They say that love is the greatest force in the mortal world, but it can really make a person's IQ drop straight to zero.
That said, this trip to Zhongzhou that Shu Fu took alongside her senior sister actually had another hidden purpose.
"Hey, you two still breathing?"
Yuan Qingfeng and Zhou Quan had been tied up so tightly they looked like two human rice dumplings. Zhao Yun squatted down right in front of them, pulled a small vial out of her storage bag, popped the cap off, and unceremoniously splashed all the strange liquid inside straight onto both of their faces.
"Wake up already! Who said you could sleep in?"
"...Cough cough cough!!"
The liquid was a weird dark yellow, reeking so horribly that it could be described as appalling in both appearance and stench. Even Shu Fu, who was standing two full zhangs away, couldn't help but furrow her brows. "Senior sister, what new ingredients did you add to this stuff this time?"
"Oh, nothing much," Zhao Yun said nonchalantly as she shook the empty little vial. "Just toad body fluids, slug slime, weasel stinky gland secretions, corpse flower nectar, mixed with a few... things I'd rather not explain to you. Don't worry, none of it is toxic. It just smells absolutely disgusting."
Before she even finished speaking, the two men who had just woken up heard her words, and immediately collapsed forward one after another, clutching their throats and retching so hard they were practically screaming.
Shu Fu: "...I'm begging you, senior sister. Don't keep using these moves that hurt the enemy one thousand while costing you eight hundred, okay?"
The stinging fumes that assaulted the other party's noses were also stinging her own eyes.
Shu Fu, who traveled alongside Zhao Yun all year round, naturally carried pills that protected against irritating odors, which were made by Jiang Xuesheng. She quickly took one, then strolled over to the two of them with her hands behind her back, wearing a gentle, pleasant expression.
She said in a calm, soft voice, "Well now, have you learned your lesson? Will you ever do something like that again?"
"We won't! We'll never dare do it again!"
Yuan Qingfeng had been fed up with them for ages, and he knew full well what trouble he was in. He flipped over on the spot and kowtowed immediately. "Every mistake here is my fault! I beg Fellow Daoist to spare my life, give me a chance to turn over a new leaf and be a new person..."
Zhou Quan was also completely terrified by the whole scene. The little crush he'd had a moment ago had vanished entirely. He quickly followed suit, kowtowing over and over. "Spare me, big brother! Spare me! I was wrong, I didn't know who I was messing with, I was confused for a second, my wits were possessed by ghosts, I will never dare do that again!"
"Stealing your sect's property, colluding with demonic cultivators, knowing full well that He Xiuwen is running a black market here and committing all kinds of evil, yet you said nothing and let innocent people suffer," Shu Fu said with a faint, knowing smile, glancing at them sideways as her fingertips brushed lightly over the hilt of her sword. "The rules of Tianyi Sect, I'm sure the two of you know them better than I do. What punishment do such actions deserve?"
Yuan Qingfeng lay flat on the ground, his head dripping with cold sweat. "That... that..."
Shu Fu ignored his pathetic state, and continued in a light, cool tone. "Fellow Daoist Ji is very generous, and doesn't want to punish you too harshly. Since you obviously don't respect him as your master, you will sever your master-disciple ties from today on, and go make your own way in the world. But every single thing Tianyi Sect ever gave you, you will return every last bit of it, no exceptions."
Then she turned to Zhou Quan, who was trembling all over. "As for you, Fellow Daoist Ji thinks there's still a chance to set you right. Pack up your things, and come back with me to receive your punishment."
"Yes, yes..."
The two of them looked utterly devastated. One of them was grieving over losing all his sources of income, the other over his romantic hopes crashing and burning. Not only had his confession gone nowhere, the person he'd had a crush on turned out to be a Godzilla — a Godzilla who was even the same generation as his homeroom teacher, who looked exactly like a strict school discipline director the second you laid eyes on her.
Yuan Qingfeng knew full well that he had broken the rules repeatedly and there was no way to turn the tide. He could only struggle to try and hold onto a little leftover wealth for himself: "Fellow Daoist, I've been in Tianyan Sect for so many years, and I've forged quite a number of spirit artifacts for my sect..."
Shu Fu said with genuine surprise: "You mean the spirit artifacts with a 70% return rate? Are you planning to use those to ask for a favor from me?"
Yuan Qingfeng: "......"
How could he have been so foolish as to end up in this woman's hands again.
Seeing that the situation was hopeless, Yuan Qingfeng did not dare to hold onto any more false hopes. Even though his ached so badly that his heart, liver, spleen, and lungs were all trembling, he honestly handed over his storage pouch, which contained the spirit artifacts he had swiped from the sect and most of his ill-gotten gains.
His master was named Ji Shaoguang. Young in age and low in seniority, he only got the special qualification to take in and teach disciples because of his outstanding talent in artifact forging.
