Chapter 181: Protagonist 19

Le’er City’s specialty, the Jiao Eye Flower, was monopolized by the city’s three great clans, growing exclusively within the medicinal gardens under their control.

These gardens opened to the public once every half month. As long as you paid enough Spirit Stones, you could enter and harvest herbs.

The next opening was scheduled for three days later, so Gongxi Yue simply found an inn, booked a room, and settled down to cultivate for the next three days.

Wen Xunzhen couldn’t help asking, “You’re the Lonely Moon Sword Monarch. If you wanted early access to the garden, it would be a trivial matter. I thought you’d go straight to the City Lord’s estate for a visit.”

They would no doubt welcome her with the utmost hospitality, inviting her into the garden without hesitation. Even if they set aside her status as the Eldest Young Miss of the Gongxi Family, her position as Chief Disciple of the Yunyin Immortal Sect was more than enough to make anyone clamor to please her.

Gongxi Yue always seemed decisive and efficient, not the type to waste time. Yet here she was, patiently waiting.

“Following the proper rules,” Gongxi Yue said simply, eyes closed, focusing her spiritual power to expel the lingering medicinal Qi from her body.

Realizing she wasn’t in the mood for conversation, Wen Xunzhen had no choice but to leave her be, retreating to the other side of the room with Qian.

The room wasn’t large, surprisingly modest considering the status of Gongxi Yue and her daughter.

Having witnessed the Gongxi Family’s wealth and extravagance firsthand, as well as the fastidious tastes of other family members, Wen Xunzhen had expected Gongxi Yue to be just as particular.

Yet she had chosen neither the grandest inn in the city nor the finest room—just one that was clean and simple.

A few plain pieces of furniture, pale green fabric curtains, and a hard straw meditation mat. Gongxi Yue sat cross-legged atop the mat without complaint.

Even Qian, whom Wen Xunzhen had thought of as a bit spoiled, seemed entirely accustomed to this austere environment. Without a single whine or fuss, she sat at the table gnawing on a flower pastry.

The table was piled high with all kinds of sweet pastries—all bought by Gongxi Yue. Before arriving at the inn, Wen Xunzhen had watched as mother and daughter stood in the flower pastry shop, negotiating back and forth before finally reaching an agreement.

“I’ll buy you these pastries, but for the next three days, you stay in the room and eat them. No running around,” Gongxi Yue had said.

“I get to eat one right away! But once I finish, I want to go outside and play!” Qian had replied.

“Fine. Let’s say you eat two pastries every fifteen minutes. Over three days, that’s five hundred seventy-six pastries. I’ll buy you six hundred. That should be enough,” Gongxi Yue said, perfectly serious.

Wen Xunzhen had thought: Can’t you at least subtract the hours she’ll be asleep?

Qian couldn’t calculate that far, but she pretended to understand, nodding solemnly. “Alright, but I want different kinds!”

Then, remembering Wen Xunzhen standing nearby, she pointed and said, “Zhenzhen needs some too!”

Wen Xunzhen quickly refused, “I really don’t—”

But Gongxi Yue was magnanimous when it came to these things. “Double the order, twelve hundred pastries.”

Wen Xunzhen protested, “I don’t need—”

Qian wasn’t satisfied either. “But she’s a grown-up! She eats faster than me. She could eat ten at once!”

Wen Xunzhen: “I wouldn’t.”

Both mother and daughter turned to her in unison and asked, “So how many can you eat every fifteen minutes?”

Wen Xunzhen stammered, “Honestly, none. I don’t even like—”

Ignoring her, the pair resumed their discussion.

“Let’s add a bit more. Make it fifteen hundred. If you don’t agree, you won’t get a single one.”

“Fine!”

Wen Xunzhen: Why even ask me if you weren’t going to listen?

In the end, Gongxi Yue bought up the entire freshly-made batch from the pastry shop.

Qian eyed the mountain of oil-paper packages with suspicion. “Is this really one thousand five hundred?”

Gongxi Yue replied, “If you don’t believe me, you can count them.”

Qian, who couldn’t yet count that high, stared at the pile the whole way back, trying her best but failing to tally it.

Knowing she needed help, she tugged at Wen Xunzhen’s sleeve. “Zhenzhen, help me count, okay?”

Wen Xunzhen didn’t even need to. One glance told her there were maybe three hundred pastries at most.

But with Gongxi Yue’s hand resting ominously on her sword hilt, flashing a clear threat, Wen Xunzhen caved under the Sword Monarch’s oppressive aura and lied to the child against her conscience.

“Yep, that’s right, definitely one thousand five hundred.”

