[Young Master Xian]—❈—56:: So I Have Spoken

The one advantage to living in an estate so large that you could probably fit a small town in it with space left over, is that going from place to place takes forever.

Of course, if you’re in a hurry then this is hardly a positive, but when you’re angry, and stressed, and maybe a little scared, it’s perfect.

Sitting in the carriage, watching the scenery roll by, Xiuying and Meng Yi on either side of me, their calm presences a much-needed reminder that I’m not alone in this, calming down is easy.

The fact that these two women are also now in this situation because of me tries to raise my stress levels again, but I force myself back into calmness.

Stressing out doesn’t do them any good.

I remember my mother’s face, the pleased look and the calculating glint in her eyes, all after she just watched me wreck my sister’s arm.

Her own daughter. The one who, based on my scant memories and the look of things, has played the role of the loyal, obedient child.

The child who wasn’t a screw up. The child who did her best to be her best, every second of every day.

I wreck her arm and knock her down, and our mother doesn’t even ask a simple, “Are you okay?” Doesn’t even glance in her direction as she storms off inside, angry and hurt and, undoubtedly, embarrassed.

A lifetime of loyalty, all to be ignored the moment something better comes along.

Did our mother know how that fight would turn out?

I suspect she did.

A cultivator of her level, her skill, her experience, she must have known from the get-go that Zexi was outclassed, even if she technically should have the more powerful cultivation based on levels alone.

Hell, I had known I outclassed Zexi.

I’m not sure how, but I’d known. Like when you see an unfamiliar material, and you can just tell by sight alone whether it’s hard or soft.

Zexi was soft. Not cotton soft sure, but soft enough.

“What are you thinking?” Xiuying asks, and I look to her.

“You’ve gone from looking angry and worried to confused,” she explains.

Ah. My face always was an open book. It’s one of the few things I share with the asshole who used to have this body.

It’s why I’m such a terrible liar.

“Have you ever looked at someone and just known that they couldn’t take you in a fight?” I ask Xiuying. “Regardless of cultivation or whatever. You just know that this person isn’t on your level?”

Xiuying nods. “All the time,” she says. “I got it with former you when I first met him. The moment he showed up I just knew that, even if he had three layers on me, I would have still kicked his ass.

“It’s not something all cultivators have,” she continues, “and while some are born with it, others develop it over time. The ability to just know. Whether an opponent is beyond you, or whether you’re beyond them.”

“Has it ever been wrong for you?” I ask.

“Nope.” She shakes her head. “It takes a lot to fool a sense like that. If you ever meet someone like that, you probably won’t survive to talk about it.”

My eyes widen. Well, that’s worrying.

“I’m guessing you’re asking because you got that feeling with the dumb bitch you knocked on her ass back there,” Xiuying says, not really asking.

Before I can answer, Meng Yi says, “I should remind you that the so-called ‘dumb bitch’ you’re referring to is a Young Mistress of the family that we both now serve.”

Xiuying winces like the fact that she forgot something that obvious physically pains her.

Since I bought her contract, Meng Yi has been giving the former soldier little lessons on proper etiquette and such for an employee of a family like mine, and Xiuying has shown a (to me) surprising amount of seriousness towards learning and implementing them.

Xiuying is rather proud, after all. Even if not in an off-putting way. I honestly thought that the idea of being a servant would be unacceptable to her.

“I didn’t mean dumb bitch in an insulting way,” she says, looking almost desperate for a way to talk herself out of this.

Meng Yi raises an eyebrow at her junior employee.

“Is that right? So, ‘dumb bitch’ is a compliment where you’re from then?” she asks.

“It could be, you don’t know,” Xiuying says.

“Uh-huh. Yes. I’m sure that argument will stop the Young Mistress Xian from smacking you through a wall,” Meng Yi says.

“She wouldn’t dare. Not with our big, strong Young Master to protect me,” she says, hugging my left arm to her chest in a cutesy manner.

With my arm pressed to her chest as it is, I feel something small and rather knobby pressing against my triceps, and it takes me a moment to realize what it is.

