Tie Ci sat up somewhat bewildered and nearly fell off, only then realizing she was high up in a tree.
She had teleported.
In desperate situations, dire straits, when pushing to the absolute limit, such opportunities would arise.
This time she had teleported into a handsome man’s embrace—truly a romantic encounter after hardship.
Tie Ci immediately cheered up. She watched the black-clothed figure stand up, standing like jade on the treetop with his bow drawn to full capacity, but not aimed at the pit.
There was a massive boulder with a faint green glow—an old wolf sitting there, with the half-moon and mountain behind it, outlining its calm yet coldly sinister silhouette.
The wolf’s chin fur was completely white, like a cluster of white whiskers. It sat far away on the high stone, occasionally emitting low, deep howls from its throat.
The wolf pack received their orders, trampled over their companions’ corpses to exit the pit, and charged madly toward this tree. From their posture, they either planned to knock the tree down or gnaw it down.
The black-clothed man in the tree and the wolf king stared at each other from afar. With his back to Tie Ci, she couldn’t see his expression, only that the old wolf remained extremely calm, sitting upright and motionless, its eyes coldly fixed on the black-clothed man without blinking.
The black-clothed man chuckled coldly. Under the moon, his tall figure was complemented by flowing robes that drew in a touch of cold white moonlight.
Stars clustered like flowers, gleaming at his arrow tip.
“Whoosh.”
The wind was too fierce, bringing to mind lightning, thunder, storms, flash, giant trees crashing to the ground, and roaring fires.
The short grass across the ground bent low, and the air seemed instantly split apart.
In the next moment, the old wolf’s body seemed to tremble.
The forest was too dark and the distance too far for Tie Ci to see clearly whether the wolf had been hit by the arrow. She could only see that the wolf still sat in its original position, with even deeper howls continuing to sound.
Thinking he had missed, Tie Ci became interested and was about to take out her own folding bow.
But the black-clothed man stopped her.
“Do arrows cost nothing? Wasteful!”
So he had hit it?
Why didn’t the wolf fall?
But soon, the more perceptive wolves below had already sensed something was wrong. The orderly, obedient wolf pack immediately descended into chaos, with several fierce male wolves breaking free and beginning to tear at each other.
“When the wolf king dies, the pack disperses,” the man said.
His voice had become slightly deeper and sounded very pleasant. Tie Ci suddenly thought of that fish-roasting gentleman from that night.
Who would have thought the archery teacher was the leader of the illegal fish-catching operation.
The fighting below intensified with blood and flesh flying. Tie Ci’s mood suddenly improved considerably. Watching this scene with great feeling, she said, “Next, please observe: Nine Wolves Competing for Succession.”
The man laughed heartily.
Tie Ci looked at him laughing and asked, “How did Teacher happen to come rescue me?”
“You’re my money tree—if I don’t save you, who would I save?” the black-clothed man said. “Besides, it wasn’t really saving you—saving the wolves was more like it. If I had arrived any later, you would have killed all the wolves on this mountain.”
The wolf king struggled without dying and let out another series of low howls.
A large group of wolves charged again, slamming into the tree with banging sounds.
The black-clothed man suddenly began taking off his clothes.
Tie Ci was startled: “What are you doing!”
The black-clothed man seemed to receive a reminder and grabbed his outer robe: “No, I shouldn’t strip mine. Better to strip yours. Come on, strip quickly!”
Tie Ci was startled again: “Why!”
The black-clothed man had already reached out to pull at her collar: “Don’t ask so many questions—strip quickly!”
Tie Ci could bear it no longer and pushed with her hand: “Go to hell!”
But she forgot they were in a tree. One push nearly sent the fellow tumbling down into the wolf pack below.
Seeing him lean backward, Tie Ci reached out like lightning and grabbed his hand. The black-clothed man swayed in the tree while she held him, still looking up innocently: “Hey, what are you doing? Is this how you repay kindness with enmity?”
“Is this how you use favors to coerce people into stripping at the slightest disagreement!”
“Don’t I need fabric to start a fire? My clothes were just bought—cost a whole tael of silver. Better to strip yours since they’re already too dirty to want anyway.”
Tie Ci: “…”
A misunderstanding, all a misunderstanding.
Yet this beauty was such a miser.
“Lend me some strength!”
The black-clothed man gripped Tie Ci’s hand tightly and flipped over gracefully, his robes flowing like blooming flowers and flowing clouds. For the sake of this eye-pleasing figure, Tie Ci obediently apologized.
“Sorry, I misunderstood. May I ask Teacher’s distinguished name?”
“Rong Wei.”
“Related to Rong Pu?”
“Tracing back eighteen generations of ancestors and making a turn, we could probably count as relatives.”
Tie Ci thought all Chinese children were descendants of the Yellow Emperor too—by that logic, everyone would be relatives.
