Call Me Big Sister

Eastsea Academy. Early morning.

The campus was always noisy during enrollment season. Upperclassmen gathered in twos and threes by the edge of the field, bragging about how many hundred-year soul beasts they had hunted last semester and whose soul skill had broken through another bottleneck. The freshmen hunched their necks as they searched everywhere for their classrooms, clutching wrinkled admission notices in their hands. Every one of them looked like they had been forcibly escorted here by their parents.

Tang Wulin stood beneath the ginkgo tree at the school gate, holding that hard-won admission notice in his hand, his expression caught between excitement and nervousness. Around his wrist was that pale golden bracelet, its beads carrying a faint warmth in the morning light.

"Eastsea Academy... I really got in."

He took a deep breath, clenched his fists to encourage himself, and was about to take this historic first step—

A figure appeared silently behind him.

"Does it look good?"

Tang Wulin nearly threw away his admission notice. He spun around and saw a familiar white lab coat, a pair of amber fox eyes curved into crescents, and a black tear mole at the corner of her mouth that looked suspicious no matter how he viewed it.

"Teacher Lu?!"

"Mhm." Lu Menge had one hand in her pocket and held her ever-present thermos in the other. She looked him over. "Not bad. You came pretty early."

"Teacher, why are you here—"

"Obviously, I work here." Lu Menge blew on the steam rising from her thermos. "You, on the other hand—don't go in yet."

Tang Wulin froze. "Why?"

Lu Menge glanced toward the other side of the gate, her M-shaped lips curling into a meaningful smile.

"Wait for someone. There's a... freshman reporting in with you today. Your teacher will personally give you both an introduction to the school."

Tang Wulin followed her gaze. On the other side of the gate, separated by the crowd flowing in and out, stood a silver-haired girl.

She wore simple, plain-colored clothes. Her figure was slender, her skin almost translucent with its whiteness, and her silver hair drifted gently in the morning breeze. The surrounding bustle seemed completely unrelated to her—she was like a patch of blank space forcibly inserted into a lively painting, utterly out of place yet perfectly natural.

What caught Tang Wulin's attention most was her eyes. Purple, and very deep. At that moment, she was staring at the four words "Eastsea Academy" above the gate, her brows slightly furrowed as if she were having a battle of wills with the signboard.

"She's been standing at the gate for fifteen minutes." Lu Menge took a sip from her thermos, sounding as if she were watching a drama series.

"Why?"

"Maybe—she doesn't know how to cross the road."

"...Huh?"

Lu Menge offered no further explanation. Holding her thermos, she walked toward the gate on thin high heels, her white coat fluttering like a flag in the sea breeze. Tang Wulin hesitated for a beat, then hurried after her.

Gu Yue really was wrestling with the school gate. But not because she did not know how to cross the road. She simply felt that stepping through those gates meant choosing a path. A path leading into society, into the human civilization she despised, needed to guard against, yet had studied for tens of thousands of years. She was not good at making such decisions—not because she hesitated, but because she had lived alone in the Star Dou Great Forest for too long. No one had ever been qualified to make decisions for her.

Now, someone was.

"Gu Yue—"

A lazy voice came from behind her. Gu Yue's back instinctively tensed for a moment. She turned around.

Lu Menge was already fewer than three steps away. Her amber fox eyes held a mischievous smile, and the tear mole beneath her left eye made her look as if she were plotting some prank. Behind her stood a human child with black hair and blue eyes, holding an Eastsea Academy admission notice. His gaze toward her was full of innocent curiosity.

Gu Yue's gaze fell on the boy's wrist and paused for a fraction of a second. Pale golden bracelet—she sensed an exceedingly faint yet painfully familiar aura from it.

But she did not ask. This was not the time.

"Let's go." Lu Menge tilted her head and gestured inside with her chin. "Being late on the first day of school means your teacher has to write a self-criticism."

Gu Yue looked at her coldly, lingering resentment toward last night's tiger roar still in her purple eyes.

"...I never said I was coming."

"Yes, yes, you never said so." Lu Menge's smile did not shift in the slightest. "So say it now—are you coming or not?"

Gu Yue stood still and met those fox eyes for three seconds.

A subtle stalemate filled the air. Tang Wulin shrank behind Lu Menge, looking from the silver-haired girl to Teacher Lu, instinctively sensing that the atmosphere was becoming visibly dangerous.

Three seconds later.

Gu Yue moved.

