See You Again, Female Bandit

It hadn't taken long, only ten short minutes, yet it had been equivalent to a month of ordinary effort.

Usually, improving one's mental power was no easy task. It was incredibly difficult, but with the help of the Spiritual Diagram Record, the process had become much easier.

Long Jiuyyao didn't feel tired at all. In fact, he still wanted more and wished he could do it again.

But without the help of that strange moonlight, everything returned to normal, and the feeling was gone. That strange moonlight, which resonated with the radiance of the Seven Original Sins, lasted only ten minutes.

After those ten minutes, the moonlight was the usual sparse, pale gray—not the faint white light from before.

Based on Long Jiuyyao's guess, the strange moonlight appeared during the hour of the Rat, from 11:55 p.m. to 12:05 a.m. It lasted only those ten minutes, and appeared when the full moon reached its highest point.

Long Jiuyyao stretched, took in the breathtaking view beneath the mountaintop, then sped away like a shadow and vanished.

When Long Jiuyyao returned to his courtyard, he saw Yuan Xin fast asleep on his bed. He pinched her soft cheek, then turned and headed for the room next door.

"Click!"

The sound of the door closing woke Yuan Xin. She muttered unhappily, "Brother's such a coward!"

Then she rolled over and went right back to sleep, as if no one had spoken.

Long Jiuyyao, in the room next door, had no idea. He slept soundly until dawn.

"Bang, bang, bang!" A rapid knock sounded at the door!

"Who is it? Can't you let people sleep? Get lost!" Long Jiuyyao opened the door in disarray, his face dark with displeasure, and shouted.

The Blue Haired Girl felt she'd been unjustly chewed out and immediately grew annoyed. I put aside our past grievances and came to wake you, and now you're the one getting mad?

The Blue Haired Girl opened her mouth to speak, but Long Jiuyyao abruptly shut the door, leaving her standing outside. Her anger flared even hotter.

"Bang, bang, bang!" The knocking grew several times louder. "You jerk, open the door!" the Blue Haired Girl shouted as she pounded on it.

Long Jiuyyao was even more dumbfounded when he opened the door and saw the Female Bandit from a year ago. Though they hadn't seen each other in a year, he could never forget her blue hair. She was even more beautiful than before.

I'm done for, Long Jiuyyao thought. We never settled things from last year, and now she's just chewed me out for no reason. Who wouldn't be upset?

He could already imagine the furious look on her face.

"Phew!" Long Jiuyyao patted his chest and steadied himself. He changed into a black robe, then opened the door again.

"Ah!"

As soon as he opened it, Long Jiuyyao was hit by a lovely, milky scent.

"Thud!" They both fell to the ground.

Lan Xinhuang hadn't expected the jerk to suddenly open the door. At the last moment, she lost her balance and crashed straight into him.

Long Jiuyyao didn't realize what was happening. Instead, he was lost in that milky scent, even greedily breathing it in.

His actions made Lan Xinhuang feel a ticklish sensation at her neck, as if a soft breeze had brushed past. She looked down at Long Jiuyyao's entranced face. Her cheeks instantly flushed red as a sunset, though she was even angrier than she was embarrassed.

"Brother! What are you two..." Yuan Xin covered her mouth in shock as she approached from farther down the hall.

Lan Xinhuang, who had been seething with anger, jolted as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over her. Her fury vanished, and even her raised, pale arm froze in place.

"You lecher!" Lan Xinhuang came to her senses and cursed.

She struck Long Jiuyyao hard in the chest with her jade-white hand, then got up, covered her face, and hurried away.

"Sister Lan!" Yuan Xin called after her.

Lan Xinhuang paused when she heard Yuan Xin, but only for a moment.

Yuan Xin came to the doorway and folded her arms, grinning. "Brother, you're pretty good! You managed to win Sister Lan over so quickly."

"But you shouldn't do that right at the front door. What if someone sees? It wouldn't look good. Besides, you're not ready for that sort of thing yet, are you?"

It was no wonder she'd gotten the wrong idea—the two of them had looked far too intimate to Yuan Xin.

Lan Xinhuang had been straddling Long Jiuyyao's waist, and he'd buried his face in her neck. His hands had even been resting on her waist.

No wonder she'd let her imagination run wild.

"What are you talking about? It wasn't what you think! You're still so young, yet you've got quite the imagination." Long Jiuyyao got up, tapped Yuan Xin on the forehead, and scolded her.

"Mm-hmm, it definitely wasn't what I think!" Yuan Xin said, but the look on her face suggested otherwise.

Seeing that she didn't believe him, Long Jiuyyao gave up on explaining and asked instead, "Why did the Female Bandit come here?"

"The Female Bandit? What Female Bandit?" Yuan Xin asked, puzzled.

"Never mind. Why did she come here?" Long Jiuyyao asked again.

