Realms In The Firmament

As the Xiao Monarch had been unable to touch women because of the special martial arts he had cultivated, his EQ was nearly zero!

What he had just said was totally pinheaded. You had to wonder if he was lacking a brain or that his brain had become totally mushy.

So was it playing, teasing, or just bald-faced flirting? — Of course, Ye Xiao himself didn’t even realize this.

The girl in cyan had pretended to be unflappable at the beginning. She had decided to bear with his ‘hand-holding’ and remain oblivious to it. But now Ye Xiao had brought attention to the situation, making her whole body heat up. Her eyes widened and she felt ashamed as well as resentful. She was about to lash out at him and was glaring at him.

No matter if it was intentional or not, what he had just said was too over the top!

Ye Xiao knew that things had gone wrong immediately and realized that he had just said something stupid, so he groaned, tilted his head and ‘passed out’ again…

Although his EQ was really low, his IQ was quite high; he clearly knew how to use the current situation to seize the initiative.

It wasn’t the decent thing to do, but it worked!

The girl in cyan was about to get mad, but she saw him faint again. She knew he was pretending, but she still found it funny in spite of being annoyed!

“Fine. Fair enough. It can at least clear up the embarrassment at the moment!”

She humphed and stood up, grabbed the bowl of water and shouted angrily, “Get up and drink.”

Ye Xiao kept pretending to be unconscious to avoid the embarrassment.

The girl started to become angry. “You took advantage of me and now you’re actually playing dead. You can absolutely move now. Do you want me to feed you myself?”

- Splash!- The water was dumped onto his face…

The Xiao Monarch was stunned. It looked like he could no longer pretend…

…

“Brother Feng, who did this to you, who used such a despicable torture method on you?” The girl held a cup of tea in her hand and smiled gently.

She had taken off the silk veil that had covered her, revealing an ordinary face.

Ye Xiao said faintly, “Before I start to talk, could you please unblock my Jing and Mai? I could recover faster…”

The girl smiled softly and said, “What are you talking about Brother Feng? You are an expert cultivator. If I set you free, it would be like letting the dragon return to the sea and the tiger roar in the jungle. I am an infirm girl. That would be a disaster for me, wouldn’t it?”

Ye Xiao sighed and said, “You only need these two guards of yours to flick their fingers to fight against me… What are you worrying for? There is truly no need!”

“Well it is better to be cautious while living in the mortal world. Cautiousness guarantees years of sailing for the ship.” The girl smiled sweetly.

No matter how hard Ye Xiao tried to convince her with a flow of eloquence, she wouldn’t unblock his Jing and Mai.

“This girl looks soft and sweet, but she is very stubborn inside. She won’t easily change her mind on what she believes to be right.” Ye Xiao came to a conclusion regarding the girl.

“Gosh. I really did not engage with women a lot in my former life. I really don’t understand how girls think. She has saved my life. Is it really necessary to take precautions against me like this? Do they think I am some kind of ungrateful rat…” Ye Xiao was upset and depressed.

“Brother Feng, you haven’t talked about why you left the auction in a hurry and how you encountered such a thing…” The girl smiled favorably. She casually wiped her hands with a silk handkerchief.

It seemed that she still minded the fact that her hands were ‘touched by a man’.

“It was my bad luck.” Ye Xiao showed emotions on the face and sighed, “At the auction, I purchased a lot of items and I was going to go back home early for dan-making… Besides, I had too much money with me, so I didn’t leave with you guys… I hardly imagined that a masked man dressed in white would appear in front of me when I turned the corner to go into an alley…”

“A masked man in white?” The girl in cyan frowned, “If he was planning to rob you, why did he dress in white? If he was in white, he must not be afraid of exposing himself, but then why did he mask himself? … That is very odd.”

“Who knows. The man in white…” Ye Xiao kept bragging while he was thinking: “This girl is really scrupulous.” The expression on his face was sincere though, “The man in white just swung his hand and then a stream of blue light quickly flew into my face… I couldn’t defend against it. It was too powerful…”

“Blue light?” The girl in cyan focused on these words and asked perceptively, “What kind of blue light?”

Ye Xiao was stunned, “Urh? What?”

The girl spoke blandly, “What kind of blue was it. Was it an acid blue? Or sky blue? Or sea blue? Or was it light blue?”

Ye Xiao was thinking; he acted like he was deep in thought, trying to recall the events, “It should be sky blue…”

His voice contained a strong sense of uncertainty.

The girl exchange glances with the two men and murmured, “Sky blue… It is… The middle levels of the grade of Tianyuan?”

The men were quiet like two puppets.

Ye Xiao understood that the color blue implied the top-grade expert cultivators in the Land of Han-Yang. However, there were still nine levels in this grade.

Light blue was the color of the initial-levels, level 1 and level 2; Sky blue was the color of the middle-levels, level 3 and level 4; Acid blue was the color of the high-levels, level 5 and level 6; Sea blue was the color of the peak-levels that people commonly described as the Grandmaster levels of Tianyuan.

