Spectating the Angsty Romance of the Master and Disciple from the Sect Next Door Chapter 20

Xie Huaixue looked at the steamed buns in her hand. A momentary flicker of distraction appeared in her expression. Her gaze slowly moved upwards, meeting Li Jin’an’s dark, bright eyes, and she answered with a non-sequitur:
“Is that steamed bun shop still open?”
Li Jin’an placed the paper bag on the table, took out a bun, and lowered her head to take a few bites. She didn’t really want to answer the question, but when she looked up, she found Xie Huaixue still watching her, so she simply gave up and spoke in a somewhat fierce tone. “It wasn’t open originally. I paid Granny Wang’s descendants to keep selling steamed buns.”
As she spoke, she glared at Xie Huaixue in exasperation. “Why do you have so many questions? If you’re not going to eat them, I’ll just feed them all to my second disciple.”
It was indeed open, but only for her. So much so that the Wang family’s ancestral teaching became that every few decades or centuries, an immortal would come to buy their steamed buns…
She just wanted to eat them herself, and brought them along with a tiny bit of sympathy and pity for Xie Huaixue. That’s why she came with the steamed buns.
Just a tiny bit.
After all, the Immortal Venerable’s experiences in the Heavenly Tome were so tragic, even the Sword Sovereign, her mortal enemy, couldn’t bear to look directly. It was a rare thought to not be in a hurry to infuriate the Immortal Venerable to death, otherwise, who would fight with her in the future?
Seeing that she had truly annoyed the other person, Xie Huaixue nodded. “I’ll eat them.”
Li Jin’an didn’t actually take the steamed buns away or refuse to let her eat them. She merely vented her resentment on the buns, as if each large bite she took was a bite out of Xie Huaixue. In three or four bites, a large meat-filled bun was gone.
With the buns gone, she felt refreshed, and her mood lightened.
Compared to her, Xie Huaixue ate very delicately, her expression serious. It didn’t look like she was eating a three-copper coin meat bun from the common folk, but rather meticulously savoring a top-tier delicacy.
Seeing that Xie Huaixue valued the steamed buns she bought so much and didn’t mention anything about their past related to the buns, Li Jin’an felt slightly satisfied. This was more like it.
Knowing someone for twelve hundred years meant there were too many old memories between them. Whether good or bad, when recalling the past, the other person would inevitably appear in those scenes.
Granny Wang’s steamed buns were one of them.
As a child, Li Jin’an was a clingy little bun who couldn’t be left alone and always needed company. At that time, Xie Huaixue hadn’t cultivated the Emotionless Dao, Li Jin’an wasn’t yet a sword cultivator, and there weren’t so many insurmountable one-sided obstacles between them. Li Jin’an still loved clinging to Xie Huaixue.
Because children always like to play with older children, Xie Huaixue was a year older than her, beautiful, and much more mature. When she couldn’t cling to her Master or Yinyue Monarch, she would reluctantly cling to Xie Huaixue for a bit.
When Li Jin’an grew a bit older and realized her foolishness, she stopped being so clingy. But at the time, she was so clingy you couldn’t pry her off.
Sometimes Yinyue Monarch would take Xie Huaixue out alone, and Jijin Sword Sovereign found her too annoying. Li Jin’an felt so wronged that her world caved in. Moreover, she was so difficult when throwing tantrums that she was truly hard to coax. When Xie Huaixue returned to the Dao Sect, she would buy the best steamed buns from the town at the foot of the mountain as an apology. Eventually, Li Jin’an became fixated on this one steamed bun shop, refusing to eat any others.
When Li Jin’an grew up, she “kicked off” Xie Huaixue and went to buy steamed buns herself, adamantly refusing to let Xie Huaixue profit from the difference in price.
Looking back now, Yinyue Monarch taking Xie Huaixue out alone was probably to find a way to suppress the cold poison in Xie Huaixue’s body.
To Li Jin’an, this past was incredibly embarrassing, so she rarely mentioned it to others, especially in front of Xie Huaixue, her mortal enemy, fearing she would weaken her Sword Sovereign aura and be looked down upon by the Immortal Venerable.
As she ate the steamed bun that tasted just like in her memories, Xie Huaixue couldn’t help but feel as if the little red-robed girl with her hair in twin buns was right before her eyes. After a momentary daze, only the red-robed Sword Sovereign, scowling, remained opposite her.
