My Master Raised a Demoness - Chapter 3

Life in the Swordlight Sect was wonderful.

It felt like the good next life I’d asked the earth god for.

Mei Zhexue gave me a storage pouch heaped with spirit pearls.

He said everyone in the cultivation world used them as money.

When I went to the sect dining hall, I filled a whole pocket with pearls, just in case I didn’t have enough.

A plate piled high with food cost me one.

I didn’t dare eat there.

Everyone was looking at me.

I didn’t know why. Maybe I didn’t fit in.

I was so small and skinny, like a stunted bamboo pole.

I asked the woman serving food for a box to take it away in.

When I came back and looked,

my already overloaded plate was straining under even more food.

Stuffed tofu, giant braised pork meatballs, sweet-and-sour ribs, chicken legs…

Wow.

I couldn’t finish it. I packed the rest into the box for dinner.

I kept hiccuping through my reading lesson with Mei Zhexue.

It was the first time I’d been able to eat my fill. I’d found it a little hard to stop.

He fed me a medicinal pill and asked, frowning, what I’d eaten.

I showed him my food box, just as it was.

He picked up a piece with his chopsticks and swallowed it with difficulty.

An immortal of his level must have long since outgrown the need for food.

“Don’t go to the dining hall tomorrow,” he said.

For once, I didn’t immediately agree.

The dining hall was nice. The woman serving food was nice. The other disciples eating there were nice too.

Besides, if I didn’t go there, where would I eat?

Mei Zhexue looked uncomfortable. “I’ll cook for you from now on.”

I had my doubts.

“My cooking is… passable,” he said.

The next day, he made me a whole table of dishes.

Oh, wow. Food fit for an immortal!

I was never going back to the dining hall!

Once I could recognize plenty of characters, I discovered Mei Zhexue was reading a book too.

It was called *How to Teach a Disciple*.

When I happened to catch him at it, he hastily closed it.

“I’ve only taught one male disciple. My experience is limited.”

But apart from him, I was the only person on the entire peak. I asked about it.

He coughed.

“You’ll meet him in due course.”

“Does that make him my senior brother?”

Mei Zhexue nodded.

I asked what my senior brother was like.

He gave a fair assessment. “Exceptionally gifted, diligent, dependable. Just… a little cold by nature.”

As he spoke, the look he gave me suddenly became rather strange.

Could it be—

had he found out I’d done an extra thousand sword swings today?

In my first half month at the sect, I grew ten centimeters and put on twenty jin—about ten kilograms.

Clearly, an immortal mountain really did produce exceptional people.

You could make a fortune raising pigs here.

One morning, Mei Zhexue was doing my hair as usual.

When he saw the stool I’d stained with blood, even his voice shook.

He scooped me up and rushed straight to the medicine hall.

He kept stuffing immortal pills into my mouth as though they cost nothing, his voice frantic.

“Does it hurt?

“Have you had some underlying illness you didn’t tell me about?”

I’d never seen him so distraught.

Something cool dripped onto my face.

By the time he’d dragged the physician elder out of bed and shaken him nearly to pieces,

the man thought I must have some incurable disease and be about to die.

Then he took a proper look, picked his quilt up from the floor, and rolled his eyes.

“For fuck’s sake. Ever heard of menstruation? You ignoramus.”

The elder said I’d been malnourished, which was why it had been delayed so long. He gave me a few simple instructions and the supplies I needed, and Mei Zhexue carried me back.

Once we reached our peak, his white clothes were smeared with my blood, but he still wouldn’t put me down. He held out a long-fingered hand.

“What?” I asked blankly.

“The thing they gave you to put on,” he said anxiously, looking terribly worried. “Where are you bleeding?”

I clutched the supplies even tighter to my chest.

He frowned, puzzled.

Yes, he’d been doing a great many things for me lately.

Brushing my hair, making my bed, teaching me to read, cooking for me, getting my bathwater ready.

All I had to do was open my mouth to eat and hold out my arms to get dressed.

But this didn’t seem quite right.

“I… I can do it myself.”

Blushing furiously, I got out of his arms and shuffled awkwardly away.

I didn’t get to stay away for long, of course.

When I’d finished changing, I found he’d moved his things into the room next to mine.

For the next few days, I really did have to do nothing but open my mouth and hold out my arms.

I was a little worried.

Mei Zhexue was getting rather clingy.

Did elders have nothing to do?

He was the first thing I saw when I woke and the last thing I saw before I slept.

When I voiced my concerns, he kept feeding me without the slightest pause, his expression perfectly earnest.

“I’m saving the world. That is my important work.

“You’re going to become a demoness. My greatest duty is to keep an eye on you.”

That sounded reasonable. That night, I recited the disciple’s rules a few extra times.

At some point, a new rule had appeared at the back.

“Do not casually accept meat buns offered by unfamiliar men.”

Mei Zhexue was extremely vigilant these days.

Any fellow disciple who came a little too close to me would be chased away.

Gradually, a rumor spread through the sect that I was Elder Mei’s precious treasure.

If you couldn’t afford a good sword, just get close to Junior Sister Fengqiu.

Elder Mei would break yours, then replace it with an excellent one.

I’d heard his warnings so often my ears were practically callused.

Mei Zhexue would say:

“Never approach a strange man. Come back and tell your master first.

“And don’t accept anyone else’s buns. Not meat buns, not vegetable buns, not red-bean buns.”

I asked why the senior brother he’d mentioned still hadn’t come back.

He tilted his face toward the sky at a forty-five-degree angle.

“What senior brother? There is no senior brother. You’ve always been my only disciple.”

Then, one day, I happened to find someone.