"The Master said, 'Only women and petty men are difficult to deal with. Draw close to them, and they grow insolent; keep them at a distance, and they resent you.'"
Several months later, on a stone platform beneath a dense grove in Barren Mountain's little valley, Li Chen's Hu Ze avatar reclined with a Jade Slip in hand, leisurely reviewing the Analects he had inscribed.
By now, he had transcribed more than nineteen chapters of the classic. Only the last remained before it reached completion and his great undertaking was finished.
Li Chen himself had no idea what would happen then, but he was intensely interested in finding out.
Vixen Hu Xi watched resentfully as the Shiba Inu Demon returned to its original form and knelt beside His Lordship as a white dog roughly ten feet long. It even tucked its head beneath his hand, letting him stroke it with a smile. Jealousy filled her heart.
Shameless, seductive bitch! Hu Xi secretly stamped her foot. Fortunately, she had her own ways of competing for favor. Before long, she obtained a platter of freshly picked grapes from the White Ape outside the cave, each grape glistening with dew, luscious enough to drip.
Wearing a fawning smile, Hu Xi approached to ingratiate herself. "My lord, are you thirsty? Let your little servant feed you some grapes."
Li Chen glanced at her and said mildly, "Let me test you. Pheasants and rabbits share a cage. There are thirty-five heads above and ninety-four feet below. How many pheasants and rabbits are there?"
The fox demon stiffened, standing rooted to the spot like a statue.
Though the Shiba Inu Demon was in its original form, it covered its mouth and laughed in a remarkably human fashion. "Twenty-three pheasants and twelve rabbits. You can't even solve