Yu Mi returned to the sleeping palace. She activated a concealing treasure, retracted all her aura, and silently came to the door of the meditation room. She poked her head in to look.
Bao Gu was sitting cross-legged, eyes half-closed. Her upright posture, wrapped in circulating five-element spiritual power, was wreathed in five-colored radiance, giving her an almost sacred, stately air. But the aura she released made Yu Mi’s heart clench and her scalp tingle with cold, as if what sat there was not a slim, delicate young woman, but some terrifying existence that could turn into a raging dragon and charge out at any moment.
She had no idea what kind of power was hidden in that small body now, nor what cultivation realm Bao Gu had reached. She couldn’t see through Bao Gu’s strength at all—she could only feel that Bao Gu’s combat power was definitely terrifying.
Seeing that Bao Gu’s aura was still relatively gentle and her expression very calm, Yu Mi knew the seclusion was going smoothly. She quietly withdrew without making a sound.
Just as she reached the outer door and was about to close it, a strange feeling suddenly rose in her heart. The jolt of alarm made her send out her divine sense almost instantly—yet she detected nothing. The room was empty.
But her instincts screamed that something was wrong.
In the span of a heartbeat she summoned the Nanming Lihuo Sword. The blade spat out a cold light as she thrust it toward the place her subconscious labeled as “danger.”
The sword drove straight in and rammed the wall, stopped by stone; the force was then absorbed by the formation that covered the walls.
Yu Mi’s strike hit nothing.
She flicked her sleeve, shooting out a set of formation flags that rose into the air and wrapped themselves protectively around Bao Gu. Then she planted herself in front of Bao Gu, sword in hand, and barked in a low, chilly voice:
“Whoever’s skulking around—come out!”
As she spoke, she turned her palm, and a jade token appeared in her hand, then flashed and vanished.
The next instant, the Qingzhou Grand Formation activated.
In a heartbeat the grand formation seemed to come alive. Array sigils surfaced on the ceiling, floor, and all four walls, sealing the entire room as tight as a heavenly net. Outside the room, layer upon layer of formation power locked the area down.
The moment Yu Mi launched an attack, everything outside this tiny protected corner where she and Bao Gu stood—this entire room, and even the whole palace—would be blasted by the formation. No matter who had snuck in, even if they were at the Earth Immortal realm, chances were they’d leave their life here.
As the formation power surged, the intruder could no longer hide. A faint ripple of spatial energy stirred around them, and a figure appeared.
Qingying stood in the middle of the room, only six or seven steps from Yu Mi and Bao Gu. She looked at Yu Mi—who was acting like she faced a mortal enemy—with utter speechlessness.
“Uh… I just came to see when my cheap shifu would come out of seclusion.”
She really hadn’t expected Yu Mi, whose cultivation level wasn’t that high, to be this vigilant—to actually notice her sneaking in.
“Get out,” Yu Mi snapped, voice low and hard. Her brows were tight with killing intent, her gaze glacially cold as she shouted, “No one is allowed to disturb Bao Gu while she’s in seclusion!”
Qingying frowned.
“Then why did you come in?”
If Yu Mi didn’t come check, what if something went wrong during Bao Gu’s seclusion? Yu Mi trusted herself. But this ferocious jiangshi she’d only known for two days—could she stake Bao Gu’s life on whether Qingying was trustworthy?
Bao Gu was in seclusion right now; Yu Mi didn’t want to start a fight with Qingying here. She only said in a deep voice,
“Out.”
As she spoke, she opened a single exit in the barrier formed by the Qingzhou Grand Formation, while using formation power to seal herself and Bao Gu in layer after layer.
Ever since Qingying could remember, no one had ever yelled at her like that. Her eyes went round with anger—and with grievance.
A flare of ghostly yin flame shot up in her pupils. Her fangs extended, jutting more than an inch past her soft pink lips. She glared at Yu Mi, murder written in her eyes. A sharp, violent aura curled around her fingernails as she stared at the formation power shielding Yu Mi, hunting for an opening to punch a claw through the Qingzhou Formation and drag Yu Mi out.
Yu Mi’s gaze was like a drawn blade.
“Your shifu is in seclusion and cannot be disturbed. Leave.”
However furious she was, she absolutely could not make a move here and risk alarming Bao Gu.
Qingying ground out between her teeth, “I hate you!”
