Little Kitty

After leaving the training grounds, Lu Menge was unusually silent the whole way. Tang Wulin hugged his bag of new clothes tightly and followed carefully behind, occasionally glancing at Gu Yue. Gu Yue shook her head at him—meaning, "Don't talk. Just follow." Tang Wulin obediently kept his mouth shut.

When they reached the gingko-lined path by Eastsea Academy's back gate, Lu Menge suddenly stopped. She looked back at Tang Wulin, then at Gu Yue, held it in for a long while, and finally said only two words: "Dismissed."

As if granted a pardon, Tang Wulin bowed, clutched his clothing bag, and bolted back to the dormitory. Gu Yue did not leave. Leaning against a gingko tree with her arms folded, she wore an exceptionally rare expression in her purple eyes—if Lu Menge was not mistaken, it was called schadenfreude.

Lu Menge stopped and turned around. The teasing languor was gone from her amber fox eyes, replaced by a long-suppressed, simmering irritation. "What are you laughing at?"

"Nothing." Gu Yue's expression remained blank, her lips perfectly still. "You saw wrong."

Lu Menge took a deep breath, swallowed the ten thousand retorts already at her lips, and started walking again. The rhythm of her low-heeled boots against the stone path had lost its usual lazy ease, gaining an indescribable note of resentment instead. Gu Yue followed at an unhurried pace, completely composed. She was in an especially good mood today. Not because her soul power had recovered—not because Di Tian's secret letter had arrived, nor for any of those reasons she had never cared about. It was simply because Lu Menge had actually been stumped. And not by some ancient god or Titled Douluo, but by a human teacher with the Heavenfrost Sword martial soul. In the most unexpected way possible, she had been asked, "Were you ever kept by someone?"

Gu Yue replayed that sentence over and over in her mind, wanting to laugh more each time. Of course, she did not laugh aloud. She maintained the dignity of the Silver Dragon King. But she deliberately walked shoulder to shoulder with Lu Menge—normally, she would have preferred to stay three paces away from her, but today she insisted on making sure Lu Menge could see her expression clearly.

Naturally, Lu Menge saw it. Gu Yue's purple eyes were usually full of indifference, but today they were practically shining. Lu Menge suddenly stopped and turned around. Gu Yue stopped as well, tilting her head at her, her gaze openly spelling out a single line: Yes, I am enjoying your misfortune.

"You're feeling good?" Lu Menge's fox eyes narrowed slightly.

Gu Yue did not deny it, nor did she hesitate. "Very."

"You're this happy because I got shut down?"

"Mhm." Gu Yue lifted her chin slightly. The wind swept her silver hair behind her shoulders, revealing her pale neck and the corner of her lips that she simply could not suppress. She recalled what had happened before. "Last time in the Star Dou Great Forest—you let the Little White Tiger scare me. Then you were the one who pinned me over your knee and spanked me. Before we came to Eastsea Academy, you were also the one who dragged me and all my things out of the stone hall. Then, on the first day of school, you spanked me in public." She raised her head and looked directly at Lu Menge.

Lu Menge blinked her fox eyes.

"Today, someone got revenge for me—I feel great. Great enough to save this day in the Dragon Clan Memory Legacy."

Lu Menge was silent for quite a while. Then she reached out and flicked Gu Yue sharply on the forehead. Gu Yue covered her forehead and glared at Lu Menge with her purple eyes, but the gesture had no intimidation whatsoever.

"Now that you've vented, give me some advice." Lu Menge slipped both hands into her sweater pockets, her expression unusually serious. "I have to explain this clearly to him."

"How will you explain it?" Gu Yue lowered the hand covering her forehead, her tone turning cool again. "Tell him you're a Nine-Headed White Tiger, that you've lived for hundreds of millions of years, and that your soul rings grew on their own? Aren't you afraid of scaring him to death?"

"I can't. But I also can't let him keep thinking I'm some pitiful little thing being supported by someone else."

"You could have ignored him and let him cling to that misunderstanding. He'd still bring you late-night snacks and buy you milk tea. The more you explain, the worse it'll look."

Lu Menge fell silent for a moment, then spoke in a rare low voice. "No." When he had asked that question at the training grounds, there had been no contempt or mockery in him—only concern that he had desperately tried, yet failed, to conceal. That meant he had taken even the most humiliating possibilities into his own heart.

Gu Yue shifted her gaze from Lu Menge's face to the gingko treetops. Light filtered through the yellow leaves, falling in scattered flecks across her silver hair. A tiny voice spoke within her—ever since awakening as the Silver Dragon King, she had been wary of all humans, yet this White Tiger before her was the greatest loophole in humanity's entire understanding. She said she felt great, but what she did not say was that, when she saw Lu Menge frozen in place by Wu Changkong's single sentence at the training grounds, she had glimpsed a loneliness and bitterness that spanned endless years in those amber eyes.

