Read Novel Full Chapter 284: Coming Clean
Chapter 284: Coming Clean
The Cheap Wine Shop, main room of the back courtyard.
When she heard Twelfth Madam Luo’s remark, Zheng Zhuxi was quite surprised and bewildered.
Ever since Ding Songyan had told her Twelfth Madam Luo was a Supreme Master, she had regarded the woman as a senior powerhouse. Though she looked only about thirty, she had to be much older, and for such a senior powerhouse to say something like that was, frankly, pretty blunt.
Yet Zheng Zhuxi found no trace of blame in Twelfth Madam Luo’s expression or eyes. There was a hint of complaint, but mostly teasing.
The way peers treat each other? Zheng Zhuxi smiled and said, "Back in Dingjiang Prefecture, he was always running into trouble too. In that year and more, I went through more than I had in the ten years before."
"Some people are just like that." A trace of a smile showed on Twelfth Madam Luo’s face as well.
Then she pointed outside the main building.
"I’m going to check on the shop. I won’t disturb your conversation."
"Thank you, Twelfth Madam." Ding Songyan bowed sincerely.
Zheng Zhuxi watched in astonishment as Twelfth Madam Luo crossed the back courtyard and vanished through the door beside the shop’s kitchen.
Didn’t my junior brother bring me here to meet Twelfth Madam Luo?
How is it that Twelfth Madam Luo left and the two of us are staying in her home?
What does she mean, she won’t disturb our conversation?
Whose home is this, anyway?
For a moment, Zheng Zhuxi couldn’t quite work out how Ding Songyan and Twelfth Madam Luo got along day to day.
Ding Songyan, completely at home here, led Zheng Zhuxi into the east wing room and closed the wooden door, saying with a smile, "Senior Sister, at the Prince’s estate I was worried the walls had ears. It’s safer to talk here."
Although he had Establishing the Six Directions, what he was about to tell her involved too many secrets, and Ding Songyan didn’t dare be careless. Better safe than sorry.
I see... With a Heaven-Man Supreme Master around, it really is safe... Zheng Zhuxi vaguely understood.
With a sweep of her eyes, she saw that the east wing room was very clean. Aside from the bed, table, and chairs, the space was piled with boxes of all sizes, but they were stacked neatly, not messy at all.
Zheng Zhuxi had gradually recovered her old feeling of being with her junior brother. She was about to pull over a chair and sit when she found he’d grabbed it first.
She had no choice but to sit on the edge of the bed, laying Autumnwater across her knees.
Then she saw her junior brother abandon the chair he’d taken, walk to the bed, and sit down right beside her. He even adjusted Autumnwater’s position as if it were the most natural thing, and took the opportunity to set Frostshade on the bed.
Zheng Zhuxi’s body stiffened, but she forgot that she could stand up and leave or move somewhere else.
They had sat side by side before, but only because the surroundings left no choice, and it had felt natural. He had never deliberately sat down beside her like this.
Zheng Zhuxi suddenly realized where the subtle change in her junior brother’s attitude lay.
He was more proactive, more assertive, and more forward...
Seeing that his senior sister hadn’t pulled away, Ding Songyan did nothing else. He just tilted his head toward her and said with a smile, "There’s so much to tell that I’ll start from my first day at the estate."
Breathing in a faint citrus fragrance, Ding Songyan recounted his experiences in the Flame Capital in exhaustive detail. He even roughly repeated the key conversations, though he didn’t go so far as to reproduce the everyday small talk, which couldn’t have been finished in two to three hours.
Some of it Zheng Zhuxi had read in his letters but hadn’t fully understood. Some Ding Songyan hadn’t felt right putting in a letter, so she hadn’t known about it. And the things she had guessed at, like who the male "Jade Maiden" was and what he was after, were confirmed one by one.
Ding Songyan didn’t shy away from the fact that he’d gone to see Twelfth Madam Luo almost every morning and evening to study the Way of Name and Reality under her guidance. He just left out what the people in the nearby streets said about it.
Zheng Zhuxi listened with limpid, bright eyes. At times her eyes reddened over his life-or-death battle with Evil Beyond Measure Sun Feiyang. At times she huffed in mock disgust at his shamelessness. At times she grew tense over Demoness Ji’s surprise attack and her words. The stiffness she had felt at him deliberately sitting beside her gradually faded away.
