Gu Chengming had no idea he'd just been mentally filed away in Jiang Lu's private ledger under the label: 'shameless freeloader living large off someone else's coin.'
They exchanged a few more words, then parted ways at the fork in the path.
Jiang Lu headed off toward the training grounds, his mind full of unspoken worries. Gu Chengming, meanwhile, tucked the heavy token into his robe and set off in the direction of the Hidden Sword Pavilion.
When he arrived, however, he found the place empty of the person he was looking for.
Behind the counter sat not the languid, cool-mannered Elder Yu, but an unfamiliar young female disciple — a temporary stand-in, as it turned out.
As for Elder Yu? Apparently indisposed. Not coming in today.
"Indisposed?"
Gu Chengming found that puzzling.
Since she wasn't there, he asked the stand-in for directions to Elder Yu's private dwelling. Returning the token in person seemed more appropriate, and he wanted to express his thanks properly while he was at it.
The substitute disciple didn't think much of it — she assumed Elder Yu had some important matter to convey — and readily gave him a rough idea of the location.
Gu Chengming thanked her and followed the directions toward a secluded bamboo grove behind the mountain.
It was, honestly, a bit of a nightmare to find.
Lush bamboo stretched in every direction, every stalk looking exactly like the last. The wind stirred the leaves into a dry, whispering rustle, and there wasn't a single useful landmark in sight.
On top of that, someone had apparently laid an exceptionally sophisticated misdirection array somewhere around the dwelling.
Gu Chengming wandered through the grove in circles for what felt like ages, growing increasingly convinced he was going nowhere. He was nearly dizzy from the looping.
Just as he was about to give up entirely, the token in his hand — the one he'd been gripping the whole time, with its carved character "Qiu" — gave a faint, sudden flicker, and a soft, gentle glow spread from its surface.
Immediately afterward, the haze ahead of him seemed to part, as if brushed aside by an invisible hand.
A stand of bamboo that had appeared to be a dead end quietly split open on its own, revealing a narrow, winding path that curved away into the quiet green.
"So the token is a key too."
Gu Chengming raised an eyebrow and stepped onto the path that had appeared out of nowhere.
At the end of the path, the world opened up.
A small, exquisite courtyard came into view.
Its walls were low and modest, draped with cascading purple wisteria. The gate stood half-ajar. Gu Chengming walked up and knocked.
Knock, knock, knock.
No answer.
Only a few iridescent spirit-butterflies dancing among the blossoms.
He knocked again. Still nothing.
Not home?
Gu Chengming hesitated, then gave the gate a gentle push. It wasn't locked. It swung open with a soft creak.
The courtyard lay before him in full view.
Beneath a great, ancient scholar tree at the center, a comfortable woven-rattan hammock swayed from the branches.
And draped across that hammock, face-down, was a figure in purple.
Yu Wenqiu had shed the slightly imposing elder's robes she wore on official business. In their place was a loose, soft gown in pale lavender. Her long black hair — usually immaculate — hung unbound, spilling freely over her shoulders and across the hammock, a few wayward strands curling playfully against her cheeks.
She was not asleep.
She was lying there with her bare feet — fair and smooth — dangling in the air, kicking lazily back and forth, while she held an enormous book in both hands and read with the focused delight of someone who had completely forgotten the world existed.
Occasionally, when she hit a particularly good passage, a poorly suppressed giggle would escape her — a soft, giddy "heheh" — and she'd roll over in the hammock, stretch out like a contented cat, and flash a sliver of pale, slender waist.
Not a single trace of the cold, aloof elder she presented herself as on any other day.
She looked, in every conceivable way, like a girl who had called in sick specifically to stay home and binge-read novels.
She was so absorbed in the story that she'd sunken entirely into its world, completely oblivious to the fact that Gu Chengming had pushed open the gate and walked in.
Gu Chengming stood in the doorway, cleared his throat, and spoke up:
"Ahem... Elder Yu?"
Nothing. The figure in the hammock giggled on.
He raised his voice. "Elder Yu!"
Still no reaction.
He tried again, louder still: "Elder Yu Wenqiu!"
"Ah!"
That landed.
The person in the hammock jolted like a cat whose tail had just been stepped on. Her whole body spasmed. The book flew out of her hands. She nearly toppled off the hammock entirely.
Yu Wenqiu scrambled upright, hair askew, and stared at the figure standing in her gateway with a look of pure, blank bewilderment.
How was there a person here?!
The misdirection array she'd had placed outside her dwelling was a top-tier commission — she'd paid a fortune for it. Under normal circumstances, even other elders looking for her couldn't find the entrance without a message talisman.
That was exactly why she'd felt safe enough to fully "let herself go" out here in the open courtyard.
So how had this person gotten in?!
Her gaze dropped instinctively to the token in Gu Chengming's hand, still faintly glowing.
Oh.
Right.
That was her personal token. It carried master-level clearance — immune to every restriction on the dwelling.
She recovered with impressive speed, almost instantaneously.
In a flurry of motion, she raked her hair back into something presentable, sat up straight, and arranged her face into its customary expression of cool, detached composure.
Her right hand flicked out with the speed of lightning — the novel that had gone flying vanished from thin air, whisked into her storage ring before it could hit the ground.
