Senior Brother Leaves the Mountain, Sending the Junior Sisters into a Panic!
The Senior Brother of the Qingxiao Sect was leaving the mountain.
Knowledge of it began with a handful of Elders. Qinghe, posted outside the Council Hall, caught the tail end. One afternoon she carried it down to the little courtyard behind the back mountain, where the pear trees grew.
That day, for once, the junior sisters were all in one place.
Su Wanzhao, second in the line, leaned on the window frame with a sword hugged to her chest. Ning Wanwan, the third, was totting up what the pill house had swallowed and lost this month. Pei Zhuyu, the fourth, had only just come back up from the town below. Her boxes of sweet things sat unopened on the table.
In came Qinghe. She shut the courtyard gate behind her with a care that drew the eye.
“Senior Brother is leaving the mountain,” she said.
Not a head lifted. Su Wanzhao offered a small “mm.” Abacus beads went on clicking under Ning Wanwan’s fingers. Pei Zhuyu worked the lid off a box of peach-blossom pastries, as though the news had been mentioned and could now be forgotten.
“To Tianmen Pass,” Qinghe added.
Everybody in the cultivation world knew that name by now.
Three months back, Gu Xuandu had broken seven sects one after another and cut down three grand elders at peak Spirit Transformation. They called him the Child of Destiny. Said he was born carrying the fortune of heaven and earth. His banners now stood on the far side of Tianmen Pass, every sect of the Northern Region behind them. Qingxiao held the first seat of the Southern Region. Sitting still and pretending not to hear was a luxury it no longer had.
The man they sent to stand for them was Xie Linyuan, Senior Brother of the sect, who had held that post for eleven years and had never once been given a reason to expect it would be easy.
His cultivation stood at Spirit Transformation as well. Which layer, nobody could say. Even at the most generous estimate, he came short of those three at peak.
A fight like that was, if you were honest with yourself, a dead man’s errand, and there was not a soul in that courtyard who believed otherwise.
Plain as it was, not one of the girls lifted her head. You would have thought the whole thing bored them.
Qinghe turned it over and got nowhere. Were things between the three of them and Senior Brother really this bad?
“And I heard the Master say—”
Qinghe lowered her voice. “This one’s dangerous. Senior Brother has spent all these years on nothing but cultivation, and he has never taken a Dao companion. If the worst comes, the Xie family has nobody behind him. Before he goes, then. Best, very best, to have the marriage question settled.”
Still nothing. A gust found its way in at the window. The pear branches swayed. On the table two abacus beads knocked together once, faint as a knuckle tap.
Su Wanzhao let the silence run a good while, then gave a short sneer.
“Our Master does like to plan.”
Ning Wanwan’s head went back down to her beads. “A man like Senior Brother? Who’d have him?”
“Exactly.”
Pei Zhuyu chewed, swallowed, and took her time. “Face like he’s been sucking a lemon since birth. Late to sword practice by a quarter hour, punished. Late to closed-door training, punished. Slip down the mountain without leave, punished. He’s even rationed the wine: twice a month, no more. When I go looking for a Dao companion, first thing I’ll do is find his exact opposite.”
Qinghe turned it over. Fair enough, she decided.
Su Wanzhao nodded along.
“I’m even less likely.”
Ning Wanwan, flat as a ledger line: “Same.”
Eyes met around the room.
The conversation died there, and not one of the four of them made any attempt to pick it back up.
Half a shichen later Su Wanzhao was out of the pear courtyard.
Her sword practice, she said. Still owed for the day.
The time it takes to burn a stick of incense later, Ning Wanwan shut the ledger. An incense stick’s worth of time, and the argument had run out of breath. Pill Peak still had a batch of medicine in the furnace, she said, and nobody else to take it out.
Pei Zhuyu went last. At the gate she doubled back, fitted the lid on the pastries, considered, and took the box with her.
Qinghe sat on alone in a courtyard going empty. She had the feeling, and no evidence for it, that she had missed something.
It was on the road to Sword Storage Cliff that Xie Linyuan came across Su Wanzhao.