She also believed that the yin and yang sharing of the Chaos remains was real, while the follow-up about "yin and yang uniting, each supplying what the other lacks, so that Chaos becomes one again" was Demoness Ji talking nonsense. But at some critical juncture, Demoness Ji would most likely need her junior brother’s help, and that was where the danger lay.
Once he had no more use to her, Zheng Zhuxi doubted how much "sibling affection" Demoness Ji would have left. She’d probably strike without mercy.
After a long while, Ding Songyan finally got to how he met Jiang Lanting, and he warned his senior sister to watch out for Yin-Yang Order members pretending to be women to trick her.
Zheng Zhuxi’s starry eyes widened, and she asked in disbelief, "All Yin-Yang Order disciples are both yin and yang in one body, both female and male?"
"It depends on their realm. If it’s not congenital, it seems you need a perfected Great Proliferation Realm to have both, and the extra side still can’t produce offspring. For that, you have to enter the Dharma Realm." Ding Songyan summarized what Young Master Jiang had told him.
Zheng Zhuxi thought it over for a while, then smiled with pursed lips.
"When I read the Secret Classic of Mountains and Seas, I wondered which sect had inherited the Xiangshe. I never expected it to be the Yin-Yang Order. Young Master Jiang sounds like an interesting person."
She didn’t mock them, nor did she find such a condition disgusting. Instead, she said softly with a sigh, "It must be hard for them to accept themselves, and they’re often torn and in pain. If the secret got out, most people would think of them as monsters. It can’t be easy for Yin-Yang Order disciples."
"I don’t know about the others, but Young Master Jiang seems to be in his own skin, getting the best of both worlds and doing whatever he pleases," Ding Songyan muttered.
Zheng Zhuxi gave her junior brother a puzzled look. Something about that remark felt odd.
Ding Songyan cleared his throat.
"What I mean is, when facing Yin-Yang Order disciples, you shouldn’t think of them as pitiable or feel sympathy for them. That would only make them feel like they’re sick. It’s best to treat them normally."
"That makes sense." Zheng Zhuxi also felt that was the best attitude.
Ding Songyan went on, getting to the part where Jiang Lanting, to repay the help he’d received, gave him a Tiger-Leopard Dragon-Concealing Pill.
Because her cousin was Prince Kang, Zheng Zhuxi had heard of the Tiger-Leopard Dragon-Concealing Pill and knew what it did. In the past, she’d have been sure to tease her junior brother a bit, but now, with the words on the tip of her tongue, nothing seemed quite right to say. She could only stay silent and pretend she didn’t know about it.
"Someone at the perfected Dharma Realm only needs two days to absorb the medicine’s power. I was thinking about Twelfth Madam’s guidance, so the moment the two days were up, I went to the Cheap Wine Shop. While we were discussing martial arts, a passerby suddenly collapsed in a hidden spot in the back alley..." Ding Songyan told the story of Wu Zheng, even boasting about how he’d used the cover story that a perfected Great Proliferation Realm needed seven days to digest the Tiger-Leopard Dragon-Concealing Pill to keep his reputation clean.
Zheng Zhuxi rolled her eyes at her junior brother. She could already imagine what was being said on every street corner.
She had originally worried this would hurt Twelfth Madam Luo, but from what her junior brother said, Twelfth Madam Luo seemed to have given up caring. Anyway, Luo Mingyin was a false name and her appearance was fake too. Whether she returned to her original identity or took on another face and another name to keep tempering her heart in the mortal world, the current rumors wouldn’t affect her.
Thank goodness Twelfth Madam Luo is so open-minded... Zheng Zhuxi breathed a sigh of relief and couldn’t help asking, "So which Supreme Master is Twelfth Madam Luo, really?"
"I have a rough guess, but I can’t tell you right now. It would blow her Name-and-Reality disguise and make it impossible for her to stay in the Flame Capital, and then Demoness Ji would come knocking," Ding Songyan said with a self-deprecating laugh. "Once the Flame Capital business is settled, I’ll tell you who she is."
Zheng Zhuxi tersely acknowledged and didn’t press further. She knew what mattered most.
Ding Songyan went on to what happened after he and Twelfth Madam Luo took Wu Zheng to the Phoenix Terrace Study, though he left out the exchanges that touched on the two of their pasts. That was Twelfth Madam’s privacy, and as for his own, he had no plans to share it for now. If he and his senior sister really did become a couple one day, he’d only bring it up when the moment called for it. He’d rather reveal his transmigration secret than talk about that.