But all the Rongs were quite good-looking. This one had more delicate and beautiful features than Rong Pu, with slightly upturned red lips naturally carrying a three-part smile. His eyes had thick lashes that naturally lined his eyes, brilliant when he glanced around, yet his gaze was slightly cool. When he looked through slightly disheveled black hair, it reminded one of distant moons veiled by starlight and mist, lamplight behind curtains in fragrant halls filled with subtle perfume—both cold and lonely, yet carrying an indescribable allure and desire.
The tree was trembling slightly. Rong Wei shamelessly extended his hand. Tie Ci had no choice but to remove her outer robe, fortunately still wearing a light-colored inner robe underneath.
The blood-stained outer robe was torn apart by Rong Wei, wrapped around arrow tips, ignited, and shot out with whooshes, circling the tree to form a perfect circle.
Tie Ci was about to remind him to be careful of forest fires causing great disasters when she noticed a ditch had already been dug around the circle’s perimeter. The fire wouldn’t spread but would only burn in a large circle.
Now the wolves were trapped inside the fire ring.
The wolves were startled—some ran away, others tried to charge out but were forced back by the fire ring.
“This wolf pack has plagued Qingyang Mountain for a long time,” Rong Wei said. “They once broke into the academy and killed students. The academy expended great effort to drive them away and even posted a reward—eliminating them would earn a thousand gold pieces.”
Tie Ci thought, no wonder this fellow was so enthusiastic—he loved money.
Rong Wei began straightening his clothes: “Rested enough? Come down and kill wolves for revenge when you’re ready. Later we’ll calculate our respective reward money by wolf heads. But the ones you killed before don’t count.”
Tie Ci: “…”
With such character, would he ever find a wife?
Regarding male character traits, Tie Ci didn’t care much about most things, but miserliness was unacceptable. Grandet, Shylock, Harpagon, Plyushkin were forever negative characters in her extracurricular reading.
Two figures majestically leaped down from the tree.
The tables had turned—now it was Tie Ci’s turn for a killing spree.
At some point, the two had ended up back-to-back, each handling wolves in a semicircular area. Their coordination seemed to develop naturally—when his blade reached over her shoulder to kill a sneak-attacking wolf, she wouldn’t dodge. When her elbow struck through a wolf’s throat from under his armpit, he wouldn’t panic.
Finally, with wolf corpses piled before them, the remaining leaderless wolves were terrified and fled through gaps in the gradually extinguishing fire ring.
After killing for half the night, Tie Ci was once again covered in sticky blood, and Rong Wei hadn’t fared much better. Filthy and stinking, they walked to the base of the high stone and stared at the old wolf still crouching there.
The wolf had a bloody arrow piercing its throat, yet its eyes remained open.
Rong Wei jumped onto the high stone and slapped the wolf’s head with a smack.
“If you’re dead, stay dead! What are you putting on airs for!”
The old wolf’s eyes closed, and it crashed to the ground with a thunderous sound.
The whimpering of the distant remaining wolf pack gradually faded away.
Tie Ci leaned against the high stone, stretching her legs and staring blankly as she watched Rong Wei diligently cutting wolf tails.
Wolf heads were too heavy to carry back—they needed some proof.
As she watched, her eyelids grew heavy, and she fell asleep in a second. Vaguely, she felt cold at first, then warm.
She was too tired to even dream. When she woke, she expected to find his clothes covering her, given how warm it had been.
There weren’t any.
She was covered with skinned wolf pelts—warm indeed, and treated, but the smell was still less than commendable.
Tie Ci sighed.
She knew she shouldn’t have read Master’s trashy romance novels.
Rong Wei was also wrapped in wolf pelts, sleeping across from her. The sleeping figure seemed quiet and well-behaved, with downcast eyelashes like two upturned little fans. Tie Ci always wanted to try placing pearls on them—she estimated they wouldn’t fall off.
As Tie Ci watched, she suddenly froze.
This person across from her was, strictly speaking, a stranger. They had met only three times, and the first two could hardly be called pleasant. This person’s background was mysterious and his motives unclear—how could she sleep so peacefully beside him?
This didn’t match her nature.
Tie Ci stared at his face and figure, thinking about the vague sense of familiarity this person gave her. She once again thought of the man she had encountered several times in the mountains and at sea. The height didn’t quite match, and the build was hard to judge since all slender young male figures looked similar. His behavior and style seemed somewhat similar…
As for voice, she remembered that person’s voice was extraordinarily pleasant—the kind that could make ears pregnant. Though Rong Wei’s voice was also pleasant, it was ultimately somewhat inferior, with a different timbre as well.
She had always been very curious about that person’s identity, vaguely feeling he was extraordinary, and more certain that he had played a very important role in the Yuantie weapons incident. But what his ultimate purpose was, what he had gained—like the thick fog on the sea that day—without seeing his true face, there would be no answers.