Came across was a generous way of putting it. She had been parked by that boulder a quarter hour already. She had run a set of forms. She had laid her sword flat across the middle of the path, on purpose. Then, with nothing left to do, she folded her arms and pretended an interest in the clouds.
Up the road he came. The sword on the ground was the first thing he saw.
“Your sword.”
“I know.”
“Nothing may block the path. That will be 100 extra sword forms.”
Su Wanzhao’s face locked. She put out a hand and pulled the sword back into her palm.
“It slipped during practice.”
Three paces at least had lain between her and it. He measured the gap. Said nothing.
“Three hundred, then. Back mountain.”
“…”
A vein jumped at Su Wanzhao’s temple. She hated this man. She had hated him from the age of eight.
Eight, and enemies were hunting her. He dragged her clear, then dumped her on the ground. Her crying was too loud. Eleven, her first attempt at flying on his sword, and she came down with a broken leg, and him hauling her up by the ankle, scolding her the whole length of the walk home. Fifteen, she slipped out to the shops, and was brought back, and copied the sect rules until dawn. Not a character short of them. No sleep.
Other people could sit down when they were tired. Let her wrist drop a finger’s width, and the scabbard landed. And everybody said the Senior Brother was good to her.
Good, my foot. He did nothing but find fault with her.
Su Wanzhao, all at once, was annoyed.
“Senior Brother.”
He stopped walking.
“Tianmen Pass. Are you going to die?”
He thought about it.
“Probably not.”
“Probably?”
“Nothing in this world is certain.”
The words went in her ear and came out on the far side meaning something else entirely.
So it was dangerous. Really dangerous.
Everything she had rehearsed on the road stuck in her throat at once. Only after some while did she turn her face aside.
“Have you thought it through, though? Suppose you really don’t come back.”
“The sect has the Master. Outside affairs go to the Third Elder. Qinghe has the Scripture Pavilion key. Wanwan takes the pill house accounts. As for you—”
“Who asked you about any of that?”
Su Wanzhao cut him off, hard.
His gaze came up to her face.
Her chest heaved. A quarter hour of sword practice had not disordered her breathing so. Now she could not get it even.
“I’m asking about you.”
It was plain on his face that he had not understood.
Su Wanzhao held his eyes for a few breaths. Then it hit her how absurd it was, all these years, losing her temper at a stone.
“Here!”
Angry, Su Wanzhao strode up to him, fished something out of her sleeve, and planted it in his hand.
It was a red sword tassel.
Two loops of fine vermilion cord. A white jade bead threaded at the centre. The fringe trimmed even. Only at the tail of the knot had the cord been pulled a shade too tight. A stub of thread stuck out there and would not be pushed flat.
He looked down at it. Su Wanzhao reached over and tucked the loose end back in.
“What are you staring at? It hangs fine.” She sounded put out, and looked it.
Qingxiao kept an old custom, generation on generation. A woman who had given her heart away braided him a red tassel with her own hands. If he took it, and tied it to his sword, the answer was understood.
The tassel lay in his palm. Su Wanzhao spoke before he could:
“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a friendship present.” Su Wanzhao’s hand went back into her sleeve. “For luck out there. You are fighting for the sect. Don’t make it into something.”
Then she turned and went, quick strides, and the hand in her sleeve stayed shut.
A dozen paces out, his voice arrived from behind her.
“Wanzhao.”
Her feet stopped.
Mountain wind went by her ear. She bit her lips. Forced the smile off her face first. Only then turned her head halfway.
“What is it now?”
He had not moved. The red tassel was still in his hand.
“Three hundred basic sword forms. Don’t skip them.”
What was left of Su Wanzhao’s smile stopped where it was.
She looked at him. Then at the tassel in his hand. Then she came back those few paces at a march and made a grab for it.
“Give it back!”
His hand moved away before he had decided to move it.
“Didn’t you give it to me?”
“I’m not giving it now!”
“The tassel’s mine now.” His fingers closed round it. “The sword forms still get done.”
“Xie Linyuan!”
Birds went up out of the mountainside in a clatter of wings, and went on complaining about it for a long while after.
The second to come looking was Ning Wanwan.
