Chapter 59

Yun Shuchen's careless remark had, as the saying goes, "struck a chord" with her linguistically impoverished disciple. Three days later, Qing Zhouxue, who had already given up on herself, unrolled the exam scroll to find the topic was actually decent—write about the people around you. Broad enough.

Her fellow senior and junior disciples, having long resided in the immortal mountains, hadn't seen their parents or families for years. The people they saw daily were nothing but fellow disciples, a few elders, and the Sect Leader.

After three sticks of incense burned down, they handed in their papers.

The daily morning assembly was a tradition passed down from the ancestors of the Taichu Sect. Even if there were no important matters, it was still held as a matter of routine. After the elders finished concerning themselves with the sect's livelihood, they occasionally began to chat casually.

Around this time every year, the Sect Leader would always bring a few of the disciples' exam papers—always at the two extremes, either exceptionally good or exceptionally poor—to give their masters a good look and serve as some amusement for the tea gathering.

This essay prompt was fairly easy to write; many wrote about their own masters. For instance, Ruan Mingzhu praised Elder Zhong to the heavens and below, claiming he could split mountains and level seas, capable of anything, and had achieved perfect merit in saving all sentient beings. It was quite exaggerated—anyone glancing at it would think it was describing the Tathagata Buddha of the Western Paradise.

It was clearly forced and contrived.

When the elders heard the Sect Leader read a few lines, it was hard not to laugh, but they found the girl's writing rather entertaining.

The Sect Leader, in high spirits, picked up another paper. This one had remarkably poor writing—so poor it was atrocious. Written about his own junior martial brother, the entire piece was less than three thousand characters, and at least fifteen hundred of those were spent criticizing the other's thunderous snoring. One could clearly see the resentment bubbling over.

"These people can't even write a single sentence clearly," Elder Yue remarked idly, picking up a sheet at random. Suddenly she paused with keen interest, scanning it up and down. "Oh, this one's not bad—Nephew Qing's."

Since the Sect Leader had resumed his position, Yun Shuchen had attended the meetings only sporadically. As it happened, she was present that day. Hearing the words from Yue Changge, she looked up toward her.

"...The first time I met her was when I was eight years old. She wore a light purple outfit, as beautiful as the evening clouds over Heyi Peak." Yue Changge let out an "oh" of appreciation. "The prose is plain, elegant, and natural—quite good indeed."

"Stop reading," Yun Shuchen said with a light cough. "Hand it over; let me take a look."

"It's so well written." Yue Changge gave a meaningful smile and deliberately picked out the interesting parts to read. "On the Moon Lantern Festival, she took me down the mountain to play. We ate many snacks, and the sweetness of the tangyuan was unforgettable. After we returned, she drank wine out of indulgence and got drunk once more. I always felt she wasn't very happy, and so I too felt sad inside—good heavens, is this what other people's disciples are like?"

The Sect Leader's focus shifted upon hearing this. "Going down the mountain without permission?"

Liu Xunqin sneered, her focus even further off. "Drinking? Didn't I tell you to abstain from alcohol?"

Yue Changge read word by word, as if peeling away the last shreds of Yun Shuchen's composure layer by layer. When only the final layer remained, the paper in Yue Changge's hand suddenly flew up. By the time she recovered her senses, Nephew Qing's masterpiece had already been snatched into Yun Shuchen's grasp.

The woman shot her a glare, didn't bother to look closely at the paper in her hand, and instead flipped it face down on the table.

"Setting that aside, I did glance at Nephew Qing's piece earlier, and it truly is well written. Between the lines, one can see that child genuinely likes you. Every little matter, she remembers very clearly—" The Sect Leader nodded with satisfaction. "It seems my decision back then to let her become your disciple was the right one."

Indeed, Qing Zhouxue's essay was sincere in its plainness. It read with elegance, naturalness, and heartfelt emotion, earning very high praise. Had Yun Shuchen not politely declined, the Sect Leader would have loved to post this piece as well on the mountain gate, so all the disciples could see a model of filial piety for the contemporary age.

In a moment when no one else was around, Yun Shuchen sat in the courtyard and read all her disciple's thoughts about her. As she read, a smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

Those were all trivial daily matters; there was nothing shameful that could have been written in Qing Zhouxue's hand.

And yet, Yun Shuchen felt a certain reluctance.

She didn't want to show it to anyone else, nor did she even want to hear it read aloud.

So it was no surprise that Qing Zhouxue again took first place, and her name in radiant gold had to hang on the mountain gate for a few extra days.

By evening, Yun Shuchen once again asked her, now that she'd swept the board with a perfect score, whether she had any reward in mind. Her disciple, just like last time, pointed to her own brow and closed her eyes.

To her surprise, the familiar warmth did not land on her forehead. Instead, a soft touch brushed against the corner of her eye—gentle, faintly ticklish. Her lashes trembled, and she squeezed her eyes shut even tighter.

After an initial moment of shock, Qing Zhouxue was gradually struck by an inexplicable joy. Her mind and body felt entirely at ease, fully relaxed, as she marshaled all her senses to savor the tender favor her master left at the corner of her eye.

Yun Shuchen lightly touched once, then, with a hint of hidden lingering affection, pressed gently for a long while. She felt a pair of hands stroke over her arm—it was Qing Zhouxue's. Her disciple clutched at her arm with a grip that seemed tense.

Would she like this?

When she was this close to her, intimate and unguarded, was she thinking the same things?

