Ning Ruan concluded:
If half of Seventh Senior Brother's mouth could be transplanted onto socially-anxious Fifth Senior Brother's face,
the entire world would become a far more harmonious place.
"Ahem. Fifth Junior Brother and Seventh Junior Brother are still carrying injuries. Perhaps Little Sister should apply her healing arts first."
As Eldest Senior Brother, Luo Yue naturally couldn't allow the awkwardness to continue unchecked.
Ning Ruan nodded along cooperatively. "Eldest Senior Brother is right."
A hard-won healing opportunity, this.
She refused to waste it on Seventh Senior Brother's mouth.
"Th-then... sorry to trouble... Little... Little Sister."
Fifth Senior Brother Liang Xiuxiu hung his head, blushing furiously.
Paired with that unbearably soft face, Ning Ruan had to fight the urge to reach out and squish it.
Seriously, though... how exactly had a senior brother this well-behaved and the terminally venom-tongued Seventh Senior Brother managed to wound each other in a spar?
Seventh Senior Brother sat down cross-legged on the spot — chin still raised.
It was a rather handsome face, truly. He simply insisted on looking at people through his nostrils:
"Weak though you are, anyone admitted to our Invincible Peak must possess excellent talent. Very well — you may heal me."
Ning Ruan: ...
She was a healer. A HEALER!
Healers do not draw swords on their patients!
She drew a deep breath.
Then, following her memory of a certain light-element cultivation method she'd wheedled out of Seventh Dad, she set her spiritual power in motion.
Moments later.
The pure white radiance unique to light-element spirit masters bloomed over her right hand.
With studied calm, Ning Ruan extended it over the two men.
A pale gauze of light settled over them both.
Seventh Senior Brother Yan Liang frowned slightly, raised chin dipping toward her:
"Junior Sister. I hear you are already a Third Realm light-element spirit master.
I suggest you increase the healing intensity considerably. At this rate, how long is this supposed to take? We would recover faster eating pills."
Ning Ruan's small hand trembled — then quickly steadied. "...Then, shall I begin in earnest?"
Yan Liang arched a brow:
"Hold on. Little Sister, why is there hesitation involved in healing an injury?
Are you a light-element spirit master or not?
Don't tell me that in all these years, you have never healed anyone?"
Ning Ruan: "..."
She unleashed the healing art at full power anyway.
Within moments, Liang Xiuxiu's and Yan Liang's auras began to visibly stabilize.
The wounds inside them really were knitting at speed.
Ning Ruan quietly exhaled at last.
It seemed her healing art was behaving itself today.
However.
The relief lasted exactly one moment.
Then pure alarm broke across Yan Liang's insufferably proud face:
"Wait wait wait wait!
Little Sister, stop! Stop right now!
Are you certain you're healing me and not secretly attempting my assassination?"
Ning Ruan snatched her hand back, projecting perfect calm while internally panicking at maximum throttle:
"Healing. Obviously."
"Like hell you are!" Yan Liang very nearly sprayed a mouthful of blood. "The injuries I spent all this effort recovering from — one treatment from you and they're WORSE!"
This wasn't healing — this was treating a man to death!
Liang Xiuxiu said nothing.
But he was visibly not doing well either.
Ning Ruan sighed and abandoned her defense.
She tapped the jade belt at her waist.
And promptly produced two green fruits dense with spiritual energy, offering one each to Liang Xiuxiu and Yan Liang.
The latter glanced at the fruit — and shock flashed across his eyes:
"Qingxuan Fruit?"
Luo Yue too looked at the fruit in astonishment. "Spiritual energy this rich... it must be five hundred years old at minimum."
Never mind five hundred — even a hundred-year Qingxuan Fruit was a supreme healing treasure, as exquisite as it was rare.
Then again — coming from Little Sister, it somehow seemed perfectly reasonable.
This was, after all, the person who hauled out lightning-struck wood by the armful.
Yan Liang accepted the fruit. Chin still raised:
"The Qingxuan Fruit is excellent. But Little Sister, what is going on with you?
Aren't you a light-element spirit master?
How does even your healing malfunction?