Far cleverer than Su Wanzhao, this one. No staged encounter for her. She waited inside the pill house, timed it to the moment he went past, and stepped out with a cup of tea. The time it takes to drink a cup of tea, no longer: that was the whole of it. She held it out to him.
“Senior Brother. Sit.”
He glanced up at her.
“Something you need?”
“Can’t I look for you without a reason?”
“You can.”
She poured, steady as she was over a ledger. Only at the eighth part of the cup did her wrist check, the smallest hesitation.
“You’ve poured a fair amount of money into the sect over the years, haven’t you, Senior Brother?”
“It’s fine.”
“The Master says you’re going to Tianmen Pass.”
“Mm.”
“And that he told you to leave an heir?”
This time Xie Linyuan finally raised his eyes.
“How do you know that?”
No answer. Out of her sleeve came a storage ring, which she slid across the table to him.
“Three hundred thousand high-grade spirit stones. Deeds to twelve spirit veins. Seventy-eight shops down the mountain, in the town below. And the pills I’ve put by over the years.”
He did not touch it.
“What does this mean?”
“A dowry.”
He said nothing.
She met his eyes squarely. Her face still wore the seriousness she saved for column sums.
“I’ve run the numbers. Become Dao companions with me and you never touch the sect’s ledger again. No running into secret realms after a few spirit stones. You cultivate. I do the earning. Children, as many as you want. Which peak we live on, your call.”
He studied her a good while.
“Wanwan.”
“Mm.”
“The pill house. Losing badly these days?”
Ning Wanwan’s brows drew together, puzzled.
Xie Linyuan pushed the storage ring back.
“If money’s short, say so. No need to throw yourself into the bargain.”
“…”
Xie Linyuan was thrown out of the pill house.
Those doors did not open again all afternoon.
Now and then a cauldron burst came out of it, and the smell of scorched herbs drifted into the courtyard.
Qinghe came by later and found a sheet of paper stuck to the door, the ink still wet.
Xie Linyuan and dogs are not permitted entry.
Third in line was Pei Zhuyu.
After the evening meal she walked into his courtyard, a jug of wine in each hand, and set them both on the stone table.
“Senior Brother. Drink.”
Xie Linyuan was wiping his sword.
“You may drink on the 7th of the month.”
“I know.”
“Then why bring it?”
“For you.”
Pei Zhuyu dropped into the seat across from him, chin in her palm, smiling, and settled in to look at him.
Pretty, and since childhood the best in the sect at making people fond of her. The year he carried her out of a pack of Demonic Beasts she was a scrap of a thing. Both fists in his collar. No intention of letting go. Then the Pei family came up the mountain asking after her, and everyone learned how wrong they had been. Not some little junior sister who trailed after Senior Brother for sweets. A daughter of the Pei clan, born to the main line of a great clan.
“If you really don’t come back, there’ll be no one to look after me.”
“The Master will look after you.”
“The Master doesn’t even know I secretly switched my cultivation method.”
Xie Linyuan’s hand stopped on the sword.
“Switched it to what?”
Pei Zhuyu shut her mouth at once.
After a while she pushed a jug forward.
“Senior Brother. Why don’t you just not go.”
“No.”
She had known he would say it; it was on her face. No argument came. From her sleeve she took a jade slip and laid it, gently, beside the jug.
White through and through, a pale green at the rims, four old seal characters cut into the face.
Taixu: Return to Origin.
His gaze fell on it.
Pei Zhuyu saw it. Her smile began, little by little, to curl.
“The thing you’ve had people looking for, for three years.”
The wiping cloth went down. He picked the slip up, and did not put his spiritual sense into it straight away.
“The complete text?”
“Nine layers, complete. The copy you pulled out of the Scripture Pavilion stopped dead at the third. The other six are inside.”
His thumb went back and forth along the slip’s edge.
Pei Zhuyu knew how often he had gone back over that fragment. One birthday she had asked what he wanted. He had named this art, without thinking much about it, and likely forgotten his own answer by the next month.
She had not.
“A Pei family secret?”
“Mm.”
“It can’t be taught outside.”
“There’s a way around that too.”
Pei Zhuyu pushed the jug aside and leaned across the table toward him.