Yun Shuchen's heart churned with a thousand thoughts. She drew back slightly, lowered her gaze to those beautiful, clear eyes looking up at her, then let it drift downward, fixing on those lips that needed no rouge to be red.

No one knew that what she truly wanted to kiss was right there.

*

After the radiant red list at the mountain gate was taken down, the disciples knew that the next year's studies had all come to an end. Finally, they no longer had to recite such tedious material day in and day out or face the nightmare of various written examinations; they genuinely felt a weight lifted from their shoulders. But hard on the heels of that came the sect's second selection, so no one dared let their guard down.

As another autumn deepened, the Taichu Sect announced the form of the second selection—a treasure hunt in a secret realm.

When Ruan Mingzhu heard the news, she finally let out a sigh of relief. "At least it's not that creepy stuff from last time. Good, good."

"Even so, don't take it lightly," Lin Xunzhen said with a glance at her; her expression was not at all relaxed.

The first selection had already eliminated half of the inner disciples. As they advanced step by step, the opponents they faced would only become more outstanding—all dragons and phoenixes among men.

This time, the secret realm was located at the bottom of the great marsh in the central part of the Taichu Sect. The group had been in the sect for quite some time now and knew this marsh was rich in spiritual energy, yet no one had ever discovered that there was a secret realm hidden here.

Before sinking to the bottom of the lake, as required, all their storage rings, magical treasures, and even weapons were confiscated.

"They won't even let us bring a blade?" Ruan Mingzhu and Qing Zhouxue looked at each other. If those were taken away, it felt as if half their souls had been stripped.

In the end, they had no choice but to hand over Ruan Mingzhu's precious blade with its thin crimson edge and Qing Zhouxue's famous Frost Sword.

The water in the lake swelled and surged, forming a whirlpool-like channel that sucked the small boat carrying the four of them in with dizzying speed.

After a violent shaking and the bone-chilling cold of being swallowed by the lake, they woke to find themselves standing on a stretch of desolate, sandy plain.

A long river, a setting sun, boundless silver light casting a faint, cold gleam—the shifting dunes driven by the fierce wind made it impossible to discern any direction.

The blowing sand lashed against their faces, stinging a bit. In the gaps between Ruan Mingzhu's words, she got another mouthful of sand. She spat. "Who would've thought that coming into a secret realm, we'd get a taste of home?"

Seeing Senior Sister Bai Su, with her delicate skin, unable to even open her eyes against the wind, Ruan Mingzhu took off her outermost thin garment and wound it around Bai Su's mouth and nose several times, leaving only her eyes exposed.

The four of them barely managed to take shelter in a lee spot to catch their breath. Lin Xunzhen crouched on the ground and spread out a map—the only thing they had brought in from the outside world.

On the map, four major terrain types were outlined. The southernmost part was sandy; the west and north were surrounded by dense forests; to the east lay a body of water.

In cinnabar, multiple locations were drawn in the depths of the forest, presumably the tokens needed to win this competition. It was said they bore the Taichu Sect's emblem, easy to recognize.

The number of tokens equaled half the number of teams—in short, quite brutal, requiring the elimination of half the participants.

Another line of cinnabar text on the map read, 【After obtaining the tokens, return by the same path to exit the secret realm.】

"This place is far too barren. Even plants can't find purchase, and there's no water anywhere," Lin Xunzhen said, unable to condense even a drop of water at her fingertip—proof enough of the extreme dryness of the air.

The urgent task at hand was how to get out of this sandy expanse.

Qing Zhouxue looked at the red sun low on the horizon; she could feel the chill creeping in. "Can we travel at night?"

Ruan Mingzhu, while tugging at Qing Zhouxue's clothes and wrapping her head into a second dumpling, said, "From my years of eating sand, wandering around at night is a good way to end up as a corpse in the wilderness. That said, you can navigate by the stars. It's much better than daytime."

During the day, the dunes shifted with the wind, their shapes constantly changing. And at night, with gale-force winds, it was all too easy to lose your bearings.

But in the daytime, you couldn't see the stars—an even harsher constraint.

They didn't know whether other teams had landed directly in the forest; if so, this sort of opening put them at a severe disadvantage.

After some discussion, they decided to risk traveling through the night.

All three copied Ruan Mingzhu, wrapping cloth around their mouths and noses. Step by step, sinking into the sand, they braved the howling night winds and walked in a line, like a pack of wolves journeying together along the ridge of a dune.

When the last trace of light at the edge of the sky faded.

The night was cold as ice, biting to the bone. Aside from Qing Zhouxue, who was already accustomed to the bitter chill of her spirit root, the other three were shivering uncontrollably. Ruan Mingzhu struggled to gather a small flame at her fingertip for warmth, but after only a few steps, the strong wind blew it out.

"Did... did you all hear some strange noise?" Bai Su said, hugging her clothes tightly, her voice trembling from the cold.

Qing Zhouxue stopped in her tracks. The disasters that had haunted her since childhood had honed an intuition in her; right now, she felt certain the surroundings held more than just their group.

When the first wolf howl rose desolately from the north, it was answered by a chorus, one after another. Behind them came faint rustling sounds, not too near, not too far, as if something was always following.

Startled, they all stopped and looked around. One by one, pairs of beast eyes opened in the darkness, gleaming like ghost fires. Counting carefully, there were over twenty of them.

What was that? A strange familiarity clenched at Ruan Mingzhu's heart. By the brief flash of a flame, she caught sight of the ferocious fangs of the beasts.

Those were the overlords of the wasteland, the nightmare that travelers could never shake off—the sand wolves.