She spun around with a huff and stomped out. As if she couldn’t tell how guarded and wary they were around her.
Once Yu Mi saw Qingying leave, she checked Bao Gu again to confirm she was fine, then carefully inspected the formation before stepping out and sealing the room tightly.
She closed the door and turned around.
Qingying was sitting on the steps outside the hall, cheeks puffed, lips pursed, still fuming. The yin fire in her eyes had swelled so much it drowned her pupils; both eyeballs looked like twin flames, practically burning up to her eyebrows. The fire raged so fiercely it should have scorched her, but it hadn’t even singed a single eyelash.
Her pair of fangs were long, sticking a good inch past her lips. All in all, she looked murderous.
And yet for some reason, Yu Mi just found her a little pitiful. Maybe it was the way she was sitting on the palace steps—it looked a lot like a child someone had thrown out of the house and left outside.
Yu Mi sighed inwardly and went to sit down beside her, leaving about two feet of space between them on the steps.
Qingying bared her teeth at Yu Mi internally, staring at her with hatred and silently chanting to herself in her head:
*You promised cheap shifu you wouldn’t hit her. You promised cheap shifu you wouldn’t hit her…*
Then, unwilling to accept it, she added silently,
*If I don’t hit Yu Mi… can I bite her?*
She knew very well that someone like Yu Mi would absolutely not survive one bite from her. If she just sank her teeth in and sucked once, from that moment on there’d be no such person as Yu Mi in this world.
But could she bite?
She remembered that look in her cheap shifu’s eyes on the Ascension Platform—the way Bao Gu stared fixedly at the shattered realm gate even when heavenly lightning had blasted her to the brink of death. She remembered how, in the past, whenever she mentioned Yu Mi, her cheap shifu would get sad and ignore her for a long time afterward.
Fuming, Qingying retracted her fangs again. But she was still so angry her eyes filled with tears that refused to fall.
Yu Mi turned her head and looked at Qingying—and was stunned.
How could someone’s eyes be spitting fire and brimming with tears at the same time? How did this water-and-fire-coexisting thing even work?
“Hey, don’t cry,” she said.
Qingying stood up and lifted her leg, about to kick Yu Mi. But as soon as her foot came up, she remembered she wasn’t allowed to hit her, so she forced it back down and stomped the ground instead.
There was a boom.
Terrifying force drove straight into the earth, making the ground tremble several times. The Qingzhou Formation’s defensive strength was triggered yet again.
The commotion alarmed everyone nearby. Divine sense after divine sense swept toward the two of them.
Gritting her teeth, Qingying snarled, “Don’t provoke me. I promised cheap shifu I wouldn’t hit you, but I never said I wouldn’t bite you!”
Yu Mi glanced down at the floor tile under Qingying’s feet and saw that it was intact. Then she looked at Qingying’s eyes, still ringed with tears. This jiangshi really was just a big child.
“All right, stop sulking. Sit down,” Yu Mi said with a small laugh. “Your shifu is in seclusion and I’m standing guard for her. You snuck in without a sound—did you expect me to smile and welcome you? I already did you a favor by not treating you as if you were trying to kill your own master and directly using the grand formation to blast you.”
She said seriously,
“Qingying, you’re no longer that ‘enemy-of-the-whole-world’ jiangshi from before. You’re following Bao Gu now. When you walk the cultivation world with her, there are a lot of taboos and unwritten rules you need to pay attention to.
“Take just now, for example. When a cultivator is in seclusion, especially a critical one, being disturbed is absolutely not allowed. Other than the person standing guard, anyone who secretly approaches is killed on sight.
“I know you wouldn’t hurt her. But what if you misjudge and poke her lightly, or call out to her and shake her at a crucial moment? Best case, she’s badly wounded. Worst case, she dies on the spot.
“How could I not be angry?”
Qingying snorted.
“I saw you sneaking in first, so I went in.”
“I’m Bao Gu’s guardian right now,” Yu Mi said. “Are you?”
Qingying was instantly speechless.
She slumped back down onto the step without another word.
Yu Mi wasn’t very familiar with Qingying, and she had no idea how to coax children. Seeing Qingying sulking in silence, she didn’t know what to say either. She was also afraid this restless little thing would bottle up her anger and then cause trouble right outside Bao Gu’s door, so she didn’t dare leave.