“Marry me.”
He raised his eyes to her.
She blinked once, and pressed a finger down on the slip.
“Married, and you’re not an outsider any more. I even asked Father. He said if you agree—”
“Zhuyu.”
She stopped.
Xie Linyuan set the slip back in front of her.
“Put it away.”
Pei Zhuyu’s smile thinned out. Her hand stayed where it was.
“You can at least look at it first.”
“No need.”
“It really is the complete text. I’m not fobbing you off with a fake.”
“I know.”
“Then you’re giving it back to me?”
His eyes came back to her.
“I want the method. The marriage can’t be agreed to like this.”
Her finger on the slip curled in, slowly, until the nail went white.
“Why can’t it? You want something, I have it. I want—”
She stopped. Then she looked him full in the face.
“Xie Linyuan. I just want to marry you.”
The courtyard held its breath, one beat.
Xie Linyuan’s eyes dropped. He picked the sword up off the table.
“You didn’t talk like this when you were little.”
Pei Zhuyu blinked. It had landed somewhere she had not expected.
“Thirteen, near enough. I took your storybooks off you. You hugged the lot and bawled, and said that if every man alive fell down dead, you still would not marry me.”
“…”
Pei Zhuyu’s smile was entirely gone.
She had forgotten it years ago.
He had it by heart.
“I was small then.”
“Mm.”
“I didn’t know any better.”
“I know.”
“Then why bring it up?”
No answer. He only nudged the slip an inch nearer her hand.
Pei Zhuyu looked down at it. Then she scooped it up and jammed it back into her sleeve.
“Fine. Forget it, then.”
Up she got, one jug in hand, then a pause, then the second jug gathered in against her chest too.
He watched her.
“Wasn’t that for me to drink?”
“Not giving it now.”
At the gate she turned round, and the jug in her arms struck the door frame with a hollow knock.
“Xie Linyuan. You’d better come back alive.”
He raised his eyes.
Pei Zhuyu’s face was stiff.
“Next time you want to see it, it won’t come this cheap.”
She hooked the gate shut behind her with one heel.
Xie Linyuan sat on a while. Picked up the cloth, gave the blade two passes, and then it came to him.
The switched cultivation method. She had never explained that one.
The most direct of them was the youngest, Liu Qingshuang.
She took no bends at all.
Next morning Xie Linyuan pushed his door open. She was sitting on the step.
“Liu Qingshuang?”
Liu Qingshuang stood up.
“Senior Brother. I have an innate Mystic Yin Dao Body.”
“I know.”
“Cultivate with me. It would raise your cultivation.”
A beat passed.
“Who taught you that?”
“The Scripture Pavilion.”
“Which book?”
“Yin-Yang Union of the Dao: True Explanation.”
“That’s a banned text.”
“That’s not what we’re talking about right now.”
“Who gave you the key?”
Liu Qingshuang pressed her lips together and said nothing.
He had already turned.
“Qinghe.”
Across the yard, Qinghe dropped her broom.
Liu Qingshuang caught hold of his sleeve.
“Senior Brother!”
Xie Linyuan glanced back.
The girl raised her face. A moment before, she had been perfectly sure of herself. Her eyes were going red.
“Can’t you stop treating us like children?”
The key went unasked after that.
Liu Qingshuang lowered her head.
“I know what you’re going to do. I know I can’t stop you. The Master said leave an heir, so I thought, if there has to be someone, it shouldn’t be a stranger.”
By the end she was very quiet.
He looked at her. Something came back to him. A snowy night, many years ago.
He had picked her out of a broken-down temple, too starved to cry, able only to cling to his cuff. He had been barely into his teens. He carried her through the snow all night.
Afterward one of them became the Senior Brother, and the other the little junior sister.
The days ran long. It was easy to forget. The child who once needed carrying to live had grown up long ago.
He reached out and put a hand on the top of her head.
“I’ll come back.”
Liu Qingshuang did not look up.
“Liar.”
“When did I ever lie to you?”
“Last time you said I only had to copy the sect rules five times.”
“You climbed the wall again after that.”
“…”
The tears in her eyes were gone at once.
