Fang Guyuan felt the clothes his own disciple could wear were still too few, so he took Chi Yujun to the sect’s storehouse to draw Dust Sword Palace robes that fit.
The style for female disciples was, for the most part, an ethereal moon-white satin skirt of flowing-water cloud patterns, retained sleeves, and flying rose-clouds, with a porcelain-blue cloud-clasp belt at the waist dotted with black-and-white yin-yang fish.
The one in charge of the storehouse was Xie Ningyun, an outer disciple of Dust Sword Palace.
Disciples in an immortal sect were, for the most part, divided into three kinds: core disciples, inner disciples, and outer disciples.
Fang Guyuan, as the Palace Master’s personal disciple and the Eldest Senior Brother of all Dust Sword Palace, naturally belonged to the rank of core disciples.
By rights Chi Yujun had not gone through the steps of an immortal sect’s examination, and originally could not even count as an outer disciple.
But her identity was special, and with the special permission of Palace Master Ye Fengzou, and her having nominally taken Fang Guyuan as master, she barely counted as one of the inner disciples, a little higher in standing than Xie Ningyun.
Of course, what could be left for an outer disciple to manage was naturally all things that did not matter much: daily odds and ends that were used up, such as paper and brushes, clothes and shoes, handkerchiefs, and also some fairly basic mind-methods.
Xie Ningyun had been sitting at her ease beside the desk, leaning back in the chair with one leg crossed over the other, flipping through an erotic picture-book of the sort that made a man’s heart jump when he saw it and a woman’s face go red when she saw it.
The book was full of pictures and words, and as luck would have it, it was right at the part where a naked man pressed a charming young married woman to the wall from behind and drove in.
Xie Ningyun had read herself into a daze, and only hated that the picture would not move and the words would not pant.
She did not even hear someone knocking outside the door.
Red lips biting a finger, she showed a coy, bewitching look, and giggled in a foolish daze.
Fang Guyuan knocked, saw no movement inside, and knocked again with more force in his hand.
“Junior Sister Ningyun, are you there?”
“Here, here! Come in!”
Xie Ningyun was startled into a jolt on the spot, soul flown and po scattered.
In a flash she threw the book, sprang up from the chair like a frightened rabbit, and ran to open the door for Fang Guyuan.
“E-Eldest Senior Brother, you came today. Is there some urgent matter?”
Because she felt guilty for slacking, and because what she had just been looking at set the blood pounding, Xie Ningyun, standing in front of Fang Guyuan, was flushed red all over her face.
Even her speech stammered a little, and her eyes dodged.
She was like most of the other female disciples in the sect.
Toward Eldest Senior Brother they all held a longing that could not be put into words.
If her model were to… no.
Even if it were not a proud talent of the sect, even if it were only an ordinary passerby, catching her on the spot looking at this kind of thing would be a shame so great that, thinking of it later, she would want to dig into the ground with her toes until she died!
“Oh, nothing major. I just brought my newly accepted disciple to the storehouse to draw some things she can use.” Fang Guyuan considerately pretended not to notice Xie Ningyun’s oddness, and smiled mildly. “What, have you been busy lately?”
“It’s… it’s all right. If you say busy… I have been a little busy.” Xie Ningyun laughed awkwardly, and absolutely did not mention what she had just been busy with.
She looked at Chi Yujun following behind Fang Guyuan, her gaze stalled, and she could not help widening her eyes before she reacted.
“Ah??? Wait?!?! Eldest Senior Brother, you took a disciple?!”
“Mm. Originally it wasn’t allowed. I haven’t finished my own apprenticeship yet. But I spoke to the Palace Master, and he agreed. Come, Xuewu. This is Senior Sister Xie, Xie Ningyun, who manages the storehouse. Come and pay your respects to Senior Sister Xie.”
“Hello, Senior Sister Xie.”
Xie Ningyun blanked.
By rights, a disciple Eldest Senior Brother took, however one counted the generations, ought to be senior to an outer disciple like her.
How could she be called Senior Sister?
“Junior Sister Xie, this is the disciple I just took, Chi Xuewu. She has only just arrived, and there are many places she doesn’t understand. Later we may still need you to look after her more.”
“No, no, no, how could that be?” Xie Ningyun waved her hands in a flurry. “By generation, I’m the junior one. As for lending a fellow disciple a hand, isn’t that all as it should be? Eldest Senior Brother is too polite, too polite.”
“Only……”
Xie Ningyun looked at that head of eye-catching silver hair on Chi Yujun, and those green snake eyes unlike an ordinary person’s, and dimly remembered that this kind of appearance had some saying attached to it, yet for the moment she simply could not recall it, and kept thinking with her brows drawn.
