“Xuewu, won’t you say hello to your Fifth Martial Uncle and Little Martial Aunt?”
Fang Guyuan saw that Chi Yujun was still sitting closed in on herself, unable to get a word in and not looking as if she wanted to, and tried to pull her into the talk.
The other party only gave him a scattered glance, brows drawn, not wanting to speak.
Fang Guyuan was just about to say she could not be this rude to her elders when Chi Yujun’s eyes shifted, and as if she had thought it through, she opened her mouth, soft.
“Hello, Fifth Martial Uncle. Hello, Little Martial Aunt.”
“Wah!” Ye Baizhi’s eyes lit up.
She looked at Chi Yujun, then at Fang Guyuan, sizing them up back and forth several times, her tone full of pleasant surprise.
“Eldest Senior Brother, you’re this formidable! How long has it even been, and she’s willing to open her mouth and communicate! Aiya — maybe she’s actually a good child too, so good, so good. Only, having her call me Little Martial Aunt always makes me feel a few years older…… How about she calls me Senior Sister Ye instead? Heh heh, heh heh heh…… That way I’ll have a little junior sister too. Anyway, as long as I’m not ranked last, it’s fine.”
Chi Yujun rolled her eyes in silence on the inside, and on her face she still did not move.
What good child? Who was a good child?
She was only acting.
She was using this name “Chi Xuewu,” which did not belong to her, using this silver-haired beauty’s body, using the identity of Fang Guyuan’s disciple, but she was clear in her heart.
Her soul was still a man’s.
It was still that Chi Yujun.
That was not wrong.
She had not changed one bit, and she would not change.
By her shallow understanding, love was obedience.
Or there might be something else besides, but that was not yet inside the range of her thinking.
So she planned to force “Chi Xuewu” into becoming a disciple who obeyed her master, at least in her conduct — even though every time she had to do this, she spat on herself a little more in her heart.
She was not used to a change like this yet.
But that was all right.
The disgusting one who would listen obediently to Fang Guyuan was not her, Chi Yujun.
It was only the personality she performed, “Chi Xuewu.”
—What did the things she, Chi Xuewu, did have to do with me, Chi Yujun?
Thinking of it this way, her heart was much more comfortable.
Chi Yujun was in charge of revenge.
Chi Xuewu was in charge of obedience.
Once her strength was great enough, she would tear off this mask called Chi Xuewu and throw it away, and then let Chi Yujun slowly appreciate the look on Fang Guyuan’s face as he fell into despair and carried regret for the rest of his life.
She had it all planned.
……It was just as well Han Ziyou beside them could not read minds, and did not know what Chi Yujun was thinking.
Otherwise he would certainly have complained, “Who treats their real appearance as a character skin? The sense of stepping into the role is that strong. Can you really cut it away?”
When the false is taken for the true, the true also becomes false.
Where nothing is taken for something, something is still nothing.
The Chi Yujun of now did not understand this principle.
But by the time she understood it, everything would already seem too late.
“Hello, Senior Sister Ye.” She obediently followed along with what Ye Baizhi had said.
Fortunately, she did not dislike Ye Baizhi the way she disliked Fang Guyuan.
The discomfort was not so strong, and she also could not tell seniority apart.
“Look! Look! She really is so good! The first impression she gave me made me think she was the very withdrawn, very closed-off, very numb type who doesn’t like to talk! And it turns out she’s this obedient and sensible?! Eldest Senior Brother, what kind of bewitching soup did you pour into her? Don’t tell me you can even handle a female disciple you only picked up a couple of days ago? Tsk tsk. I really did look down on you.”
Ye Baizhi was first amazed, and then her tone turned teasing, brows and eyes working.
That expression of hers, in Han Ziyou’s words, was “the living image of a middle-school girl classmate who, the moment she saw a boy and a girl say more than a few sentences, had to gossip and ship the couple, yet whose instinct for gossip was unexpectedly accurate.”
Fang Guyuan’s face, however, went stern.
He thought of how there were indeed some words he ought to say clearly to his disciple, so as not to repeat his earlier stumble — though, looking at the state of mind of the two of them, it was not very likely.
“Junior Sister Baizhi, some jokes can’t be made at random. You know as well as I do, later she’s definitely going to……”
The rest, “later she’s definitely going to marry into the Penglai Fang family,” had not yet left his mouth when Ye Baizhi nodded, already understanding.
She was only after a bit of fun.
Even if he did not say it, she knew.
“Aiya, I know, I know — it’s only talk. I wasn’t taking it for real either. If you don’t like it, I just won’t say it. Oh, right, Eldest Senior Brother. Taking her as a disciple really can be used as a shield to block some of the people with hidden motives. But if… the Penglai Fang family comes to our door and asks us for the person, then what?”
The reason of having taken her as a disciple was enough for most situations.
But toward that Penglai Fang family, which looked down on everyone and still enjoyed a certain privilege within the immortal dao, it truly was too slight to mention.
“If it’s like that…” Fang Guyuan turned his head toward Chi Yujun. “Then it depends on her. If she wants to go with them, she goes. If she wants to stay, she stays. It’s all the same to me… though looking at her attitude toward me, perhaps she’d be more willing to go to the Fang family. Who can say.”
What Fang Guyuan had not expected was that this disciple he had picked up, who seemed to hold some deep blood feud with him, turned her attitude a full hundred and eighty degrees.
Head lowered, she said timidly, “I don’t want to go anywhere else. I just want to stay by Master’s side.”
“Hoh! Eldest Senior Brother, not bad!” Han Ziyou patted Fang Guyuan on the shoulder. “You’ve cultivated feelings with your little disciple this fast?”
Fang Guyuan was shocked beyond measure, and could not help widening his eyes.
This… was the obedient, timid girl before his eyes still that one who, from the moment she arrived, had clamored that she would kill him?
The change was too great, too abnormal.
It was hard for Fang Guyuan not to suspect she had been switched — or rather, that she had some other aim.
He would rather she showed deep hatred in front of him.
That way he would feel more at ease.
A person’s change always had a reason.
A change that came from nowhere always made one feel that something had happened where he did not know it.
Courtesy offered for no reason was either treachery or theft.
The few of them exchanged pleasantries a while longer.
Ye Baizhi bundled up all the little ornaments and little trinkets she had brought, the sort a girl could use, and gave the whole lot to Chi Yujun, and also said that in a while she would take her to pick out new clothes.
Han Ziyou mainly dropped some small props, such as a communication instrument.
Although he had been looted for gold, the look on his face seemed quite happy, and no one knew why.
After the two of them had left, Fang Guyuan stared for a long time at Chi Yujun, who did not say a word.
“Is there something you want to say to me… or rather, something you ought to say?”
“There isn’t.” Chi Yujun — no, she could not be called Chi Yujun now.
She was already the disguised personality, Chi Xuewu, and she looked her master up and down with an innocent expression.
“Everyone has a side they don’t want other people to see. I’m very clear on that. In front of outsiders, if you can give me face, then as things stand now I’m already very grateful for your being so reasonable. But in front of me, you don’t need to disguise yourself. That will be very tiring.”
Fang Guyuan waited for her answer, yet Chi Xuewu only shook her head.
Looking at the way she was, Fang Guyuan could only sigh.
“If you don’t want to say it, then forget it. I understand you may have some difficulty. If you’re willing to say it, come find me then.”
“— But……” His words turned, and his expression suddenly drew tight and serious. “You don’t want to say it, but I have something I want to say to you.”
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