The two sat down side by side.
Zhu Zhuqing sat upright beside Li Hanqiu, keeping a forearm's length between them.
She quietly clenched the hem of her clothes, unsure where to look, her expression tense and uneasy.
Li Hanqiu took two cups of chilled tea from his Soul Tool and offered one to her.
"Would you like some tea?"
Zhu Zhuqing looked at the tea, then at him, but did not reach for it.
Li Hanqiu did not insist. He took a sip himself and set the other cup beside Zhu Zhuqing's thigh.
"If you don't like it, never mind. I imagine you're already itching to hear what was wrong with your posture and footwork just now?"
Zhu Zhuqing's face reddened slightly. She nodded gently, anticipation filling her eyes.
Li Hanqiu stopped holding back and began explaining at an unhurried pace.
He spoke for about seven minutes.
He touched on the combat role of agility-attack Soul Masters, explaining techniques such as "lowering the shoulders, tucking the ribs, and drawing in the tail" when maneuvering with a feline martial soul.
Then he changed tack, discussing how to gather strength in the instant before striking and concentrate that strength into a single point for an explosive release.
He only skimmed the surface of each topic, yet every point hit just the right spot.
But those tiny glimpses were precisely what left Zhu Zhuqing spellbound, a faint light brightening her beautiful eyes.
Partway through, her shoulders unconsciously relaxed, and her body lost its tension.
When he reached a crucial point, Zhu Zhuqing leaned her whole body forward, her eyes fixed on him without blinking.
At some point, without even the girl noticing, the distance between them had gradually shrunk...
Just then, Li Hanqiu abruptly stopped. "That's enough for today. We'll talk more another time."
Only then did Zhu Zhuqing realize that she had somehow edged right up beside Li Hanqiu. Barely half a foot separated them; she was almost touching his sleeve.
An almost imperceptible blush rose to her face. She hurriedly straightened and turned away.
"Why... why didn't you finish?"
"Next time." Li Hanqiu stood and casually put both cups into his Soul Tool. "Going too far is as bad as not going far enough. With knowledge, depth matters more than quantity."
Li Hanqiu was spouting nonsense. In truth, he was keeping Zhu Zhuqing on the hook, deliberately stopping at the barest hint.
He wanted to stir Zhu Zhuqing's desire and make her take the initiative to ask. Once she took that first step, he would have far more room to maneuver.
Zhu Zhuqing bit her thin lip and looked up, hesitating to speak. She desperately wanted to keep asking him for guidance on the things she had not understood.
But the girl was thin-skinned and wavered again and again. In the end, she lowered her head and puffed out her cheeks, sulking at herself.
Li Hanqiu pretended not to notice, an easygoing smile on his lips.
The two sat a while longer.
Watching the sun sinking toward the horizon, Li Hanqiu asked as though in passing, "You said you wanted to become stronger. What for?"
At his words, Zhu Zhuqing's small hands gripped her sleeves, and she answered in a clear voice, "For someone..."
"Is that person important to you?"
Zhu Zhuqing fell silent for a moment.
"I... I don't know."
"You don't know?" This time, Li Hanqiu's confusion was genuine. He turned to look at Zhu Zhuqing.
Zhu Zhuqing frowned, struggling to recall the past, but her eyes remained bewildered. The fragments in her memories were blurred and indistinct.
"I can't remember his face."
"I only remember that, when I was little, someone always stood in front of me. Lots of bad people with ill intentions wanted to bully me,
"Every time, he pulled me behind him and argued with those people, fought with them."
Zhu Zhuqing's voice grew quieter and quieter.
"But afterward, after the day I awakened my martial soul, I couldn't remember anything clearly anymore. It was as if he had never appeared in my world at all..."
"But I know he must still be alive, somewhere in this world, waiting for me to find him."
Zhu Zhuqing raised her head and looked at Li Hanqiu.
"That's why I want to become stronger. Once I'm strong, I'll go find him. This time, it'll be my turn to protect him!"
Something stirred sharply in Li Hanqiu's heart.
With his god's-eye view, he naturally saw things from a different angle.
The person Zhu Zhuqing was describing was clearly... Dai Mubai!
Li Hanqiu instinctively wanted to say it, but swallowed the words just as they reached his lips.