Yuan Qingfeng had always thought highly of himself, and barely paid any mind to this gentle and kind "Little Master". Again and again, he tested the limits right on the verge of being expelled from the sect, until he finally got what he asked for, and was successfully sent away with his bedding rolled up... no, he didn't even get to take his bedding, and was completely stripped clean before being shown the door.
Yet he never expected that this was only the beginning.
Shu Fu took the storage pouch in one hand and weighed it twice, while her other hand slowly rested on his shoulder, her fingers tightening: "By the way, Fellow Daoist Yuan. Your cultivation was also granted to you by Tianyan Sect. Why don't you return that along with everything else?"
"Wh... You can't do this!"
Yuan Qingfeng was so horrified that his voice cracked from screaming, "Master! Master wouldn't treat me like this!! Master has always been so good to me..."
Shu Fu nodded understandingly: "That's right, Fellow Daoist Ji has always treated you very well. Apart from not pulling strings for you, and not letting you sell low-quality spirit artifacts, he has granted you almost every request, and never treated you unfairly in the slightest. On the contrary, because he felt he was young and lacked seniority, he was afraid that others would look down on you, so he often asked the senior elders in the sect to teach you extra skills."
"But."
Her tone and gaze turned sharp in the next instant, "I really wonder what kind of ungrateful wretch you are, to actually harbor hatred towards such a good Fellow Daoist Ji, colluding with demonic cultivators to set an ambush on the only path he takes when he leaves the sect, intending to rob him. If my senior sister and I hadn't happened to pass by, would your master still be alive today?"
"!!!!!!"
This time, Yuan Qingfeng was truly struck right at his weak point. He felt as if he had been hit by a thunderbolt, trembling so much that he could not utter a single word.
"You... you know..."
"Not just me. Fellow Daoist Ji knows too." Shu Fu said coldly, "It's just that he's a bit slow on the uptake, insisting that you were just confused for a moment, and wanted to give you another chance. He wouldn't let me disable your hands and feet for him. But now it seems that if you don't want to keep your own limbs, even he can't save you."
"Stop! Let go of me!!"
At this point, Yuan Qingfeng was so terrified that his soul nearly left his body. He watched helplessly as Shu Fu placed one hand over the top of his head, and couldn't help screaming hysterically: "I beg you, please spare my life! Aren't you upholding justice? Isn't Jiuhua Sect an upright and honorable orthodox sect? You... you are doing something so cruel as crippling a person's cultivation, that's against the very name of the righteous path..."
"Oh, that thing? To be honest, Fellow Daoist Ji thinks the exact same way."
Shu Fu fully agreed with this, and explained to him very patiently, "But I told him that a hopelessly rotten guy like you, if I let you go just because of a moment of softheartedness, would never be grateful. Instead, you'd turn around and bite the hand that feeds you, and who knows, that bite might land right on his throat."
"To avoid all that trouble later on, even if I don't kill you, I'll at least have to cripple you."
If you ask why? It's just how it goes in novels and TV shows.
According to all the usual tropes, a vicious villain will never turn over a new leaf just because they were spared once. They'll only fixate on the punishment they suffered, and without a hundred percent doubt, pop up again later in the plot, hell-bent on causing more chaos nonstop.
Shu Fu hated trouble. Even though she understood it was what the plot needed, she had zero interest in tangling with the same lowlife villain over and over again. Especially this third-rate villain who didn't even have enough merit to be a source of fun, not even entertaining enough to laugh at.
If there was any way to do it, she'd send them off to wrap up their part in the story without a second thought.
"All that said, goodbye, Fellow Daoist Yuan."
"If we're lucky, you might even get to make a future appearance as an ordinary villager named Yuan."
That was the last thing Yuan Qingfeng heard before he fainted dead away again.
And just like that, his part in the story was done.
...
After dealing with Yuan Qingfeng, Shu Fu and Zhao Yun didn't linger any longer. They brought along the half-dead scar-faced cultivator, the completely dejected Zhou Quan, the rescued victims, and a huge haul of seized stolen goods, and rode their swords to leave the valley.
He Xiuwen was a crafty one with multiple hideouts, so taking down one after another would sooner or later force him out into the open.
Shu Fu did a quick mental calculation and figured that his black market financial reports for the year must be looking absolutely terrible. If his operation was a publicly listed company, its stocks would all be deep in the red by now, plummeting nonstop all the way to rock bottom.
The weather's turned cool, time to make the Demon Lord go bankrupt.
"By the way, Fufu."
Zhao Yun had gone back to her bewitching, youthful girlish look. She twisted a lock of her sleek, pitch-black long braid around her finger, her bright clear eyes crinkling with a smile as she glanced over at Shu Fu every now and then. "There's a question I've been wanting to ask you for ages."
