Invincible Peak.
Outside the courtyard nearest the main hall.
Luo Yue stood at the gate with Ning Ruan, smiling pleasantly.
Suddenly.
Under Ning Ruan's baffled and faintly alarmed gaze, he slowly withdrew from his storage ring a low-grade spirit stone giving off a pale glimmer of spiritual energy.
And dropped it casually at his feet.
Then, with acting so wooden it was painful to watch, gave a light "Oh?":
"A spirit stone, lying on the ground? I wonder whose it could be?"
Ning Ruan's face went full question marks: "???"
Didn't you just throw that, Eldest Senior Brother?
Or had she gone blind?
But at that very moment.
Light rippled across the courtyard's firmly shut gate.
A figure shot out like an arrow off the string.
And snatched up the spirit stone with a speed that beggared the eye.
"My thanks, Eldest Senior Brother, for recovering the spirit stone I lost so long ago. I shall treat you to tea another day in gratitude."
The voice was languor incarnate.
Only now did Ning Ruan get a clear look at the man.
An extravagantly red robe.
Features almost excessively fine and delicate.
His pretty peach-blossom eyes drooped half-shut, giving him the look of a man about to fall asleep upright.
Luo Yue, evidently long accustomed to this advanced technique of sleeping while standing, merely curled his lips in a smile, voice as mellow as ever:
"Wonderful. Why wait for another day? How about today?"
The instant the words landed.
The young man's nearly-shut eyes snapped wide open, flooded with shock:
"Eldest Senior Brother jests. Poor as I am, where would I find tea to serve you?"
Ning Ruan: "..."
Luo Yue: "..."
...
Ning Ruan did, in the end, get her tea... as if.
Cradling the cup of plain water rippling in her hands, she sank into contemplation.
Meanwhile.
Once Luo Yue made the introductions, the young man's perpetually drooping eyelids finally lifted a fraction. His gaze settled on Ning Ruan and studied her a moment.
Then his fine-boned face arranged itself into three parts conflict and seven parts heartbreak:
"Master took another disciple? Didn't Seventh Junior Brother only just join?
Last time, the welcome gift emptied out my entire family fortune."
Even someone as mild as Luo Yue felt his mouth twitch at that:
"Fourth Junior Brother. The gift you gave Seventh Junior Brother was a Yellow Rank low-grade spirit artifact... fragment. Utterly useless.
Moreover, Seventh Junior Brother joined four years ago."
The young man's face cycled through several colors.
At last, with the air of a man committing to some earth-shaking resolution, he gritted his teeth and drew a supreme-grade spirit stone from his storage ring.
And held it out to Ning Ruan.
Ning Ruan pressed her lips together. She was just about to say there was no need, she had several storage rings full of spirit stones — when the young man's hand darted back.
He re-extended it holding a mid-grade spirit stone of sharply diminished luster.
Ning Ruan: "???"
Another beat of visible agony.
The hand darted back again...
Then, with infinite reluctance, it held out a low-grade spirit stone whose shape and aura Ning Ruan found deeply, deeply familiar:
"Little Sister, your senior brother is truly, honestly poor!
Don't judge this spirit stone by its grade — it's the last of the savings I couldn't bear to spend all these years."
Ning Ruan started to speak, stopped, started again: "..."
Exactly how blind would she have to be to miss that this was the very stone Luo Yue had tossed on the ground earlier?
She drew a deep breath.
And squeezed out a thin smile, gaze full of a strange pity:
"I had no idea Fourth Senior Brother's finances were so strained. This spirit stone... you should keep it."
She had left home carrying the entire yield of a spirit stone mine... if she actually took this stone off him, she wouldn't be able to look at herself.
What kind of millionaire snatches a beggar's last coin... goodness, she'd very nearly accepted it.
Pei Jingyu retracted the half-offered low-grade spirit stone without a heartbeat's hesitation, beaming from ear to ear:
"Little Sister is a good person."
Ding! One Good Person Card, delivered.
Ning Ruan: "..."
Luo Yue could no longer bear to watch.
Pei Jingyu couldn't read the meaning in Ning Ruan's gaze — but one thing he did know.