Because of her cooperation, Gongxi Yue even assigned her a task upon returning to the room: For the next three days, she was responsible for keeping an eye on Qian and making sure she didn’t run off.

Wen Xunzhen: …

Does the Sword Monarch forget that I’m a prisoner who needs guarding myself?

Wen Xunzhen had no idea why Gongxi Yue trusted her so much, but she resigned herself to her new babysitting duties.

At first, Qian behaved. But after finishing her fifth pastry, she set down the half-eaten sixth one, jumped off her chair, and headed straight for the door.

Wen Xunzhen, who had thought this job would be simple, quickly blocked her. “Qian, where are you going?”

Blinking her round eyes, Qian answered, “I’m going out to play.”

Wen Xunzhen reminded her, “But didn’t you promise your mother that you’d stay in the room and eat pastries for three days? No running around.”

Qian shook her head earnestly. “I’m very good when I’m eating pastries. Once I’m not eating, I can go out and play.”

In her childlike logic, there was no flaw.

Wen Xunzhen warned, “Your mother will be angry if she finds out after she finishes cultivating.”

But then she recalled how Gongxi Yue rarely punished the child even when angry, and her threat lost steam mid-sentence.

Glancing at her mother, who sat across the room with eyes closed in meditation, Qian crept closer to Wen Xunzhen’s ear and whispered, “My mother’s cultivating. She won’t know I went out. I’ll just play for a little while and come right back.”

Her tone and behavior were far too practiced, making Wen Xunzhen suspect this wasn’t Qian’s first time pulling a stunt like this.

Which gave rise to another thought: If Qian could sneak out… could she use this chance to escape too? Maybe it was worth a try.

Just then, Qian grabbed her hand. “Zhenzhen, come play with me!”

Wen Xunzhen hesitated, then agreed, “Alright. But you can’t tell your mother.”

Like a pair of thieves, the two tiptoed toward the door. Just as they reached the threshold, before their grand escape could even begin, Gongxi Yue’s cold voice rang out from her meditation mat.

“Do you want to die?”

Qian instantly bolted back to her chair, resumed gnawing on her half-eaten pastry, and waved Wen Xunzhen over in a hushed whisper, “Hurry! Come back!”

Stunned, Wen Xunzhen quickly scrambled back as well, suddenly suspecting she’d almost been set up by a child.

That night, Gongxi Yue’s cultivation continued without pause, leaving Wen Xunzhen to handle the child’s nightly face washing, foot bathing, and coaxing her to sleep.

Wen Xunzhen carefully settled Qian on the far side of the bed, while she herself lay on the outer edge—keeping as much distance from the child as possible.

But back when they’d slept on the big bed at the Gongxi Family estate, the child had always ended up rolling over to her side in her sleep. With this small bed, it happened even faster—before long, the little one would wriggle over, either pressing her head against her or propping her feet against her.

In just a few short days, Wen Xunzhen went from being unaccustomed to it… to getting used to it.

That small, soft, warm body nestled beside her brought a surprising sense of peace.

Children at this age were pure and simple. She didn’t know anything about Wen Xunzhen’s strange condition, nor did she have an adult’s instinct for distance, suspicion, or morbid curiosity. She just snuggled up like a little animal.

They hadn’t spent much time together, and yet when Wen Xunzhen looked back on her life, the person closest to her… turned out to be this child with whom she shared no blood.

During all the years Wen Xunzhen was locked away in Medical Valley, her father had never once shown her any affection—not once had he hugged her.

The Senior Disciple Sister who looked after her had never come near her either. Only one senior sister had ever held her hand.

She had grown into who she was today, alone in that cold indifference.

They didn’t see her as a man, but neither did they regard her as purely a woman. To them, she was just… something else.

Xiao Shou was the first person she met who knew about her unusual body and still treated her entirely as a woman, openly expressing his love and desire for her. But even as he said he cherished her, he kept to the rules of propriety, rarely even embracing her.

Aside from Xiao Shou… there was Gongxi Yue.

That sentence—“Since you believe yourself to be a woman, I will treat you as one”—Wen Xunzhen remembered it vividly. It was precisely because of this that, no matter how poorly Gongxi Yue treated her, Wen Xunzhen found herself unable to truly dislike her.

And there was absolutely no way she could bring herself to dislike a child who stuck to her side every night while she slept.

Whenever she gritted her teeth through pain or woke gasping from a nightmare, cold and trembling all over, there was always the sound of steady breathing beside her.

Warm, like a little furnace. Wen Xunzhen would feel a strange, quiet calm.

In the mornings, before she had time to dwell on her difficult future, she’d open her eyes and be pounced on by Qian, who would grab the quilt and bury her face in it, playfully tackling her. Her whole world would narrow down to just this immediate, messy, joyful struggle.