If it was purple blue, that meant the cultivator was higher than the class of expert cultivators and reached the class of ultimate masters of the world… Whoever reached this class, wasn’t far from being able to ascend to the Qing-Yun Realm.

However, supreme masters in this world that had reached this level and were capable of flight were very few. There were some, but certainly not many.

Expert cultivators with sky blue qi were among the top-class cultivators in the martial world. They were absolutely not normal.

The girl in cyan suddenly frowned, “Brother Feng… If the robber is such an expert cultivator, he can’t be some nameless person. Could it be that you have crossed paths with him before?”

Ye Xiao looked innocent and waved his head as he spoke, “I am doing quite well in dan-making business apparently. I usually concentrate on this and haven’t gotten involved in the martial world. If I wasn’t running out of money, I wouldn’t have taken out the supreme dan beads for the auction. How could I possibly piss off such an expert cultivator?”

“That’s weird…” The girl was lost in her thoughts as a frown appeared on her face. She was obviously trying to find a clue from what he had described.

The girl didn’t doubt Ye Xiao’s words. In fact, if someone was not extremely talented and had no perseverance in the art of dan-making, they wouldn’t be able to make such world-class supreme dan beads.

Because of that, her way of thinking would not lead her to discover the truth.

Ye Xiao was gulping down water at the moment, as he felt really thirsty.

He had been sweating for such a long time and it was lucky that he hadn’t died from dehydration. Now that he had the time and opportunity, he naturally had to replenish some water.

“What happened next?” The girl continued with her investigation.

“Hmm. And then the… items I had with me were taken…” Ye Xiao sighed and gestured to his body, “And now I feel like I have been punched by ten thousand strong men at the same time. In fact, I am exhausted just by sitting here and talking to you.”

The girl smiled politely, “It is indeed not easy.”

Ye Xiao asked, “Do you mind if I ask for your name? You saved me today and I will repay you someday.”

The girl thought for a while and said, “It was a simple favor. That’s all. It is not worth mentioning. My family name is Wen-Ren. Brother Feng, you can call me Lady Chu-Chu.”

“Chu-Chu…” Ye Xiao praised, “Beautiful name! She who is delicate and touching is certainly a beauty.”

[TL note: Chu-Chu, which is 楚楚 in Chinese. It is a part of the idiom ‘楚楚动人’, which means delicate and touching and is mostly used to describe girls.]

A gleam of anger appeared on Wen-Ren Chu-Chu’s face: “What kind of person are you? I told you to call me Lady Chu-Chu… Who told you to call me Chu-Chu!”

She casually put the handkerchief away and didn’t touch it again. She smiled softly, “By the way, did you just say… that you were taking those items home to make dan beads?”

Ye Xiao kept his head raised, “Yes.”

“But what I have been told is… those supreme dan beads that you auctioned were not made by yourself, right?” Wen-Ren Chu-Chu said cunningly with her eyes half-closed.

“That is a rumor. In fact, I am the unique supreme dan-maker in this land. Only I can make the supreme dan beads; no one else can.” Ye Xiao hurriedly tried to justify himself.

However, this declaration made it sound like a cover-up.

“Heh heh…” Wen-Ren Chu-Chu smiled meaningfully, like she had already asked all the questions on her mind. She raised her cup and said, “Please. Brother Feng, drink.”

Ye Xiao glanced at the handkerchief that was put aside by Wen-Ren Chu-Chu. She had only used it once to wipe her hands. It was still clean and new but it had already been discarded like a worn out pair of shoes.

He made an observation about the girl: “This girl is neat freak.”

Ye Xiao put down the cup and pretended that he was too weak to hold it. The cup fell down and rolled over to the girl. Wen-Ren Chu-Chu quickly reached out her hand to grab it…

Ye Xiao acted fast to grab the cup first and took it back. He then spoke embarrassedly, “Please forgive me, Lady Chu-Chu. I don’t like people to touch the things I am using…”

“Are you a neat freak?” Wen-Ren Chu-Chu raised her head and looked at him for the first time since the conversation started.

Ye Xiao hadn’t noticed until now that her eyes were clear blue, like the ocean and the sky, an endless starry sky; they were shockingly beautiful! Her eyelashes were long like two delicate tiny fans, filled with absolute sense of beauty!

“If this girl took off her disguise and revealed her true face, she would be even more beautiful than Su Ye-Yue, I guess.” Somehow, Ye Xiao had such an image in mind.

Rubbing his nose, Ye Xiao smiled bitterly, “Yes, I am. I am apparently not in my own place, but I still cannot overcome my habit. Gosh. I am sorry.”

Wen-Ren Chu-Chu frowned and breathed a sigh of relief. Then she looked at the handkerchief that she had put aside and frowned again.

She looked back at Ye Xiao with a sense of terror in her eyes.

Ye Xiao lowered his head and drank his water. He had no idea what mistake he had committed this time.