The scowling Sword Sovereign crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes and squinting at her. She asked in an unkind tone, “What are you looking at?”
Xie Huaixue withdrew her gaze and sighed softly, “I’m merely sighing with emotion that after a thousand years, something from the mortal realm still remains unchanged.”
As the pale moon was caressed, a thousand years passed in the mortal world.
Unlike cultivators whose lifespans are imbued with cinnabar and mercury, seemingly able to live until the end of time, mortals only live for a short hundred years, and a thousand years is enough time to erase the traces of a person’s existence. A moment’s carelessness and a family line could completely die out. Even if passed down through generations, it would have been through many. She didn’t know how Li Jin’an managed to find Granny Wang’s descendants to make the same steamed buns from a thousand years ago.
Li Jin’an pouted, “So sentimental. Isn’t it enough just to have something to eat?”
Like her second disciple, as long as it gets into her mouth, she wouldn’t bother to investigate what stories or origins lay behind it.
Xie Huaixue pressed her lips together and smiled, “It’s delicious. Still the original taste.”
She rarely showed excess emotion, let alone smiled. In that moment, much of her usual coldness and aloofness dissipated. The corners of her lips curved slightly upwards. Her overly fair skin was translucent and radiant, as if a divine statue on a high pedestal had suddenly been infused with a soul. Her gaze shimmered with brilliance as it moved.
The Immortal Venerable’s beauty was unparalleled in this era.
“Oh.” Li Jin’an replied indifferently.
She abruptly stood up and walked to the window, her back to the other person, to hide the corners of her lips that couldn’t help but turn up. But she couldn’t hide her bright red, burning earlobes. She said nonchalantly, “Oh right, everyone says you’re good at teaching disciples, so you might as well help me train mine too.”
Don’t let the Jijin Sovereign’s impatient and irritable demeanor in front of others deceive you, as if everyone owed her a spiritual vein. In truth, she couldn’t resist being praised. Once praised, her tail would wag sky-high.
It’s better now; no one runs up to the Jijin Sovereign to praise how beautiful the jade pendant on her waist looks today. But as a child, Yinyue Monarch truly used to praise her this way. The first thing upon meeting was to praise Li Jin’an from head to toe, and then they would be rewarded with a proud young Sword Sovereign, whose face was redder than her clothes and whose chin was held high.
Although Qingxiao Immortal Venerable didn’t praise as comprehensively or with as rich a vocabulary as her Master, an occasional word could still achieve the same effect, resulting in an adult Sword Sovereign whose ears were burning crimson.
Xie Huaixue didn’t speak.
Li Jin’an furrowed her brow, her lips turned down, and she turned to look at her. She scoffed, “It doesn’t matter if you’re unwilling. Who told me I have a handle on you?”
It was indeed unkind to make Xie Huaixue teach six disciples all at once. Not to mention the three strange little brutes from Qingxiao Peak, even her own disciples each had their own headaches: the eldest was a sullen block, the second had a tangled mind, and the third loved clinging to her senior sister…
But, she was doing this for Xie Huaixue’s own good!
No matter how troublesome her disciples were, they were still normal children. They wouldn’t defy or offend their superiors.
Letting Xie Huaixue see what normal disciples should be like would also help her be more mindful and raise her vigilance against abnormal disciples, lest she unknowingly fall into the trap of those three brutes.
She hoped Xie Huaixue wouldn’t be ungrateful and waste her earnest efforts.
Xie Huaixue’s eyelashes fluttered slightly. When her gaze touched upon Li Jin’an’s earlobes, she quickly averted her eyes, as if a pebble had been dropped into a lake, causing ripples. “I’m not unwilling.”
Li Jin’an looked left and right. She didn’t find any unwillingness on Xie Huaixue’s face, but she inexplicably felt that her expression was somewhat reserved. For a moment, she didn’t know whose ears were burning red. She said suspiciously, “Good that you know what’s good for you.”
Before she could observe anything amiss, Xie Huaixue stood up and walked to the outer room.
Li Jin’an was a few steps slower and heard the voices of Qingxiao Peak and Jijin Peak disciples greeting in unison.
