The next morning, Ge Nianlan was unceremoniously dragged out of bed, dressed, fed, and taken to the training grounds.
When he woke up, he found that his neck hurt from leaning against something shorter than him. He frowned, shifted, and looked over into the face of a beet-red Huai Zhen. The smaller boy side-stepped away and glared at him before facing front again. Ge Nianlan remained stunned for a few seconds, before the chilling gaze finally reached him. He shuddered and slowly turned to face the Bull Saint.
The woman was the prime example of a sword cultivator—lean in stature, with sharp eyes and a killer’s aura. Perhaps even in a group of righteous cultivators, they would mistake her for one of theirs. However, the one thing that would set her apart from the crowd, was her curve-bladed sword, Night Howler.
The curved-bladed sword teemed with demonic qi, from the beasts and demons she defended the territory of Black Mane Palace from. It contained the souls of past enemies and fed off the blood of her best adversaries. It was a sword that had been consecrated by the Devil Lord himself and was one of the Yinxue Region’s number one devil weapons.
Although Wen Yuqing only made appearances in the cursed artifact to condemn him, Ge Nianlan knew of her martial prowess from stories that Zheng Yuying would tell him. He had also had a brief history lesson, over the Eight Saints, courtesy of Nie Chenhui. So, despite never seeing her in action, Ge Nianlan had a deep fea—uh, no. A deep respect for her.
“Young Lord.”
“…Yes, Lord Wen.”
“You were the one who wanted to take sparring lessons, were you not?”
“I, uh—”
“Don’t stutter.”
Ge Nianlan unconsciously straightened. “Yes, I was.”
“Then, could you please explain why you were late and, on top of that, why you were still asleep by the time I arrived?” Wen Yuqing asked.
Ge Nianlan tugged at the collar of his shirt. “Um…”
“Don’t say ‘um’.”
“That is…” Ge Nianlan averted his gaze. He took a deep breath and bowed until his forehead nearly touched his knees. “My deepest apologies, Lord Wen! It was rude of me to disrespect your time like this. I will accept any punishment you deign to give me.”
Wen Yuqing raised a brow in surprise. She leaned against her sword as she looked at the top of Ge Nianlan’s head seriously. “Do you mean that?”
“Of course!”
Of course, he did! If he didn’t turn around and make a good impression on Wen Yuqing now, then he was dead meat!
He wasn’t trying to compete with Huai Zhen or anything, but Huai Zhen had clearly come on time and was awake. Once Wen Yuqing finds out that Huai Zhen is the proper young lord of Black Mane Palace, she won’t just vote to kick Ge Nianlan out—she’s going to come after him with her own sword for being so disrespectful to her! Then, Ge Nianlan won’t have time to worry about whatever Supreme Devil God, he’ll be more worried about the Bull Saint!
Ge Nianlan already had a taste of a horrible death, every night in his sleep. He really didn’t want to experience what it might be like to die by a real devil sword, even after all his hard work.
As Ge Nianlan sweat, Wen Yuqing smiled to herself. “No matter what I do, you won’t tell His Excellency?”
“Of course, not!”
“Alright. Then, run twenty—um, no. Run five laps around the training grounds!”
…Why did she change the number? Was she looking down on him?
Ge Nianlan pursed his lips and nodded.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Qlatbea tfrlajalcu obg jcbatfg rfmbcv, tf rajgafv tlr pbu.
“Mjrafg!”
Xf Rljcijc rajgafv tlr gec.
Lejl Itfc kjamtfv Xf Rljcijc ajxf boo jcv uijcmfv ja Qfc Tedlcu. Qtfc atf Deii Vjlca wfa tlr ujhf, tf lwwfvljafis jnfgafv tlr fsfr jujlc, tlr mtlc cfjgis abemtlcu tlr mtfra.
“Vb, sbe’gf Tecxbcu Ujnlilbc’r vlrmlqif?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“And your name is Huai Zhen?”
Huai Zhen nodded, before he caught himself. While he could choose to respond or not around his shizun and the Pavilion Master, he was in another place. On top of that, she was a high-power person, so it wouldn’t be good to be so rude.
