Yun Fuzhao took the seventh-grade Rejuvenation Pill—a reward from Wei Heyu—out of her storage bag.
This elixir could stop bleeding, resolve bruising, and restore Primordial Qi.
As a seventh-grade elixir, it could fetch several hundred top-grade spiritual stones at a pawn shop.
Yun Fuzhao carefully pried open Yu Ze’s mouth, stuffed the elixir inside, and cupped his chin, working his jaw to make him chew.
The boy’s face was a bloody mess.
With all the blood and mud mixed together, there wasn’t a single patch of clear skin left.
Yun Fuzhao recalled that in the novel, he was described as fiendishly handsome and wickedly charming, with a face that could captivate the masses.
‘Looking at this grimy, blackened mess, I really can’t tell.’
Once she saw the elixir had mostly dissolved, Yun Fuzhao wiped her fingers on him and prepared to leave.
But the man on the ground suddenly shot up like a reanimated corpse and grabbed her ankle.
Startled, Yun Fuzhao accidentally kicked him a few times.
“…”
The young man on the ground opened his ink-black eyes.
Like a predator lying in wait in the mountains, he stared at her with deadly intensity.
His gaze made Yun Fuzhao’s skin crawl.
‘The great villain lives up to his name,’ she thought.
‘But the great villain hasn’t matured yet.
Right now, he’s just a helpless kitten.’
Yun Fuzhao squatted down.
“I saved you.
How are you going to repay me?”
Yu Ze remained motionless, his eyes simply fixed on her.
His eyes were dark and bright.
His pupils were so large that very little of the whites could be seen, giving him a strange, almost inhuman look.
“I fed you a seventh-grade Rejuvenation Pill.
Seventh-grade!” Yun Fuzhao stressed.
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch in this world.
You have to pay up.”
She held out her hand.
“Since we’re from the same sect, I’ll give you a discount.
Let’s just say one thousand top-grade spiritual stones.”
Yu Ze observed her impassively.
The woman before him had delicate brows, clear eyes, and a distant, unapproachable aura.
She looked like a respectable young lady, yet her words were so shameless.
A seventh-grade Rejuvenation Pill was expensive, but not *that* expensive.
She was clearly extorting him.
His suspicions about her eased a little.
It seemed she wasn’t in league with those people; she just wanted to fleece him.
Yu Ze managed a pained twitch of his fingers.
He wanted to sit up, but his entire body ached as if it had been broken into pieces.
He shook his head, his dark eyes fixed on her.
Yun Fuzhao eyed him suspiciously.
‘The original story never mentioned him being mute.
This brat is definitely putting on an act.’
She had only been talking, anyway.
She knew perfectly well that Yu Ze didn’t have any Spirit Stones now.
He would only have them after he returned to the Demon Realm and became the Demon Lord.
Yun Fuzhao helped him up.
“Alright, alright.
You obviously don’t have any Spirit Stones on you right now.
I’ll let you put it on a tab.”
Yu Ze’s leg was broken; he couldn’t walk at all.
She couldn’t imagine what kind of grudge those people had against him to be so ruthless.
Since she was already halfway through saving him, it didn’t feel right to just abandon him here.
Deciding to see it through, she simply hoisted him over her shoulder.
Yu Ze was about her age but nearly a head taller, making the sight of him being carried like this look particularly ridiculous.
Yun Fuzhao was now at the Spirit Severing Great Perfection stage and had the strength of an ox.
Carrying a skinny youth was nothing to her.
She could have even carried him with one arm, but she refrained out of consideration for his pride.
After all, she could feel the man on her shoulder tense up, his fingers gripping tightly onto her clothes.
After walking for a while, she put him down as they neared the Disciple Residence.
The men’s and women’s quarters were separate; she couldn’t just take him back to her own rooms.
But on second thought, Yu Ze was a loner in the Wuya Sword Sect.
He didn’t like to socialize, and the other disciples avoided him.
If she left him here, no one would likely pay him any mind.
Thinking of the twenty thousand cultivation points Xi Muzhe had rewarded her with, Yun Fuzhao sighed, resigned herself to her fate, and carried the man to the Healing Pavilion.
When Elder Qingshan of the Healing Pavilion saw how gravely injured Yu Ze was, his expression changed.
“Quick, quick, put him here.”
“What happened?” Elder Qingshan asked with a grave expression.
“How was he injured?”
Yun Fuzhao recounted everything she had overheard.
As he listened, Elder Qingshan’s expression shifted several times.