This won't do at all. You must spend more time in closed-door training.
If the training doesn't kill you, train like it's trying to!"
Had she just encountered an interdimensional Grind King?
Ning Ruan pressed her lips thin — and flipped out two more Qingxuan Fruits of undiminished quality.
"..." Yan Liang nearly choked. He opened his mouth —
and watched his Little Sister produce yet ANOTHER two Qingxuan Fruits.
Yan Liang: ...
He truly deserved death. Blaming his own Little Sister over such a trifle.
Little Sister was so well-behaved. Clearly none of it had been on purpose.
Perhaps... perhaps it was his INJURY that... hadn't been cooperative enough?
And in that one moment of hesitation —
another premium Qingxuan Fruit had materialized in his hand.
Face working through several complicated expressions, Yan Liang opened with:
"I truly deserve death. Little Sister, I admit it: your healing is actually superb.
You are a formidable light-element spirit master.
In fact, on this entire peak, I judge your talent second only to mine."
As if.
He had now told every white lie allotted to him for this lifetime.
Ning Ruan: ...
There was no need to force the compliments quite this hard.
In truth, she had absolute confidence in her light-element talent.
But for reasons known only to the heavens, whenever she cast a healing art, it crashed.
Not every time, admittedly.
But call it eight times out of ten.
It was supposed to be HEALING.
Yet her healer's touch might as well have been venomous.
It kept healing people in reverse.
Hence the Qingxuan Fruits... she'd come prepared from the start.
"Little Sister... don't... don't be sad. This was an accident," Fifth Senior Brother Liang Xiuxiu offered in a small voice.
Luo Yue, meanwhile, mused aloud:
"Little Sister hasn't yet visited the sect's Scripture Pavilion to receive a cultivation method, has she?
I suspect the problem may lie with Little Sister's previous method.
Perhaps a change of method will fix everything?"
A light-element spirit master healing people in reverse — he had genuinely never heard of such a thing.
If he hadn't witnessed it today with his own eyes,
he'd have found it very hard to believe.
Having turned it over from every angle, the method was the only possible culprit.
It could hardly be that Little Sister herself was poisonous, could it?
The more Ning Ruan listened, the more sense it made.
She bade her three senior brothers an extremely perfunctory farewell.
Then immediately commandeered Invincible Peak's Scarlet Feather Kite and made for the Crimson Heaven Sect's main peak.
The Scripture Pavilion stood there.
It was her first visit since joining the sect.
Having long since memorized the sect rules, she walked — under the bizarre stares of countless disciples —
straight through the transport array and up to the seventh floor without an instant's hesitation.
"Hold on, who is that? Why is SHE allowed on the seventh floor?"
"Some peak's direct-disciple senior sister, surely? Only Peak Lords, elders, and direct disciples may enter the seventh and eighth floors."
"But she isn't even wearing direct-disciple robes."
"...Wait. Come to think of it, of all the peaks, only Xueyang Peak's direct disciples never wear the uniform. That Senior Brother Pei Jingyu from the challenge stages has never once worn it."
"So that one just now was also Xueyang Peak?"
"..."
Ning Ruan paid the chatter behind her no mind.
She was gazing, with complete earnestness, at the white-haired old man on the seventh floor who called himself the Pavilion's gatekeeper, and her tone could not have been more serious:
"I am quite certain. I would like you to recommend me a light-element cultivation method, Senior."
The old man sat in a corner of the seventh floor, a Xun rabbit leg in hand, eating with tremendous relish:
"Little girl, have you lost your mind?
You walk in, ignore the entire collection, and insist that I recommend something?
I'm a washed-up old wreck reduced to guarding a door — and you'd trust ME to pick your cultivation method?
Are you truly not afraid of qi deviation?"
Ning Ruan's expression didn't flicker:
"Crimson Heaven Sect rule number one hundred twenty-three thousand, nine hundred fifty-six clearly states: the elder who keeps the Scripture Pavilion bears the responsibility of recommending suitable cultivation methods to disciples."
The old man: ...
Where the hell did this blockhead come from? Who memorizes THAT rule?