Tie Ci always felt that judging from the scale of the furnaces under Cangsheng Tower, the weapons later confiscated that Murong Duan had refined seemed too few.
Rong Wei across from her opened his eyes, and the dark forest seemed to instantly brighten and become radiant.
Looking at the sky, it was getting late. There were still too many wolf tails, so they wove a vine net, placed the wolf tails on it, and dragged it along as they walked.
The path wasn’t easy to travel. Rong Wei walked while identifying directions, and only then did Tie Ci realize she had unknowingly wandered too far last night.
Thinking of the classes she had to attend today and sensing the circulation of meridians within her body, she suddenly asked, “Want to experience soaring through clouds and mist?”
“No!” Rong Wei refused without even asking, rejecting outright.
“Come on!” Tie Ci stepped forward and unceremoniously grabbed his waist. “One, two, three—up!”
An instant of weightlessness.
In the next moment, clouds and mist struck their faces, wind howled, blue sky overhead, mountain cliffs below. Rong Wei sat dazedly on a pine tree jutting out from the mountainside, yellow liquid slowly flowing from beneath his bottom. A fierce large bird shrieked as it dove down, slapping Rong Wei across the face and head, seeking revenge for the bird eggs he had sat on and crushed…
Tie Ci hung from the pine tree with wolf tails draped all over her, screaming, “Dear, quickly pull me up!”
Rong Wei shifted his bottom, and egg yolk dripped down onto Tie Ci’s face.
…
Tie Ci finally grabbed Rong Wei’s hand, closed her eyes: “One, two, three!”
In the next instant, an enraged bear roared as it pounced toward the unwelcome intruders.
…
“One, two, three!”
A waterfall crashed down overhead. Rong Wei flailed around in the torrent, trying to catch wolf tails being washed away by the water.
Tie Ci was wedged between two rocks with her long legs sticking out, flailing wildly.
…
After that, Rong Wei refused any further physical contact with Tie Ci, declaring he would rather trek through mountains and die of exhaustion than trouble her ladyship.
Fortunately, after several random crashes—no, teleportations—they were indeed not far from the academy.
They returned to the academy through the mountain gate just as the morning wake-up bell had finished ringing. Students were getting up, washing, grooming themselves, and having breakfast.
Ma De and his group hadn’t slept all night, tossing and turning in bed, seeming to hear that Ye Shiba’s screams even in their dreams. When dawn came and they climbed out of bed, opening their doors and looking at each other’s dark circles, they couldn’t help asking, “Did that guy come back last night?”
Someone said, “Even if he came back, returning late would still be punished—a fright plus ancestral hall reflection would be unavoidable!”
Someone said, “It was very quiet last night—didn’t hear any commotion. Maybe he hasn’t returned yet?”
“Then should we ask Cui Shi? Aren’t they dormmates?”
Someone laughed aloud, “Last night Cui Shi pretended to be panicked and reported to the dorm supervisor that Ye Shiba didn’t return for the night. The supervisor will definitely punish him today… Look, here comes Cui Shi!”
Cui Shi was peering around at the Section A entrance, looking delighted. Seeing them, he immediately said, “Ye Shiba still hasn’t returned!”
Everyone was overjoyed and congratulated each other, saying today they could collect money from the betting pool and see Ye Shiba’s expulsion notice posted high at the mountain gate.
Some worried, “What if he comes back and accuses us?”
“How can he accuse us? Does he have evidence?” Ma De slowly fanned himself. “We didn’t show our faces or speak—who can he identify? Remember, no matter what he says, we deny it to the death! He’s stuck with this bitter pill!”
“Exactly. A little brat who got in through connections, wanting to take Teacher He’s spot, wanting to fight with us—dream on!”
Just as they were talking happily, sudden commotion came from outside. Countless footsteps clattered as people rushed out. Everyone looked out in bewilderment. The dorm supervisor also emerged from his office to see a large crowd on the white stone avenue that ran through the academy from the mountain gate, like a dark cloud still moving inward.
The dorm supervisor stood by the roadside, shouting loudly, “Disperse! Crowds cannot gather without reason! Disperse! What happened!”
The crowd scattered slightly, and the supervisor vaguely saw Ye Shiba’s face. He immediately shouted sternly, “Ye Shiba! Come here! You didn’t return to the dorm last night—where did you go! Did you go to those brothels and pleasure houses…”
His voice and expression were severe. Students on the crowd’s periphery turned to look at him with strange expressions, leaving the supervisor’s mind blank. He continued, “Those who don’t return to the dorm must be reported to the Director for discretionary handling, with ancestral hall confinement or expulsion depending on circumstances… I’ll just…”
He suddenly stopped, mouth agape.
The crowd finally completely dispersed, and Tie Ci walked over.