She had not been persuaded. She had simply realized that this woman would not give her the option of refusing. Rather than having Lu Menge kick down her door in the middle of the night in the Star Dou Great Forest, she might as well walk in willingly. At least that was more dignified.

Lu Menge nodded in satisfaction. "Good girl. Follow your teacher."

Eastsea Academy's staff office area had an exclusive private office. The plaque on the door bore the name "Lu Menge," and beside it was a pink sticky note with a smaller line of writing: Knock if you have business. Don't knock if you don't.

Lu Menge led Tang Wulin and Gu Yue into the office, then locked the door behind them.

The curtains were drawn, and only a desk lamp lit the room. The dim yellow light stretched the shadows of the three of them long across the wall. Little White Tiger was curled up on the windowsill, sleeping soundly. Its tail twitched now and then, as if it were dreaming of chasing butterflies.

Lu Menge sat behind the desk and crossed her legs. Her asymmetrical white stockings appeared and disappeared beneath the edge of the desk. She took a sip from her thermos, then raised her eyes to look at the two standing side by side before her.

On the left stood Gu Yue, silver-haired and purple-eyed, the Silver Dragon King. Lu Menge had just captured her from that old forest in the Star Dou Great Forest. At the moment, Gu Yue stood with her arms crossed, expressionless, her purple eyes filled with the words, "I want to leave."

On the right stood Tang Wulin, black-haired and blue-eyed, inheritor of the Golden Dragon King bloodline. His martial soul was Blue Silver Grass, his innate soul power was rank three, and so far, aside from being quite skilled at forging, he had no combat ability worth mentioning. At the moment, he looked utterly confused, having no idea why an eighty-ninth-rank powerhouse had summoned him here.

Lu Menge looked at them for a long time.

Long enough for Tang Wulin to start awkwardly scratching the back of his head. Long enough for Gu Yue to furrow her brows.

Then Lu Menge set her thermos on the desk, clasped her hands beneath her chin, and a smile practically holy in its radiance rippled through her amber fox eyes.

"So adorable."

Tang Wulin: "..."

Gu Yue: "..."

"Your teacher has lived quite a long time. I've seen many soul masters, many soul beasts, many gods—" She paused. "—and many lunatics. But the two of you really are the cutest pairing I've ever seen."

Tang Wulin had no idea what she meant by "pairing," but his instincts told him not to ask right now.

Gu Yue's frown deepened. Her gaze shifted from Lu Menge to Tang Wulin. Her senses confirmed it again—that aura. Golden, blazing, the aura from the same origin as hers, sleeping within the shell of this human boy.

"You." Lu Menge suddenly extended a finger, pointing at Tang Wulin, then at Gu Yue. "And you. Starting today—you will call me big sister."

Tang Wulin opened his mouth and instinctively asked, "...Call who big sister?"

"Me, of course." Lu Menge said it as if it were obvious. "You two are too young, too small in every way. In terms of seniority, age, cultivation—yes, and height too—you should be calling me big sister first. Any objections?"

Tang Wulin looked at Gu Yue, then at the holy radiance in Lu Menge's eyes, and very wisely gave up resisting.

"Big Sister Lu."

Lu Menge's smile blossomed like a fully opened king flower. She turned toward Gu Yue, tilted her head, and waited.

Gu Yue did not open her mouth. Her arms remained crossed, her expression unchanged, and her purple eyes stared straight ahead as if no creature in this world could make her call someone big sister.

Lu Menge's smile did not fade. She simply rose from behind the desk. She made no sound as she stood; her thin heels touched the carpet without disturbing even a single fiber. The motion was so slow that Tang Wulin did not have time to see how she moved from her chair to Gu Yue's front—and Gu Yue saw it clearly, but did not have time to react effectively.

A dull thud rang out.

Tang Wulin stared in dumbfounded shock at the scene before him—Lu Menge had flipped Gu Yue over and placed her across her lap. Silver hair cascaded down, and a second of surprise appeared on Gu Yue's face before rapidly freezing into an extremely dangerous livid expression. But the hand Lu Menge pressed against her lower back seemed to contain some kind of force, making the eight Dragon Souls inside her fall silent together.

Smack.

At the first strike, Gu Yue's body stiffened. It did not hurt—how could the Silver Dragon King's body fear such little force? She was shocked. Furious. And the mixture of those two emotions created a terrifying low-pressure aura enough to make the soul beasts within ten miles flee in a stampede.

