The young man, who seemed like a puff of white cloud, returned to the Tong Yin Ferry Boat and saw the Sable Hat Girl squatting beside the ladder at the bow. Cui Dongshan grinned and asked, "Second Seat Xie, are you squatting over a latrine, or lying in wait for me?"
Xie Gou could not be bothered to stand. Shielding her mouth with one hand, she asked, "Sect Master Cui, can you really point Qing Mi toward a path of Unification of the Dao? You weren't fooling him?"
Cui Dongshan squatted down beside her and sighed. "The traditions of our household are built on treating people with sincerity. If I say it is fifty-fifty, then it is half and half. I would never deceive anyone."
Cui Dongshan hemmed and hawed, flicking his sleeves. "I'm a Sect Master, after all. My face is worth more than gold."
Xie Gou was half-convinced, half-skeptical.
Cui Dongshan seemed to belatedly realize something, and terror covered his face. "How did Second Seat Xie learn of such a secret matter? Could it be that when Fellow Daoist Qing Mi and I saw no one around and stood side by side at the corner of an alley wall to water the ground, you saw that too? I'm still a pure, unwed young man! If word gets out, how am I supposed to face anyone afterward..."
Xie Gou bared her teeth in a grin. "It wasn't taking a dump. What was there to see?"
Cui Dongshan sucked in a breath. After three days apart, one ought to view a scholar with new eyes. Second Seat Xie had spent only a few days cultivating on Luopo Mountain, yet her conversational prowess had surged by leaps and bounds.
Pei Qian was strolling at the bow. "It was nothing more than