Yun Cai: “I just don’t understand. Even if they lured Senior out, what could they do? Attack him?”
“No, that’s not right.” Before Yun Cai could finish, she denied her own idea. “I saw them advance and retreat in an orderly fashion, in a continuous stream. Their escape route didn’t seem to be prepared for us. I think they planned to lure Senior out and then quickly retreat. So why did they want to lure him out?”
Yun Cai lowered her gaze slightly, pondering for a moment before saying, “I heard from my father that it’s time for Five Spirits Mountain to recruit disciples again. I saw a few children outside, also wearing the disciple uniforms of Five Spirits Mountain. Could it be that Senior is in charge this year?”
Yan Qingxi: “Correct.”
“That would make sense,” Yun Cai said. “Perhaps they wanted to lure the tiger away from the mountain, draw Senior away, and take the opportunity to find where the new disciples are, then attack this batch of new disciples to sever a generation of our Five Spirits Mountain?”
2333: “…”
2333 felt the female protagonist was done for.
Wen Qianshu coughed twice and said, “It’s all my fault. My skills are lacking. In the end, I failed to shake them off and exposed Martial Uncle’s location.”
Yun Cai: “It’s not your fault, Senior Sister Yan. It’s really our incompetence that burdened you—”
Yan Qingxi raised his hand, and both of them fell silent.
Yan Qingxi said, “Xiao Shuang.”
Wen Qianshu: “Here.”
Yan Qingxi: “You’ve been in seclusion for many days, and this is the result? They didn’t even deal a fatal blow, and you couldn’t retreat unscathed?”
Yun Cai: “That’s not what happened, Senior—”
Wen Qianshu: “It is this disciple’s fault. Please punish me, Martial Uncle.”
Yan Qingxi: “Of course you’ll be punished. You’ll be punished for your recklessness, for clearly being unable to hold on yet refusing to ask for help. When we get back, I will report everything to the Head and ask her to punish you.”
Wen Qianshu: “Yes.”
“Treat your wounds here first,” Yan Qingxi said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
After speaking, the color of his sleeves faded, and a water mist rose around him. In a short while, he disappeared, leaving only a few jade vials behind.
Wen Qianshu picked them up and found they were all top-grade healing pills. She pulled down her top, revealing her shoulder, where several claw marks were visible. The skin and flesh were split open, emitting a black aura.
Yun Cai reached out and took the vial from her hand. “How could it be your fault? If it’s your fault, isn’t it even more my fault?”
Endless Moon had just dispersed and was about to take the medicine vial when Wen Qianshu calmly condensed it back. “What does it have to do with you? In the end, it was my negligence.”
This point was indeed correct, but it wasn’t Wen Qianshu’s negligence; she did it on purpose.
Canglan Courtyard disciples were skilled with water, able to seep through any crack, making them naturally adept at escaping. The attackers were an aquatic demon clan; while it might be easy to block the disciples of Yanyun Sky, trapping someone from Canglan Courtyard was an impossible fantasy. Furthermore, Yan Chengshuang’s cultivation was profound. Even a dabbler like Wen Qianshu could have managed to escape more or less unscathed.
Wen Qianshu could have dodged the blow aimed at Yun Cai, but she deliberately moved forward to take it. Yun Cai’s cultivation was still shallow, and she wasn’t from Canglan Courtyard, so naturally, she couldn’t tell. Yan Qingxi, however, was different. But he wasn’t on the scene and had no suspicion of Yan Chengshuang, so he just assumed her secluded cultivation had gone poorly and her skills had regressed.
2333 didn’t understand. “What’s the use of this self-injury ploy? You’re just getting punished for nothing.”
“Who said it was a self-injury ploy?” Wen Qianshu said to 2333. “Besides, even if it were, it wasn’t for Yan Qingxi. It was for Yun Cai.”
2333: “Yun Cai?”
“Then what’s the use? She’s only a paper’s breadth away from the truth. One little poke and she’ll guess it.”