Little Sister... was quite possibly genuinely pitying them.
Pitying all of Invincible Peak... after all, Little Sister was seriously loaded...
Seeing that his Fourth Junior Brother — that ten-thousand-year-old turtle spirit of a man — had already re-drooped his eyelids and appeared to be drifting off, Luo Yue hastily cleared his throat and raised his voice:
"Fourth Junior Brother, I hadn't finished. Meeting your Little Sister was one matter. There is another, and it's important."
Pei Jingyu had already melted fully into his chair, on the very brink of sleep:
"Eldest Senior Brother, important matters and me don't mix. Find someone else.
Today's physical activity has already exceeded ten ordinary days' worth.
I truly do not wish to move again."
Ning Ruan: "..."
Following "miserly" and "illegally good-looking," Ning Ruan appended a fresh label to her beautiful Fourth Senior Brother: lazy.
Lazy to the point of transcendence. The man had unlocked the skill of falling asleep standing up.
Luo Yue took no offense, voice warm as ever:
"But Master has returned.
That tremor that shook Invincible Peak earlier? Master's doing, I expect.
Master is very angry about our peak's impending disbandment.
Which means..."
Pei Jingyu pried his eyelids up with visible effort. "Which means?"
Luo Yue's smile turned positively radiant:
"Which means, in Master's words, I'm afraid you all are going to have to take the field."
"..."
...
After leaving Fourth Senior Brother's courtyard, Ning Ruan couldn't hold back a sigh:
"Eldest Senior Brother, I think I understand now why our Invincible Peak is facing disbandment."
"No. You still don't understand enough." Luo Yue shook his head with great solemnity.
Ning Ruan: "..."
The time it takes to drink a cup of tea later.
Ning Ruan stood before yet another courtyard, this one blanketed in fog.
Feeling the wildly chaotic ripples of layered arrays ahead, she couldn't help staring:
"Eldest Senior Brother, is this our peak's forbidden ground?"
Luo Yue shook his head. "This is your Third Senior Brother's residence."
Catching his Little Sister's increasingly peculiar expression, he added, smiling:
"Your Third Senior Brother... is truly a decent sort. His guard is simply set a touch high.
Hence the ninety-nine arrays around his home."
Ning Ruan: ...Ninety-nine arrays...
"A touch high"? This was the reigning King of Lying Low.
Luo Yue produced a voice-transmission jade talisman from his storage ring with the ease of long practice, primed it with spiritual power, and said gently:
"Third Junior Brother. Urgent news. Please come out — we must speak."
Light flashed across the talisman.
A few breaths later.
The fog cloaking the courtyard abruptly thinned.
A man in a green robe emerged from the gate and saluted Luo Yue with cupped hands. "Eldest Senior Brother."
Unlike Fourth Senior Brother Pei Jingyu's almost excessive prettiness, this man was handsome too — but utterly self-effacing with it.
"A blade's edge sheathed within" was a phrase for describing temperament.
Yet for the first time, Ning Ruan had met someone whose face and bearing both managed to live up to it.
Worthy of the King of Lying Low... Ning Ruan silently affixed the label to her Third Senior Brother.
Luo Yue answered the salute with a smile and gestured at Ning Ruan, ushering the formalities along:
"This is Junior Sister Ning, Master's newest disciple — the only light-element spirit master on our Invincible Peak."
Mm... also its only female disciple.
"A light-element spirit master?" The faint smile on Third Senior Brother's face flickered into surprise as he looked up — his gaze catching on the eye-drawing black sword casket at her back — before quickly settling back to neutral.
From his storage ring he drew a palm-sized banner and offered it to her with a slight nod:
"Greetings, Junior Sister. Your welcome gift: a Speed-Boost Array. Step inside it and your movement techniques will be greatly enhanced."
Ning Ruan — by now fully institutionalized into Invincible Peak's welcome-gift customs — accepted the little banner, green from tip to tail, with a dazed expression, and sank into thought: ...
She must have misheard.
Speed-boost?
Boost whose speed?
Arrays could grant buffs now?