She’d have to gently warn her, “Keep your voice down, don’t disturb your mother’s cultivation!”

Wen Xunzhen was half-afraid Gongxi Yue would lose patience and come over with one swing of her sword, sending them both crashing to the floor.

But the more she tried to catch the wild child, the more Qian would dodge and shriek and run, completely out of control.

By the time she finally got her to settle down, Wen Xunzhen couldn’t help wondering why she was even doing this… all while resigning herself to sit and start tying up the child’s hair.

Back at the Gongxi Family estate, this had always been the maids’ job. Those ghost-like maids who appeared just when needed, smiling as they clustered around to help Qian change clothes, wash her face, do her hair—everything done in a flash, then disappearing just as quickly, flawlessly trained.

After leaving the Gongxi Family, it had been Gongxi Yue herself handling it. But on the very first day, Wen Xunzhen noticed just how hopelessly clumsy Gongxi Yue was at taking care of a child.

It took her forever just to tie up Qian’s hair, and when she did, it was all crooked and lopsided.

Wen Xunzhen couldn’t help pointing it out, “Her hair’s crooked.”

Gongxi Yue answered coldly, “I can’t see it, so of course it’s crooked. Whose fault do you think that is?”

Wen Xunzhen: “……”

And just like that… the job fell to her.

Qian would sit in front of her, hugging a mirror, inspecting her hair and making requests—ribbons, flowers.

Wen Xunzhen humored her, choosing flowers and ribbons to weave in. “Why don’t you make these requests to your mother when she does your hair?”

Qian sighed dramatically, waving her hand like a tiny old lady, “She doesn’t know how! As long as she can manage the simplest little topknot, that’s already good enough.”

While Gongxi Yue cultivated in the room, Wen Xunzhen and Qian had no choice but to spend the next three days inside together.

On the second day, Wen Xunzhen cleared the tables and chairs to the side and crouched on the floor with Qian to play marbles.

Qian pulled out a whole box of large night-luminescent pearls from her Storage Bracelet. The two of them took turns flicking them across the floor. Wen Xunzhen never missed a single shot; Qian couldn’t hit a thing. By the end, she was hopping mad, stomping and pounding her little fists against her chest.

“Okay, okay, no more playing,” Wen Xunzhen caught her tiny arm.

They switched to something else. Qian’s Storage Bracelet was full of toys gifted by various elders—one after another, she pulled them out to share.

“This is a bamboo dragonfly! Look, twist here and it’ll fly!”

Wen Xunzhen watched with curiosity—it really was exquisite. It didn’t even need spiritual energy to fly, just a flick and the thin bamboo wings would spin into the air. She had never played with toys like this before.

Qian took out several, and the two of them let them fly, watching them dart around the room.

Then, one after another, the bamboo dragonflies they launched went veering off course—one smacked right into the face of the meditating Gongxi Yue, the other nosedived straight into her hair bun.

Wen Xunzhen: “……”

Qian and Wen Xunzhen exchanged a panicked glance. Qian bolted over first, quickly grabbing the dragonfly out of her mother’s arms.

Just as she was standing on tiptoe, reaching for the one stuck in Gongxi Yue’s hair, Gongxi Yue’s eyelashes gave the faintest tremble.

Qian instantly clapped a hand over her mouth in silent terror, scrambling back.

“Zhenzhen, you go get the other one!”

Wen Xunzhen mimicked Qian, tiptoeing over, holding her breath as she carefully extracted the second dragonfly from Gongxi Yue’s hair bun, pulling out a loose strand of hair along with it.

Throughout the entire process, she was convinced Gongxi Yue would open her eyes at any second… and send her flying with one kick.

Pressing a hand to her pounding heart, Wen Xunzhen pinned down Qian, who was already fidgeting, itching to launch the dragonflies again. “Let’s play something else!”

Three days passed in a blur. When Gongxi Yue finally opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was her daughter standing on the table, draped in a long bedsheet, holding a flower vase and pouring water onto the floor.

Wen Xunzhen, similarly wrapped in a pale green curtain, was half-kneeling in front of the table, reaching out her hands and saying solemnly, “Thank you, Your Majesty, for bestowing heavenly dew.”

Qian poured water into her palms and declared, “No need to thank me! You may rise! But you have to drink it, okay?”

“Do I really have to drink it…?”

Gongxi Yue: “……”

Holding the so-called ‘heavenly dew’ in her hands, Wen Xunzhen was still hesitating when suddenly she sensed something. She turned her head—and locked eyes with Gongxi Yue.

Silently, she pulled down the curtain draped over her shoulders.