Yu Wenqiu, of course, had no idea that the senior Sovereign across from her had just dug up every last detail of her "white silk, jade-green" escapade.
Watching the senior's expression cycle through a baffling series of subtle shifts, Yu Wenqiu's heart skipped. Had the senior just used some secret technique similar to the Clairvoyant Eye?
Could it have something to do with Little Gu?
But why would the senior make such a face? What exactly had she seen?
Yu Wenqiu ran quickly through every secret the senior might have glimpsed, and the more she thought about it, the less certain she felt — until finally she simply let the worry go. Forget it, forget it. No use fretting over it.
Little did she know, the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign had already stamped her with the label: how does someone like this even get a taste?
This was the scene that greeted Gu Chengming when he returned to his own courtyard.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign and Yu Wenqiu sat facing each other, the atmosphere thick with awkwardness.
"Elder Little Yu?" Seeing Gu Chengming return, Yu Wenqiu finally let out a breath of relief, then shot him a rather resentful look.
"I wanted to surprise you."
Gu Chengming thought privately that this situation certainly qualified as a surprise.
For some reason, whenever Yu Wenqiu and the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign sat together, he got a distinctly bad feeling.
As though realizing she'd become rather a third wheel, the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign sighed. "Since you're back, and Elder Little Yu has surely come all this way to discuss important matters, I won't intrude on the two of you."
Only then did Yu Wenqiu fully relax. "Take care, Senior."
Gu Chengming watched the figure vanish around the corner before turning back to Yu Wenqiu with a smile. "What brings Elder Little Yu here so suddenly?"
The tension that had gripped Yu Wenqiu finally drained away completely. She edged half an inch closer to him. "I missed you."
Elsewhere.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign paced back to her own side courtyard, sat down at her writing desk, and drew out once more, from her sleeve, that copy of A Veteran Harmonious Joy Sect Female Cultivator Teaches You How to Capture the Heart of the Cultivator You Fancy.
This time, though, she found it hard going, for faint, suggestive sounds kept drifting over from the room next door.
Her fingers pinched at the page, restless and unsettled, and she gave her own cheeks a couple of slaps.
A Sovereign of her standing — how could she stoop to eavesdropping at walls?
She dragged her gaze back to the booklet, but she'd barely read half a line before her senses betrayed her again.
This Elder Yu — she was, she was actually this bold?
Her thoughts drifted back to that "white silk, jade-green" causal fragment she'd glimpsed earlier.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign suddenly realized that, in this contest over a Dao companion, what she lacked went far beyond mere technique.
The most intimate contact she'd ever had with him was guiding his hand through a thread of true Cloud-Moon intent.
Listening to the sounds next door, she felt both wretched and unbearably restless.
And infuriatingly, Little Gu seemed to eat it right up. Did he actually like this sort of clumsy display of affection?
But if she wrapped herself up the same way, wouldn't that look terribly contrived?
No — she was the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign. How could she go copying someone else's blanket-wrapping trick?
But what if Little Gu really did like it?
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign sank briefly into her own private Gu-repression.
The next morning.
Gu Chengming sat cross-legged in his study, the furrow between his brows smoothed away.
The thread of true essence that had been stalled at Fourth Realm 7th level had, after last night's rather thorough intimacy, quietly advanced a notch and, by now, settled firmly in place.
Fourth Realm 8th level.
By ordinary cultivation-world standards, the stretch from Fourth Realm 7th to 8th level would take at least several years of grinding. For Gu Chengming, it had taken a single night.
He glanced down at his own hands, his expression subtle.
The boost from his current realm wasn't actually all that significant anymore. After all, with the Knight Dharma Sword in hand, Gu Chengming had already become someone who, under the right circumstances, could get the drop on a Sovereign.
That kind of record would place him among the very strongest even in the Fifth Realm.
It was right then that the Great Thousand Record, silent for so long, surfaced again to say something baffling.
[The Great Thousand Record's gaze upon you turns complicated.]
[If you keep on like this, you may well seize a superior Dharma-Station the very moment you become a Sovereign — leapfrogging two whole realms at once isn't out of the question.]
Curious, Gu Chengming asked what exactly that meant.
[As is common knowledge, a superior Dharma-Station holds absolute suppressive power over an inferior one.]
