Unsheathed

“By the way, who was that strange sword immortal just now, Young Master Wei?” Chen Ping’an asked. “He spouted a bunch of nonsense and even invited me for some tea, but I have no clue who he is or what he was talking about.”

“If I’m not mistaken, that appeared to have been the patriarch of the Golden Crow Palace, Sword Immortal Liu Zhiqing,” Wei Bai replied.

Tang Qingqing nodded as she smiled and corroborated, “Once every few years, Sword Immortal Liu would travel to a mountain spring in our Spring Dew Garden that he had privately purchased some years ago to acquire water and brew tea.”

“Ah, I read about this in the Spring Dew Garden’s ‘Spring Dew in Winter,’” Chen Ping’an exclaimed as an enlightened look appeared on his face. “So that sword immortal just now was Liu Zhiqing of the Golden Crow Palace. I’ve certainly heard much about him.

“If I had known who he was, I would’ve tried to suck up to him a little and keep him for a conversation. That way, I’d be able to earn a reputation for myself as someone who had the honor and privilege of exchanging words with Sword Immortal Liu!”

Wei Bai’s smile remained unchanged, but the old woman was barely able to maintain her amicable facade, while the ship’s administrator continued to sweat profusely.

You sliced the Golden Crow Palace’s lightning cloud into two, yet Liu Zhiqing is still inviting you for tea! Do you really need to suck up to Liu Zhiqing to forge a reputation for yourself? Can we just do away with all these pretenses and get to the point? My heart can’t take much more of this!

“It seems like you don’t think I have the right to have tea with Sword Immortal Liu,” Chen Ping’an remarked as he turned his gaze to the old woman.

“I wouldn’t dare to think such a thing,” the old woman said in an insincere manner. “What could be more fitting than for a pair of sword immortals to have tea together by a mountain spring?”

Chen Ping’an’s gaze remained on the old woman, and the latter’s expression gradually began to stiffen.

“I heard in mortal empires, subordinates would choose death for themselves over dishonor for their masters,” Chen Ping’an suddenly remarked.

The smile on the old woman’s face had already completely disappeared at this point.

“I’ve also heard of a story from the Great Guan Empire,” Chen Ping’an continued. “From what I heard, Young Master Wei encountered a young man while walking over an arched bridge across Snow Veil Lake. The young man was accompanied by a maidservant, who greeted him with a smile, and Young Master Wei asked her if she would be willing to marry the young man.

“The maidservant offered no response, and shortly thereafter, an old woman, the very same one sitting in this room, as a matter of fact, sprang over the lake to gift a box to the young man. May I ask what was in that box? I came from a very poor background, and I’ve always been very curious about what precious item could’ve been in that box to have elicited such a stunned reaction from that young man.”

The old woman was already prepared for the worst.

She would fight Chen Ping’an to the death and take Wei Bai and Tang Qingqing down with her. With both the Iron Warship Residence and the Spring Dew Garden pitted against him, someone would surely hunt him down to avenge them!

However, Chen Ping’an had already turned his gaze away from her as he mused, “No wonder the Buddhist monasteries here are so popular.”

Wei Bai’s entire body was completely tensed up as he forced a smile onto his own face.

Chen Ping’an slowly rose to his feet, then gently tapped the ship administrator’s shoulder with his folding fan as he passed him by and said, “Let’s try and avoid a third deal between us. Otherwise, it may be the last deal you ever make.”

After that, he strode over to the door, then raised the folding fan in his hand and waved it slightly as he said, “There’s no need to see me out.”

The door opened up on its own, then closed behind him on its own as well.

Wei Bai remained seated at the table with a wry smile on his face.

After a prolonged silence, Wei Bai was certain that Chen Ping’an had departed, and he turned to the old woman with a smile as he said, “Don’t take it to heart. Immortals of his caliber are able to do whatever they please, but the same does not apply to us.”

The old woman smiled and nodded in response, but in spite of Wei Bai’s pleasant smile, internally, he was far from pleased.

I don’t care if you’ve taken it to heart or not, but I certainly have! You think I didn’t sense that hint of killing intent that you displayed just now, you old hag? While it’s true that it was directed to that young sword immortal, I’m not an idiot! You almost got all of us killed!

After returning to his room, Chen Ping’an began practicing his six-step walking meditation.

All of a sudden, he stopped in his tracks, then strode over to his window before jumping out to continue his walking meditation on the railing of the ship.

An entire night of walking meditation passed by.

As the sun began to rise over the sea, Chen Ping’an stopped in his tracks on the railing at the head of the ship as he cast his gaze into the distance. With his pristine, white robe basked in the light of the rising sun, he resembled an incandescent deity.