“This is simply outrageous!”
Qingshan patted Yu Ze’s shoulder and said solemnly, “I will report this to the Sect Master and get justice for you!”
Yu Ze kept his head bowed, still not saying a word.
Having delivered him, Yun Fuzhao considered her task complete.
Without a backward glance, she hurried back to enjoy her chicken stew.
Seeing Yu Ze still gazing in the direction Yun Fuzhao had left, Qingshan spoke up.
“Her name is Yun Fuzhao.
She was once the Sect Master’s head disciple, but after a few mishaps, she became an Outer Disciple, just like you.”
At this, Qingshan sighed.
“She’s a good kid, just down on her luck…”
Yu Ze slowly retracted his gaze and went back to being as silent as a block of wood.
“Senior Sister Yun, where did you run off to?
If you took any longer, Duan Wenhao would have finished all the soup himself!”
The moment Yun Fuzhao returned to the courtyard, she saw Duan Wenhao squatting on the stone steps, holding a bowl of chicken soup and savoring it with great relish.
They had set up their cooking pot in a courtyard within the Disciple Residence.
The area was spacious, separating the men’s and women’s quarters, with a high wall running down the middle.
That rascal, Duan Wenhao, had probably smelled the fragrant chicken soup and climbed over the wall.
The Inner Sect Disciples’ residences were a long way from here.
His nose was truly sharp to have smelled it from that distance.
“Duan Wenhao!” Yun Fuzhao squeezed in next to him, bumping him aside.
She chuckled.
“You’ve got some nerve drinking our soup.
Weren’t you the one complaining about the chicken?”
That rascal Duan Wenhao was shamelessly adaptable.
“That was then, this is now.
I was complaining about the chicken, not the soup.
What does one have to do with the other?”
He took another slurp and sighed contentedly.
“Delicious!”
“…”
Song Ying didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
She handed Yun Fuzhao a porcelain bowl with a large chicken leg inside.
She winked and whispered to Yun Fuzhao, “I saved this for you.”
Yun Fuzhao’s heart warmed, and she was so moved that she practically started drooling.
The three of them held their bowls, squatting together on the stone steps.
All of them looked relaxed and content.
Song Ying said, “Aren’t you afraid the other Inner Sect Disciples will gossip about you for hanging out with us?”
Duan Wenhao was in the middle of chewing a piece of chicken, so his words were muffled.
“Let them dare!”
After swallowing the chicken, he looked at Yun Fuzhao with a fawning expression.
“With Eldest Senior Sister around, no one would dare gossip about me.”
Yun Fuzhao remained unmoved.
“Don’t call me that.”
Duan Wenhao was a world-class suck-up.
“Eldest Senior Sister, you will always be the Sect’s Eldest Senior Sister!
No one can shake your supreme position in my heart!
No one!”
Song Ying was speechless.
“Speaking of which, it’s not just the Inner Sect Disciples.
Even the Direct Disciples have to be wary of you now,” Duan Wenhao said with a look of pure adoration.
“You’ve bonded with the Wuji Sword, reached the Spirit Severing Great Perfection, and killed a Third rank Magical Beast in a single blow.
Tell me, which of the Direct Disciples can do any of that?”
“If you ask me, even that so-called genius, Yu Nian’er, is nothing special compared to you.”
Yun Fuzhao’s expression remained placid.
‘He’s killing me with praise.
This is definitely it.’
As Duan Wenhao continued to ramble on, Song Ying’s hand suddenly shot out, grabbed a small white snake, and held it up in front of his face.
His eyes immediately squeezed shut, and he passed out cold.
Seeing that he had also fainted from fright, Yun Fuzhao felt a little less pathetic about her own fears.
Song Ying had grown up in the countryside and wasn’t afraid of such things.
She examined the little snake curiously.
“Where’d this little guy come from?
It doesn’t look like it has a Grade.”
Yun Fuzhao nodded.
“It doesn’t have a Grade, just a normal snake.
I just found it in the grass.
It looked pitiful, so I brought it back.”
Song Ying didn’t suspect a thing.
She put the snake aside, and as if remembering something, she said to Yun Fuzhao, “I heard that after the ceremony the other day, Yu Nian’er was heartbroken, and to console her, the Sect Master gifted her a Seventh Rank Snow Spirit Deer.”
A hint of envy appeared in her eyes.
“I heard that deer is gorgeous.
They say when it runs, it leaves behind a trail of sparkling snowflakes…”