In her spare time, Ye Qingxian planned to ask Yue Wuhua how to get along with her Junior Sister normally, so she could learn a few tricks.
In the end, she kept putting it off.
Never mind. Asking directly didn't feel right. She'd observe them in the days to come instead.
She and Yue Wuhua were both fairies of the same standing, and their paths crossed regularly in all sorts of settings. Yue Wuhua sometimes brought her Junior Sister along, so Ye Qingxian had already left a deep impression on her.
That was how Ye Qingxian explained it to herself.
A week slipped by. Then, at a banquet, Ye Qingxian ran into Yue Wuhua and her Junior Sister.
A particularly shy girl followed behind Yue Wuhua that day.
As usual, Ye Qingxian sat in the seat of honor.
Yue Wuhua took a seat beside her, while Shuang Yue followed closely and sat to Yue Wuhua's right.
Everything she'd observed so far seemed perfectly normal. Then, when no one was looking—when no one else could see what was happening beneath the table—Ye Qingxian caught sight of it in an instant. With her stature, she noticed Yue Wuhua and Shuang Yue tugging at each other's hands. Shuang Yue seemed unwilling to let Yue Wuhua hold her hand, so they kept pulling back and forth. Yue Wuhua seemed to be running out of patience. She simply pressed down on the back of Shuang Yue's head and, right under Ye Qingxian's gaze, kissed her soundly.
Ye Qingxian: "..."
"?"
Wait, what had she just seen?
Was this... normal?
Was this how she could get along with her Junior Sister as sweetly as Yue Wuhua did?
Could this be the only right way to go about it?
This—
Ye Qingxian was left staring in utter shock.
After being kissed, Shuang Yue lowered her head, even more embarrassed. She kept muttering things no one else could understand, like, "No, no, you can't do that. The Cat Princess hasn't agreed yet." Those kinds of remarks made Yue Wuhua inexplicably furious. Her face darkened, but she couldn't do a thing about it.
Ye Qingxian fell silent.
What Cat Princess?
Just going by the way they got along, was this really normal?
Her Junior Sister did keep rejecting her advances, just like Shuang Yue.
But was she really supposed to do what Yue Wuhua did?
Kiss her first, whether she agreed or not, and worry about the rest later?
It just didn't seem right.
Who got along with someone like that?
What kind of way to get through to someone was a kiss?
Could that possibly be the right thing to do?
Besides, she was straight, wasn't she?
Ye Qingxian said so with absolute certainty.
She remembered that Yue Wuhua was supposed to be straight too. How had things changed? What, exactly, had happened?
Ye Qingxian felt as if her whole worldview was collapsing. Especially since she was the only one who'd seen it. When Yue Wuhua kissed Shuang Yue, she'd even spread out her domain, so none of the countless female cultivators present had noticed their little secret.
What was wrong with this world?
When Ye Qingxian left the banquet, she was still in a daze, unable to put her feelings into words.
She was silent for a long time.
Before she knew it, she'd wandered near her Junior Sister's cave abode again.
Ye Qingxian knew she was straight.
So she definitely couldn't just kiss her like that.
It was almost as if she were deliberately emphasizing that to herself.
She changed into another disguise and knocked on her Junior Sister's cave-abode door.
Knock, knock, knock—
"Who—who's at the door?" I hurried out of my bedroom and noticed the female cultivator standing outside. "Qing Ye, what brings you here?"
I rushed over and opened the ward.
"I came to see how you've been lately," Qing Ye replied.
I clutched the talisman she'd given me. "Thanks. Your talisman works great. Could I borrow it for a few more months?"
I was afraid she'd come to take it back, so I immediately promised in all seriousness, "I'll make sure to pay you every last spirit stone for renting the talisman from now on."
Qing Ye chuckled. "It's fine. Just keep using it. I'm not leaving the sect, and it'd just sit around otherwise. You might as well rent it out and put it to good use. The last time resources were distributed, the talisman came in handy, didn't it?"
"Yeah, it helped a lot." I went outside with her. We strolled side by side.
Only then did I really notice the difference in our heights.
Qing Ye seemed pretty tall too.
Oh, it wasn't that she was tall. Everyone else was tall.
Never mind, then.
I nudged a pebble along the ground with my foot when the little life inside my belly suddenly kicked me.
"..."
"If you have something to say, just say it. Why are you kicking me?" I reasoned with the baby. "Can't you talk?"
Maybe it was because I was nearing the end of my pregnancy, but my intelligence seemed to have taken a slight hit. I immediately added, my words a little muddled, "If you can't talk, you're not allowed to kick people either."
The baby had always been quiet, but whenever Qing Ye showed up, it got lively.
It wasn't the first time.
Who knew that as soon as I finished speaking, it would kick me again?
I... froze like a statue.
All right, all right. Were you starved for maternal love?
My fists clenched on their own.
I slowly let a deathly smile spread across my face.
With the baby tossing me around like this, my stomach was bound to feel awful, so Qing Ye and I sat down on a bench.
"Is the baby misbehaving?" Qing Ye asked, glancing over.
The girl's gaze almost instinctively stopped at one particular spot.
