“Mmm… Ziyu, stop it. Let Big Brother sleep a little longer,” Xu Ziyan mumbled, wriggling again beneath the covers.
Ziyu?
Xu Zirong narrowed his eyes. Among the younger generation of the Xu family, there was only one person called Xu Ziyu, a member of a very minor collateral branch. And that Xu Ziyu was already in his twenties. He could hardly call Xu Ziyan ‘Big Brother.’
Silently adding yet another suspicious detail to his mental list, Xu Zirong stubbornly pushed against the great bundle of bedding. “Big Brother, if you don’t get up now, we’ll really be late! You don’t want me to be late on my first day of cultivation, do you?”
“Mmm… right… Ziyu mustn’t be late for school!” Xu Ziyan suddenly threw off the quilt and sat upright, still looking half-asleep. His silky black hair was an enormous bird’s nest.
Xu Zirong silently made a note of two more words: ‘going to school.’
“Uh… so it’s Zirong.” Xu Ziyan finally woke properly. Seeing his little brother, he opened his eyes wide, then climbed out of bed in embarrassment.
He had promised to take good care of his brother, yet every morning it was his little brother who had to wake him. What a loss of face… _(:з」∠)_
Yawning, Xu Ziyan picked up the clothes beside his bed and dressed. Meanwhile, Xu Zirong mentally underlined the name ‘Ziyu’ several times.
He felt that if he could discover the owner of that name, he might finally uncover why Xu Ziyan had changed so drastically.
Xu Ziyan moved quickly and had everything in order within minutes.
When the two left the room, Ruoshi was still kneeling outside, too afraid to stand. The moment she saw Xu Ziyan, she bit her lower lip and put on an aggrieved expression.
Xu Ziyan stopped short. “What happened here?” He remembered Ruoshi as a fairly clever maid. What was she playing at?
“Young Master… it’s this servant’s fault. I offended Young Master Zirong,” Ruoshi hastily explained.
A nearly invisible smile touched Xu Zirong’s lips. He was eager to see how Xu Ziyan would handle this.
“You offended Zirong?” Xu Ziyan looked stunned. As he remembered him, the newly arrived Xu Zirong was sensitive and starved for affection, obedient and rarely even angry. He could hardly imagine what Ruoshi could have said to provoke him.
He gave Ruoshi a cool glance. “In that case, go tell the steward that you are to be transferred out of Liushang Courtyard starting today.”
Ruoshi stared at Xu Ziyan with wide, disbelieving eyes.
She had spoken partly to appeal for sympathy, never expecting him to transfer her away without asking a single question. After Ruoqi had been moved, her status had plummeted and she could now barely scrape by in the laundry room. If Ruoshi suffered the same fate…
Her face went deathly white. She swayed and nearly fainted.
Xu Zirong was stunned too. He had never imagined Xu Ziyan would deal with Ruoshi without even asking what had happened.
He remembered Ruoshi’s cleverness had once made her second only to Ruoqi in Liushang Courtyard. Now Ruoqi was gone and Ruoshi was being expelled too. Between those two lifetimes, Xu Ziyan’s behavior was so different that Xu Zirong could hardly avoid suspecting something.
“Young Master…” Ruoshi opened her mouth to explain.
But Xu Ziyan had no patience to listen. He knew exactly what Ruoshi had done in the previous life. She had not yet done any of those things in this life, however, so he had not intended to target her.
Now that she had offended Xu Zirong, deliberately or otherwise, he did not want her staying in Liushang Courtyard. Learning from the previous life, he intended to keep people who had once bullied Zirong as far away from the boy as possible.
Of course, many had mistreated Xu Zirong merely to curry favor with the original Xu Ziyan. As his attitude toward the boy changed, theirs would change too. What remained were those who disliked Xu Zirong for their own reasons.
Taking Xu Zirong along, Xu Ziyan left cheerfully, paying no attention to Ruoshi, who still lay trembling on the ground. In this world where the weak were prey to the strong, he could not protect everyone. He could only look after the feelings of those he had chosen to shelter.
On the way to the training hall, Xu Ziyan did his best to pass on everything he knew from the original body’s experience. Today’s combat exercise would test him too: even with all the original owner’s memories, he might not be able to display the same fighting strength.
Xu Zirong listened to Xu Ziyan’s patient instruction with a smile throughout the journey, his inner feelings difficult even to describe.