“Eldest Senior Brother, this disciple of yours was born so pretty…… The color of her hair and eyes is truly rare, and her skin is so white and tender, so fresh and dewy, tsk tsk — eh? But why is it black under her skin, with something moving? Did my eyes blur?” She even rubbed her eyes, suspecting that because she had just been looking at something dirty, nothing she looked at was right.
Fang Guyuan’s heart went tight.
He knew Xie Ningyun had seen the gu on the Phoenix Body.
“She has some hidden ailments……” Fang Guyuan turned his head, looked at Chi Yujun, and pointed at a door on the left side of the room.
That way led to the storehouse, packed full by row on row of wooden racks.
“Xuewu, go in and see whether there’s anything you can use. There are quite a lot of things. You can choose slowly.”
Only when he saw Chi Yujun’s figure turn into the storehouse did Fang Guyuan lower his voice and speak with extreme care.
“Someone put a gu on her. There are gu insects on her body — if you’re going to come into contact with her, you should be careful and protect yourself.”
“G-gu insects?!” Xie Ningyun let out a cry of surprise, then hurriedly covered her mouth and cursed herself for making a fuss, and copied Fang Guyuan, lowering her voice and raising a brow to ask, careful. “W… why?”
“Her constitution is rather special. The Immortal King Sect took her and used her as material for refining a human gu.” Fang Guyuan’s expression could not help turning pained, and he shook his head lightly. “If you run into other fellow disciples, you can also remind them a few words — this child was tormented by the heretical cult for a long time. Her mind is somewhat unlike an ordinary person’s. She takes all of us for her enemies, and there’s a possibility she’ll lash out and hurt someone. In short, when you come into contact with her, be careful. As for the rest…… look after her where you can.”
A ripple of sympathy rose in Xie Ningyun’s eyes.
She looked in the direction Chi Yujun had left and sighed.
“So it was like that…… I only saw that she was pretty, and didn’t think there were so many twists behind it. She… is quite pitiful. Only, Eldest Senior Brother, you say she’ll hurt people. Then you yourself keeping her at your side, aren’t you afraid she’ll hurt you?”
Hearing this question, Fang Guyuan was silent a moment, and a bitter smile rose at the corner of his mouth.
“I can’t do nothing just because I’m afraid of being hurt, can I…… If someone always has to suffer for it, then why can’t it be me? Though I also don’t know whether doing this is of any use at all… at least this time, I don’t want to regret it.”
“Eldest Senior Brother……” Xie Ningyun could not help a solemn respect, and as if she had been moved by it, her gaze went sharp, and she lifted a foot to charge into the storehouse. “I’ll help you look and see whether your disciple has anything she can use!”
With that, she went into the storehouse in a streak.
After a while, Xie Ningyun and Chi Yujun came out with their arms full of a great pile of things.
Clothes, shoes, handkerchiefs…… and also some basic low-rank methods inside the sect that counted as required study.
These were basically all chosen by Xie Ningyun.
The two of them carried the things to the desk, and Xie Ningyun began registering them one by one against the items.
“Add one more copy of the “Hunyuan Mind-Cultivation True Scripture”, for her to cultivate her state of mind.” Fang Guyuan was holding a thread-bound book with a blue cover, and added, “This was taken from your desk, Junior Sister Xie. That should be all right, shouldn’t it?”
“It’s all right, it’s all right!” Xie Ningyun was too flustered to think, and agreed at once. “The storehouse has plenty more! I’ll just take another later!”
“Thank you for today, Junior Sister. When you have time, come sit at my Qingxuan Peak.” Once the things were all packed away, Fang Guyuan took his leave of Xie Ningyun, bringing Chi Yujun with him.
“It’s nothing. It’s what I ought to do. Eldest Senior Brother is too polite! Goodbye, Eldest Senior Brother! Goodbye, Senior Sister Chi!”
Xie Ningyun, all smiles, saw the two of them out of the building, then turned back, collapsed into the chair, felt that slacking was dull, and casually wanted to pick up the little yellow book she had just thrown aside and go on reading.
“Eh? Strange? Where’s my book? I remember I threw it over this way, didn’t I?”
Xie Ningyun was greatly puzzled.
She turned over every corner of the desk and did not find that book.
At last her body went stiff, her face corpse-pale, the hand that had been searching and probing stopped trembling in midair, and her soul nearly left its shell.
— She suddenly remembered.
To make slacking convenient, she had changed the cover of every one of her little yellow books.
That erotic album, whose actual contents were “Picked Up a Supreme Dual-Cultivation Method: the Aloof Empress Submitted to Me After **,” had for its cover precisely the “Hunyuan Mind-Cultivation True Scripture”!
Xie Ningyun’s eyes went black, and she was already thinking how she was supposed to start over.