Mei Man shifted closer and asked him, “What is it?”
Qiu Yingling lowered his hand, exposing the side of his neck.
Only then did Mei Man see that his neck was covered in blood-red scales.
The scales were packed tightly together—beautiful, in all honesty, each one gleaming like a piece of polished red jade. Blood seeped through the gaps between them, washing them until they appeared even more translucent.
The problem was that they had grown on a human body.
Caught off guard by the sight, she was frightened and turned to run.
Qiu Yingling caught her by the arm and said with a laugh, “Manman, do you find it disgusting? Half your body has already stepped into the cultivation world. You’ll see plenty more sights like this from now on.”
Mei Man understood the logic. If she was even afraid of something like this, it would be terribly embarrassing.
So she suppressed the urge to retch and sat back down.
Qiu Yingling took her hand and pressed it against his neck.
The instant her fingertips touched the scales, his eyes narrowed slightly. A breath escaped him from deep within his lungs, and his pupils shifted repeatedly between round and vertical slits.
Mei Man felt as though she had touched something soft, resilient, and icy.
His neck was still warm, and so were the scales, but it felt as though something were winding around her fingers.
Cold. Chilling. With the faintest sting.
She instinctively tried to pull her hand away, but Qiu Yingling said, “Although you can’t sense qi, you can still touch it. What covers these dragon scales is demonic aura.”
Mei Man paused.
The next moment, she pressed her entire hand against him, covering the scales firmly.
The movement was so sudden that Qiu Yingling had no time to prepare. Her palm landed against him in full.
These were newly grown scales, still tender and not yet hardened. They were extremely fragile—and highly sensitive.
The moment her palm touched them, that direct and utterly unapologetic contact brought on an intense, unbearable tingling.
His breathing faltered. The muscles in his arm tightened, and his head tilted unconsciously to the side. Even the simple act of swallowing caused the scales to flex and expand.
Mei Man heard him let out a faint, muffled gasp. Then his breathing abruptly grew restrained.
Keeping her face taut, she cursed him inwardly. At the same time, she pressed harder, her fingertips nearly digging into the gaps between the dragon scales.
If it had been Xie Xu, he would most likely have silently caught her hand and pulled it away. At most, she might have glimpsed a hint of his reaction in the tips of his flushed ears or his tense body. In Mei Man’s eyes, he was the sort who kept his lust hidden beneath a stony exterior.
But Qiu Yingling was different. He was practically shamelessly obvious.
After exhaling several uneven, hurried breaths, he raised the corners of his eyes. His gaze drifted toward her like soft, damp water, slowly seeping over her.
He did not quiet his breathing. Instead, it grew heavier and more hurried, as though he were doing it on purpose.
Mei Man wore a dark expression and ignored him. Her hand moved slowly over the scales as she sensed the demonic aura.
She had no way to draw qi into her body, so she had no idea what spiritual energy actually felt like. But after coming to the inner sect, she had clearly sensed that the qi here was warmer and gentler, soothing both body and mind.
She supposed that must be spiritual energy.
It was completely different from this demonic aura.
Mei Man normally had no opportunity to come into contact with demons, so this was a rare chance. Naturally, she was unwilling to let it go easily. She seized Qiu Yingling by the neck and pressed, rubbed, and kneaded the scales in every way she could.
At first, he had been the one to invite her to sense them, and he had acted like such a shameless tease. But before long, he refused to let her continue. He brushed her hand away and said with a smile on his pale face, “Manman, that’s enough. From now on, even if a demon wearing human skin comes right up to you, you’ll be able to recognize it.”
Mei Man noticed his evasive movements, and a strange, twisted sense of pleasure suddenly rose within her.
The senior brother whom all those cultivators revered as a genius, the one they had always looked up to, was no different from anyone else. He, too, possessed shameful desires, an unbecoming and vulgar side that could not be shown to others.
She ought to drag him outside and display him before everyone, so they could all see what he was like now.
Perhaps, to stop her, he would even beg her.
She tasted a little satisfaction in that despicable thought. Then she realized that she herself had provoked this side of him, and the realization made it all the more gratifying.
It was as though she had personally dragged him into this hidden current of desire.
So she pretended not to notice anything. Instead, she put on an expression of concern and hesitation and reached out to touch his face.
“Senior Brother Yingling, are you feeling better?” she asked. “Your face was terribly pale just now, but you’ve got some color back now.”
