Chapter 76 Part 2

“What else?” Mu Qian Tan rubbed her brow, no longer in the mood to talk. She wanted to nap but was too lazy to go inside the hall, so she just dozed off in the chair. “Don’t bother me. I need to rest.”

Shang Shan had a bellyful of questions but was forced to shut up. Anxious but afraid to speak, she squatted by the chair and picked at the armrest with her finger.

“…”

The faint scratching sound like a little mouse scurrying reached her ears. Without opening her eyes, Mu Qian Tan fished out Shen Xin’s Heart Puzzle Toy from her Storage Pouch and tossed it into her lap. “Go play over there.”

“Oh! So this is what it’s like!” Shang Shan got the toy and beamed with joy. She set the empty plate aside, rolled up her sleeves excitedly, sat cross-legged by the chair, disassembled the pieces, and eagerly began. “Then let me help you put the heart back together.”

Drowsiness rose. Mu Qian Tan murmured, “Go ahead. Practice your brainpower while you’re at it…”

When she opened her eyes again, it was noon. Sunlight bathed her in orange-yellow warmth, like warm water flowing over her.

Her awareness gradually returned. She only cracked her eyes at first, waiting until they adjusted to the daylight before fully opening them.

She stared blankly at the clear blue sky for a moment. Mu Qian Tan covered her thin lips with her hand and yawned, then slid her hand down to rub her slightly sore shoulders and neck. She turned her head to look beside her. Shang Shan sat at her feet, back to her, legs splayed, head down in deep concentration as she assembled the Heart Puzzle Toy.

Shen Xin had said it was for kids, and the description proved spot-on.

Her stomach growled a bit. Mu Qian Tan’s laziness hadn’t worn off, so she nudged the girl’s shoulder with her foot. “Mealtime.”

Shang Shan compared two similar fragments and stole a glance. “I don’t have time to cook!”

Mu Qian Tan narrowed her eyes and basked a bit more, then nudged again. “Mealtime.”

“Hey! Come on!” Shang Shan fumed, carefully set the toy down, ran to the stove, knelt on the ground, and rummaged butt-up in the snow pile for the food box. “I said I’m busy! What if the ideas in my head scatter later?!”

Mu Qian Tan looked at the ground. A small section of the heart was already assembled, and the other pieces were neatly sorted by shape.

Shang Shan pulled out several vegetables from the box, hugged them, quickly washed, peeled, and stir-fried them. With a sulky little face, she nearly flipped the pot into the sky before presenting a steaming plate. “Eat up.”

Mu Qian Tan took it and tasted. Shang Shan said, “Say thank you!”

Mu Qian Tan said, “Not bad.”

Shang Shan wiped sweat from her forehead and huffed, “Of course!”

She turned back to her puzzle. Mu Qian Tan said, “You’re not eating?”

Shang Shan called, “I’m busy!”

How rare—not even eating.

Mu Qian Tan finished the plate and went to exercise. After bathing and returning, she saw the figure hadn’t budged. Three days passed like this; the girl sat for three days straight. Only near evening did she leap up excitedly. “Done!”

She scrambled over to Mu Qian Tan, who had just finished her run, and offered the heart. “Look, I put it together!”

Mu Qian Tan was still catching her breath. She lowered her gaze, took the heart, examined it from all sides, and compared it to the one in her own chest cavity. Confirming every fragment was in the right place, she said, “You got it right. Not bad—you’ve got some skill.”

She was about to say more when a thud sounded. Moving the heart aside, she saw Shang Shan face-down on the ground, fast asleep with snores.

Shen Xin had made this thing. Though just a children’s puzzle toy, assembling it was no easy feat. Ordinary people would take ages to figure it out, often losing patience halfway. But Shang Shan, fueled by who-knows-what drive, tackled the toy with fiery passion. To achieve her goal, she skipped eating, drinking, and sleeping, researching and trying nonstop—and completed it in a mere three days.

Mu Qian Tan looked at the heart, then at the sleeping girl on the ground, and spat out two words: “Stupid Dragon.”

She had stayed a full month in the Narrow Sea. Now, it was time to face the next hall master.

The busyness after leisure should have been irritating, but the one waiting below was Jiang Zhouyao—one of the few normal hall masters—and she and Mu Qian Tan could chat amiably enough. Meeting her brought no mental pressure, so Mu Qian Tan simply treated it as mooching a meal. She even bought a jar of rice wine on the way; after all, adult friendships were maintained with alcohol.

Mu Qian Tan mulled over the feast in her mind, leisurely imagining what they would eat and chat about that evening.

Little did she know, she had miscalculated badly.

When she arrived at Cliff Mountain, it was still afternoon, and the sky remained bright. Jiang Zhouyao had already prepared dinner and stood quietly at the end of the grape arbor in a water-red long skirt, a gentle smile on her face. “You’re here?”