She knocked his hand off and left.
At the courtyard gate she looked back.
“Senior Brother.”
“Mm?”
“When you come back, I still want to do dual cultivation with you.”
Xie Linyuan looked at her.
She went scarlet and fled on her sword.
He stood there a while.
It occurred to him, seriously, that he ought to change the lock on the Scripture Pavilion.
The day before he set out, Xie Linyuan went to Qixia Peak next door.
On Qixia Peak, exactly one person let him boil his own water.
Shen Zhaoyue sat under the tree and watched Xie Linyuan lay a long sword on the table, its spirit patterns fractured in three places. Then she watched him straighten the scabbard beside it, and line the cloth up square, and still said nothing.
She had known him longer than anyone in the sect.
Before he was Senior Brother, they grew up together in a town at the foot of the mountain. Then one entered Qingxiao and one went to Qixia Peak. Two mountains apart. As children, they still found ways to meet.
Outsiders said he was cold, strict, hard to approach.
Shen Zhaoyue had never thought so.
She only thought he was stupid.
Especially about women.
“I hear you’ve been busy lately.”
Shen Zhaoyue poured him tea.
“It’s fine.”
“Those young ladies in the Qingxiao Sect haven’t been leaving you alone, have they?”
His hand paused.
“You know about that too?”
“Probably the only person left in the Southern Region who doesn’t is you.”
Shen Zhaoyue laughed.
Xie Linyuan said nothing.
She looked down at the sword on the table. She let the tea sit, then: “So. Coming to see me today. Have you decided?”
“Decided what?”
Shen Zhaoyue looked up.
His face was perfectly serious.
She looked at him a few breaths. Her faint hope had been stupid.
“Never mind.”
She picked up the long sword.
“Where’s it broken?”
“The third spirit pattern has split. There’s hidden damage along the spine. I need it tomorrow. I don’t trust anyone else to fix it.”
Shen Zhaoyue closed her eyes a moment.
Of course.
She had thought that after all that fighting, this block of wood had picked one.
He had only come to get a sword repaired.
“Xie Linyuan.”
“Mm?”
“You’ll die alone someday, you know that?”
“Why?”
“No reason.”
Shen Zhaoyue took the sword into the refining room and did not come out for two full shichen.
Xie Linyuan waited in the courtyard.
At dusk she finally pushed the door open and tossed him the mended sword.
“Done.”
He caught it and ran his spiritual energy along the blade. The broken pattern was whole again, smoother than before.
“Thank you.”
“Just a thank you?”
“I’ll buy you a drink when I’m back.”
Shen Zhaoyue looked at him.
“Come back first, then we’ll talk.”
He nodded, sheathed the sword, and turned.
He had gone a few paces when a voice came from behind him.
“Linyuan.”
He turned around.
Then Shen Zhaoyue was in front of him.
She explained nothing. She reached up and straightened his collar, knocked crooked by the wind. Then she rose on her toes and put her lips to the corner of his mouth.
Very light.
So light that Xie Linyuan had no time to react.
Shen Zhaoyue stepped back. Her face wore the same expression it always did.
“The sword’s fixed.”
“That strike. Don’t lose.”
He stood there.
Shen Zhaoyue was already heading back to her gate.
Before the gate closed, she heard the man outside finally answer.
“All right.”
Once the door shut, Shen Zhaoyue leaned against it and got a hand up over her face, taking her time about it.
After a while she cursed under her breath.
“Blockhead.”
The day Xie Linyuan left the sect, the whole of Qingxiao Sect came to see him off.
The Elders stood at the front. The disciples lined up from the Mountain Gate clear to the Ascension Steps. Nobody joked. Even the wind going through the Mountain Gate sounded quieter than usual.
The junior sisters stood together.
Su Wanzhao held her sword, face cold, as if seeing off an enemy. Ning Wanwan had not turned a page in half a shichen. Pei Zhuyu was not smiling. Liu Qingshuang stared at the sword at his waist.
None of them brought up the past few days.
The parting was here. The fighting and blushing and sulking stopped mattering.
He walked to the Mountain Gate and did not take off flying on his sword at once.
He went first to Su Wanzhao and handed her a wooden box.