She gave a delicate cough, and said in as steady a voice as she could manage:
"How did you find your way here?"
Outwardly, perfect calm. Inwardly, Yu Wenqiu was so mortified she wanted to slam her head into a wall.
She had gone to such lengths to manufacture an excuse to skip out today, just to hole up at home and enjoy a blissful stretch of slacking off — and she'd completely forgotten about the token. She'd been caught red-handed, cornered in her own house.
Reading novels wasn't something to be ashamed of, strictly speaking. But having it get out was still... not great.
Worse — what she'd been reading was one of those wildly popular mortal storybooks: the kind full of gifted scholars, beautiful women, tangled grudges, doomed romances, and passages that were, shall we say, not entirely suitable for all ages.
If word got around, what would become of her reputation as an elder?!
Gu Chengming tactfully pretended he hadn't seen any of the preceding chaos. He held up the token with a smile.
"This disciple has finished exchanging his cultivation arts and has come to return the token, and to express his thanks to Elder in person."
Yu Wenqiu exhaled quietly. Good. He was just here to return the token.
She accepted it and, feigning composure, asked: "Mm. Since you're here — what technique did you select?"
"Reporting to Elder," Gu Chengming replied straightforwardly, "this disciple selected a copy of the Hundred Bones Resonance."
"The Hundred Bones Resonance?"
Yu Wenqiu blinked, genuinely puzzled. Why on earth had he picked something so obscure? That particular body-tempering method had a well-deserved reputation for being brutal — most people who started it couldn't make themselves finish it.
But her mind was fully occupied with figuring out how to get rid of him as quickly as possible, so she didn't dwell on it. She simply gave a brief nod.
"Mm. Body tempering is hard work, but it does good things for your foundations. Since you've chosen it, train diligently. Don't give up halfway."
With that, she lifted an imaginary teacup and made the universally understood gesture of a host signaling the visit was over.
They exchanged a few more polite, perfunctory words. It was perfectly obvious that Yu Wenqiu's attention was already drifting — her eyes unfocused, her thoughts clearly back in the hammock with her book, impatient to return.
Then, out of nowhere, Gu Chengming asked:
"Oh, one more thing — when I arrived just now and intruded so abruptly, I couldn't help but notice that Elder seemed very absorbed in something... might I ask what sort of storybook it was?"
"!!"
The imaginary teacup nearly crashed to the floor. Yu Wenqiu shot to her feet, eyes darting, and launched into a sputtering denial:
"You must have been seeing things! What I was doing just now was practicing a special cultivation method!"
It was such a transparent non-denial that even she didn't believe it.
Gu Chengming looked entirely unsurprised. He didn't call her out — he just smiled and played along:
"Ah, I see. My eyes must have deceived me. That said..."
He paused, then shifted direction:
"I did want to thank Elder Yu once more for the generous assistance last time. Without Elder's help, this disciple would have had no way to obtain that technique."
"And if Elder ever finds, in the course of her... cultivation... that she'd like a change of pace — some light reading to clear the mind — this disciple happens to have a few titles that can't be found on the open market. Rare editions, you might say. I could bring them by for Elder's... critical assessment."
"Rare editions?!"
The moment those words left his mouth, Yu Wenqiu's eyes lit up.
Mortal storybooks were easy enough to come by in the secular world outside the Wenjian Sect. The problem was that as a sect elder, she almost never had a legitimate excuse to go down the mountain. And asking a disciple to buy them on her behalf was... out of the question. Far too damaging to her image.
In the past, every time she'd needed to "restock," she'd had to go through the whole ridiculous rigmarole of disguising herself, slipping down the mountain in secret, posing as an ordinary rogue cultivator.
A complete hassle — and she'd had to stay constantly on guard against being recognized.
And now here was Gu Chengming, apparently sitting on a private stash of titles that weren't even available for purchase? The lingering embarrassment she'd been feeling evaporated on the spot.
Though almost immediately, she caught herself.
"Ahem!"
Yu Wenqiu forced out two loud, dignified coughs and attempted to salvage whatever remained of her elder's composure.
"Mm... well. There is, as it happens, a technique I've been cultivating recently that has reached something of an impasse. To break through, one must immerse oneself in the mortal world — undergo the tribulation of worldly entanglement. But having secluded myself in these mountains for so long, I've grown... rather distant from that realm of experience. It occurs to me, unexpectedly, that these mortal storybooks may contain certain profound truths of human feeling that could offer illumination."
She cut a sidelong glance at Gu Chengming, affecting perfect nonchalance.
"...If you truly have some on hand, you may bring them by. I'll grudgingly look them over for you."
Gu Chengming watched her — so obviously desperate to say yes, yet working so hard to dress it up in elaborate excuses.
This Elder Yu was, unexpectedly, remarkably easy to read.
He clasped his hands and bowed with a smile.
"Understood, Elder. This disciple will see to it."
With that, he took his leave with appropriate timing, not lingering a moment longer than necessary to disturb the elder's "cultivation."
As he stepped out of the courtyard and the gate swung shut behind him, a faint sigh of relief drifted through the air — followed shortly by the distinct sound of something heavy settling back into a hammock.
..............
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