‘I’m an old woman. What a strange feeling.’
‘Being called an old woman by someone four years younger than me… that really left me speechless. Between feeling pathetic and angry, I chose anger.’
‘What can I do? Behind that wicked woman stands my good sister. No matter how much I resist, it’s useless. I’d better just finish what I’m doing first.’
Hua Jian didn’t press her advantage. Once Qian Xu backed down, she sat quietly and started fiddling with her own little toys.
After playing for a while, she got up and moved to the more spacious outside.
Curious, Qian Xu glanced up secretly and saw that wicked woman seriously practicing some kind of spirit technique.
It looked a bit eerie, but surprisingly, it seemed legitimate—without that ominous vibe you’d expect.
‘Could it be that she’s actually a good person?’
‘No, no, how can you think that? She’s the Saintess of the Demon Path. How could she be a good person?’
Qian Xu quickly shook her head, suppressing the strange thought that popped into her mind.
Even if everything Hua Jian said was true, she was still a malicious person who liked to bully her—definitely a wicked woman.
With resentment, Qian Xu quickly scribbled one bold, flamboyant character after another on the page in front of her.
Compared to the fairly dignified handwriting she had before Hua Jian arrived, the characters she wrote now seemed more and more unbridled.
In the end, the words she wrote in her notebook might have been even worse than Hua Jian’s.
When she finished the book and looked up at Hua Jian again, Hua Jian had switched to a different spirit technique.
She was sitting in midair, slowly spinning a large ball formed from petals.
‘Is she really practicing heavenly spirit techniques?’
Stepping out of the study, Qian Xu sniffed and noticed a faint, elegant floral scent lingering in her room.
Looking closely, she saw that the ice lotus Hua Jian had placed on the nearby cabinet earlier was likely the source of the fragrance.
“Are you done?”
Hua Jian opened her eyes in midair. She gave a slight tremor with her hands, and the flower ball in her palms suddenly exploded outward, showering the entire room with a rain of petals.
These colorful petals had no killing power. They dissipated into spiritual light spots not long after landing, leaving only a faint, undetectable floral scent.
‘That doesn’t really seem like a demon’s method either…’
“Thanks to you, it’s just beginning.” Qian Xu replied grumpily, shaking off the petals with effort. “I won’t be able to go out this month.”
“You can’t blame me for that. If you hadn’t run into me halfway, you’d be locked up for three months, not one—maybe even six.”
Hua Jian descended from the sky and landed in front of Qian Xu, spreading her small hands as if to say she had actually done Qian Xu a favor.
If Qian Xu had really caused a big commotion, she wouldn’t have faced just a month of house arrest and reflection.
Instead, she would have gotten a dual beating from her parents and a much longer confinement.
The way things were done in Beijing was different from other places.
People there were… more straightforward. That applied to raising children, too.
Even for a major family like the Qian, punishments that people usually associated with big clans were often used.
A confinement like Qian Xu’s was actually fairly standard for a big family, and she was lucky she hadn’t stirred up major trouble.
If she had truly caused a disaster, she’d probably be hung from that old crooked-neck tree by her mother right now.
“Think before you act in the future. Don’t just charge in on a hot head. Got it?”
“I… Is it wrong for me to hit a bad guy like you?”
“You’ve never even met me. How do you know I’m a bad guy? See, you’ve wronged a really good person.”
Qian Xu was left speechless again. This time, she had truly lost.
Who could have imagined that Hua Jian actually had a good relationship with spirit techniques?
The rumors outside about the two Saintesses being irreconcilable as fire and water, yet privately they were like this? It was ridiculous, okay?
Hmph!
Seeing Qian Xu start sulking because she couldn’t win the argument, Hua Jian couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
That only made Qian Xu angrier. Without caring whether she could beat Hua Jian or not, she lunged forward and started pummeling Hua Jian’s arms and shoulders with soft fists.
Hua Jian wasn’t angry. She clasped her hands behind her back and dodged left and right as if teasing a child. Qian Xu couldn’t land a single punch on her.
Eventually, after not landing a single blow, Qian Xu got serious. Her boxing technique became more structured, but she still couldn’t hit Hua Jian.