Su Wanzhao frowned.
“What’s this?”
“Your Sword Intent runs too hot. This Jade of Stillness holds the fire down. When you practice, stop thinking about settling everything with one strike.”
Then he went to Ning Wanwan.
“I renewed the herbs contract for the west storehouse of the pill house. Three years. The accounts are in your room. And this.”
It was a new pill furnace core.
Ning Wanwan stared at it and for a long while said nothing.
What Pei Zhuyu got was a pass token.
“The Pei clan’s caravans won’t pay spirit tax when they cross Qingxiao territory from now on.”
“When did you arrange that?”
“Yesterday.”
“Weren’t you at Qixia Peak yesterday?”
No answer came.
Pei Zhuyu glared at him a while. Then her fist closed around the token.
Last was Liu Qingshuang.
What Xie Linyuan gave her was the plainest thing of all.
A sword manual.
Liu Qingshuang opened the first page.
Every page was covered.
His own handwriting, years of it. From her first form: where she was wrong, where she rushed, which strike drifted half an inch. Page after page.
Page by page she went through it, and never looked up.
“When did you write this?”
“Over the years.”
No further questions came.
Just before Xie Linyuan turned away, she caught his sleeve.
That look she had on a snowy night, years ago.
“Senior Brother.”
He glanced back.
Liu Qingshuang’s voice was very small.
“Come back. Really come back.”
He smiled, then.
“All right.”
It was the first smile they had seen from him all day.
The long sword left its sheath. One line of sword light crossed the Qingxiao Mountain Range and was gone.
Nobody at the Mountain Gate spoke.
Su Wanzhao spoke first.
“Did he just smile?”
Pei Zhuyu sniffed.
“No.”
“I saw it.”
“You saw wrong.”
Ning Wanwan closed the ledger.
“Could you all be quiet?”
Liu Qingshuang held the sword manual and took no part.
She only looked into the distance.
…
Outside Tianmen Pass.
Gu Xuandu stood ten thousand zhang up, a Child of Destiny if ever there was one, his fortune coiled behind him like a dragon. Below him the cultivators of the Northern Region filled the sea of clouds.
He had waited three days.
At last he saw a line of sword light come from the south.
Then he landed on the city wall.
Gu Xuandu looked at him.
“The Qingxiao Sect sent only you?”
“Mm.”
“They sent you here to die?”
He thought about it, honestly.
“Probably not.”
That got a laugh out of Gu Xuandu.
The next moment, heaven and earth changed color.
The young sovereign, who had broken seven sects and been called this generation’s Child of Destiny by countless people, raised one hand. Clouds turned over. Ten thousand li of spiritual qi came into his palm.
Then Xie Linyuan drew his sword.
One strike.
Heaven and earth went quiet.
Gu Xuandu looked down at the immortal armor over his chest. It was split through. He raised his head and looked at Xie Linyuan.
“You—”
That was the only word he got out.
He was already falling from the clouds.
The sword went back into its sheath.
The Elder on the city wall stood with his mouth open.
Not one of the hundreds of thousands of cultivators of the Northern Region made a sound.
After a long time, someone asked, voice shaking:
“Daoist Xie … Daoist Xie, what realm are you in, really?”
He considered it.
“I broke through three days ago.”
“Broke through to what?”
He named a realm that existed now only in old books.
The city wall went quiet again.
The recording disciple’s brush dropped and rolled.
He had already turned, though.
“It’s over. I’m going back.”
He had promised several people.
He could not be too late.
The sect had figured on three months at least.
So when he came down at the Mountain Gate the next afternoon, the gate disciple stared.
“Senior … Senior Brother?”
“Mm.”
“How are you back?”
“It’s finished.”
“What’s finished?”
“Gu Xuandu.”
The gate disciple opened his mouth.
He had already walked past.
That evening the report from Tianmen Pass came in.
One strike.
Gu Xuandu defeated.
The Senior Brother had stepped into the legendary Taixu realm three days ago.
When the news reached the pear courtyard, the young ladies were sitting together, and sank once more into a long silence.
Quieter this time than the day Qinghe told them the Senior Brother might not come back.
