Out of Options

Lu Menge was thinking.

She leaned back in the rattan chair in her office, a thermos resting on her knees as her fingers tapped idly against its lid. Little White Tiger lay sprawled on the windowsill, its tail hanging down and twitching every so often to chase away nonexistent flies.

"Tell me," Lu Menge suddenly said, "should I let him know?"

Little White Tiger's ears twitched, but it did not open its eyes.

"He really seems to think I'm some poor little thing. Last time, he said, 'If anyone bullies you in the future, tell me'—and he was serious. His eyes were sincere, too. I was pretty touched at the time, but after I came back and thought about it, something felt wrong. He genuinely thinks I'll get bullied."

Little White Tiger yawned.

"I've lived this long. Other than the laws of heaven and earth, who has ever bullied me?"

Little White Tiger buried its head in its paws. It had heard her go on about this question many times—from the night after they watched that movie, to when Wu Changkong brought her a late-night snack, to when he bought her a scarf. Every time she made some sort of move, Wu Changkong's interpretation would veer precisely away from the truth. That would have been fine, except every single misunderstanding somehow led to the conclusion that she needed protection.

Lu Menge set the thermos on the windowsill, stood up, and examined herself in the mirror. Today, she wore a light gray sweater, dark blue trousers, low-heeled ankle boots, and her hair tied in a low ponytail. Very proper. Very capable.

"I'm going to let him know how formidable I am." She spoke to her reflection with absolute determination.

Little White Tiger finally opened its eyes. It looked at her with an expression that clearly said, Are you sure?

"Tang Wulin and Gu Yue happen to have practical class today. They're going to the Spirit Pagoda to choose spirit souls. Before I take them there, I'll make a trip to the training ground first. Wu Changkong should be there. I'll find an excuse to get him to show off the Heavenfrost Sword, then casually mention that I have eight rings—not deliberately, just offhandedly, like saying the weather is nice today. He's smart enough to realize I've been keeping a low profile. Then he won't keep imagining how miserable my life is."

Little White Tiger let out a roar.

"I know eight rings aren't much to him—he's a Titled Douluo, so eight rings really are lower than his. But I'm not weak, right? At least I can't be bullied so easily, right?"

Little White Tiger roared again, longer this time.

"What do you mean, 'You'd better be'? Of course I am!"

Lu Menge scooped Little White Tiger off the windowsill, placed it on her shoulder, pushed open the office door, and headed toward the training ground in her low-heeled boots. As she passed the field, she happened to run into Tang Wulin and Gu Yue.

"Come on—we're making a stop at the training ground before I take you to the Spirit Pagoda."

Tang Wulin was crouching beside a flowerbed, tying his shoelaces. He looked up at that. "What are we going to the training ground for?"

"I need to see Teacher Wu about something. You two can just wait nearby."

Gu Yue's violet eyes rested on her face for a second. Lu Menge pretended not to notice.

The training ground was in the northeast corner of Eastsea Academy, an open-air combat practice area paved with special hard stone slabs and surrounded by simple protective barriers. Wu Changkong was indeed there. Dressed in white, he stood in the center of the training ground with the Heavenfrost Sword in hand, its tip angled toward the ground as cold mist curled around it. Three upperclassmen stood opposite him, driven steadily backward by his sword intent. One move. Two moves. Before the third could even come out, half of the three students' martial souls had already frozen over.

"Enough. Go back and train your soul power to protect your bodies."

The three students looked as though they had been pardoned. Lu Menge seized the opening and walked over from the edge of the field, followed by two little tails—Tang Wulin with a bewildered expression, Gu Yue looking entertained.

"Teacher Wu—"

Wu Changkong turned around. He had not yet put away the Heavenfrost Sword, and the frost on its blade condensed into fine droplets beneath the afternoon sun. When he saw Lu Menge, his gaze shifted slightly—a subtle relaxation that only appeared after confirming she was safe and sound. Lu Menge caught that look. She would have found it amusing before, but today all she could think was, Oh no, he definitely thinks I've been wronged again.

"Teacher Lu." He put away his sword and walked over. "What is it?"

"It's nothing major. I'm taking Wulin and Gu Yue to the Spirit Pagoda to choose spirit souls today, but before we go, I wanted you to help check the circulation of their soul power. You're higher-ranked than I am—I'm afraid I might not judge it accurately, so sorry to trouble you."