Under the dim light of dusk, Pei Qian was sitting on a small stool outside the entrance of a shop on Dragon Riding Alley of the Dragon Spring Prefecture, while Shi Rou was standing in the shop, occasionally taking glances outside.

Pei Qian would often sit outside to eat sunflower seeds, and whenever she did this, Shi Rou knew that she was thinking of her master.

After Chen Ping’an set off for the Northern Complete Reed Continent, Zhu Lian had to keep an eye on Pei Qian for a full two weeks. Only then did she finally grow accustomed to attending school every day and no longer tried to jump over the wall to escape all the time.

However, that didn’t mean that she no longer got up to any mischief. On one occasion, Zhu Lian went to the school to enquire about how Pei Qian was doing, and the answer that he received was both reassuring and concerning. What was reassuring was that Pei Qian hadn’t gotten into any altercations with anyone at school, not even verbal ones, but the concern was that she had no interest in her studies, nor any respect for the classics.

During her lessons, she would sit at her windowside seat, drawing small figures onto the corner of every page of her books. One of the teachers found out about this and examined all of her books, only to discover that a figure on the corner of every single page without exception.

The figures were very rudimentary, merely stick figures consisting of a circle and some lines, and they were either performing fist techniques or practicing with a sword, which she illustrated in the form of an additional line. Furthermore, the figures had been illustrated in a flipbook fashion, playing out in short sequences when the pages were flipped through at a sufficient speed.

As opposed to throwing a tantrum or reprimanding Pei Qian, the teacher examined her homework and instructed her to recite the book passages that she had to memorize. To his surprise, she was able to recite everything flawlessly. Thus, the teacher decided to let her off the hook, but warned her not to further deface the exalted classics with her drawings.

In response, she purchased some books from outside of school to serve as her new canvases, and she continued to scrape by, doing the bare minimum to keep abreast of her studies, nothing more and nothing less.

Sometimes, she would go out in between lessons to capture an ant, then place it on a sheet of paper. She would then draw lines on the paper in whichever direction the ant was trying to flee, barring its escape. Eventually, the entire sheet of paper would be riddled with lines, and the poor ant would be forced to scurry frantically back and forth in her makeshift maze.

The young master of the Dragon Tail Creek Chen Clan had told all of the teachers of the school to treat Pei Qian just like any other child, so she received no biased or preferential treatment. To all of the other children, she was known as the dark little girl who only spoke whenever she was spoken to by a teacher and rarely ever interacted with anyone outside of that.

Outside of her reclusive nature, she was always doing strange things that were inexplicable to her classmates, and unsurprisingly, she didn’t have any friends.

As time passed, a rumor began to spread that she was a little miser, and that she would help out at the pastry shop on Dragon Riding Alley every day to earn money.

After that, a child claimed to have personally witnessed Pei Qian getting into frequent altercations with a white goose. Another child who lived near Dragon Riding Alley claimed that every morning, Pei Qian would crow like a rooster, intentionally and maliciously waking everyone up.

Some other child claimed that after picking on the white goose, Pei Qian would also fight with the rooster in the northernmost part of town while loudly declaring the names of her attacks as if she had gone insane.

After the school visit, Zhu Lian had a chat with Pei Qian upon his return, and she finally kicked her habits of drawing stick figures on her books and constructing mazes for ants.

She took up a new hobby in their place, using water and the dirt in a secluded corner near Dragon Riding Alley to mold a series of clay figures that she would arrange into two opposing armies, which she would then pit in battle against one another. Over time, she had accumulated a collection of thirty to forty clay figures, and after each battle, she would stow them away in a safe place somewhere nearby.

Shi Rou observed this behavior and spoke to Zhu Lian about it in private, but the latter told her that it wasn’t a concern.

However, two things happened after that, the first of which was that after completing her transcriptions one day, Pei Qian rushed out excitedly to her makeshift battlefield to command her troops, only to return very shortly thereafter.

Seeing that she was in a rather glum mood, Shi Rou asked her what happened. Pei Qian was standing on the stool behind the counter, resting her head on the counter as she explained that both armies had perished in the storm the day before.

This left Shi Rou feeling rather concerned. Given how clever Pei Qian was, there was no way that she would’ve left her precious clay soldiers out in the rain. However, Zhu Lian brushed off her concerns once again.

However, the second incident had even Zhu Lian feeling a little worried, and after receiving word of the incident from Shi Rou, he made a trip to Dragon Riding Alley from Downtrodden Mountain.

Shi Rou told him that one day after school, Pei Qian dragged a dead goose back to the shop on Dragon Riding Alley by its neck, then buried it somewhere.