Every time she threw a punch, Hua Jian seemed to predict its trajectory and easily sidestepped.
Throughout it all, Hua Jian barely moved her feet. She didn’t use her spirit techniques—just her pure physical ability to evade Qian Xu’s attacks.
Finally, when Qian Xu, panting heavily, swung at Hua Jian’s face and missed easily, the sweaty Qian Xu had to face reality.
A Saintess wasn’t appointed for nothing. Hua Jian’s strength was formidable.
Hua Jian was a bit surprised too. She had assumed Qian Xu wasn’t all that strong, but from that display of hand-to-hand combat, Qian Xu’s fighting prowess was no less than the talented geniuses she had encountered at the Ascension Gathering.
In the Ascension Gathering she had participated in, the only one who could match Qian Xu would probably have been Hua Jian herself.
“Impressive. I didn’t expect a young lady like you to have such skill.”
“Don’t underestimate me. Our Qian Family isn’t like other families.”
Qian Xu took out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from her face. This was also the first time she had used all of her boxing techniques on a person.
After the fight, her stamina was almost completely drained. She could only stagger over to a distant chair and sit down to catch her breath.
After copying the family rules for so long, being able to release her energy so intensely actually gave her a refreshing feeling.
The resentment she held toward Hua Jian had also been poured into those fists and released.
“It’s a bit of a waste, but at least some of it was burned off.”
“Hmph, big bully, so shameless.”
“I didn’t use any spiritual power or Ling Wang Realm techniques. Just pure physical body and reflexes.” Hua Jian indicated that she couldn’t be called a bully—she was simply being a punching bag.
If she had really wanted to bully Qian Xu, she could have grabbed her by the collar and stopped her attack the moment Qian Xu threw the first punch.
Letting Qian Xu finish an entire set was actually her mercy, okay?
“Then I guess I should thank you?”
“No harm in that.”
“（Beijing dialect swear phrase）!”
So it was true that the girls of the Qian family were down-to-earth. When angry, they even cursed.
After the writing session, Qian Xu didn’t do anything else. She sat alone in a chair, regulating her breath, and occasionally watched Hua Jian take a small pair of scissors to trim the pot of ice lotus.
Hua Jian’s movements were very gentle, so much so that one might suspect she was just cutting air.
But on closer inspection, you could see tiny, crystalline ice shavings being ground off the lotus leaves.
After watching for a while, Qian Xu got bored.
“Is this what you usually do?”
“Not that idle. Every day I study spirit techniques under my Shijie and apply new ones in battle…”
Recalling her life in Wanhuagu, Hua Jian began to count on her fingers.
“About half and half. Half the day learning new techniques, the other half sparring with others.”
Qian Xu was skeptical. ‘The daily life of Wanhua Saintess is so simple? I don’t buy it.’
Even if Hua Jian was different from what she had imagined, it shouldn’t be this normal. Where was the demeanor of a Demon Path Saintess?
This was just the everyday life of an ordinary cultivator.
“Your sparring partners must be really restrained, right?”
After thinking for a while, Qian Xu found only one point to attack.
With Hua Jian’s status so high, the people who practiced with her must have been afraid to go all out, worried about hurting her.
But she was wrong again.
“People aren’t restrained when they’re about to die. Maybe at first they look down on me, but they quickly learn that I’m serious.”
Hua Jian’s lips curled into a smile as she spoke a terrifying sentence.
“How do you get your sparring partners to use their real skill?”
“Simple. Beat them within an inch of their life. Put them under survival pressure so they have no choice but to go all out.”
‘Alright, now that’s demon-like.’ Qian Xu had just been wondering where Hua Jian’s Demon Path Saintess aspect was. Look, there it was.
“How are you planning to sleep tonight? I only have one bed here… Hey, what’s with that look!”
“My dear little sister, we’re cultivators. Do you really sleep every night?” Hua Jian couldn’t help but retort.
Beds were the least of their worries. Didn’t they cultivators just cultivate all night instead of sleeping? Who actually sleeps properly?
