Sigh.
Piling the paper cranes onto the ground, Shang Qijiu sighed. He must have fallen lovesick for the Yixue plum trees on Junior Brother Qingyuan’s peak, otherwise how else could he smell their faint, cool fragrance?
“Does Senior Brother like Yixue plums that much?”
Xiao Yuan held the little dragon cub as he sat down on a stool nearby, watching his Sect Master Senior Brother and the other senior brothers and sisters sitting on the ground folding paper cranes. He suddenly understood why his Senior Brother’s paper-folding speed was so fast.
He had roped the other senior brothers and sisters into folding them together.
How did that saying go? Seeing this scene, he couldn’t catch a glimpse of the Sword Sect’s future at all.
Xiao Ziyu reacted the fastest, flicking his sleeve to sweep the paper cranes piled on the ground into his sleeve-universe, patting his hem as he stood up and said, “Junior Brother, you’re finally here!”
That acting was far too fake.
The First Peak belonged to Xiao Ziyu, and the protective array of the peak was also set up by him. Others might not know who arrived, but he knew with crystal clarity.
Wasn’t he just trying to exploit a few peak lords to fold paper cranes without saying it outright?
A delivery paper crane obsessive dream-man.