[Working backward from that rule, it follows easily enough: if a cultivator, upon ascending to the Sixth Realm, attains the single highest Dharma-Station on an entire trunk lineage, then every other Dharma-Station on that same trunk becomes theirs for the taking.]
[Every inferior Dharma-Station on that trunk would owe its very breath to them — no room left for anyone to contest it.]
So did such people actually exist? Of course they did.
Both the Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing Sovereign and the Jiahao Sovereign had become unrivaled within their own tier the instant they proved their Dharma-Stations and ascended to the Sixth Realm — precisely because what each of them had attained was the highest point on that trunk lineage.
And, without exception, both of them had gone on to reach the Seventh Realm.
But could it really be that simple? If merely attaining a superior Dharma-Station meant already having one foot through the door to the Seventh Realm, wouldn't everyone just go and attain one?
The truth was that a superior Dharma-Station was extraordinarily difficult to attain. It typically demanded an exceptionally solid foundation and a powerful natural affinity for the trunk lineage in question before there was even the faintest chance of claiming it from the outset.
On top of that, a superior Dharma-Station was rare to begin with — the instant one surfaced, countless Sovereigns would covet it. It would mean a mere Fifth Realm cultivator having to contend with a horde of Sovereigns over the same opportunity.
Add it all up, and the difficulty was simply off the charts.
Something stirred in Gu Chengming.
Just as he was about to press the Great Thousand Record for more, it had already gone silent within his Sea of Consciousness, as though having said its piece it had impatiently handed the floor back to him.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, before the water-mirror of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau.
Zhou Qingmu sat in her specially made ebony chair, staring at the scene reflected in the water-mirror with a subtle expression, the same confusion rising in her that had plagued the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign.
— Why did Yu Wenqiu get a taste?
In the mirror, beneath the osmanthus tree, her Little Gu was casually tucking a loose strand of Elder Little Yu's hair behind her ear, and she leaned right into his shoulder in response — the tender atmosphere between the two of them was cloying enough to come through even the water-mirror.
Going by her years of experience reading people at the Night-Watch Bureau, Zhou Qingmu judged that Elder Yu's whole temperament ran to the "rather passive" type.
From the tense posture she'd shown sitting across from the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign under the osmanthus tree, to the awkward little movements she made now nestled against Little Gu, every detail said this was a thin-skinned girl, nothing like the type bold enough to take the initiative.
By rights she should have been shy — very shy indeed.
But she still got a taste... how infuriating.
Incomprehensible!
But then, on second thought, the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign seemed just as shy...
Extending the thought further, she realized she wasn't any better herself.
Zhou Qingmu began to fret.
By rights, she wasn't the indecisive type — so why did she turn so hesitant whenever Little Gu was involved?
She turned to searching, in earnest, for the root of this puzzle.
Her thoughts drifted quietly back decades, to her time at the Imperial Academy.
She'd been only sixteen or seventeen then, sitting with a few fellow students in a small courtyard of the Academy, sipping tea. One junior schoolmate she was close with had asked her, quite earnestly —
"Sister Qingmu, if you ever meet someone you like, what will you do?"
She'd held her teacup and laughed, brisk and sure of herself:
"Declare my feelings boldly — and if he doesn't agree, beat him until he does!"
It sounded like a joke, sure, but it was proof enough that her younger self could never have imagined she'd turn into such a spineless mess.
After much brooding, Zhou Qingmu finally found the root of her own spinelessness.
It was because she cared too much that she'd reined herself in — afraid of being disliked by Little Gu, she didn't dare go straight for it.
But if she kept being this spineless, she'd never even get her turn.
In all her years — in the imperial court, across the martial world — not one thing she'd ever done had she come to regret.
If she went on shrinking back over this matter with Little Gu, it would become the first regret of her entire life.
Declare her feelings boldly.
Silently, she repeated to herself the words she'd spoken all those years ago in that Academy courtyard.
As for when to make her move, how to make it, and how to handle what came after —
those were the details she, Zhou Qingmu, would now set about refining carefully.
Several days later.
In a natural continuation of events, Gu Chengming answered Zhou Qingmu's summons and headed for the Night-Watch Bureau.