Wait, is that her breast?

Good Heaven, Meng Yi was right, these things are mosquito bites.

Meanwhile, outside my head, Meng Yi is saying, “If that expression on your face is what you think cute girls look like, then it’s no wonder the men of Silver Springs avoided you like the plague.”

Xiuying splutters. “T-that’s not true. Stop spreading lies. Men didn’t avoid me, I just wasn’t interested.”

“‘Wasn’t interested?’ Hmm.” Meng Yi put on a thoughtful face. “Is that what they’re calling involuntary celibacy these days?”

“I’m not celibate,” Xiuying near-shouts, mortified. “And you’re lucky Qigang’s sitting between us, or I’d come over there and kick your ass.”

Meng Yi gasps in mock horror. “Xiuying, what an uncouth way to talk to your senior,” she says.

Xiuying rolls her eyes. “Senior my ass,” she says.

“Again with the mention of ass,” Meng Yi says. “What is it with you and ass today? Are you sad because you’re flat there too?”

Something dangerous sparks in Xiuying’s eyes. “I don’t have a flat ass,” she says.

Meng Yi scoffs. “Please, I’ve seen pancakes with more curve than your backside.”

Xiuying goes deathly still, and something about the change in her aura alerts Meng Yi to the fact that she done fucked up.

“Alright, that’s it, I’m throwing you off the carriage,” she says, leaning over me to reach for Meng Yi, though not with any real heat.

Faced with the consequences of her actions, Meng Yi switches tacks instantly. “No, no no no no no, Xiuying, hold on, hold on. Let me tell you something, okay? Let me tell you something, just hold on please. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s too late for peace, Senior Yi,” Xiuying says. “In the words of our Young Master, I choose violence. You’re getting off the carriage.”

Pressed back against the seat by Xiuying’s body, and listening to Meng Yi’s laughing squeals and she and her friend play wrestle, I feel a wave of desire run through me.

I want to protect this. I want to protect them.

But how can I do that? When I have a powerful, calculating, potentially manipulative mother who’s virtually holding me prisoner.

A voice in my head suggests to me that, maybe it would be better to play the game.

‘If you want to protect what matters to you, then you have to use the tools you have, right?’ it says.

‘This is the capital, the land of intrigue and politics. That’s the game. Learn it. Master it. Beat them at their own game.’

I rebuke the voice.

I know what it is. It is the gate to Slippery Slopes. The good intentions that pave the road to hell.

It starts with doing what you can with what you have, then suddenly, you look back one day and you realize that somewhere along the way, this became familiar. It became comfortable.

And then you don’t even recognize who, or what, you are anymore.

No, that will not be my story.

I will not lose myself to the ‘Game of Thrones’, or whatever it is my mother is playing at.

If... No, fuck that. When I overcome this, whatever it is, it will not be because I became the thing I sought to avoid.

No, it will be because I remained myself, unfailingly myself.

So I have spoken.

“Qigang?”

The voice pulls me from my thoughts, and I see two pairs of eyes watching me with worry and more than a little awe.

I noticed that the carriage has stopped.

“What happened?” I ask.

“You happened,” Xiuying says. “You know the number of impossible things you’re doing is beyond ridiculous at this point.”

Confused, I look to Meng Yi.

“A crown appeared on your head,” she says. “It was gold and wreathed in fire.”

I blink. “Well, that’s um...” I clear my throat, not quite knowing how to finish the sentence.

I know that crown, and it has no business being on my head in the physical world. Not for a long while yet. Late Qi Realm, at the earliest.

“That’s significant,” I say finally.

“You’re telling us,” Xiuying says.

“What happened?” Meng Yi asks.

“Nothing really, I was just... making myself a promise.”

“To protect us?” Meng Yi asks.

I nod.

“Knowing you, you probably swore to do it by being so nice to those who want to hurt us you confuse the shit out of them,” Xiuying says, smiling at me.

I blink.

“Am I that obvious?” I ask.