Wen Qianshu: “Exactly. But the places that can be figured out with a little poke are also the easiest to poke in the wrong direction. By getting injured, I can claim to be ‘outmatched,’ and then logically ‘reveal’ to the demon clan that this is where the new disciples are.”
“When Five Spirits Mountain recruits disciples, they set up a barrier to obscure the location. Logically, the demon clan should only know Yan Qingxi’s general whereabouts, not the specific location.”
“In the original book, Yan Qingxi’s cultivation is profound; he doesn’t seem like someone who would expose his whereabouts. Perhaps that’s why Yun Cai guessed that someone from the demon clan might have infiltrated the farmstead and knew where Yan Qingxi was. But it’s different now. Now Yan Qingxi is here—”
“Because I’m the one who revealed it.”
“Yun Cai is very smart, but right now, she’ll only think the demon clan wants to wipe out Five Spirits Mountain’s new recruits. She won’t think about a spy. Doesn’t that make a lot of sense?”
“It makes a little sense—” 2333 said, “What sense does it make! The female protagonist can’t enter Five Spirits Mountain now.”
Great. Yun Cai wouldn’t think there was a spy, but the spy didn’t get in either.
Wen Qianshu: “What’s so difficult about that? Since I’ve already exposed this village to the demon clan, Yan Qingxi will definitely think the demons outside are eyeing it covetously. Once we leave, they’re likely to attack the mortals here to vent their anger.”
“And why would these mortals be implicated? Because of me, Yan Chengshuang, his martial niece.”
“Given Yan Qingxi’s personality, he will definitely find a way to take these villagers with him, settle them, and ensure their safety. He might even take in one or two children and bring them to Five Spirits Mountain.”
2333: “What if he doesn’t?”
Wen Qianshu: “Then there’s still me. I can naturally remind him, tell him, hiss—”
Wen Qianshu sucked in a sharp breath. She saw that Yun Cai had already come closer and was applying medicine to her shoulder. Noticing Wen Qianshu flinch, she looked up, tilted her head, and asked, “Too hard?”
Her eyes were beautiful. Outside the deep cave, they shimmered with a watery light in the daylight, clear and bright like amber. The corners of her eyes curved like crescent moons, outlining her light-colored pupils. Her skin was like snow and her clothes like fire, making the white even whiter and the red even redder. Her ink-black hair cascaded down like a flowing river.
Like the moon’s reflection in a cold pond, like fresh flowers in a blazing fire.
Wen Qianshu: “…”
Wen Qianshu felt she couldn’t take it.
She hadn’t felt the pain while talking to 2333 just now, but coming back to her senses, a heart-piercing pain shot through her. Was applying the medicine even more painful than getting injured?
Wen Qianshu opened her mouth.
2333: “Don’t you wail! You’re Yan Chengshuang. Keep your character setting stable for me.”
Wen Qianshu tried to divert her attention and asked Yun Cai, “By the way, how did you get out here just like that? Didn’t Senior Yun send anyone with you?”
Yun Cai pursed her lips and said, “I had a fight with my family.”
Wen Qianshu: “Huh?”
Yun Cai: “There are beautiful leaves all over Five Spirits Mountain. I… I’ve liked them since I was little, and I often go pick them to save.”
“Daddy disapproves. He says I’m not attending to my proper duties.”
Wen Qianshu froze for a moment, then asked, “And then?”
The Young Miss said with a troubled face, “And then I started arguing with him. I said I had finished all my assignments and was cultivating properly, but he insisted I wasn’t diligent and that in the future I might not even be able to kill a single demon. In a fit of anger, I snuck away from him and ran to the Five Spirits Line. It just so happened that a few Yanyun Sky disciples were looking for a catfish demon recently and couldn’t find it, so I found two fellow disciples and ran out to look for it with them.”
In a fit of anger.
Wen Qianshu suddenly smiled.
“Huh?” Yun Cai leaned in and muttered, “What are you smiling about?”
Wen Qianshu: “Nothing. I just remembered something someone once said to me.”
Yun Cai: “Who?”
Wen Qianshu closed her eyes and finally said, “It’s nothing.”