“My surname is Huai, given name Zhen. I am the disciple of Lord Hanjing of Yunkong Pavilion,” Huai Zhen said.
“And you are his only disciple.”
“Correct.”
“I see. What level of cultivation are you at?”
Huai Zhen frowned uncertainly. With the Bull Saint’s level, she would be able to detect his cultivation level immediately without even asking. He glanced at her to ascertain if she was mocking him, but she waited sincerely for his answer.
“I cannot.”
“You cannot what?”
“I…cannot cultivate…” Huai Zhen said.
Wen Yuqing’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh. I see.”
Huai Zhen tried his best not to fidget as Wen Yuqing fell silent.
“In that case, did you at least learn to hold a sword?”
“Yes.”
“Do it then. Pick up the sword.”
Huai Zhen bent down and picked up the wooden sword that Wen Yuqing had placed in front of him and Ge Nianlan before their lesson officially started. The wooden sword was on the lighter side, but was still a little too heavy for Huai Zhen. His wrist tensed oddly and he nearly dropped the sword, but a hand quickly reached out to steady him.
“Did you have any wrist injuries before?”
“…I did.”
Wen Yuqing frowned. She took the sword from Huai Zhen’s hand and carefully observed his wrists and fingers.
“You never let it properly heal, did you?”
Huai Zhen clenched his jaw.
He wanted to. But whenever his hands and wrists showed any sign of recovery, they would just be crushed again. That cycle continued for a few months during Baili Liuye’s seclusion. By the time he could tell his shizun, the children stopped, and the damage had already been done.
“We need to fix this,” Wen Yuqing said. She glanced at the boy. “And do some strength training.”
“It…can be fixed?”
“Of course, it can. In this world, there are very few things that cannot be fixed,” Wen Yuqing said. She frowned and mumbled to herself, “I wonder why your shizun never bothered to fix it though.”
“I never told him!” Huai Zhen blurted out. He glared at Wen Yuqing. “It’s because I never told him, because I didn’t think I could fix it. That’s all. It’s not my shizun’s fault.”
Wen Yuqing stared at him in surprise. The timid boy suddenly spoke loud enough for her to hear without straining herself. It was both a shock and a pleasant surprise.
Her smile became somewhat friendlier. “You must really cherish your shizun.”
Huai Zhen’s face flushed. “He does his best to take care of me.”
He was often clumsy, but if it weren’t for him, Huai Zhen would have died or, worse, sold off to god knows where.
That was one of the reasons Huai Zhen hated to bother his shizun when the disciples harassed him. It was already difficult enough to be the Dragon Tree Guardian and a high elder in the Eternal Pagoda without having to defend his useless disciple from children of far more affluent families. If word gets out that he couldn’t even cultivate, yet his shizun was offending prominent clans for his sake, Baili Liuye would turn into the laughingstock of the cultivation world. And, worse, the respect he had built for so many years would be lost because of his useless disciple.
“Well, in that case, we’ll have to make him proud, right?”
Huai Zhen looked at Wen Yuqing.
She smiled. “Your lessons won’t start for another month. Fixing your hands won’t take too long with modern medicine, but it will be painful, so you need time to heal.”
Huai Zhen nodded enthusiastically. “I’ll do anything to fix my hands!”
Wen Yuqing smiled and patted Huai Zhen’s head. “You actually like using the sword, huh?”
If it was just to make his shizun proud, this boy wouldn’t have such a passionate glint to his eyes. She giggled to herself as Huai Zhen flushed. Perhaps it was because of those eyes that were a redder brown than a normal person’s, but she found herself thinking of Ge Jinsheng.
This little boy reminded her of when Ge Jinsheng found his heart again in Qiao Lanying.
“Say, is one of your parents from the Yinxue Region?” Wen Yuqing asked curiously.
“I don’t know my parents,” Huai Zhen sheepishly said. “Shizun was the one who found me and raised me, so I’m not sure.”
“Oh my,” Wen Yuqing gasped. She cleared her throat and grinned. “Well, then you’ll fit right in around here! Who hasn’t been abandoned or forgotten about in the Yinxue Region?”
