The Young Master Is an Immortal

Staring at Ji You's receding back, the corridor packed with those seeing him off was silent as a tomb.

After a while, Fang Ruoyao murmured, "Why?" Only then did she snap everyone out of their shock. By then, Kuang Cheng had already reread the copy of the "Summer Law Immortal Regulations" in his hand.

The answer had been in that book all along. It was simply that what he had read and what Ji You had read were not the same.

"One who reaches Perfection of the Lower Three Realms before coming of age may enter the Immortal Registry on their own. Any of the Seven Great Sects of the present age would make an exception to take in such a person. Because... such a person will inevitably enter the Upper Five Realms in the future. And those Upper Five Realms disciples are the ones who truly determine a sect's fortunes."

Kuang Cheng curled his lips. "I told him to come beg Miss Fang, but he refused. Everyone thought he was timid and weak. Now it seems Miss Fang was never his choice from beginning to end."

The double meaning in those words instantly changed Fang Ruoyao's expression. "For commoners to cultivate immortality in secret is a crime punishable by beheading. This is clearly an iron law of Great Xia."

"The Qingyun Immortal Regulations have, since ancient times, stood above Great Xia's iron laws."

Hearing this, everyone fell silent, no longer knowing what to say.

These past few days, everyone had believed Fang Ruoyao was the key to breaking the deadlock. After all, she was the Celestial Academy disciple known throughout the county.

Thus, Old Qiu had knelt before the county office for an entire day, and Kuang Cheng had swallowed his pride to beg her. As for Ji You, in everyone's eyes, he had been a turtle hiding in its shell, too afraid even to step outside.

But now they finally understood. No matter how clamorous the outside world was, no matter how it mocked him, he had remained unmoved as a mountain because he had no need to beg anyone.

At this moment, Fang Ruoyao stared blankly in the direction Ji You had gone. She suddenly realized that Kuang Cheng had not been lying. From the moment that man arrived to the moment he left, though less than an hour had passed, he had not looked at her even once.

"I may not be worse than him after I enter the academy."

"He... merely had an earlier start than I did."

Fang Ruoyao said this with a pale face, but she still refused to let her pride fall to the ground.

Meanwhile, Dong Wei, standing to Kuang Cheng's right, found his legs going weak and his lips trembling without cease.

He suddenly recalled that just two days ago, Jia Sicong and he had laughed at Ji You in a restaurant. And now Ji You was an immortal—he could grant life if he wished, or take it away if he wished.

He turned to Jia Sicong, only to find that the other man was not scared out of his wits like he was.

"Brother Jia, y-you... why aren't you shaking?"

"I treated him to ten steamer baskets of fresh dumplings. But you, my brother, did not."

"???"

While everyone was still discussing the matter, Ji You had already led the Qiu father and daughter to the county stele by the city gate. At that moment, not a breath of wind stirred within ten li of Yuyang County, and the sky was clear and bright.

There, Ji You stopped, his face waxen yellow. "Old Qiu, take Ruru home first."

Old Qiu looked up at his words. "Young Master, what about you?"

"I need to return to the... ancestral residence..."

"Young Master?"

Ji You waved a hand. Without waiting for him to speak again, he turned and left.

Seeing this, Old Qiu could not help straightening the back that had gradually begun to stoop over the past two years, watching Ji You hurry away.

Qiu Ru also raised her head. She looked at the young master, then at her father, before her gaze fell upon her own chubby little hands.

Just now, she had thought it was raining. But when her eyes swept over them, she discovered that the drops on the backs of her hands were not rainwater, but faint smears of blood.

Old Qiu did not see this. He was still worried about his wife, who had fainted at home when they were taken away that morning, so he hurried back home with his daughter.

By then, the unconscious Li Shuping had awakened. Yet she remained lying on the bed, her hollow eyes fixed straight on the roof beam. She had neither eaten nor drunk a drop, and had not spoken a word.

Because Sixth Aunt from next door had just gone out and returned with news that the grain carts were setting off from the city one after another. That meant the offerings had begun to be transported up the mountain with the carts, and among them, perhaps, was a bewildered little girl.

No one in the room knew what to say. Before a mother who had lost her daughter, any amount of consolation seemed pale and powerless.