According to her message, the Imperial Astronomical Bureau had recently observed an unusual Dharma-Station omen — a matter of grave importance requiring him, the Director, to come in person.
Mulling it over aboard his flying sword the whole way, Gu Chengming had already guessed roughly what it might be about.
Lately, most of the pressing matters that had gripped the Capital had settled.
The Eternal Life Sect's Perfected One had gone entirely silent after the battle at Stringless Ward, and the scattered fragments of wild Jiahao that had drifted loose from the Wanton Joy Sovereign's remains had been steadily gathered up, one by one, by the various Sovereigns and Fifth Realm cultivators about. The sky over the Capital had gradually settled.
By rights, he, the newly-installed Director, should have been in for a stretch of easy days.
But of course, right in the middle of what should have been that easy stretch, the Imperial Astronomical Bureau kept sending over observation results that made "easy" look impossible.
In a side hall of the Night-Watch Bureau.
When Gu Chengming pushed open the hall door, Zhou Qingmu was seated beneath the window, reviewing a scroll of documents.
Seeing him enter, she set down her vermilion brush with her usual composure and slid a blue-bound file across the desk toward him.
"This is what the Imperial Astronomical Bureau observed two days ago."
Her tone stayed level. "Barring surprises, this is the Dharma-Station Free Heaven."
Gu Chengming's expression turned thoughtful.
Wasn't this exactly what the Jiahao Sovereign had told him about?
The words surfaced in his mind.
"Young friend, should the need arise, you may claim the Dharma-Station Free Heaven."
Gu Chengming fell into thought. Going by what the Jiahao Sovereign had said that day, this Dharma-Station "Free Heaven" was a significant opportunity the senior had left for him.
Given the current situation, if he wanted to come out on top of this contest, his own hand of cards alone probably wouldn't be nearly enough.
He looked up at Zhou Qingmu across from him, about to voice the thought.
But the moment he raised his eyes, he froze — because he noticed his director's state was, just then, rather strange.
She sat bolt upright beneath the window, her back ramrod-straight, her fingertips resting on the desk occasionally tapping the edge without seeming to notice. Her eyes held a complicated cast, as though she were repeatedly steeling herself for something difficult.
Gu Chengming held his tongue and waited patiently for her to gather her thoughts.
After a long while, Zhou Qingmu finally spoke, slowly.
"By rights, since you helped me attain my Dharma-Station before, I ought to help you claim Free Heaven in return, no matter what."
The words of gratitude Gu Chengming was about to voice were cut short by her very next sentence.
"But if I did it that way——"
Zhou Qingmu's tone shifted, taking on a note of difficulty.
"it would just look like a favor exchanged, like I was trying to repay a debt through it — and that would make me rather contemptible."
Gu Chengming's hand paused mid-air over the file. — What? His director's choice of words seemed awfully solemn for the occasion.
When had a superior ever needed a word as heavy as "contemptible" just to describe helping out a subordinate?
Not to mention, given how Zhou Qingmu had already recommended him to the Emperor for the new Director's post, she, the Deputy Director, owed him nothing at all by way of repayment.
After all, her stepping aside to make way for him had more than settled the debt from helping her attain her Dharma-Station.
The alarm bells of "something's up" quietly went off in Gu Chengming's head again.
Still holding the file, he asked carefully, "What does the Director mean by that?"
Zhou Qingmu drew a slow, deep breath, as though running once more through lines she'd rehearsed countless times over the past several days.
She lifted her eyes to meet his directly. "There's something I want you to do for me."
"Consider it the price of my helping you going forward."
Given how seriously she was treating this, the "price" was surely no small thing. But refusing outright now would come off as heartless — and besides, his director had never been the sort to make unreasonable demands.
He weighed it for a moment, then nodded readily. "Go ahead."
The instant those words left his mouth, Zhou Qingmu silently ran through, one last time, the vow she'd made in that Academy courtyard all those years ago — "Declare my feelings boldly — and if he doesn't agree, beat him until he does."
In the next instant, Zhou Qingmu rose to her feet.
Before Gu Chengming could register more than a flash of purple-gold sleeves, Zhou Qingmu had already reached out and cupped his face.
His pupils contracted slightly. Before he could get a word out, Zhou Qingmu had already leaned down and kissed him.
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