“Yes,” both women say, smiles fond.

Someone knocks on the carriage door.

“Yes?” Meng Yi calls.

The door opens, revealing our coachman, a beast rank still in Weaving phase.

The poor man looks confused, shocked, and a little pale.

“I sensed a... It was... Is everything...”

“It’s fine,” Meng Yi says. “Take a few minutes to comport yourself and then we can continue. Okay?”

“Um...” his eyes dart to me, only to quickly move away when they meet mine. “Yes, Senior Meng.”

He bows, closes the door and rushes back.

Barely a minute later, the carriage was moving again.

I sigh.

My life would be a lot easier if I would stop doing impossible things.

—❈—

Xian Weiju

Laying on a bed, in a room she hadn’t been in for decades, Weiju leaned back on the soft pillows, Jian’s head on her lap, and her fingers running idly through his hair.

She was upset, and having something to do with her hands usually helped calm her down. Jian’s hair was the closest thing available.

She observed the dark strands of hair as she messed with them. Black was not their natural colour, she knew.

Like most Northerners, Jian had hair as white as snow.

But hair that colour would attract too much attention here in The Empire, so he dyed it, from the hair on his head to his lashes.

What colour would their hair be? She wondered. If they had children.

There weren’t many half Northerners around, not with how insular the nation was, so information about them was rare.

Would their hair be grey? Weiju wondered. Or would it be a mix of both colours, white on one side and black on the other?

She found that idea funny.

Unbidden, an image of a little boy popped up in her head. With Jian’s dark, shimmering eyes and her round, little nose, the left side of his head with black hair and the right side with white.

Weiju swallowed a laugh.

Jian stirred in that way he did when he was around her, so that can know that he senses something.

“What is it?” she asked.

Jian looked up at her, eyes serious.

“Your brother summoned a domain,” he said.

Weiju blinked. Slowly.

“That’s impossible,” she said.

“I know,” Jian agreed. “It was weak, merely the idea of one, and it only lasted moments. But it was there.”

Weiju sighed. “This idiot knows that his life would be simpler if he just stopped doing impossible things, right?” she asked rhetorically.

She sighed again. “If you sensed it then mother obviously did, and who knows who else in this fucking city.”

Fuck, she needed to get out of this place.

The only reason she was still here was because her mother literally ordered her to be.

“If he keeps this up, very soon half The Continent will be running around, digging up every rabbit hole looking for Celestial Plums,” she said.

“All of this can’t be from a Celestial Plum,” Jian said. “Not even if it was divine rank.”

“Obviously,” she said, then pinched the bridge of her nose, annoyed that she was thinking about this.

She did not want to be thinking about Qigang and the madness that followed him like an aura.

“You need a distraction,” Jian said, sitting up.

A minute later Weiju was naked, and five minutes after that she’d had her first orgasm and was two minutes towards the next one.

Sweet Heaven, she knew there was a reason she kept this man around.

—❈——❈——❈—

—❈——❈——❈—

Thanks for reading.

So, a few things to say.

First, the poll's done, with a roughly 2 to 1 vote for the harem route.

Now, some of us have expressed our disappointment with this outcome, as well as a worry that I might not appreciate this turn of events and my creativity may suffer as a result.

This is an understandable worry to have, but let me assure all of us that I have little issue with the harem route. I have many ideas for building it up (like the little bit in this chapter with Qigang noticing Xiuying's breast in a totally ordinary, even comical way), and I'm even rather looking forward to building the story to that point.

Secondly, to serve the harem route, a retcon has been made. The kiss scene between Qigang and Meng Yi in chapter 49:: ReUnion, is now no longer canon. All according changes will be made in the coming days.

Finally, to everyone, both those who voted for, and those who voted against, the harem route. I have put a lot of effort into making this story the best that I can make it. And you all like it as a result.

The effort I put into building this story will not change. Regardless of the result of the poll.

I hope that your love for the story doesn't change either.

Take care, everyone. Thank you once again for all your amazing support.

I love you.

You're awesome.