She said it naturally. The words "higher-ranked than I am" slipped from her tongue as lightly as a breath, flattering him while burying the implication of "eight rings" underneath. Then she pushed Tang Wulin forward. "Go on. Let Teacher Wu check your soul power circulation."

Tang Wulin staggered a step from the shove, then steadied himself and obediently activated his soul power. Wu Changkong turned his attention to him, extending two fingers from his left hand to rest on Tang Wulin's wrist. After sensing for a moment, he nodded slightly. "Your meridians are very clear. There's obvious improvement compared to two weeks ago."

Leaning against a piece of training equipment with her arms folded, Lu Menge spoke casually. "He forges every day. Forging is training too—I trained the same way back then. When I was figuring out soul power circulation on my own, from one ring to eight rings, it was more or less this approach."

She slipped the words "eight rings" into the middle of a string of remarks like sprinkling a grain of salt into a bowl of soup, waiting for him to taste it himself. Wu Changkong did not respond. He was checking Gu Yue's soul power circulation instead—Gu Yue expressionlessly extended a hand, let him take her pulse once, then withdrew it. Wu Changkong frowned slightly. "Your blood and qi are a little cold. Keep warm."

"...Got it," Gu Yue said. Her tone was cool, but Lu Menge noticed she had not shaken off Wu Changkong's hand—for the Silver Dragon King, that was already an extremely high degree of cooperation.

"Eight rings," Lu Menge repeated as Wu Changkong turned around, emphasizing the words this time.

Wu Changkong stopped and looked back at her. At last, a tiny change appeared on that glacier-like face—his lips moved slightly, as though he was confirming that he had heard correctly. "Eight-ring assault-type," Lu Menge said, hooking a thumb toward herself with a dazzling smile. "The real deal."

The training ground fell silent for a moment. Wu Changkong nodded once. "Then you're very formidable."

Lu Menge's fox-like eyes narrowed. His tone was too calm. It was not the surprise of You're actually that formidable, but the calm of I understand. If anything, it sounded more like a perfunctory You're right—like hearing a child boast about running very fast, and as an adult, being too embarrassed to expose the lie, so all you could do was go along with it and say, "Yes, you're very fast."

"You don't believe me," Lu Menge said.

"It's not that I don't believe you." Wu Changkong's tone remained infuriatingly steady.

Lu Menge took a deep breath and decided to bring out the big guns. She stepped back two paces, raised her right hand levelly, and spread her fingers slightly. One soul ring after another rose beneath her feet—eight in total, each one so dark a purple it was nearly black, their profound luster flowing beneath the sunlight. The instant the eighth soul ring lit up, a hazy phantom appeared behind her—the White Tiger Sacred Image. She deliberately suppressed it within an extremely small range, revealing only the blurred outline of its noncombat form. A gentle white light fell from the sacred image's mouth, like an ancient blessing. Everyone present felt their blood and qi warm slightly for an instant.

Then she withdrew her soul rings. The phantom vanished. The entire display took less than five seconds—clean, decisive, and indisputable.

"Do you believe me now?"

Wu Changkong was silent for a while. He truly was thinking. Eight soul rings, purple and above—the configuration was extraordinarily luxurious. "You mentioned your family situation before. You said you had no parents and had always been alone."

Lu Menge nodded. "That's right."

"Then where did these soul rings come from?"

"I trained for them myself, obviously. Where else would they come from—someone giving them to me?" She nearly bit her tongue. She had almost let something slip.

Wu Changkong's brows furrowed slightly. Trained for them herself? Eight rings, purple-grade quality, no family background, no sect support—an orphaned girl cultivating alone? He had seen many geniuses and many powerful figures built up by resources. Lu Menge's configuration did not seem like something a solitary wanderer in her twenties could achieve independently. Unless—someone was helping her. No, that word was too mild. Someone had been raising her with vast amounts of resources. And those resources clearly were not something she could acquire through ordinary means.

Wu Changkong fell silent for several seconds before suddenly speaking. "Teacher Lu."

"Mm?"

"Back then... did someone give you a lot of tonics?"

"Huh?" Lu Menge froze.

