When he got to this point, he seemed to suddenly remember something and looked back at Su Wanwan. "You never ran into this sort of thing before?"
Su Wanwan's steps paused.
"I have," she said flatly. "How could I not? When I was little, my cultivation was shallow and even my transformation wasn't stable. What I feared running into most wasn't Great Demons, but cultivators. Great Demons might not necessarily take an interest in me, but cultivators were different. Some would get greedy the moment they saw a Fox Demon, either saying they were exorcising demons to accumulate virtue, or saying they'd catch me and take me back to guard the gate or refine pills. In short, not a single good word out of them."
"What happened later?" Chu Yang asked.
"Later, I learned to hide," Su Wanwan said. "Hide my tail, hide my aura, hide my thoughts. After hiding for long enough, even when I spoke, I had to put a layer of twists around it first, in case someone heard what I really was."
When she said this, her tone was not heavy. It was even rather casual.
But Chu Yang glanced at her and did not reply, only continued walking forward.
Sun Wukong, for once, did not crack jokes either. He merely clicked his tongue. "That lot really is annoying."
"So." Su Wanwan tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Don't always think I like talking in circles. A lot of the time, if I didn't, I wouldn't survive."
At those words, the little path ahead suddenly fell quiet for a moment.
The wind swept down from the slope, carrying a trace of lingering morning chill, blowing the waves of grass down layer after layer.
Chu Yang led the horse on for a few steps, then suddenly