Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Fu Duyue wasn’t dead. To me, this was heavenly news; to Rong Jiming, it was like a bolt of lightning from the blue, leaving him completely dazed.

She, however, didn’t stand on ceremony. The first thing she said upon entering was, “I spent ten years in secluded cultivation at the North Sea. On my way back, I heard you’ve been acting all sentimental toward a tree every day. I almost thought you’d gone mad.”

Rong Jiming’s ears turned bright red.

For the first time, I felt that this legendary Martial Aunt Fu was a true living bodhisattva.

In just a few words, she cleared up the past.

Back then, she had left the Sect to investigate disturbances in the Demonic Abyss, not because she had died in a secret realm as Rong Jiming had assumed. She hadn’t sent word because her communication mirror was broken and she had been trapped in the Far North Snow Sea, only managing to escape and return recently.

She and Rong Jiming had once been the most compatible fellow disciples, and they had indeed harbored feelings for each other, but those feelings had long since been scattered by the mountain winds and snow ten years ago.

She looked at Yin Qichi with a candid expression. “Little girl, you aren’t like me. You’re much bolder and brighter than I was back then. If someone sees you as a mere shadow of another, then he’s blind.”

Yin Qichi froze for a long moment, her eyes suddenly welling with tears.

Rong Jiming stood rooted to the spot. After a long silence, he gave her a solemn bow, then turned and gave Yin Qichi a bow as well.

“It was my lingering obsession that almost caused harm.”

As soon as this admission of guilt left his lips, the notification chime finally stopped ringing.

I was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when Fu Duyue turned and patted my shoulder. “You must be Qiwu, right? I heard quite a bit on my way here-they say the Guiyuan Sect has only been kept alive these past few years because of you.”

“It’s not that exaggerated,” I said.

She glanced at the ledger in my arms, then at the IOUs fluttering in the wind at the pharmacy entrance. She fell silent for a moment. “I was being conservative.”

Just as we were speaking, Xiao Jiyue drifted slowly past the corridor, clutching half a watermelon, her eyelids barely lifted.

“Eldest Senior Sister, the ground at the Spirit Field has cracked again. Medicine Peak says they have no money for repairs, so they’re just letting it stay cracked.”

My heart stifled.

This ancestor of mine was finally willing to open her mouth, yet all she talked about was money.

I chased after her. “Since you know it’s cracked, why didn’t you just fix it while you were there?”

Xiao Jiyue thought about it seriously. “Because I’m lazy.”

“If the Sect collapses, you won’t even have a tree to lie under.”

She finally paused in her tracks.

Striking while the iron was hot, I dragged her to the Spirit Field.

The Guiyuan Sect’s Spirit Field was a place of sorrow. The soil was thin, the spiritual pulse was weak, and for the past few years, everything planted there had died. Everyone had long since given up on it. But Xiao Jiyue just squatted on the ridge, and the moment she reached out to touch the soil, the look in her eyes changed.

“This land isn’t incapable of sustaining life,” she said. “It’s just that the people planting here were too diligent.”

I didn’t understand.

She pointed at the spiritual grass seedlings that were nearly rotting from overwatering. “They’re being loved to death.”

I blinked, finding those words strangely familiar.

She raised her hand and performed a hand seal, drawing away the excess moisture, then lazily buried a few grayish-white seeds I had never seen before into the ground.

“Don’t touch it. Check back in three days.”

Three days later, the ground was covered in a patch of plump Clear Dream Mushrooms.

The Medicine Peak Elder hugged the mushrooms and wailed as if he had seen his own mother.

Staring at that patch of spiritual mushrooms, I realized for the first time that this seemingly most unreliable Junior Sister might actually be the Guiyuan Sect’s most valuable God of Wealth.