"With your soul ring configuration, it would have been difficult to obtain them independently given the living conditions you mentioned before." Wu Changkong spoke slowly, as though choosing every word with care. "If someone used tonics to raise your cultivation—" He paused, apparently feeling that what came next was inappropriate, but some deeper concern still made him ask, "Were you kept by someone before?"

The training ground fell into unprecedented silence.

Tang Wulin's mouth dropped into an O. Gu Yue's eyebrows nearly flew off her forehead. Little White Tiger stumbled on Lu Menge's shoulder and almost rolled off. Lu Menge's mind crashed for a full three seconds.

She had lived through endless ages, experienced the war of the God Realm, seen the Dragon God fall, and calmly held the Silver Dragon King over her knee in the Star Dou Great Forest to spank her. But in her long life, this was the first time anyone had asked her, "Were you kept by someone?"

"What did you say?" Lu Menge thought she had misheard him.

Seeing her reaction, Wu Changkong became even more convinced of his judgment. She was avoiding the subject. When someone was struck at a sore spot, their first reaction was to make the other person repeat it, buying time to invent an explanation.

"If it's true," he said in a voice so low that only she could hear, "you don't need to feel ashamed. You had no other choice then. Staying alive was what mattered most. Those things won't affect how I see you."

Lu Menge stood where she was, her expression like someone had dumped a bowl of ice cream over her face—shocked, absurd, unable to laugh. Kept? Her? The Nine-Headed White Tiger? Every bone in her body was screaming, Money is the one thing I never lack. But she could not say it. Because she had just personally said she had no parents, no family, no sect. Her eight-ring cultivation and outrageously lavish soul ring configuration were right there for all to see. An ordinary person could never accumulate those resources alone. He was using his own logic to deduce the truth. And the conclusion he reached—was that she had been kept.

"Wu Changkong," Lu Menge said after taking a deep breath, forcing her voice into the steadiest tone of her entire life, "no one has ever kept me."

Wu Changkong looked at her. There was no disbelief in his eyes, only deeper, more restrained pain. She was still denying it. That meant the experience had been too painful for her. She would rather pretend it had never happened than admit it.

"Okay," he said.

Those three letters made Lu Menge give up completely. It was not Okay, I understand. It was Fine, we won't talk about it. He did not believe her at all.

"I'm heading back first." She raised her right hand and waved at Tang Wulin and Gu Yue. "You two, let's go. We're going to the Spirit Pagoda. Don't spread what happened today."

Tang Wulin nodded mechanically. An extremely complicated emotion surged in Gu Yue's violet eyes—if Lu Menge was not mistaken, that expression seemed to say: I, the dignified Silver Dragon King, just witnessed an ancient sacred beast being asked by a mortal whether she was kept by someone, and I can't even tell anyone about it.

After they had walked far away from the training ground, Tang Wulin cautiously asked, "Teacher Lu... are you okay?"

"I'm great."

"Teacher Wu seemed really serious when he asked that question."

"I know."

Tang Wulin hesitated. "Then why did he think you were... being kept by someone?"

Lu Menge said nothing. The more she thought about what had happened today, the more stifled she felt. It was not as though she had not considered revealing her true form—if she put the Nine-Headed White Tiger onto the training ground, unfurled all nine tails, and let the pressure of a sacred beast blanket the heavens and earth, Wu Changkong would immediately understand what sort of existence he had been working alongside every day. But if she did that, she would lose. She had come out this time to live as an ordinary person. Once all her secrets were exposed, she would not be able to trick him into bringing her late-night snacks anymore.

Gu Yue suddenly spoke beside her. "If you showed your true form, he wouldn't bring you late-night snacks anymore."

Lu Menge halted and turned to look at Gu Yue. The girl's violet eyes were calm and still, several strands of silver hair blown up by the wind, her face plainly saying that she understood but would not say it aloud. Lu Menge decided to skip this topic.

"Come on. I'm taking you to the Spirit Pagoda to choose spirit souls. Nobody mentions what happened today."

She strode ahead in long steps, her low-heeled boots striking the stone path in a hurried rhythm. After walking a few paces, she softly cursed again. The curse was quiet enough that only she heard it. Rather than anger, it was more like an unfamiliar feeling had left her thoroughly unsettled. Behind her, Gu Yue and Tang Wulin exchanged a glance, reading the same sentence in each other's eyes: Teacher Lu had taken a hit.