Some paper-thin barriers could not be pierced so bluntly.
Those two siblings now stood face to face without recognizing each other. Whatever lay behind it was probably a deeply tangled affair.
So he changed his approach. "Then, Zhu Zhuqing, is there anyone at Shrek Academy who feels familiar to you? Or someone who made a particularly good first impression?"
Zhu Zhuqing thought for a moment. "No."
She paused, then added, "Um... you? Do you count?"
Watching Zhu Zhuqing give her cautious, slightly bashful answer in the form of a question,
Li Hanqiu's face darkened with exasperation. He coughed a few times. "Me? Well, I suppose I count. But what your teacher wants to know is whether any of your classmates left a strong impression on you."
This time, Zhu Zhuqing considered it for so long that Li Hanqiu thought she would not answer.
Yet a moment later, Zhu Zhuqing said uncertainly, "There might be one..."
"Who?"
"Dai Mubai." She lowered her eyes. "I can't really explain it. He just gives me this feeling, almost like an illusion that we knew each other a long time ago."
Li Hanqiu's heart gave a jolt.
Sure enough, the person Zhu Zhuqing had mentioned was Dai Mubai!
He was about to probe a little further when a cheerful call suddenly came from the mountain path behind him.
"Teacher-!"
The voice belonged to Tang San.
Li Hanqiu turned around.
There, beside the slope, Tang San came jogging over with a blue clothbound notebook in his arms.
His face glistened with sweat, his breaths came in soft pants, and his bright eyes curved with a smile.
"Teacher, there you are. I have a few questions about cultivation I'd like to ask you."
As he spoke, he suddenly realized something was amiss. His gaze passed over Li Hanqiu and landed on Zhu Zhuqing, who was still sitting on the stone bench.
In an instant, Tang San's previously gentle eyes darkened, the warmth in them fading bit by bit.
In its place, an icy chill slowly seeped in. Intense possessiveness surged in Tang San's eyes, and the smile froze on his face.
But Tang San reacted quickly. Within a few moments, he put on a harmless, faint smile again and approached step by step.
"You're here too, Zhu Zhuqing? What a coincidence."
He greeted her sweetly.
Zhu Zhuqing nodded. Her feminine intuition told her that something was very wrong with Xiao Wu's demeanor.
So she stood and bowed slightly to Li Hanqiu. "Teacher Li, I'll head back first. Thank you for your guidance today."
With that, she walked down the slope, her fitted black outfit soon disappearing into the dusk.
Tang San stood beside Li Hanqiu, watching her retreating figure. Like a rusty gear, his gaze shifted in jerks toward Li Hanqiu's face.
"Teacher, what did you talk about during your 'alone time'?"
"Nothing much. Just chatting," Li Hanqiu said casually.
"Really?!"
Tang San's questioning left Li Hanqiu utterly baffled. "What else would we talk about?"
Seeing that Li Hanqiu seemed not to have noticed a thing, Tang San breathed a sigh of relief.
When Tang San opened his eyes again, all the sinister gloom had vanished, leaving only wholehearted joy.
"Mm, that's what I thought."
Tang San spoke sweetly. He lowered his head and closed the notebook. Through an exposed corner, it was easy to make out a drawing.
A portrait of a young man, no less.
He tilted his face up, his smile blooming like a flower.
"Teacher, let's go back to the dorm. I still have lots of cultivation questions to ask you."
Night fell.
Zhu Zhuqing washed her face beside the Academy East Stream, wiped her skin dry, and headed toward the dormitory by moonlight.
The moon shone brightly. In the woods, only the rhythmic chirping of insects could be heard.
Just then, a slender shadow stepped out from behind a tree and blocked the middle of the path.
"Zhu Zhuqing."
It was Tang San. He leaned against a tree trunk with his arms folded.
Moonlight spilled down from behind him, leaving his soft, delicate face half lit and half in shadow.
He gave a quiet smile. "Can we talk?"
"How about the Back Mountain?"
Zhu Zhuqing stopped in her tracks.
She stared at Tang San with a slight frown. Then, as though something had occurred to her, Li Hanqiu's image surfaced in her mind.
Tang San watched her, and she watched Tang San in return.
Neither spoke. The night wind swept up the fallen leaves scattered across the ground, sending them swirling between the two.
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