"How do you want to explain it?" Gu Yue finally asked.

"Martial Soul True Form," Lu Menge said.

Gu Yue looked up.

"I won't fully transform—just a partial beast transformation. Tiger ears, tiger tail, tiger claws—let him see whether I really got this way by having someone pile supplements on me. I won't show all my cultivation, but at least he'll know I truly trained myself." Her tail lifted slightly, though she did not notice it herself.

Gu Yue examined her seriously. Tiger ears—fluffy white tiger ears emerging from either side of her head. A tiger tail—thick and extending from her tailbone, with the ancient rune Gu Yue had once seen under moonlight at its tip. Tiger claws—no, those had to be restrained, or one casual paw on Wu Changkong's shoulder could freeze him into claiming a workplace injury. Add those elements to a languid, alluring face with a beauty mark beneath her eye, a sinfully voluptuous figure, and fox eyes that always seemed to say, "You owe me money."

"After partially transforming, what expression are you planning to use when you explain it to him?" Gu Yue asked.

"I'll play it by ear," Lu Menge said casually. "If he doesn't believe me, I'll be nicer. If he still asks whether I'm being kept, I'll be less nice. Either way, I'll show him my strength first."

Gu Yue imagined the entire scene. Lu Menge standing before Wu Changkong, a pair of snowy white tiger ears perched atop her head, her tail swaying back and forth. She lifted her chin and made what she thought was a fierce expression, showing a hint of fang. Then Wu Changkong lowered his head and looked at this fluffy woman whose tail wagged from side to side and whose ears could twitch—what would his reaction be? Would he believe she was powerful?

Gu Yue spoke. "With your face, you'd look like a little kitty trying to seduce Teacher Wu."

The gingko path fell silent for an entire breath. The wind stopped. The gingko leaves stopped drifting. Even the range hood in the distant cafeteria kitchen went quiet. Lu Menge stood before Gu Yue, the pupils in her fox eyes shrinking for an instant—not in anger, but because she had been struck right where it hurt.

"Se...duce?"

Gu Yue analyzed calmly, "Your hair is down, with slightly curled ends. Your lipstick is cool-toned, but glossy. Your eyelashes are too long—you never used to put on mascara. Are you sure you're going to show off your muscles rather than something else?"

Lu Menge instinctively touched her eyelashes, the tips of her ears heating up beyond her control. "That's because I was taking you to the Spirit Pagoda today—it was a formal occasion, so I had to mind my appearance—"

"The last time you went to the Spirit Pagoda, you wore a low-cut camisole."

Lu Menge was speechless. Her expression at that moment pleased Gu Yue more and more—this was the highest realm of being stumped. No tiger roar, no restraints, merely being rendered speechless by a few casual remarks.

Gu Yue strode forward with complete confidence. As she passed Lu Menge, she paused briefly, the gold of the gingko leaves reflected in her purple eyes. "Aren't you going to seduce him anymore?"

Lu Menge took a deep breath and tossed her loose long hair back. "I am—but I'm not seducing him. I'm going to tell him that I'm strong. I don't need protection, and I definitely don't need to be kept."

Gu Yue gave a faint "Mhm." Then, just as Lu Menge took her first step, she softly added, "Then lower your heels a little more—flats make you look shorter, so it'll be easier for him to lower his head and look at you."

Lu Menge looked down. She was wearing flat ankle boots today. Slowly, she clenched her fists. The next second, she flashed a dazzling smile. "Gu Yue, tonight you're having clear broth with your hot pot."

"Why?"

"Because you said 'seduce' just now."

The wind blew Gu Yue's silver hair across half her face, leaving only one faintly gleaming purple eye visible, but the corner of her mouth lifted slightly. Since Lu Menge had known her, it was the first time Gu Yue had smiled so clearly while awake. Not because she was smug, but because every cutting remark she had made today had struck straight into the weak point of the woman who toyed with everyone in the palm of her hand.

"Let's go." Gu Yue took the lead.

Lu Menge followed behind her, unconsciously touching the ends of her hair as she rehearsed her partial transformation entrance all over again. She had to let Wu Changkong see—what the White Tiger True Form really was. What little kitty—little kitty. Those three words clung to her mind like bits of lint, impossible to shake off. She walked toward the Spirit Pagoda beside Gu Yue, her steps still loose and casual, but she knew it herself—never in her life had she wanted so badly to prove that she was strong.