"How exactly have you been acting as his Mistress? If this old woman hadn't been carrying his life tablet, I probably wouldn't even have known the day my disciple died!"
"If my disciple dies, the inheritance of the Mandarin Sword Sect will be severed, and my parents won't even be able to fulfill their dying wish. Don't you feel ashamed? My mother wouldn't even pass the Mandarin Sword on to me, yet she taught it to an outsider like you, while making me learn the Mandarin Sword that man practiced. And now you've become some damn Lotus Sword Venerable and forgotten your roots. Have you forgotten what you promised my mother before she died?"
"Guan Chujun, I hope you understand one thing. Mistress wasn't unwilling to pass the Mandarin Sword on to you. You simply couldn't learn it, so she had no choice but to find another way. You were the one who insisted on learning the Mandarin Sword, claiming you were no weaker than any man. In the end, even after Master passed away, you only learned its superficial forms, yet you still dared to take disciples and mislead them."
The Fairy replied coldly to the Immortal Sword in her hand, cutting off the endless tirade from the other side.
"Bullshit! This old woman simply couldn't be bothered to learn it. Only a bumpkin like you would treasure that lousy sword technique. Have you forgotten when you learned swordsmanship at my house? With my bare fists, I could beat ten of you!"
"After I took up the sword, you never once refused to admit defeat."
The Fairy's tone was utterly calm, yet those words pierced the other fiery woman's mouth like a sharp sword and actually silenced her.
"I'm not going to argue over this useless nonsense with you. My precious disciple is about to die. Do you know that?"
"I know."
"What use is knowing? Didn't he nearly die anyway? If you really knew, you wouldn't have let him be in such danger!" The person on the other side of the sword grew increasingly impassioned. "When I saw his life tablet about to shatter, I came straight out of that deep sea, slaughtered countless fiends, and finally reached land. I contacted you at the first opportunity, yet you calmly replied with two words: 'I know.' Tell me, if you knew, why did you still let him fall into such a perilous situation?"
"He never told me he needed help. He only asked how someone should deal with an opponent whose realm was higher than his."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him to learn from your Master."
The woman on the other side of the sword fell silent for a long while, like the eerie calm before a volcano erupted.
"He Shutong, why are you so high and mighty? Why did you make him learn from me for no reason? Did he have to beg you to save him whenever he was in danger? You're his Mistress, don't you know that?"
"Firstly, even if he didn't beg me, I would still save him. Secondly, I'm not his Mistress. That's merely your peculiar sense of humor. I never acknowledged him when he called me Mistress. If we must calculate our relationship, at most I'm his Martial Uncle."
"I don't care! Since I agreed to let you live there for ten years and comprehend whatever worthless mortal world of yours, you have to fulfill what you promised me. You must guarantee my disciple's safety!"
"He isn't still the ten-year-old child you imagine him to be." The Fairy lifted her fair head and gazed faintly in the direction of Chuyun City.
"What do you mean?" You Su's Master hurriedly asked with concern.
"An evil cultivator has set his sights on him..."
"What? An evil cultivator? You let him face an evil cultivator alone? I only told you not to interfere when he fought with those children. After all, this old woman is so powerful because she grew up beating people up, but I never said you could ignore an evil cultivator too!"
"Do you want to listen?" Mistress's tone was cold and impatient.
The person on the other side could only sullenly rein in her temper, her tone softening slightly. "Then hurry up and tell me!"
"While undergoing mortal trials, I locked away all my Mystic Qi and couldn't use even a trace of it. By the time I realized an evil cultivator had targeted him, I had already seen the corpse of that Dream Centipede."
"Dream Centipede? You're saying that a blind man discovered the Dream Centipede on his own and killed it?"
"That's right. He even seemed to have turned the tables, fawning and sparring with that evil cultivator."
"That boy is actually this clever?"
"Are you about to say that if he were this clever, how could he have failed to realize for so many years that you were a woman, allowing you to keep playing that casual joke for so long?"
"Don't digress. Keep talking!"
"In my view, he's stubborn. Once he falls into a mistaken line of thought, he easily loses his ability to think calmly."
"All because he couldn't see through the fact that I'm a woman?"
"Not only that. He never considered asking me for help—not because he didn't want to, but because he truly believed I was a Mistress who needed his protection. Simply because I told him many times that I had no cultivation, and he believed it without question."
"The Lotus Sword Venerable, famous throughout the Five Continents, has such a thick skin? You need a child to protect you?"
"I never deceived him from beginning to end. I truly have no cultivation. How he chooses to think about it is his own affair."
"He Shutong, I don't even know how to curse you anymore."
"You can't curse me either. He can't hide beneath your protection forever. If you wanted him to, you wouldn't have abandoned him and run beyond the Five Continents alone to seek that so-called truth. He'll witness the cruelty of the path of cultivation sooner or later. This evil cultivator is the finest whetstone delivered right to his door."
"I've wronged him..."
"Apologizing to me is useless. Come back alive and tell him yourself."
Silence descended once more for a long while. The Fairy was moved as well. No matter how much she mocked her, that speechless woman was still her best friend, the only person with whom she could truly speak.
At that very moment, the other woman was lying low by herself in the most perilous corner of this world.
She pursed her cherry lips and was the first to break the silence in a gentler tone:
"You can rest easy. He crossed an entire major realm and killed that evil cultivator in a counterattack."
"Heh, no wonder. It seems this old woman taught him well!" The woman on the other end regained her vigor, her tone brimming with pride. "When I caused havoc on Divine Mountain back then, who would have dared stop me if you hadn't talked me down?"
The Fairy did not continue mocking her. "There is just one strange point."
"What point?"
"I couldn't use Mystic Qi to sense the battle in detail. I only saw from far away that, when he was about to lose, he unleashed a powerful force and turned defeat into victory. Perhaps he has secrets and fortuitous encounters of his own that neither you nor I know about."
"I knew exactly what color of underpants that boy wore as a child, so how did he start having secrets after I handed him over to you? Do you even know how to teach a disciple?"
"Obviously, my disciple is the peerless prodigy Wangshu Fairy, while your disciple is merely an outsider who has just entered the Spirit Platform Realm."
"Never bully the young and poor, understand? Hey, I'm serious. If my disciple doesn't take a liking to you, why not have your so-called peerless prodigy female disciple learn the Mandarin Sword too and become You Su's Dao Companion? That would fulfill my parents' wish and carry on the Mandarin Sword Sect's inheritance, saving you, you old hag, from ruining my tender, precious disciple."
"If you don't want me to continue protecting your disciple, you can say so directly. There's no need to disgust me with this nonsense."
"No, no, I was only joking. Isn't that allowed?"
"Besides, you should know that I'm not the only person in this world who knows the Mandarin Sword."
"That's bullshit. My mother only passed it on to you."
"When You Su was fifteen, he found himself a junior sister. His talent in the Way of the Sword is extraordinarily high. Even though the Mandarin Sword is practiced by a woman, he can still teach it to her."
"What did you say?! That boy found himself a wife?"
In the new year, I wish all my readers: "Though the mountains are high, there are paths to walk; though the waters are deep, there are ferries to cross. Let harmony grind the ink of spring, and may the new year surpass the old!" I also hope all my reader husbands will stuff your big collections, comments, follows, and votes into my fresh new book—please! or2
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