"You don't know? The Mountain Survival event, which happens once every five years, is about to begin. Sister Lan came to take part with us," Yuan Xin explained.

"What!" Long Jiuyyao shouted.

"Mountain Survival requires teams of three, and Sister Lan wanted to join us, so the three of us can team up!" Yuan Xin said with a grin.

"Don't tell me she couldn't find anyone else, so nobody wanted her and she had to join us," Long Jiuyyao muttered.

With her temper, he couldn't imagine what she'd be like trying to team up with anyone else.

"Crack, crack, crack!"

Behind an ancient tree not far away, Lan Xinhuang heard Long Jiuyyao's remark and snapped the branch in her hand in fury, breaking it into several pieces.

"Who's there?" Long Jiuyyao turned and spotted Lan Xinhuang beneath the tree. He awkwardly waved. "Hi! You came back."

"You jerk! You're the one nobody wants! I could just crook my finger and have tons of people begging to team up with me!" Lan Xinhuang shouted furiously.

"Wait, wait! I want you! Is that so hard to believe?" Long Jiuyyao made full use of his thick skin.

"From the way you say it, you sound like you're being forced." Lan Xinhuang smiled coldly.

"No, no! I'm not the one being forced—you are." Long Jiuyyao eyed the Wind Blade in her hand, shaped like a full moon, afraid that one wrong word would earn him a slash.

"Calm down, calm down. I'm grateful that Miss Lan is joining our team. How could I possibly turn you away?" Long Jiuyyao gently stroked her back, moving his hand up and down.

"Hmph!" Lan Xinhuang gave an arrogant little snort.

Looking at her haughty expression, Long Jiuyyao thought, She's just acting like a kid. How could I, with two lifetimes' worth of experience, not handle you?

Watching Lan Xinhuang standing beneath the tree with her chin held high while Long Jiuyyao smiled obsequiously, Yuan Xin was amazed by her brother's skill. It had taken him just a few words to get Sister Lan under control.

Lan Xinhuang glanced at Yuan Xin in the distance, then at Long Jiuyyao. The atmosphere felt strange, though she couldn't put her finger on why.

Lan Xinhuang left Long Jiuyyao behind and walked straight over to Yuan Xin. In the end, Long Jiuyyao was the odd one out. He couldn't get a word in edgewise as the two girls chatted, so he could only trail behind them.

After asking around, Long Jiuyyao learned that Mountain Survival would begin in three days. The thirty-three participants would form eleven teams and spend a month surviving in the Rock Mist Mountain Range without bringing anything with them.

The elders would also release monsters into the Rock Mist Mountain Range. No one knew how many there would be or what their strength would be.

Besides the basic survival challenge, there was also a side challenge: the teams would be ranked by how many monsters they killed and the strength of those monsters. Their combined results would determine each team's final score.

Long Jiuyyao didn't know how strong the other participants were, but he was certain that even the weakest were at the Lesser Origin Core Realm. As for the strongest, he had no idea.

"I wonder how strong the Female Bandit is. She should be about as strong as Xin'er, right?" Long Jiuyyao sat in the Stone Pavilion, stroking his chin as he murmured.

"Whistle!" Long Jiuyyao put a finger to his lips and let out a loud whistle.

Two figures, one gold and one purple, came to his side. Long Jiuyyao happily stroked their backs. Unlike when they'd first met, when neither would submit to the other, the two beasts now got along very well.

"Blackback!" A delighted cry came from nearby. The Blue Haired Girl came running and leaped onto Zi Lin's back.

"What are you talking about? That's Zi Lin," Long Jiuyyao said, shaking his head.

"Hmph! He used to be called Blackback. You were the one who stole him away!" Lan Xinhuang shot back.

Zi Lin hadn't forgotten the name Blackback—or the girl who had once ridden on his back. He happily swayed his body.

Only Jin Ming quietly shrank back, afraid she'd spot him and turn him into braised lion's head.

Naturally, Lan Xinhuang didn't miss it. She fixed a mischievous stare on Jin Ming as he cowered.

Long Jiuyyao had seen it too. As Jin Ming's boss, he stepped forward and patted its back with his right hand, reassuring it that there was nothing to fear.

Jin Ming understood what Long Jiuyyao meant. It straightened up, held its head high, and met Lan Xinhuang's gaze.

"Hm?" Lan Xinhuang saw that Jin Ming seemed to have stopped being afraid of her now that Long Jiuyyao was backing it up. She raised an eyebrow and glanced at Long Jiuyyao.

When Long Jiuyyao saw Lan Xinhuang glaring at him, his heart clenched. His large hand, which rested on Jin Ming's back, slowly slipped away without a sound.

As the feeling of Long Jiuyyao's hand vanished from its back, Jin Ming felt its heart sink.

"Hahaha!" Yuan Xin, watching from not far away, burst into a string of clear, melodious laughter.

It was then that she realized her brother would definitely be henpecked someday.