That person said if there was a next life, it would be nice to meet earlier.
A little earlier, a little earlier.
Before, Wen Qianshu had thought, hadn’t they met early enough? Only now did she realize this was the kind of ‘a little earlier’ it meant.
Before you gradually became a calm and restrained person, were you also impulsive, also prone to fits of pique?
Damn me for never even thinking about it.
That dull ache finally, faintly, surfaced at the tip of her heart, transforming into a sharp pang.
2333: “Host?”
Wen Qianshu: “Ah, don’t worry about these details. It’s just a smile. Yan Chengshuang isn’t an ice sculpture.”
2333: “…”
Seeing that the medicine was mostly applied, Wen Qianshu pulled up her top and said, “I’m going to find Martial Uncle. You rest for a while.”
Endless Moon descended, turning into droplets of water that sprinkled onto the layer of ice set by Yan Qingxi, causing it to melt, dissipate, and gather back into a full moon.
Yun Cai nodded and said, “Mm, okay.”
Afterward, just as Wen Qianshu had predicted, Yan Qingxi took the people of Yan Family Village to a new place, settling them one by one. Unable to refuse the villagers’ pleas, he also took in a few children.
Yan Han was among them. Her mother was unknown, and she had always been cared for by her single father. After her father passed away, she did odd jobs around Yan Family Village to get by. Seeing that she was an orphan, Yan Qingxi took her with him to Five Spirits Mountain. But unlike in the book, this time Yan Han was not directly taken in by Yan Qingxi as his personal disciple, but instead became a new disciple of Five Spirits Mountain.
According to the rules of Five Spirits Mountain, unless brought in by a specific elder, ordinary new disciples had to spend time in all five sects, living in each for a month, before deciding which one to join.
The perpetually worried 2333 started worrying again: “The female protagonist isn’t going to skip Canglan Courtyard, is she?”
“She won’t.” When no one was around, Wen Qianshu was always lazy. “Her mother was a water snake demon. If she doesn’t come to Canglan Courtyard, where would she go? To Yanyun Sky to roast by the fire, or to Mingfeng Terrace to be chopped by blades? Surely she wouldn’t go to Qiankun Earth to dig holes, right?”
2333: “The female protagonist is a snake! Not an earthworm!”
Wen Qianshu: “That’s right. I thought you didn’t know.”
2333 felt exhausted.
Every day, 2333 suspected that Wen Qianshu was either genuinely stupid or just pretending to be.
Head Yun of Yanyun Sky had long been anxious. As soon as he received the news, he grabbed Yun Cai by the back of her collar and dragged her back.
Cultivators aged slower than ordinary people. Yun Cai was still growing and was a head shorter than her father, her toes not even touching the ground. Usually, the Young Miss was so majestic with her flaming long spear, but now she was being dragged by the back of her collar, kicking her legs and baring her teeth in anger, just like a little cat with its fur on end. “Dad! Dad! People are watching, Dad!”
Head Yun was unmoved, so angry his beard bristled. “Today, I’m definitely putting you in confinement!”
The Head of Canglan Courtyard, Yan Chengquan, was different. She was unlike her younger brother. Yan Qingxi looked like a banished immortal but was famously strict, whereas she appeared imposing and graceful without being angry, but in reality— “A punishment, you say? How should we punish her? Shuang’er, just copy the Water Melting Art once.”
Yan Qingxi: “No. The Water Melting Art is only eighteen characters in total. What kind of punishment is that?”
Yan Chengquan held her forehead and said tentatively, “Then… copy it twice?”
Yan Qingxi said with a straight face, “Senior Sister.”
Yan Qingxi usually addressed his senior sister as “Head,” but when he was angry, he would call her “Senior Sister,” much like how some elders call out a child’s full name when they’re furious.
In the end, Wen Qianshu copied it ten thousand times.
But the good thing was, she now knew how to use the Water Melting Art.
Wen Qianshu: “Sigh.”
Author’s Notes:
OOC Theater:
Fuliu Boat: Meow meow meow?
Why am I the only one of the five with no screen time?
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