“Mm.” Still some distance away, Mu Qian Tan responded first, only to see Jiang Zhouyao lower her hand as a section of red water sleeves unfurled from her sleeve.

“….” Mu Qian Tan halted her steps. “Feng Ling Immortal?”

Jiang Zhouyao chuckled lightly. “This one must first test Yao’e Immortal’s level to tailor a training plan for you, so please forgive the offense.”

“Wait!” She hadn’t expected a fight right upon meeting. Mu Qian Tan lifted the rice wine jar she had brought. “To be honest, I’ve already trained plenty with the other three hall masters. There’s really no need for you to push me further. I’m here to eat….”

Sigh, in her fixation on the meal, how had she forgotten that Jiang Zhouyao also followed the sect master’s orders—just like Xie Mei!

Before she finished speaking, the water sleeves came sweeping toward her like a streak of red lightning, the gust of wind striking fiercely. Afraid the rice wine would spill, Mu Qian Tan panicked slightly and unleashed spiritual power from her hand to counter. She accidentally used too much force.

A dazzling flash erupted before her eyes. The water sleeves were repelled, and the spiritual power wave rippled outward, blasting every grape on the arbor. Grape juice sprayed everywhere, unleashing a purple downpour amid an explosive burst of fruity fragrance, as if one had plunged into a sea of grapes.

In the emergency, Mu Qian Tan quickly recovered. With a snap of her fingers, the deluge of grape juice froze into hail that rained down again, smashing onto people and covering the ground in glittering chunks that sparkled like scattered diamonds in the sunlight.

Looking up at the arbor again, not a single grape remained.

Jiang Zhouyao: “…..”

Mu Qian Tan: “…..”

Shang Shan said, “I’ll clean up the battlefield!”

Frozen grape juice was still grapes—plenty of them all over the ground. What a treat!

Brushing ice shards from her shoulder and the rice wine jar, Mu Qian Tan crunched across the ice past the grape arbor and said helplessly, “That was an accident. It doesn’t count against me.”

Jiang Zhouyao was still gazing upward, murmuring darkly, “That strike just now—I didn’t use any spiritual power.”

“I could tell,” Mu Qian Tan said, a bit embarrassed. “I had the wine in hand and instinctively blocked. I didn’t control my strength.”

Shang Shan was still picking up ice chunks from the ground. Jiang Zhouyao said, “Yao’e Immortal won’t get any grapes with this.”

Mu Qian Tan replied, “Let’s just eat then. Stuffing yourself with rice works the same.”

“No rush. We’ll eat after training,” Jiang Zhouyao said, her lips curving up again, this time in an even brighter smile. “From that strike, Immortal, I see you have solid foundational strength. So the training plan will need to be rather intense.”

Mu Qian Tan: “….”

She didn’t get dinner that night; instead, she was dragged into a full session of practice first. Jiang Zhouyao’s training methods followed the same path as Xie Mei’s, focused on body tempering with basic exercises, but a full tier more difficult.

Mu Qian Tan hadn’t been able to endure it at Luminous Temple, and she fared even worse here. For the sake of a month’s free meals, she gritted her teeth and persisted for a long while before finally conceding. Several times when she wanted to quit, Jiang Zhouyao smiled encouragingly and coaxed her to hold on just a bit longer.

By the end, Mu Qian Tan was utterly spent, her clothes soaked through. She lay on the cool mat beside the dining table, too exhausted to get up, and asked wearily, “Immortal, you’re not getting revenge on me, are you?”

Jiang Zhouyao still smiled as before. “How could that be?”

She knelt by the bedside and placed a hand on Mu Qian Tan’s leg. “You can’t just rest after training like this. You need to stretch the meridians, or your legs will ache tomorrow.”

Never mind tomorrow—they hurt now. Mu Qian Tan lifted a hand to shade her eyes, feeble. “No need….”

Before she finished, a forceful press came on her leg. The sharp pain made her half-bolt upright, trembling as she said, “Really no need, Feng Ling. Press any harder and my leg will snap.”

“Relax, I know what I’m doing.” Jiang Zhouyao lifted her leg onto her own knee. “Just trust me.”

In a normal state, Mu Qian Tan would never allow anyone to touch her like this, but now her legs were numb and throbbing to the point of losing sensation. This much contact was nothing. Still, afraid of the pain, she said, “How about we just… urk!”

Mu Qian Tan jolted up again, one hand propping her up on the bed, the other on Jiang Zhouyao’s shoulder. “No, really no. Let them ache tomorrow. Don’t press.”

Jiang Zhouyao glanced back at her and called to someone behind. “Shang Shan, come help. Pin down your master.”