Soul Infant Fruit and the Soaring Jiao

"You... you know her?"

"The one who just greeted you?"

Feng Qing Er pinched her cheek.

Confirming that this was reality.

She did her best to control her expression.

Yet the shock in her eyes remained unmistakable.

It was not hard to hear her astonishment from her words.

"Is that strange?"

Lu Yuan shrugged without any self-awareness and asked in an outrageously smug tone, "She's just a friend I know. We're not especially close, but we're not as unfamiliar as you imagine either. As for who she is, what background she has, and what that has to do with me...?"

"How could it have nothing to do with you?"

Feng Qing Er tugged at her hair in frustration. She wanted to explain that this was not as irrelevant as Lu Yuan made it sound, but after thinking it over, she realized his explanation did not seem wrong. She could only smile bitterly. "Do you know what kind of background she has...?"

"Do I need to look at someone's background before making friends?"

"Would that friendship even be reliable?"

Seeing Feng Qing Er's helpless expression, Lu Yuan calmly gave an example. "Let's suppose that I became friends with you because of your background. If one day you suffered a disaster, lost that background, and perhaps even became someone others could be implicated by, why would you think I would sacrifice my own interests to help you for a friendship that had been based on mutual benefit from the start?"

Feng Qing Er was speechless.

After a long silence, she finally smiled. "Then the friendship I've gained is quite precious!"

Lu Yuan did not answer. He merely smiled and shrugged, giving an ambiguous, suggestive reply that carried a double meaning. "Who knows?"

Feng Qing Er did not think much of it.

She