Was the Good-Hearted Immortal Lord Fooled Today? - Chapter 7

He did agree not to send me away. Instead, he moved out himself.

Xie Jingci left me the room and replaced the ice bed with an ordinary pearwood one. Every night, he went off to cultivate at the cold spring.

Now I had classes by day and lived apart from him at night. I hardly saw him at all. This wasn’t the constant closeness I wanted.

What if his feelings for me faded?

The next time he prepared to leave for the spring, I wrapped myself around his arm and refused to let go.

“No, no. You can’t leave. Why won’t you sleep in the same room? Do you still hate that I’m a demon? Don’t you want to keep me anymore?”

Xie Jingci firmly pulled his arm free. “Stop this. You’re a woman and I’m a man. Naturally, we can’t share a bed.”

I had a solution. “You could turn me into a man. I wouldn’t mind.”

Xie Jingci, who couldn’t bend a rule to save his life, declined the suggestion. He was so determined to maintain proper distance between men and women that he wouldn’t even let me touch his hand now, let alone sleep beside him.

My protests failed, and my attempts to cling to him were suppressed. Furious, I gnawed on my quilt.

But I was too stubborn to quit before I got what I wanted. If Xie Jingci insisted on avoiding me, I’d make sure he couldn’t.

So when Qiao Huaizhong approached me again, shamelessly calling me “little junior sister” and asking whether I wanted to join him and his friends after the snowfall, I accepted with a smile.

Qiao Huaizhong had yet to form his golden core. Unlike his senior brother Xie Jingci, who had long ago gone out to train, vanquish demons, and win fame across the land, Qiao still needed lessons at the instruction hall.

He didn’t know I was the fox demon who’d bitten him. When he saw my pretty human form, he came to show off on my very first day, playing the kindly senior brother and asking to be friends.

I’d been new here then. Since I didn’t know the place well enough to invite trouble, I barely acknowledged the quacking idiot.

Now the timing was perfect.

I stopped rejecting Qiao Huaizhong’s attentions and played a sweet, gullible fool while he fussed around me.

He paraded his learning. I applauded and told him how much he knew.

He boasted about his family. I applauded and told him how impressive he was.

Then he displayed the magical treasures he’d stolen or wrested from Xie Jingci.

“I came across all these by good fortune. If you like one, junior sister, I can give it to you.”

I applauded his abilities and politely declined the imitation cold-repelling pearl.

After three days of cheering him on, my hands were almost swollen from clapping. That was when Xie Jingci finally gave up his long romance with the cold spring.

When I returned from the instruction hall, he was sitting at the table. His empty gaze rested nowhere, as if he’d been staring into the vacant room.

The sound of the door opening put a little light back into his dull eyes.

I didn’t greet him. I sat opposite him and poured myself water. Only after I’d gulped down the whole cup did he speak.

“Qiao Huaizhong isn’t a good man. You would do well not to become close to him.”

I toyed with my cup. “Aren’t you a gentleman, senior brother? Is a gentleman allowed to speak ill of someone behind his back?”

He lowered his eyes, ill at ease. “I’m sorry. I’m only worried about you. You’re innocent and know so little of the world. I’m afraid someone will deceive you…”

“Qiao has been very nice to me,” I cut in. “When you were deliberately ignoring me and leaving me all alone, he was the one making me happy.”

“I wasn’t trying to ignore you,” Xie Jingci said.

I glanced at him and went on playing with my cup. “Mm. Whatever you say. I’m easy to fool, so of course I’ll believe you.”

“Qiao says he can be my friend too. If you hate me, just tell me. Don’t leave me hanging like this.”

I’d spent the past few days digging for information. By now I knew most of the story between the two men.

They studied under the same master. In everything but birth, Qiao Huaizhong was inferior to Xie Jingci, yet birth had won him their master’s favor.

Whatever Xie Jingci had, Qiao tried to take for himself. Their outrageously partial master demanded that Xie Jingci live by the harshest rules, like a saint who must never fight for anything, while he indulged every whim of his old friend’s descendant.

The younger one had no shame; the older one was biased. That was how they’d bullied Xie Jingci all these years. He had never had anything that belonged entirely to him.

Until he’d picked me up out of the snow.

A demon who clung only to him and kept saying she wanted to stay with him forever.

But now I casually set aside the cup I’d been holding so carefully.

“I know Qiao Huaizhong’s no good,” I told him. “But I can’t bear being lonely. If you won’t keep me company, I’ll have to go to him.”

“And if he deceives me and I get the wrong idea about you, it’ll be your fault.”

Qiao’s favorite pastime was spreading malicious rumors about Xie Jingci. According to him, Xie was selfish, heartless, arrogant, and good for nothing but his cultivation.

As Xie was also a half-demon whom people already disliked, outsiders believed the lies without thinking and shunned him all the more. Qiao’s slander had played a large part in leaving him so isolated.

“So what will it be, my kind senior brother?” I kept my smile sweet. “Will you let me befriend that awful man and listen to him say nasty things about you all day?”

What could Xie Jingci say?

Under the table, he clenched his hand. His voice came out so quiet it was almost pitiful.

“…Don’t go to him.”

I deftly caught the cup I’d set down just as it rolled to the table’s edge.

“Words aren’t enough.” I smiled wide. “Senior brother, you need to show me you mean it.”