Bai Yaoyao opened her mouth, then answered slowly, "The Mutant Tiger on your Taoist Temple's Back Mountain told me. Zhi Yi said... he was your friend too."
"Haha, that's right. He was an old friend of mine too. Who knows which of us was really the chatterbox? Back then, he..."
The old man had been talking happily when his fingers twitched. He froze. "He... is gone?"
"He is, but he left behind a Tiger Cub. The cub's with me."
Bai Yaoyao didn't know why. She wasn't someone who let her guard down easily, yet she always felt comfortable and at ease around this old man.
She couldn't muster even a trace of wariness.
The old man nodded, his expression visibly dimming.
Bai Yaoyao took two steps forward and looked up at him.
"I saved your disciples, you took my turtle, and you spent all that time beating me up. What do you have to say for yourself? Or... how are you going to compensate me?"
The corners of Bai Yaoyao's mouth lifted as she regarded the old man with a faint smile. Whether you're upset or not has nothing to do with me.
But what I suffered has everything to do with you.
The old man looked up at the sky and heaved a profound sigh, as though he hadn't heard her.
"Well... did your master ever mention Taoist Feng Qing to you?
"I was the one who named you, you know. No need to treat me like a stranger. Your master wanted to call you Doudou, but I stopped him."
Bai Yaoyao blinked. "Why Doudou?"
"Because you weren't even a month old then, and you looked like a little bean."
Bai Yaoyao was speechless. That answered something she had wondered countless times: why her name was so obviously different