Translator: Henyee Translations
Editor: Henyee Translations
The night breeze was quite chilly. With her soaking wet clothes and depleted spiritual essence, Li Qingjun was shivering. However, Qin Yi completely ignored her state and showed no signs of concern.
Li Qingjun gritted her teeth and withstood the cold. She then picked up the hare she brought. “I fed it my own poison, but your so-called omnipotent antidote didn’t work at all! I need an explanation!”
Qin Yi chuckled. “I’m selling my medicine at the foot of this mountain, so it will only work on toxins on the mountain. Why should I care about some poison you got from somewhere else? Are you expecting my medicine to cure African swine fever?”
Li Qingjun filtered out the “African” part, which she didn’t understand, and said angrily, “I knew that was what you were going to say! So can you cure the hare or not? If not, you’re just a fraud who knows nothing about medicine!”
Qin Yi took the hare and found it was as stiff as a rock.
“It’s not poisoned, but it’s taken a concoction that will turn its muscles as hard as metal. It’s actually beneficial for those who are going into battle but there are some side effects.” Qin Yi casually tossed the hare on the ground. “It’ll wear off in about an hour, so what’s there to cure? Do you want me to massage it to make the side effects go away? I don’t think so. I like it better this way…”
Li Qingjun stared at him in bewilderment and didn’t know what to say.
At the end of the day, she was only acting like a spoiled child because she was mad at her brother for pretending to come and seek out immortals with her while having his own hidden agenda, which made all her expectations look foolish. She was so frustrated that she had to prove that her brother was wrong.
As it turned out, her brother was right.
This skin-hardening powder was created by none other than Donghuazi, the master teacher himself, and common herbalists wouldn’t be able to recognize it. That fact that Qin Yi could identify the medicine so quickly proved that he was an alchemist living away from the crowd.
Her anger vanished and Li Qingjun felt cold. Wrapping her arms around her, she huddled up in the chair and shuddered. The white liquid was still dripping from her hair, and with her blotched face and unkempt hair, she looked utterly helpless.
Qin Yi thought the girl was going to cry, but she only slowly rose to her feet and said, “Mr. Qin, I’m sorry for having wronged you.”
She then spun around and marched off, still holding her spear. Her back was as straight as the weapon in her hand.
“What a tough girl.” Liusu expressed its sarcasm in Qin Yi’s head. “She’s quite weak now and has little spiritual essence, but she still didn’t ask for your help. Some big bad wolf might snatch her if she walks around in this state. Hey, are you a eunuch or something? It’s time for you to speak up.”
That reminded Qin Yi of something, so he said, “Miss, please wait a minute.”
Li Qingjun paused and asked casually, “Mr. Qin, do you want compensation?”
“I offer an accommodations service here. The bed is warm and so is the tea. You can have a herbal bath to relax your muscles and activate your blood flow. It’ll only cost you 3 cents a night.”
His reaction surprised Li Qingjun. Instinctively, she wanted to decline his offer, but there was a gust of cold wind and she sneezed. She then recalled that the mountain wasn’t exactly a safe place at the moment and she could be in danger if she tried to go back to her brother in her current state. So, she swallowed the “no” at the tip of her tongue.
After a moment of silence, she took out a small fraction of her silver taels and put it on the stone table in the yard. She then walked past Qin Yi expressionlessly and entered the room. “Waiter, fetch me some bath water, please.”
Watching her from behind, Qin Yi couldn’t help but chuckle. “What a difficult girl.”
Liusu smirked. “You’re no better than she is.”
After Li Qingjun closed the door, Qin Yi whispered, “I’m not difficult!”
“Do you know anyone else who would take a spiked club into their bathtub?”
“I was only trying to show how close we’ve become! We’re inseparable…”
“Oh, shut up,” Liusu said sarcastically. “You rolled up into a ball when she broke in, but you’ve never considered the possibility that I could be a woman as well. I’ve seen everything.”
Qin Yi smirked. “Do spirits of objects have genders? Fine, even if they did, how could such a manly spiked club have a female spirit? And you tried to rob a man of his body. Just give me a break. Even if you were a she, I bet you have sharp fangs and a waist as thick as a bucket.”
Liusu didn’t reply.
…
Sitting in the hot water, Li Qingjun studied the room carefully.
It was an ordinary wood cabin with unpainted walls, but the logs had been carefully polished and looked very smooth. She could almost imagine how focused the teenager had been when he smoothed them down. The logs were coated with a layer of a gel-like substance which seemed to be moth-proof. A pot of flowers lay on the window sill, blooming in the moonlight and giving off a pleasant smell.
The duvet covers were made of white linen and the beddings were neatly folded and smelt like sunlight.
A painting depicting a misty mountain hung on the wall, but the technique looked rather strange. It looked like something one had drawn with a sharpened eyebrow stick. Despite being a black-and-white painting, the dimensions, light and shadows all looked rather vivid. The work was considered trite by Li Qingjun’s standards since it lacked depth and meaning. However, it was quite impressive if one considered how young the painter was, not to mention the novel technique.
The painter had also signed the bottom of the painting, which read: By Qin Yi on Year 1, Month 2, Day 8.
Li Qingjun wondered what he had been counting days for…
All in all, the room gave her an elegant and refreshing feeling. Li Qingjun could tell that the teenager had a casual but delicate lifestyle. It was hard to imagine that this home belonged to a country boy nor did it remind her of a superstitious alchemist. It was more like the residence of a well-educated person.