The little girl's gorgeous, dewy-red lips parted and closed ever so slightly. They really were hard to look away from.
Her gaze lingered for a second or two, then slowly drifted away.
Why was she even thinking about that? She wasn't going to kiss her, so there was no need to dwell on it.
Qing Ye hadn't quite understood her own recent thoughts.
Wasn't she normally not supposed to think about it at all?
"Yeah." I puffed out my cheeks and complained, a little unhappy, looking just like a hamster stuffing its cheeks. "The baby's usually well-behaved, but sometimes it acts up. I have no idea why."
If it were only Ye Qingxian, I could say I'd run into my mother and the baby was kicking up a fuss to remind me.
But what was with Qing Ye?
She wasn't that woman, Ye Qingxian, whose every word annoyed me to death.
It was like suddenly stepping on my own left foot.
I was too embarrassed to tell anyone about things like that.
Suddenly, I swayed my dizzy head.
By now, I'd learned from experience. If I stood up, I'd definitely get dizzy and lose my balance.
For all I knew, I'd even throw myself into someone's arms.
Yes, it was that ridiculous.
The baby really could make that happen.
So I kept my deathly smile in place. My palm, not even half the size of anyone else's, curled into a tiny fist, and I stayed seated without moving.
Just as I was sure I'd nearly recovered, who knew that the instant I stood up, the dizziness would surge a hundredfold? It practically told me outright that the baby was up to no good. My legs went limp along with the dizziness, and just like that, I plopped down in some girl's lap.
I—was dumbfounded.
Fine, baby. You win.
Even if I was your own mother, I was holding a grudge now.
Did you hear that? I was putting you in my little book.
That was too much!!!
Did you know what happened to people I wrote in my black book when I settled accounts with them later?
Well, you wouldn't want that to happen to you, would you?
I muttered threats at the baby, and at last, the negative effects cleared all at once.
My face was burning red. As soon as the dizziness passed, I sprang to my feet.
Her bones weren't as delicate as they looked. She was softer than I'd imagined, and the brief warmth of our touch still lingered.
Qing Ye stared at the thigh she'd just touched.
The Immortal Skirt had even been flattened a little where I'd sat on it.
When I saw Qing Ye slowly lift her head, I wanted to spin in circles on the spot from sheer embarrassment. "No, I really didn't do that on purpose." Oh no, did she think I was humiliating her?
Waaah, who wanted someone to sit on her like that?
If that wasn't humiliating, what was? My very first partner in crime!
I hurriedly tried to explain. "I-I'm sorry. I got dizzy..."
Qing Ye didn't seem to mind such a trivial thing. She casually took out a small pill. "Take this. I made it myself. It replenishes your qi and blood, and it cost me nothing. Call it payment for the flatbread you gave me last time."
Seeing that Qing Ye didn't care, I breathed a sigh of relief, took the pill, and swallowed it.
In an instant, my head cleared completely, and it felt as though my qi and blood had been replenished.
What... kind of pill was this?
It worked even better than the medicinal pills I'd taken before.
Could it be a concentrated medicinal pill?
A trace of suspicion rose in my heart, but I suppressed it.
What rich tycoon would pretend to be an odd-job disciple and play house with me?
Come on.
I knew perfectly well what kind of cannon fodder I, Ye Xiaoyao, was.
It must've been Qing Ye's own skill. She was a master craftswoman, making little pills with such incredible effects. If she sold them, wouldn't she go straight to the pinnacle of life?
Qing Ye's gaze shifted several times.
The girl recalled the thoughts that had just risen in her—the heartbeat that had made the whole world seem to fall silent.
Qing Ye frowned slightly.
She did feel... a little unsettled.
Was she being affected by Yue Wuhua's behavior?
The ripple was faint. Most people would have ignored it, but Ye Qingxian was a peerless genius, the greatest prodigy of her generation. Her heart should have remained as still as a windless lake from beginning to end. Yue Wuhua's actions must have been so shocking that they'd stirred her.
But what if there was another possibility?
For the first time, Ye Qingxian considered a different explanation.
What if that ripple had come from her Junior Sister, and not from the other people she'd always assumed were responsible?
That would... make sense, too.
Her Junior Sister wasn't a stranger.
That she was straight was probably beyond question.
As Qing Ye left the area around the cave abode, she was still thinking about Yue Wuhua and her Junior Sister. Her Junior Sister did reject her in some ways, just like Shuang Yue.
But she couldn't use that trick!
She'd intended to observe Yue Wuhua for a long time.
The scene she'd witnessed today was so shocking that there was no way she could copy it exactly. She could only conclude that her plan to observe and imitate Yue Wuhua had failed this time. Hopefully, the next time she got a close look at Yue Wuhua and her Junior Sister, she'd pick up some useful information.
Kissing someone without a second thought could indeed make them shut up—and get you a lot of positive results besides.
The catch was that the other person had to like you.
And it wouldn't work for someone like her. Well, for a straight girl.
No matter how many conditions there were, Ye Qingxian still made a note of this lesson.
Even if she'd never be able to use it...
Hopefully, next time she'd learn something she could put to use.
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