Chapter 1
I was shocked. I was stunned. My face contorted.
All this time, I’d been playing sweethearts with an eighty-year-old man in our village. I wanted to find a hole and crawl into it.
My sworn enemy Erya was grinning practically from ear to ear. She didn’t dare laugh out loud, and the effort was killing her.
The old lady next door finished counting on her fingers and murmured, “He’s nine years older than me.”
The female cultivator at the head of the group raised her chin. “My senior brother Gu Yunzhou is extraordinarily gifted. He is our sect’s foremost senior disciple. Getting to spend even a few days with him is more good fortune than you could earn in three lifetimes.”
I stared at her. “He’s eighty. I’m eighteen.”
She snorted. “Senior Brother is a once-in-a-generation genius. Everyone in the sect admires him.”
“He’s eighty. I’m eighteen.”
She lost her temper. “Cultivators care about cultivation, not age!”
“He’s eighty. I’m eighteen.”
Gu Yunzhou frowned slightly. “I know you are greedy by nature, which is why I offered you a concubine’s place. What more do you want with this ridiculous tantrum?”
I hurled the bridal veil to the ground.
“Hey! You old geezer, you’re eighty! How dare you set your sights on a fresh young thing like me?”
The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I pulled off both red embroidered shoes and flung them at his face.
“No wonder your face looks young but the rest of you is all rough and wrinkled! Those two black patches on your backside are darker than the village donkey, and the calluses practically scraped my hands. I kept wondering what kind of work you did sitting on your butt. Turns out you’ve spent decades meditating on it!”
Caught off guard, Gu Yunzhou took the shoes square in the face. He flushed red with fury.
“You… you foul-mouthed country woman!”
I spat. “Yesterday you were hugging this country woman and calling her Jiaojiao.”
People said scholars were the worst faithless lovers. Cultivators had them beaten.
The female cultivator leveled her sword at me. “Senior Brother, this lowly mortal has humiliated you. Let me kill her to avenge you.”
I leaped behind my parents.
“Cultivators aren’t allowed to attack mortals at will. Even if you kill all three of us, can you kill the whole village to silence the witnesses?”
My parents whispered, “We don’t think she said she was going to kill us.”
“She might as well while she’s at it.”
Villagers ringed our house, rows deep. The woman gritted her teeth and sheathed her sword.
Swallowing his anger, Gu Yunzhou said, “If you refuse to be my concubine, I will give you gold, silver, and jewels. That will repay you for saving my life.”
I surveyed our five tidy rooms of blue brick and tile, and a surge of pride filled my chest.
“With a fine property like this and five whole mu of fertile land at the village entrance, I don’t need your pocket change.”
“Then what do you want?” Gu Yunzhou ground out.
I rubbed my chin and thought for a long time.
“I want to go back to your sect with you.”
“And cultivate.”