“Disciple greets Master / Junior greets Immortal Venerable.”
“Rise.”
“Thank you, Master / Immortal Venerable.”
Li Jin’an leaned against the doorframe, her arms crossed, her posture languid and casual, her fingertip resting on her lips. The corner of her eye flicked up, a hint of novelty passing through her eyes. This was the first time she had seen Xie Huaixue in her capacity as a Master.
Just by sitting there, cool and detached, her tone indifferent, without needing to deliberately release any spiritual pressure, she made the six juniors below her not dare to look up directly. Even Tan Yanyi and Ling Qiu, who could space out when scolded by their own master, stood docilely, paying full attention to the Immortal Venerable’s words.
The Jijin Sovereign, whose fierce temper was as renowned as her sword dao, raised a hand to her brow in confusion. Doesn’t she look fierce?
Why are they more afraid of Xie Huaixue? What’s so scary about Xie Huaixue?
After Xie Huaixue briefly inquired about Ning Zhufeng’s condition and answered Lan Ci and Zhong Fei’s cultivation questions, she arranged for them to take the youngest disciple to soak in medicinal baths to strengthen her physique, and instructed them to protect the youngest disciple seven days later, so that she could draw spiritual energy into her body and formally embark on the immortal path.
Ning Zhufeng was naturally incredibly disappointed. She looked at Xie Huaixue with soft, hesitant, yet hopeful eyes. “Master…”
Compared to her two senior sisters, with whom she couldn’t get along at all, she hoped Xie Huaixue would personally guide her in drawing spiritual energy into her body.
She had painstakingly plotted to join the Dao Sect. Her biggest goal was to get close to this human Immortal Venerable. If this goal couldn’t be achieved, she might become a discarded pawn, driven by a poisonous curse in her soul by her Demon Lord father to forcibly destroy important forbidden grounds of the Dao Sect. Therefore, she was unwilling to give up any opportunity to get closer to the Qingxiao Immortal Venerable.
Lan Ci stepped forward, like a typical senior sister who was deeply concerned about her junior sister, and said firmly, “Please rest assured, Master. This disciple will certainly take good care of junior sister, supervising her medicinal baths every day so it won’t delay her drawing spiritual energy into her body.”
Zhong Fei was a step too slow. She didn’t dare show her jealousy towards Lan Ci, and lowered her head respectfully, saying, “This disciple will also urge junior sister to soak in the medicinal baths on time.”
Ning Zhufeng’s eyes darkened for a moment, but quickly returned to her usual timid demeanor. “Thank you, Senior Sister and Second Senior Sister. Feng’er will diligently take her medicinal baths, not missing a single day, so I can become a cultivator as soon as possible and never bring shame to Master!”
Xie Huaixue nodded lightly, signifying her agreement.
Li Jin’an, still leaning crookedly against the doorframe, swept her gaze around, then cast a disdainful look at her own bewildered-looking disciples, and secretly let out a breath of relief.
In the past, Li Jin’an was very blunt to other people’s emotions. Unless it was someone she was extremely familiar with, like Jijin Sword Sovereign, Xie Huaixue… otherwise, she wouldn’t pay attention to such subtle changes at all.
Ever since the Heavenly Tome appeared in Li Jin’an’s mind, she felt as if she had discovered a new world.
From a bystander’s perspective, it was very easy to see the schemes and subtleties in Xie Huaixue’s three disciples’ minds.
Ning Zhufeng wanted to get close to Master and have Xie Huaixue personally guide her in drawing spiritual energy into her body. Lan Ci saw through her intentions and interrupted her with a clear, resonant voice.
Zhong Fei, however, was a bit less astute. She thought Lan Ci was merely trying to show off in front of Master and also chimed in.
Ning Zhufeng, with no other recourse, instead shifted her cultivation efforts to not disgracing Xie Huaixue, as if her drawing spiritual energy into her body was solely for Xie Huaixue’s sake, subtly deepening her relationship with Xie Huaixue.
Without a single flash of blade or glint of sword, a few words had already constituted several moves.
Truly a grand play!
Li Jin’an finally understood what the disciple rivalry described in the book looked like.
Her eyes seemed to have been tempered with tiny, scattered starlight. Her gaze was bright, and she watched with great enthusiasm.
This trip was truly worth it!