At that thought, some could not help cursing that down-and-out young master a few more times in their hearts. Even now, he still won't come take a look?

"Great-aunt, what's wrong with my mother?"

"Ruru, go play by yourself for a while first. Your mother is..."

Sixth Aunt had only gotten halfway through her sentence when her gaze suddenly froze. She craned her neck and turned around.

The tiny five-year-old girl had just let out a little "heave-ho" as she stepped over the threshold. Looking at everyone in the room staring at her in astonishment, her expression was somewhat bewildered.

When Li Shuping on the bed saw her daughter, she burst into tears. She tumbled from the bed to the floor and clutched the girl tightly in her arms. Then she saw her husband enter the room behind her, and her tears poured forth like a spring.

"Did those immortals stop taking our Ruru away to refine medicine? Did they? I told you, how could there be spiritual energy in Ruru's body..."

"It was the young master."

Li Shuping lifted her tear-blurred eyes, a little joy surfacing on her face. "They exchanged the medicinal ingredient for that young master of yours?"

The several farm women nearby clapped their hands as well. "That Ji You is ungrateful and faithless, not even coming by. It serves him right to die!"

After a long silence, Old Qiu spoke as though he had yet to wake from a dream. "The young master... turns out to be an immortal."

"W-what?"

"I don't know what exactly happened either, but the young master is actually an immortal. Once those people learned of it, they no longer dared use Ruru to refine medicine."

Upon hearing this, Li Shuping, sitting on the floor, froze for a long while. In her mind appeared that down-and-out young master who came every day to mooch meals, and her eyes were filled with confusion.

The village women around her exchanged glances, thinking they must have heard wrong.

That Young Master Ji who had barely escaped death in the mountains, who normally did nothing but mooch meals, who had not even dared show his face after hearing that Fengxian Mountain Villa had set its sights on Qiu Ru—how had he suddenly become an immortal now?

"I was thinking before—could the Immortal Lord have made a mistake? Our family has never had any dealings with cultivators. How could Ruru have... spiritual energy inside her?"

"But do you remember? When Ruru was two and a half, she came down with whooping cough. Doctor Li said she wouldn't make it through that winter, but later she recovered for no reason at all. Though she had hardly eaten any meat, she only grew sturdier and stronger."

Old Qiu pressed his dry lips together and turned to his wife. "Young Master is an immortal. I heard immortals can nourish and strengthen a mortal's innate foundation..."

Li Shuping still stared at him blankly. Then she lowered her head to look at her daughter in her arms, lost in thought for a long while.

So although that down-and-out young master came every day to freeload meals, he had never owed the Qiu family anything from beginning to end...

Yuyang County was not large to begin with. Barely an hour after Old Qiu returned home, what had happened at the Yuyang County yamen had already spread throughout the county.

Many had seen Young Master Ji head to the county yamen, and afterward, many more saw the yamen runners supporting one another as they went to the Medical Hall, their faces swollen and bruised.

Then someone saw Young Master Ji lead the Qiu father and daughter out of the county yamen. Still more watched him return to the Ji residence with an iron-green face, his divine might seeming to tower over all.

Young Master Ji was actually an immortal. He had stormed into the county yamen and cowed Fengxian Mountain Villa into retreat, even frightening the immortals of Celestial Academy into silence. No one knew where this tale had begun, but it started passing from mouth to mouth among the people.

"But if that Ji You really is an immortal, why didn't he act when the Ji Family suffered disaster that day?"

"At that time, he had not yet reached Perfection of the Lower Three Realms."

"What is Perfection of the Lower Three Realms?"

"You don't even know that? Young Master Ji had not yet reached Perfection of the Lower Three Realms back then. Revealing his cultivation would have been a crime punishable by beheading, so he could only endure in silence!"

Someone stood on a restaurant stool, snapping his folding fan against the tabletop with sharp smacks.

Quite a few among them had once laughed at Young Master Ji. When the Ji Family met with disaster, when the Fang Residence broke off the engagement, when trouble struck the Qiu family—they had grown used to wagging their tongues.

Yet no one had imagined that Young Master Ji was a reclusive immortal.

Rumors were like that—half true and half false—but it was enough to leave everyone deeply shaken, until the crowd fell silent as a graveyard.

(Some earlier parts were revised. I sorted out the later logic today—please keep reading!)