As she spoke, she pressed the bloodstained pad of her finger against his right cheek, poking a shallow dimple into it. At a glance, it looked like a faint red smile.
Even such a simple touch was difficult for Qiu Yingling to withstand.
He kept his smile in place, but his body leaned slightly backward as he said, “I circulated my inner energy just now and forced the demonic aura back down, so naturally I’m feeling better. Take that golden bell for now. Don’t sell it. We’ll need it the next time we purge the demonic aura.”
“I know. But, Senior Brother Yingling, why are you trembling?” Mei Man’s hand lowered slightly and pressed against his neck. “Your voice has changed too. Are you cold?”
Qiu Yingling caught her hand.
He looked at Mei Man. Most of the concern on her face was feigned, but he believed she simply did not understand certain things, which was why she was approaching him so recklessly in this state.
“It’s nothing. I’ve only just purged the demonic aura, so I’m still a little uncomfortable,” he said. “Go back. If you stay here any longer, swaying that gold bell around, people will be unable to bear parting with such a treasure.”
Mei Man still wanted to torment him a little longer, but she was even less willing to let the golden bell she had already obtained slip away. Taking advantage of the moment, she slid off the edge of the couch and slipped away.
From that day on, Qiu Yingling began a period of secluded cultivation.
Qiu Heyang still had not come out.
Shen Shushi was busy as well. Whenever he came to see her, it was usually to ask about her studies.
With Qiu Yingling in seclusion, Mei Man could not be bothered to look for Xie Xu. In any case, even if he intended to accept the benefits she had offered him, Qiu Yingling was not around. She might as well wait until he emerged from seclusion before doing anything.
As a result, the person she interacted with most often became Yu Guiya.
He was very talkative and frequently came to the library to look for books.
The first two times he came, he asked whether she had run into any trouble lately.
When she told him she had not, he breathed a sigh of relief and turned to chat with her about other things.
At first, they discussed books.
He read a wide variety of material. When he learned that she spent all day buried in books about alchemy, he enthusiastically recommended several storybooks, saying they might help relieve the monotony.
Mei Man could not be bothered to pay much attention to him. Most of the time, she responded perfunctorily, and she never once opened any of the storybooks he recommended.
He did not get angry. He continued to smile amiably as ever.
Until one evening, when her eyelids grew heavy from reading an alchemy manual, she casually pulled out the book he had recommended and flipped through a couple of pages.
Unexpectedly, the book suited her tastes perfectly.
It contained stories about folk customs, describing a world entirely different from the one she had known.
She became completely absorbed, reading until well past midnight. The next day, when Yu Guiya brought up the book, she was able to join in the conversation and discuss several of its themes with him.
He was delighted. When he was leaving, he hesitated for a while before finally saying, “To be honest, I never thought you would like it. Before this, I recommended the book to other people, but they all said it was boring. They also said it was just something written for the mortal races, so… But I don’t think it should be that way.”
If this had happened before, Mei Man might have shared his hostility and felt the same resentment and indignation.
She might even have asked who these people were, committing each name to memory and secretly hating them despite never having met them.
But things were different now. In addition to the lessons Shen Shushi assigned her these days, she had been studying the Meridian-Reforming Pill.
She did not want to suffer through the agony of the Spirit-Nourishing Great Supplement Pill again. Once had been more than enough. So she had taken apart the pill’s formula and begun researching it from the ground up, hoping to lessen the pain of having her meridians remade.
Devoting herself wholeheartedly to one task left her no time to dwell on other distracting thoughts.
Thus, she said calmly, “Oh. But you’d be better off telling them instead of me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with these books, so telling me won’t do any good.”
Yu Guiya was stunned. A trace of bewilderment appeared in his somewhat deep-set eyes.
But in the blink of an eye, he had recovered his smile. “True. I’ve been bothering you with pointless things. By the way, didn’t you say earlier that you wanted to buy more ink? Are you planning to go to the spirit market in the Inner Sect compound, or to the market down the mountain?”
“The spirit market,” Mei Man replied.
“Then how about we go together? I happen to need to buy some talisman paper.”
“Why?” Mei Man asked, unable to understand.
It was only shopping. Why did he need a companion?
“Why?” Yu Guiya had not expected her to ask that. He paused before saying, “Aren’t we friends now? It seems like we don’t need a reason to go buy something together.”
Friends.
Mei Man was reminded of the two medical cultivators who had come to the Medical Valley to find her earlier.
She was a little puzzled. When had she ever said that she and Yu Guiya were friends?