Besides, if Hua Jian started cultivating, her cultivation vision would fill the entire room. Qian Xu would have a hard time sleeping anyway.
“I’ll just cultivate here. I won’t go into your room.” Hua Jian pointed at the floor. “After all, your study is already like that. I’m afraid your bedroom might have even more suspicious stuff hidden away.”
“What do you mean by suspicious stuff? Those are Saintess Linglong’s…” Qian Xu’s protest trailed off as she realized she couldn’t exactly say that with confidence.
Things like a life-sized Saintess body pillow definitely couldn’t be known by Hua Jian!
“Relax. I have no problem with your personal hobbies. I also like collecting little trinkets.”
Hua Jian gave a understanding smile, indicating she was a good big sister who wouldn’t look down on her little sister’s interests.
People have different tastes, right? She understood.
She also liked collecting flowers, plants, and all sorts of strange things. She was actually quite similar to Qian Xu.
“By the way, can you get me some materials for making spirit tools? I have some ideas I want to test out.”
If there was one thing Hua Jian wasn’t satisfied with, it was that she still felt the need to have a spear.
A sniper rifle was real romance—for men and women alike!
Compared to fighting up close with a fleshy body, silently eliminating enemies from a thousand miles away was also satisfying, okay?
“You can make spirit tools?” Qian Xu didn’t hesitate much and directly agreed to Hua Jian’s request. “Pretty impressive.”
“I’m impressive in many ways. Otherwise, would Wanhuagu have kidnapped me to be their Saintess?”
Over the next two days, Qian Xu truly realized what Hua Jian was impressive at.
Every so often, an explosion would ring out from her place—the sound of Hua Jian failing at tool refining.
At first, she was scared by the noise and ran over to check, but after that, whenever an explosion happened, no one came.
In her words, it would be strange if Hua Jian’s tool refining didn’t explode.
That was beyond the comprehension of a mere mortal like her. Her mind worked in mysterious ways.
Anyway, Hua Jian was using low-level spirit items. The Qian family had plenty of those. They just let Hua Jian do her thing.
However, at Qian Xu’s request, Hua Jian finally moved her refining spot to the courtyard, so that Qian Xu could have some peace while copying books in the study.
“Let’s see… about time for another explosion…” Qian Xu murmured the time to herself while copying the family rules. Hua Jian’s explosions were regular.
On average, one every hour. It had been an hour since the last one.
Three, two, one, boom!
Huh?
Qian Xu’s brush paused midair. ‘Strange, why didn’t it explode?’
After waiting half an hour, she still didn’t hear an explosion. Her curiosity grew. Glancing at the unfinished family rules, she bit her lip.
‘I should go check on our guest’s safety.’ That reason convinced her.
She tiptoed out of the study and headed toward Hua Jian’s courtyard. As she approached, she felt a faint sound coming from inside.
‘Sounds like two people fighting?’
At the door, she poked her head out cautiously. The scene in the courtyard made her eyes widen in shock. No wonder Hua Jian’s explosions had stopped. Linglong Saintess had somehow arrived and was now sparring with Hua Jian in swordsmanship. The courtyard had been set up with a soundproofing array formation, greatly muffling the sounds of their exchange.
Though the sound was low, the battle was fierce. The two maidens rose and fell in the modestly sized courtyard, their spirit swords clashing repeatedly.
For a moment, neither could gain the upper hand. The half-dragon maiden was wreathed in thunder, like a heavenly thunder lord.
Opposite her, countless petals swirled around the other maiden, her aura no weaker.
This scene deeply shook Qian Xu.
At that moment, Man Long was the Saintess she admired most, the image she had always wanted to see.
She had thought that in front of such a Man Long, everything in the world would pale. But now, her belief was violently shaken by reality.
‘So there really are people in this world who can match Linglong Saintess without falling behind… and that person is the one I hated most, the one I thought was pretending to be a fake Linglong Saintess.’
This huge gap gave Qian Xu a sense of her worldview shattering.
She had shouted “I don’t accept it” so many times before, but this time, she truly felt that it wasn’t something a simple “I don’t accept” could change.
‘But… both of them are so beautiful, so amazing.’