Huai Zhen raised a brow. “Oh…really?”
“Mn! Even me! My parents threw me into the river when I was two. If it weren’t for the previous Palace Master, I would have drowned,” Wen Yuqing said. “I think Black Mane Palace is the only sect in this region that doesn’t abandon and throw out their disciples willy nilly, so you could say that you’ve come to the right place. Here, the only people we abandon are liars and traitors. Pretty nice, isn’t it?”
Huai Zhen couldn’t help but giggle a little. “Yeah, that is nice.”
It must be so nice. So nice to stand around and have a normal conversation—Ge Nianlan thought.
He was on his second and a half lap and he was quickly losing steam. He tried to keep his breathing regulated, but as someone had never done vigorous exercise in the decade that he had been alive, he was having a horrible time.
Ge Nianlan was sure that if he didn’t have the stamina of a child, he would have collapsed by the end of the first lap!
By some miracle, Ge Nianlan actually made it to the tenth lap before his knees gave way and he fell to the ground.
He heard the crunching of gravel as Wen Yuqing and Huai Zhen approached him.
Wen Yuqing crouched down and looked at Ge Nianlan with a frown. “Didn’t you hear me say stop half an hour ago?”
“But—you—” Ge Nianlan wheezed as he pressed his face to the steaming gravel. “You said—you said twenty l-laps.”
“And I changed it to five, didn’t I?” Wen Yuqing frowned.
“But…the appropriate punish—punishment was twenty laps,” Ge Nianlan said as he slowly pushed himself up. He leaned against the nearby column. “I—I wanted to get—get as close as poss…possible.”
Wen Yuqing raised a brow as she watched Ge Nianlan try and catch his breath. After a long while with only Ge Nianlan’s heaving breathing to fill the silence, Wen Yuqing laughed. She threw her head back and laughed until she lost her balance and toppled over. She reached for the water at her side and held it out to Ge Nianlan, still trembling with laughter. Soon, her face was as red as Ge Nianlan’s and tears stung the edges of her eyes.
In his daze, Ge Nianlan took the water canister and held it while he listened to her laugh.
Huai Zhen glanced at Wen Yuqing worriedly until she slowly sat up again.
“Young Lord, I appreciate your fortitude.”
Ge Nianlan stared at her blankly. Was his sincerity taken as foolishness?
Wen Yuqing grinned. She took the water canister again and opened it for Ge Nianlan. Once it was in the boy’s hands, she gently patted his head.
“But if you do everything with such earnestness, you’ll end up being taken advantage of,” Wen Yuqing said.
Ge Nianlan shook his head. “If I was wrong, then I should atone for my mistakes. It doesn’t matter if the opposite party feels that it is too much.”
“My goodness. Who knew that the son of the great Devil Lord was such an honest boy?” Wen Yuqing said.
“I’m not honest. I just think this is fair,” Ge Nianlan said. He fidgeted slightly. “So, am I forgiven?”
Wen Yuqing burst into laughter again. “Young Lord, you’re going to be such a handful for your future partner! I sure hope you won’t make any mistakes with them.”
Ge Nianlan pouted as he took a sip of water. “No, I won’t.”
Huai Zhen glanced between the young lord and the Bull Saint. He smiled to himself.
The atmosphere had been so tense just a few hours ago, but now everything was fine. It looked like Wen Yuqing had forgiven Ge Nianlan as well and Ge Nianlan, who went to extreme lengths, didn’t seem annoyed in the slightest that he had to do such a thing.
Huai Zhen watched Ge Nianlan as he groaned and laid limply against the column.
He was a liar, but at least he was a very earnest person. Somehow, it was quite admirable.
Thanks for the chapter ^^
Thanks for reading!
i love how hard Ge Nianlan tries!! and also im emotional about Huai Zhen finding a place here :’>
Hehehe thanks for reading!!!
Wow, it’s going to be hard for Ge Nianlan later 😂 (I’m a little stressed for him haha)
🥲 wish him luck I guess LOL thanks for reading!!
Thanks for the las two chapters. Them was nice