Du Yu instantly realized something. "Old Zhan, are you saying... she's one of the Seven Outstanding Disciples of the Sage?"
Before Zhan Qisheng could answer, Xie Yujiao shouted at him, "You touched my face! How am I supposed to preserve my chastity now?!"
"Preserve... your chastity?" Zhan Qisheng jumped. "Miss, that's an awfully big hat you're putting on my head. I merely thought you looked familiar..."
"That doesn't make it acceptable!"
Du Yu understood now. If Xie Yujiao stayed with him from this point on, she really could be one of the Seven Outstanding Disciples of the Sage. And the reason she had been so proactive during the mission was that her relationship with him differed from that of the others.
Most of the Seven Outstanding Disciples of the Sage were Du Yu's friends and relatives, but Xie Yujiao was "Du Yu's woman." Looking at it that way, she probably wanted to help him more than anyone else did.
"In that case, I think I understand..." Du Yu murmured. "You said some strange things happened on that bus. Now those make sense to me too."
According to Weaver Girl, at the bus's earlier stops, the platforms had been packed with people, yet only Supreme Pivots had been able to board. Presumably, that had been the effect of some ingenious formation.
But Qu Xi had also said that once all the Supreme Pivots had boarded, the formation seemed to have been damaged, allowing mortals to start flooding in.
"Could someone actually damage Xie Yujiao's formation...?" Du Yu thought for a moment, and one person really did come to mind.
Shiranui Asuka, who had been on the bus at the time.
She herself had said that Japan's Time Masters weren't particularly good at fighting people. Instead, they excelled at supporting arts such