Shu Fu said, "What is it?"
"Why are you so good to Ji Shaoguang?" The smile in Zhao Yun's eyes deepened, and her tone took on a meaningful lilt at the end. "He did take care of Bai Tian for a while, that's true. He's handsome, talented, and has a pretty good personality, a likable young kid. But you two barely met a handful of times before, you had no history at all, you could practically be considered total strangers."
"So why is it that every time something related to him comes up, you go above and beyond to help, even handling everything personally, like you want to take care of him down to the smallest detail?"
"..."
Shu Fu knew she had the wrong idea, and was terrified this bold, uninhibited woman would blurt out something outrageous like "he's your male consort" again. She immediately cut in without even thinking, "Senior Sister, you've got it all wrong. I'm being nice to Ji Shaoguang for one reason only, and that's because I know he's a good person who deserves all this care."
That wasn't the full truth, but it was pretty close.
The real reason was that Shu Fu knew—this disciple of Tianyan Sect named Ji Shaoguang was the gentle second male lead in the original novel, who gave his all for the heroine his entire life, never regretted it even at his death.
Why wouldn't I protect our beloved second male lead? It's just common decency, right? It's to make up for that old frustration I felt back when I flew into a rage and tore the book up. Any person with a conscience would do the exact same thing!
The male lead can be killed, but the second male lead must not die!
"Is that so? Then I guess I was overthinking it."
Zhao Yun, who had always been bold and straightforward, did not doubt her words at all. She just raised one slender, fair finger, tapping it against her chin with a hint of listlessness. "But still, don't be too nice to him, or you'll make him develop some silly misunderstandings."
Shu Fu looked at her in confusion. "Misunderstandings?"
"Right! This time for the Flower Festival, he even asked our teacher to pass a message to you, saying he has 'something important to discuss' and absolutely must meet you in Wei City. I heard from the teacher that he looked all flustered and awkward when he said that—he's probably got a crush on you!"
At that point, Zhao Yun couldn't help but giggle. "Even our usually calm and composed teacher was caught completely off guard for a second. Now he's fretting over it with his junior fellow apprentice, terrified that you'll get whisked away by Tianyan Sect before anyone notices. I thought it was all such a hassle, so I just decided to tell you straight out so you can be careful around him yourself."
"One suitor like Ling Xiyue is already more than enough trouble, isn't it?"
Shu Fu: "...Huh???"
...
Just like that, Shu Fu, carrying a sense of heaviness she had never felt before, handed over all the spoils from this trip to her sect, then set off for Wei City alone. The Flower Festival was still a few days away, and Zhao Yun said she wanted to wander off to other places, so she sent Shu Fu ahead to meet up with Ji Shaoguang first.
Shu Fu: Life is so hard for me.jpg
From what Shu Fu remembered of the original novel, Ji Shaoguang was a gentle, warm young man who gave silently and never asked for anything in return. His love for the female lead was restrained and quiet, and he almost never expressed his feelings directly. Even when he worked up the nerve to confess, he would beat around the bush so much that it was like winding through eighteen twists and turns, for fear that the girl he liked would catch on. Add to that the female lead's naive, little white flower persona with a reaction time so long it could stretch for miles, and the end result was that Ji Shaoguang followed her loyally, giving his all without complaint for more than a decade before she finally realized just how deep his love ran.
So the fact that Ji Shaoguang had gone out of his way to ask Jiang Xuesheng to pass along a message to arrange this meeting was already an extremely dangerous sign, and it set off alarm bells ringing wildly in Shu Fu's head.
She knew that when this man wanted to confess, he would act far more reserved than a young girl from a respectable family who had never stepped out of her boudoir. The more he beat around the bush, the more suspicious his intentions would be.
By the way, in the original novel, the female lead's response to Ji Shaoguang's love, which was deeper than the mountains and wider than the sea, was:
"But Brother Ji, I only ever saw you as my own elder brother..."
Ji Shaoguang: "............ Fine. Then I can treat you as my own little sister too."
Even though Shu Fu knew that feelings could never be forced, she had nearly spat out a mouthful of old blood the first time she read that scene.
Good heavens, let's be reasonable here! What on earth did the female lead ever see in Qi Yuxuan?
Did she love him for being an idiot, for being a scumbag, for having a brain the size of a pea that never fully developed?
Did she love him for being a human central air conditioner that blew cold and hot for a hundred different sisters and ladies, leaving her to spend every single day of the year fighting petty harem-style drama?
Did she love him for being cold, overbearing, and blind to everything around him, never listening to a single word anyone said, ready to turn on her and kill her the second he flew into a temper?
The ancients said love is a strange thing, but who would have thought it could make a person's IQ drop to zero?
Joyous moments, bitter partings—there are always fools in this world lost to love.
Jiang Ruoshui was such a fool, and Ji Shaoguang was one too.