The things Xu Ziyan was teaching him were naturally of no use to someone with his experience. But if he really were an eight-year-old child, then Xu Ziyan was sharing almost everything he could think of.
If this were the original Xu Ziyan and all his kindness were an act, the best chance to kill him would be during today’s exercise. With demonic beasts roaming the forest, anything might happen, and Zirong could be buried there without a trace.
But as he watched Xu Ziyan seriously explain every important point, he simply could not persuade himself that the man intended to kill him in the forest.
Xu Zirong sighed inwardly. This Xu Ziyan was becoming harder and harder for him to understand.
“Have you remembered everything?”
“Yes.” Xu Zirong nodded obediently. “I’ll stay right behind Big Brother the whole time.”
“Good. I’ll find some people to join us shortly. You’ll be safer that way.” Xu Ziyan patted his shoulder.
They soon climbed the mountain’s stone steps to the summit. In the training hall square, several dozen Xu disciples had gathered into groups, apparently forming teams on their own.
When Xu Ziyan appeared, most of them could not resist looking his way. Everyone knew he had attained the sixth level of Qi Refining. Being on his team would almost guarantee their safety.
Xu Ziyan knew he was popular, but he had no intention of joining just any group.
He observed the trainees closely and consulted his inherited memories. Soon he spotted three people standing together in a corner.
Bringing Xu Zirong with him, he approached a girl who was looking down. “May we join your team?”
The girl lifted her head, and Xu Zirong’s eyebrows twitched.
“You want to join us?” Her expression was cold as she examined Xu Ziyan critically.
Xu Ziyan let her scrutinize him. He knew she had to be surprised. The original owner and this girl had been sworn rivals. He would have teamed up with almost anyone else before asking her.
Xu Ziyan was different. He was an adult and would not abandon an excellent teammate over petty teenage jealousy. Ultimately, the original owner’s dislike of this girl had come from his conviction that he was the Xu family’s future hope and everyone should revolve around him. Although she was a little weaker, she refused to fawn over him like the others, which had offended his pride.
Xu Ziyan was neither an adolescent nor afflicted with middle-school syndrome. He certainly would not do something so foolish.
When choosing teammates, the stronger the better. A stronger team would keep Xu Zirong safer.
“What? You don’t want us?” Xu Ziyan arched an eyebrow, his expression faintly challenging.
The girl’s face darkened. “Of course we do. Why wouldn’t we? But…” She changed tack and stared directly at Xu Zirong. “We don’t want a burden.”
Xu Zirong’s expression turned slightly gloomy. He disliked her tone.
Xu Ziyan remained calm. “Either we join together, or we find another team. At the sixth level of Qi Refining, I don’t think I’ll have trouble finding one.”
The girl looked Xu Zirong over again and spoke with the two boys beside her. At last she agreed. “Fine. But make this clear: you’re responsible for protecting him yourself.”
“No problem.”
“Anything we hunt gets divided into four shares. You two count as one share.”
“Fine by me.”
“In that case…” The girl drew a deep breath. “Welcome to the team.”
Xu Ziyan smiled. He liked dealing with intelligent people. It saved time and effort.
No one had asked Xu Zirong’s opinion throughout the exchange. But that was because his cultivation was too low for him to have any right to speak.
Xu Zirong did not feel humiliated. The cultivation world had always respected strength above all else. It was perfectly normal for the others to treat him as though he were not there.
Soon afterward, Xu Mo ascended the platform before the training hall and addressed nearly a hundred disciples. “Today’s combat training is confined to the forest’s outer region. The river marks your boundary. No one may cross it into the second zone. Each of you must carry a protective jade pendant. If you encounter a demonic beast far beyond your strength, crush the pendant immediately to signal for help. An instructor will come to rescue you, but your result for today will be void. Return before sunset with a beast of your own cultivation level and you pass. If you catch anything extra, you can sell it to Yijintang for spirit stones as a little spending money.”
After speaking, he swept his gaze across the weaker disciples below and added, “If you lack the strength, don’t be an idiot and venture deep into the forest. Plenty of low-level demonic beasts live near the edge. If some fool encounters danger and can’t crush the jade pendant in time, they’ll die for nothing.”
Before he had even finished speaking, Xu Mo jumped down from the platform, entered a room, and activated a mechanism.