First to speak was Su Wanzhao.
“So.”
“Mm.”
“He was never going to die at all?”
Ning Wanwan looked down at her tea.
“Going by the report, it’s probably Gu Xuandu who was in danger.”
Pei Zhuyu slowly set down her pastry.
“So I promised him the whole Pei family.”
Nobody said anything.
Su Wanzhao’s face was blank.
“I said it out loud to his face. I said I liked him.”
Liu Qingshuang sat beside them.
“I said I wanted to do dual cultivation with him.”
The three of them turned to look at her together.
Liu Qingshuang’s ears went red. She did not flinch.
“What are you looking at? I’ll say it again.”
Ning Wanwan was quiet a moment.
“That’s not the problem right now.”
“Then what is?”
She raised her head.
“He knew yesterday that he was already in the Taixu realm.”
The courtyard went quiet again.
After a few breaths, Su Wanzhao slowly closed her hand on her sword hilt.
“Meaning he knew perfectly well there was no danger in that fight, and he still watched the lot of us—”
She did not finish.
The smile on Pei Zhuyu’s face was turning dangerous.
“I suddenly feel we’ve been much too good to Senior Brother. Haven’t we?”
Liu Qingshuang nodded seriously.
“I feel that too.”
Ning Wanwan set down her teacup.
“I have an Immortal Binding Formation.”
Su Wanzhao looked at her.
“One that can hold someone in the Taixu realm?”
“Under normal circumstances, no.”
“Then what are you bringing it up for?”
Ning Wanwan took a sheet of paper from her sleeve, unhurried.
“Senior Brother revised this formation chart himself. Years back he was afraid I’d run into strong enemies outside, and told me to keep it for my life.”
The others looked at the chart.
Pei Zhuyu burst out laughing.
“Use a formation he taught us to tie him up?”
“Mm.”
“Isn’t that a little much?”
Su Wanzhao was already on her feet.
“Not at all.”
Liu Qingshuang stood up as well.
“Tie him up where?”
Ning Wanwan thought about it.
“Here, to start with.”
Pei Zhuyu added,
“Get Qinghe too.”
“Why?”
“She heard the news and didn’t hear all of it. That makes her at least half responsible.”
They all agreed this made sense.
So on the first evening after Xie Linyuan’s return, the moment he walked into his own courtyard, he saw a formation pattern light up on the ground. He knew it extremely well.
He glanced down at it.
Silence.
He had drawn it himself.
The next moment, four spirit ropes came winding in from every direction.
Xie Linyuan did not even struggle. He just stood inside the formation and watched the young ladies come out one after another from behind the courtyard wall, the roof, the trees.
Su Wanzhao, sword in hand.
Ning Wanwan, holding the formation plate.
Pei Zhuyu, smiling sweetly.
Liu Qingshuang, who had already dragged a chair over.
Qinghe stood at the very back, a coil of rope still in her arms, her face making it perfectly clear that she had no idea how she had ended up involved in any of this.
He looked around at them.
“What are you doing?”
Su Wanzhao walked up to him.
“Kidnapping you.”
“Why?”
The girls glanced at one another.
Pei Zhuyu spoke, smiling sweetly.
“Senior Brother.”
“Mm.”
“Now let’s talk this over again.”
“Talk over what?”
She reached out and brushed the dust off his shoulder.
“Who exactly you plan to leave an heir with.”
Xie Linyuan finally fell silent.
Outside the courtyard, Shen Zhaoyue, who had just arrived, stood on the wall and took in the situation, then looked down at the two jugs of wine she had just bought.
She thought it over.
She did not go in.
She sat down on the wall, opened a jug, and took a drink.
Inside, the arguing had already started.
“Senior Brother, answer me first.”
“Why should he answer you first?”
“Because I said it first!”
“I put up the biggest dowry.”
“Is money such a grand thing?”
“It really is quite grand.”
“All of you move aside, I have the Mystic Yin constitution—”
“Liu Qingshuang, shut up!”
Shen Zhaoyue listened a while, and then she was laughing.
It occurred to her that Xie Linyuan probably would not die alone after all.
His days just might not be very easy.