All in all, in Shu Fu's memory, aside from a whole line of cannon fodder side characters like Fangfei and Qi Yexin, Ji Shaoguang, as the second male lead, was also that tragic figure who lived only to give his all for the female lead, burning himself out for her without ever asking for anything in return until his last breath.
Even though the woman he loves deeply is not Shu Fu, now that she has inherited everything that belonged to Jiang Ruoshui and knows his character and temperament like the back of her hand, she naturally must do her utmost to keep him safe and sound.
But then again...
...if this ends up dragging him into another fruitless unrequited love, that would be really bad.
So on this day, when Shu Fu stepped into the territory of Wei City and walked slowly towards the teahouse she had agreed on with Ji Shaoguang, her mood and her steps were equally heavy.
Dear light, don't fall for me. I'm just a legend you can't reach.
Wei City was a bustling place. Its ten-mile long main street was thronged with carriages and pedestrians, lined with shops of every kind. The cheerful chatter of the crowd, mixed with the scent of flowers and wine, drifted all the way from one end of the street to the other. The whole city was brimming with the warmth of spring and vibrant, happy energy.
Walking through this lively market scene, Shu Fu's mood lightened a little. She was just about to take a deep breath of this rare, relaxed and pleasant air when a red blur darted right in front of her eyes, and a palm-sized object dropped down from above.
"...?!"
Shu Fu was incredibly quick to react. In the split second her mind raced, her sword was already drawn. With a flash of cold light, she sliced that sudden, strange thing clean in half in the blink of an eye.
It was not until the object drifted down to the ground that Shu Fu realized it was not some hidden weapon or something carelessly tossed from a height, but just a strange pink peach blossom as big as a bowl.
She lifted half of the peach blossom with the tip of her sword, her gaze sharpening. The mood that had just started to lift sank heavily once more.
At the same time, from behind a half-opened window directly above her head, came that familiar, cheerful male voice:
"Miss Jiang, long time no see. I hope you have been well."
"..."
Shu Fu looked up slowly. Just as she expected, there was a young man in a golden robe leaning against the railing upstairs. His face was as fair and pretty as a finely carved jade, his eyes as clear as autumn waves, and he was toying with a bunch of flower branches in his hand. It was Ling Xiyue, who she had "run into" countless times over the past three years.
"Miss Jiang, why are you looking at me like that? The Flower Festival of Zhongzhou is open to everyone, I just came to join in the fun." Ling Xiyue said with a laugh as he reached down and pulled out a "great treasure" — his coal-ball-like Pomeranian dog, holding it out to her as if presenting a precious gift. "Look, Xuan misses you so much too."
The Pomeranian barked: "Woof!"
— I might not be a bad person, but using a dog to hit on someone? You're the real dog.
Shu Fu was just about to snap back a retort when she heard a soft creak. Another window on the teahouse across the street slowly swung open, and another familiar face poked out.
"Aren't you Shu Fu? I'm so glad to see you looking well after all this time. I've been remiss in not welcoming you sooner — come on up."
That person was as elegant and otherworldly as a bright moon among rosy clouds, wearing a soft spring robe the color of a clear blue sky. His whole presence felt as vast as the open sky, as gentle as rippling water. Anyone who laid eyes on him would get lost in that sight at once.
When Shu Fu first met him, she did have a split second of being stunned by his beauty, but she quickly snapped out of it.
Having seen the vast sea and the waters of the Yangtze, no one else could ever catch her eye except Teacher Jiang.
Still, as a friend, Ji Shaoguang was absolutely a delight to be around, both in appearance and in character.
And besides —
"Woof! Woof!"
A big fluffy white dog head suddenly popped out from right next to Ji Shaoguang. Judging from the shape of its head and its coat color, it was clearly a plump, fluffy Samoyed.
Ji Shaoguang gave a soft smile, gently stroking the Samoyed's fluffy fur. "Lanlan, stop being so rambunctious... hey, quit nuzzling me! Look at you, all that thick fur of yours is making me all itchy when you rub up against me."
"Shaoguang, I think Lanlan just missed me," Shu Fu said with a quiet laugh. She lifted a hand and waved at him. "Wait just a moment, I'll be right up."
With that, she didn't spare Ling Xiyue a single glance anymore, and walked briskly up the stairs to the teahouse that belonged to Ji Shaoguang.
Comparing the two of them side by side, she realized right away that the way Ji Shaoguang looked at her was clear, open, and exactly the same as it had always been. There was clearly no trace of romantic affection between them at all.
Bro, you really are just my bro after all!
Ling Xiyue: "………………"
*Smile slowly fades away.jpg*
As if to release the frustration welling up inside him, he suddenly raised his hand with a blank expression and smacked the Pomeranian on the head hard.
Pomeranian: "YOW?!!"