At the time, Pei Qian was alone in her room, making transcriptions, while Zhu Lian was standing at the entrance of the shop.

Shi Rou told him that Pei Qian refused to tell her anything, and that she had to do some digging on her own to learn what had happened.

On the way back from school, Pei Qian was intercepted by some woman, who declared that Pei Qian had to have been the one that killed her goose. She let loose a hurtful tirade on Pei Qian, who denied killing the goose, and the woman even lashed out to try and hit her. After getting out of the way, Pei Qian continued to deny culpability.

In the end, she pulled out her pouch of pocket money, handing over the two pieces of scrap silver and all of the copper coins that she had painstakingly saved up. She told the woman that she was willing to buy the dead goose, but she was the one who had killed it.

Shi Rou asked Zhu Lian what to do and whether it was necessary to talk to Pei Qian and try to console her.

Zhu Lian told her that she could try and talk to Pei Qian if she wanted, but it wasn’t going to do anything. Given Pei Qian’s personality, she was only going to take one person’s words to heart, and that person was absent.

Shi Rou then suggested that she could go and talk to the woman, then use her mystical abilities to find the culprit that actually killed the goose. Then, she would get both of them to deliver Pei Qian an apology.

In response, the ever-pleasant and easygoing Zhu Lian flew into a rage, telling her in very forceful terms that that wouldn’t do anything, and Shi Rou was so frightened that she immediately fell silent.

In the end, Zhu Lian stood at the entrance of the shop for a long time, but ultimately returned to Downtrodden Mountain without doing anything.

After that, Pei Qian became much more subdued. She obediently went to school, followed her daily routine, and whenever she had some spare time, she would stay at the shop to help out with business, make transcriptions, practice her walking meditation, or hone her Deranged Demon Sword Techniques. However, this only made Shi Rou more concerned.

Shi Rou would rather than Pei Qian had beaten up that woman or had a fight with one of her teachers at school, but she didn’t do any of that.

It was only in that instant that Shi Rou realized that a Downtrodden Mountain with Chen Ping’an present and one with him absent were two completely different Downtrodden Mountains.

Similarly, a Pei Qian with Chen Ping’an by her side and one without were two completely different Pei Qians.

Thankfully, Pei Qian would still occasionally do as she was doing now, sitting at the entrance of the shop on her stool, eating sunflower seeds while occasionally casting her gaze toward the end of the alley, as if she were hoping for a certain someone to show up.

This Pei Qian was much more familiar to Shi Rou than the uncharacteristically subdued and obedient Pei Qian.

On this day, Pei Qian had just put away her stool and was planning to enter the backyard to practice her Deranged Demon Sword Techniques when she heard Zhu Lian call out to her from the front of the shop.

“Pei Qian! Come out, you little runt!”

Pei Qian immediately rushed out in a fit of rage with her hiking pole in hand.

“What did you call me?! You asking for a beating or what?!”

Upon reaching the front of the shop, Pei Qian spotted a little girl standing on the doorstep beside Zhu Lian with her arms crossed, looking back at her with a serious expression.

Pei Qian faltered slightly upon seeing this, then asked, “Who’s this? Is this the illegitimate daughter that you’ve been looking for this entire time? Have you finally found her?”

Zhu Lian told her to piss off, then patted the little girl on the head as he introduced, “Her name is Zhou Mili, and she was sent here by your master from the Northern Complete Reed Continent.”

Pei Qian struck her palm with her fist as she exclaimed with a look of glowing admiration in her eyes, “Master is incredible! Not only is he picking up money, he’s even picking up little girls now!”

Zhou Mili’s face was scrunched up in a look of focus as she stared intently at Pei Qian with her head cocked to the side.

Pei Qian smiled as she offered, “I’ll treat you to some braised fish tonight, how does that sound?”

She then chopped her hand up and down over the palm of her other hand to simulate a cleaver striking a chopping board, making a string of thudding sounds with her mouth to complement her act as she said, “My cleaver techniques are the second-best under the heavens, only slightly inferior to my master’s!”

She then spread her hands open as she asked, “Have you ever eaten a fish this big, or a crab this big before?”

Zhou Mili didn’t dare to maintain her combative, arms-crossed stance any longer, and sweat began to bead up on her forehead as she looked around in a panic.

In her desperation, a thought occurred to her, and she said in her still rather unfluent Great Li Empire official dialect, “Your master told me to tell you that he really misses you.”

Pei Qian’s eyes instantly lit up, while Zhou Mili hurriedly jumped down from the doorstep in a fearful manner.

Pei Qian picked up her hiking pole again, then strode over to the doorstep as she gazed upon Zhou Mili with a benevolent look in her eyes.