Bored, she took out a flask of spirit wine and started drinking in slow sips.
She glanced at Qingying, who looked rather pitiful sitting there, and felt that drinking alone and not offering any to her seemed a bit off. So she took out another jug of wine and held it out toward Qingying.
Qingying gave Yu Mi a cool sideways look, then stood up and moved a few steps farther away, decisively widening the distance between them. She took out a huge jar of spirit wine her cheap shifu had had people brew for her and hugged it, sipping it in small mouthfuls.
It wasn’t like she didn’t have spirit wine. The flagship had its own distillery and produced all sorts of spirit wines. Her cheap shifu had included ten jars of spirit wine in her monthly ration, and often dug into her own pocket to add more. Qingying had built up quite a stash.
After a few mouthfuls of wine, Qingying took out some dried meat. A small bite of wine, a small bite of meat, slowly and unhurriedly. With good food going into her stomach, her mood improved somewhat, though there was still some grievance and unhappiness tangled in her chest.
She could faintly feel that these people treated her differently. Their eyes on her were a little strange. She couldn’t say exactly how, but she could tell their gaze wasn’t the same as her cheap shifu’s.
She thought about it, then realized their eyes on her were a lot like the way the cultivators on the flagship looked at her.
She remembered her cheap shifu explaining those looks once—that what was in those eyes was “respect, but keeping their distance.”
Because she was a jiangshi. They were all afraid of her.
Qingying snorted inwardly.
*It’s not like I wanted to be a jiangshi. I was born this way. What am I supposed to do about it?*
Yu Mi and Qingying sat on the steps, far apart, each drinking their own wine. Yu Mi’s gaze drifted toward Qingying from time to time.
She had seen jiangshi before. She had even “lived” with them for a period.
Back then, when she’d fallen into a jiangshi’s hands, she’d been beaten until she was covered in wounds. What she saw were jiangshi that didn’t even blink while eating people, smashing her with leftover bones. Those jiangshi weren’t childish at all—they were pure horror, like humanoid wild beasts. They had intelligence, but treated humans as food, looking at her and the other captured cultivators the way one looked at livestock.
Whenever they got angry at Yu Mi for refusing to reveal the Saint Aunt’s whereabouts, they’d grab a cultivator in front of her, smash them inch by inch into pulp, then eat them mouthful by mouthful. Sometimes, just to scare her on purpose, they’d tear off a live cultivator’s skullcap, dig out their brain with their claws and eat it, then forcibly yank out the person’s primordial spirit and eat it bite by bite.
Those jiangshi… had no humanity at all.
But the jiangshi in front of her now was sitting there like a sulking kid, taking tiny sips of wine and tiny bites of meat, and when a bit of dried meat crumbs stuck to her fingers, she actually pulled out a handkerchief woven from celestial silkworm thread and carefully wiped every speck of grease off her hands. She was clearly someone who minded cleanliness now.
Back then, jiangshi had walked around with blood and brain matter all over their hands and hadn’t cared in the slightest.
Yu Mi couldn’t help wondering how on earth Bao Gu had managed to raise that vicious, inhuman jiangshi into… this.
“Tell me about you and your cheap shifu,” Yu Mi said, curious. She remembered when the little monkey and Ling’er had followed Bao Gu in the past—if they didn’t go seek Bao Gu out, Bao Gu rarely took the initiative to fuss over them. Her attitude was lukewarm at best. Even though Bao Gu had still been half a child back then, she treated them like some adult watching over little kids.
Qingying rolled her eyes at Yu Mi, a clear *I’m not talking to you and I’m definitely not telling you about me and my cheap shifu* written all over her face.
She finished the dried fruit she’d taken out, then fished out a spirit fruit and slowly gnawed on it. Once she’d polished that off, she realized she’d already eaten through her daily quota of dried fruit, spirit fruit, and spirit wine. So she took out a bottle of pills she’d extorted from a demon saint and started eating them one by one.
Those pills were spoils taken from that demon saint. Her cheap shifu hadn’t told her how many she could eat per day, so she decided that herself. With no limit set, she happily gobbled them down.
Yu Mi watched as Qingying popped priceless treasure-grade pills—things people outside would kill for—into her mouth like candy, one after another, and finished an entire bottle in no time. It was almost painful to look at.
With Qingying eating like this, how did Bao Gu even manage to afford raising her?