Smack. The second strike. Lu Menge did not hold back at all. Every strike carried some ancient tiger-clan restriction that could not be traced back, its force piercing through dragon scales and reaching deep into her bloodline. The sensation was not simply pain.

"Are you going to say it or not?"

Smack. The third strike.

Smack. The fourth strike.

The fifth did not land. Lu Menge's palm stopped in midair.

She lowered her head and saw Gu Yue's ears—the skin that was always so cold and pale was reddening at a visible speed.

Not from being struck.

Lu Menge narrowed her eyes. She recognized that reaction. When her old friend, the Dragon God, had been overwhelmed by humiliation and fury, its scales had also turned that color.

Gu Yue's lips moved, and in a voice quieter than a mosquito's wings, she said—

"...Sis."

Lu Menge leaned down. "What did you say? Your teacher didn't hear you."

Gu Yue's ears turned completely red. She took a deep breath, as if she intended to stuff all her pride into her lungs and blow it up, then said in a tone that suggested she wanted to move back to the Star Dou Great Forest tomorrow, "...Big sister."

At last, Lu Menge revealed her first truly heartfelt smile of the day. She lifted Gu Yue off her lap, lightly patted her back, then drew the two children close, one on each side, draping her arms over their shoulders.

"That's more like it. From now on, your teacher will be your guardian in the human world. So, the second thing—"

Tang Wulin had a bad feeling.

Lu Menge's smile remained unchanged, but her tone lowered slightly. It was a frequency Tang Wulin could not sense before he knew Gu Yue—but to Gu Yue, it was far too familiar. Last night, before the Stone Palace, when that tiger roar sounded through the forest, it had carried this very frequency.

The smile on Lu Menge's face remained as she spoke softly, as if discussing tomorrow's weather.

"No fighting. No tearing down the school. Do not reveal your identities without permission. And one more thing—do not mention the words Golden Dragon King and Silver Dragon King in front of humans."

Tang Wulin scratched his head. He had seen the words Golden Dragon King before, when Lu Menge had pinched his face that day, but even now, he had no idea what they had to do with him. Gu Yue said nothing. There was a trace of disdain in her purple eyes.

Lu Menge looked at her, then glanced at Tang Wulin. All the danger and weight in those fox eyes were covered by something greater, something called "watching her own little brats cause trouble."

"Alright—" She released them and clapped her hands. "The first thing for new students—big sister will show you around campus."

She turned toward the door, but after taking two steps, she looked back at Gu Yue.

"Gu Yue, are you still sulking, or are you coming along?"

Gu Yue raised a hand and rubbed the place where she had been hit—the movement was incredibly quick, but Tang Wulin still saw it. Those purple eyes gave him a cold glare, and Tang Wulin hurriedly turned his head away. Then she took a deep breath, tossed her silver hair behind her shoulders, straightened her back, and stepped forward to follow.

The sunlight over the field was just right.

Lu Menge walked in front, her white coat blown back by the sea breeze, revealing a stretch of long leg wrapped in a miniskirt and asymmetrical white stockings. Gu Yue, walking two steps behind Tang Wulin, suddenly spoke.

"Hey."

Tang Wulin turned his head. Gu Yue looked at him—very seriously. Her purple eyes swept from the pale golden bracelet on his wrist all the way to his still-childish blue eyes, as if she were trying to identify something.

Several seconds later, she said, "Inside your body—" She paused, then swallowed the words back. No, she could not say it. The Silver Dragon King would not voluntarily expose her identity, much less say something like, "You carry the aura of my other half inside you," to a human who might possess the Golden Dragon King's remnant soul.

Tang Wulin tilted his head. "What?"

"...Nothing." Gu Yue looked away.

"Oh."

Lu Menge did not turn around, but the rhythm of her steps clearly grew lighter. The smile at the corners of her M-shaped lips could not be suppressed—her cousin's expression just now had been far too interesting.

Little White Tiger had woken up at some point. It leaped down from the office windowsill onto the field, trotted after her on its short legs, bit the hem of her white coat, and climbed upward until it finally nestled on her shoulder.

Lu Menge tilted her head and rubbed against its little head, whispering something only she could hear.

"Dragon God, oh Dragon God." She looked up at the cloudless blue sky, a flash of moisture passing through her amber eyes. "Even split in two, you're still this adorable... just as expected of you."

She strode toward the field.

"Walk faster, you two little shorties—the cafeteria's sweet and sour ribs won't wait for anyone!"