Who talks about their exes with their current partner?
When she heard that her junior brother had been holing up in the Cheap Wine Shop’s back courtyard to hide from Demoness Ji, and that Twelfth Madam Luo had personally admitted to being a Heaven-Man, Zheng Zhuxi silently sighed over how hard he had it.
Who doesn’t want a good reputation?
But sometimes, to stay alive, you have to make sacrifices.
How often can you have it both ways in this world?
Ding Songyan continued with scaring off Demoness Ji, Hu Chaohui turning into a Two-Faced, subduing Ge Heng for the time being, helping Jiang Lanting fend off another assassination, the suspicion of He Jin and others being controlled by Ji Hanyi, and the Demon Sovereign hiding in Shilin Temple.
By the end, Zheng Zhuxi’s heart was racing.
My junior brother has only been in the Flame Capital for a little over a month, and he’s been through all that?
She suddenly understood Twelfth Madam Luo’s remark from earlier: "He does have a real knack for causing trouble."
Not a knack, an absolute talent... Even though she was on her junior brother’s side at heart, Zheng Zhuxi found herself involuntarily correcting Twelfth Madam Luo’s wording.
"That’s pretty much it." Ding Songyan had talked for the better part of an hour.
Zheng Zhuxi thought for a moment, then said with heartfelt emotion, "The Demon Seed is terrifying, but I think heart demons, no, the human heart is even more terrifying..."
"Yes, the human heart is the thing you can never guard against," Ding Songyan agreed.
He and Twelfth Madam Luo had exchanged similar thoughts on their way back from Shilin Temple.
Zheng Zhuxi, still uneasy, asked once more,
"Can Tan Guanchan tell that you were using Candlelight Sword Intent to guard your mind back then?"
If he could, they would have to prepare early.
"No," Ding Songyan said calmly. "I asked Twelfth Madam Luo about it. She said Tan Guanchan struck from afar through Faxin’s heart demon, and she destroyed that heart demon on the spot and cut its link to Tan Guanchan, so Tan Guanchan can’t know the specifics. Besides, my Candlelight Sword Intent held its ground deep in my sea of consciousness and never counterattacked. Unless that heart demon had invaded that deep, he couldn’t have detected it. As for where Twelfth Madam’s martial arts originated from, Tan Guanchan may have picked up on that."
Ding Songyan hadn’t gone into detail about what Twelfth Madam Luo did when she made her move.
Zheng Zhuxi let out a breath. Her eyes, which seemed to hold starlight, turned to Ding Songyan, and after a moment’s thought she said, pained and worried,
"Junior Brother, you didn’t need to take such a risk. You didn’t have to provoke Tan Guanchan right then..."
She could see the stubbornness in his bones, and where it came from.
Ding Songyan shook his head and smiled faintly.
"Senior Sister, you must have guessed that I have a few other secrets. Sooner or later I’ll face Tan Guanchan, and not just for Master’s sake. It was settled from the day I entered the Brightnight Sect instead of falling into the unorthodox path.
"I won’t be reckless enough to take him on right now, but if I get a chance to ruin his plans, I’ll definitely try. That slows his rise and keeps the world from turning into a place better suited to him. It also tempers my own mind, so he can’t become a weakness in my spirit, to the point that I wouldn’t even dare to cause him trouble even when hiding behind a Heaven-Man.
"Traveling the jianghu isn’t about traveling for its own sake. It’s about gaining experience and being tempered. The Flame Capital affair is my best whetstone."
Seeing Ding Songyan’s resolve, Zheng Zhuxi felt some of the questions she hadn’t been able to sort out grow a little clearer. She said solemnly, "I need to get strong fast too."
Ding Songyan didn’t bring it up again. He stood, dug a green porcelain bottle out of one of the boxes, and handed it to Zheng Zhuxi.
"Senior Sister, this is the Jade Bloom Body-Nourishing Pill Jiang Lanting gave me as his second thank-you. You must have heard of it. I thought right away that it would suit you."
Zheng Zhuxi’s gaze softened at once, and a faint smile touched the corners of her mouth. She didn’t refuse. She took the porcelain bottle and looked at it for a few breaths, then said, "Why not give it to Twelfth Madam Luo? You’ve troubled her so much, you should show some appreciation. We can’t be lacking in courtesy.
"You can find me another one later."