There were herbs in the bath water and the warmth slipped through her body, expelling the cold from earlier as well as the effects of the weakening potion. Her blocked vital point had reopened as well, and her spiritual essence could run freely in her body.
Li Qingjun felt conflicted about this man called Qin Yi.
He had set up a trap outside his front gate. Whether it was to keep out animals or people, his actions suggested he was a cautious man with some security issues. However, after the hostility she showed him, he had invited her to stay overnight under the same roof and removed all the restraints he put on her.
Was he too naive?
Was he so confident that she wasn’t going to take revenge?
Or did he have something else up his sleeves? He was such a strange “alchemist” that Li Qingjun couldn’t predict what his next move would be.
Fighting back her urge to take revenge, Li Qingjun let out a breath and reached out to the water basin next to the bath bucket.
Qin Yi brought in the basin after filling the bucket with hot water. There was a towel and some other odd things in it. One of them was called “soap”, which Qin Yi said he made himself. It could be used in place of the honey locusts that people used to wash their bodies with. There were also some “bath beads”, which were supposed to be used as a face wash…
Li Qingjun tried them. The hot spring water and the mild-fragranced soap made her bathing experience very pleasant, and she felt very clean afterwards. Her hair was very sticky from that liquid earlier, but it was shiny and smooth now.
And there were more odd things. Li Qingjun picked up a little wood strip with densely packed hard bristles on one end, and she had no idea how they were able to stay on the strip. According to Qin Yi, she was supposed to brush her teeth with this tool instead of the tender willow twig she usually used. Something called “toothpaste” was paired with this brush, replacing powdered salt…
Everything felt so strange, but she had to admit that they were all very effective.
Was this how “alchemists” lived? Did they always make odd-looking but useful things?
But people like Donghuazi had never come up with things like this. All he ever did was feed her father, the king, with aphrodisiacs and “elixirs of life”…
Li Qingjun even thought it might be worthwhile to take this Qin boy to the capital city just for his gadgets alone.
She had somehow reached the same conclusion as her brother, and the thought amused Li Qingjun. However, she immediately wiped the smile away. That Qin Yi had offended her, and she would make his life miserable!
She finally got up, found a new men’s outfit from her bag and put it on. After properly tying her hair up, she looked like a handsome teenage boy again.
She walked out of the room to find that Qin Yi was still up. He was mixing some medicinal ingredients in the courtyard under the moonlight, and she could faintly make out his murmuring. “I can ask Brother Zhang to bring me back some purple lotus roots when he goes into town. I don’t have to go there myself…”
After a pause, he spoke to himself again. “A refining furnace? Well… I’m sure I can find one just about everywhere…”
He stopped talking abruptly and turned in the direction of Li Qingjun.
The lower hem of her clothes flapped in the light wind, and her hair was still damp from the bath. Despite her men’s outfit, she could no longer hide the fact that she was a teenage girl. It just so happened that she had a pair of striking eyes. With her long spear and her ramrod straight back, she looked more confident and intimidating than most girls her age.
She was a very pretty girl indeed…
Qin Yi’s eyes flickered a little before he asked, “Aren’t you going to bed?”
Li Qingjun kept her face very serious when she asked, “You need raw materials and a refining furnace, don’t you?”
“So what if I do?”
“Other people wouldn’t know what kind of furnace would suit you, and with your financial status…” Li Qingjun looked around and gave him a mocking smile. “I don’t think you can afford many things you need to use.”
“What does it have anything to do with you?”
“I… I’d like to hire you as the herbalist for my family. As long as you follow my orders and make medicine for me, I’ll give you everything you need for your work.”
“You’re out of your mind.” Qin Yi rolled his eyes. “What’s with the men’s clothes? Do you want to get hanged up by the ankle again?”
“You!”
“By the way, if I tell you that you’re what I need for my work, would you offer yourself to me?”
Li Qingjun’s face turned livid. “Qin Yi, do you know what you’re talking about?”
“I don’t,” Qin Yi said. “A kept man is expected to warm his master’s bed, but you won’t let me do my job properly. I need to follow my own professional ethics and I’m not comfortable with your terms. So, I’m going to decline.”
Li Qingjun fought back the urge to stick her spear into his chest. She spun around and went back inside, slamming the door behind her.
Qin Yi heard Liusu’s voice in his head. “Tsk, tsk. You’re such a killjoy. She’s just a little arrogant, that’s all. It wouldn’t hurt to say something nice and tell her a white lie.”
Qin Yi said lazily, “Do you remember the big tawny dog at the village entrance?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Poor dog. It spends its day licking the bottoms of Uncle Xu’s shoes, but he won’t even build a dog house for it. What’s the moral of the story? Fools won’t even have a roof over their heads.”
Liusu had gotten used to Qin Yi’s occasional odd comments, so it didn’t read much into them. Instead, it mocked him. “Are you not into girls? I’ve never seen you exchange more than a few words with any women. After first, I thought that village girls weren’t good enough for you, but this girl has fair skin, a nice body, and such stunning features that even I feel tempted.”
Qin Yi sounded surprised. “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean? Why are you trying to make me cultivate and hit on girls at the same time? Aren’t the two things incompatible?”
Liusu went silent for a moment as though fighting back something it wanted to say. It then chuckled. “Theoretically, yes, but they’re not mutually exclusive like you’ve assumed. The orthodox path allows for cultivation partners, and the unorthodox path includes a method of absorbing energy through sexual intercourse. If you keep hiding yourself in the bucket after you become a cultivator, I may have to listen to you saying ‘gosh, my lady, behave yourself’ all the time.”