Chapter 9: Vicious

When Yi Xuefeng finished, he spread both hands toward Ning Yu, gazing at him pleadingly—one eye saying give it back, the other saying Qieyun Sword.

Ning Yu felt an ache starting behind his brows.

He and Lord Linfan, kindred in temperament, had been senior and junior in generation as well as close friends.

Before his Ascension, Linfan had entrusted him to look after Lin Fuyu, but the Savage Wilds had been thick with affairs these past years, and back then there were still those in the Righteous Path who deemed Devil Cultivators heretical evil. To avoid suspicion, he had seen Lin Fuyu only rarely.

Who could have guessed that a snow-white, adorable little dumpling of a child would grow into something so infuriating? Worse still, he couldn’t deal with Lin Fuyu the way he dealt with everyone else—with casual beatings and killing. No matter how angry he got, the boy was beyond his reach.

Seeing Ning Yu silent, Yi Xuefeng hastily waved his hands.

“Adoptive Father?”

Ning Yu walked straight past him without a glance, pretending not to see those beseeching eyes.

Yi Xuefeng fumed. I swallowed my pride and called him Adoptive Father all those times—how can he still be so unmoved?

Ning Yu preferred quiet and couldn’t be bothered to listen to Yi Xuefeng chattering nonsense at his ear, so he simply quickened his pace, left the boy behind, and went off to wander on his own.

Yi Xuefeng chased after him. “Sword Venerable! Sword Venerable Ning!”

Ning Yu ignored him completely, leaving him nothing but a cold, merciless back.

Yi Xuefeng hurried in pursuit, but the moment he drew near, a thick fog surged up out of nowhere, blotting out his view entirely.

A moment later the fog dispersed, and Ning Yu had vanished without a trace.

Yi Xuefeng drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to sense the Qieyun Sword’s location, but before he could work out anything at all, he suddenly felt a thread of spiritual power slicing toward him from afar.

His eyes flew open. At that shrill scream of parting air, he raised one hand and, a split second before the strike hit home, barely managed to block it with the dagger up his sleeve.

With a sharp clang of metal, the sword-light tore a hole in Yi Xuefeng’s sleeve. Reversing his grip, he drew the dagger out and, without so much as a blink, sent it sailing gracefully into the distance before the second sword-light arrived.

The Profound Iron Dagger smashed the Sword Qi apart midair, its momentum barely diminished, and whistled past the dense thicket to bury itself in a tree trunk.

Time seemed to freeze for an instant. A breeze passed, and the foliage the dagger had brushed suddenly rustled loose, whisked up into the air by the wind.

Where the dagger had struck, a young man stood beneath the tree, features soft to the point of androgyny, brows knit as he stared blankly at the long hair on his own shoulder.

The dagger had flown straight past his shoulder into the trunk. Off by a hair’s breadth, it could have opened his throat. Fortunately Yi Xuefeng still knew restraint: the dagger had sunk only three inches into the wood, and its fierce momentum had done no more than slice away half the young man’s long hair.

Yi Xuefeng walked over slowly. One glance and his heart sank. Missed. I was aiming for the sleeve, three inches below the armpit.

But he couldn’t let his guilt show now. Composed, he stepped forward and asked, “Who are you, and why did you attack me without warning?”

The young man stared numbly, feeling at his half-bald head, apparently still processing.

Yi Xuefeng didn’t rush him, considerately waiting in place for him to come back to himself.

After a long moment, the young man finally grasped the horrifying fact that half his head was bald. Clutching his chest, he nearly vomited blood, and roared, “Lin Fuyu! Y-you—what a vicious heart you have!”

Yi Xuefeng: “…”

Yi Xuefeng, deeply innocent: “You attacked me first without a word. I was merely returning fire. How is that vicious?”

The young man pointed at him, hand trembling. “You promised me we’d spar at the Training Grounds yesterday! You broke your word, and you still dare play the injured party crying first—Lin Fuyu, have you no shame at all?”

Yi Xuefeng: “…”

A spar?

He had no memory of any such thing, so he asked, ever so good-naturedly, “Spar over what? Is there still time?”

The young man ground his teeth. “The Beast Taming Arts! Hah—you clamored and begged to compete with me at beast-taming, swore up and down you’d beat me, then broke your oath the moment the time came! If you’d known, you could just have conceded from the start. Why play me like this?!”

Yi Xuefeng was rather baffled. Beast-taming?

Could it be Lin Fuyu went to the Forbidden Ground hoping to subdue a Vicious Beast specifically to compete with this boy?

Beixi only opened to disciples at seventeen. Proud to the bone, Lin Fuyu had taken an unconventional path to the Forbidden Ground—and suddenly everything fit.

The young man was still raging. “I waited for you at the Training Grounds a full day and night! Never mind your not showing—but you dared cut off my hair on purpose!”

Yi Xuefeng: “…”

A day and a night? Kid, are you stubborn or just missing a few marbles?

The young man looked about ready to faint from fury, so Yi Xuefeng offered, “Fine. Shall we spar now, then?”

Pulling the hood of his cloak up over his half-bald head, the young man asked through gritted teeth, “Do you even have a Spirit Beast?”

Yi Xuefeng shook his head. “No.”

“Then what exactly are we competing with?!”

Yi Xuefeng ventured, “Swords?”

Challenging a Beast-Taming Cultivator to a sword duel—what was the difference from challenging a Sword Cultivator to a medical contest?

But perhaps the boy had gone half-mad from waiting; after only a moment’s thought, he actually nodded and agreed.

Besides, Yi Xuefeng’s swordsmanship was equally mediocre—the two of them could hardly say which was worse—and given Yi Xuefeng’s ancient-monster age, it scarcely counted as bullying a child.

Following the seething young man toward the Training Grounds, Yi Xuefeng hesitated, then asked, “Young hero, what’s your name?”

The young man looked ready to spit blood again. “Ye Fangcao!”

Yi Xuefeng apologized at once. “My apologies—heroine.”

“I’m a man!”

“All right, all right. Male hero.”

Young people really do run hot-blooded, Yi Xuefeng thought. I’m half worried he’ll work himself to death before we even reach the Training Grounds.

Lin Fuyu had always been a loner who rarely spoke with anyone and skipped Morning Lessons daily. His rare appearance at the Training Grounds stunned every Cold Huai River disciple; word spread at a gallop, and spectators came running.

Ning Yu had been sitting by the lake, toying with the Qieyun Sword in his hand. His sharp ears caught someone running past behind him, chattering the name “Lin Fuyu.” One earful, and his brow instantly knotted.

A sword spar with a Beast-Taming Cultivator? Only Lin Fuyu’s temperament could produce this.

Ning Yu deliberated a long moment, then finally rose and followed.

By the time he reached the Training Grounds, Yi Xuefeng was locked in fierce combat with a young man on the field.

Ning Yu didn’t approach. Leaning against a tree, he narrowed his eyes at the proceedings.

The sword forms were scattered and sloppy, an utter disgrace to the art—Ning Yu could hardly bear to watch, and his brow drew tighter and tighter.

Looking closer, at the one sparring with Yi Xuefeng…

Hmm? Why was that boy bald like a monk?

Meanwhile, on the field, Yi Xuefeng was being driven steadily back by a wooden sword, retreating as he pleaded, “Young hero, calm down! I truly didn’t mean it—it’s just that I haven’t used a sword in years, and my aim is a little off…”

Before he could even finish apologizing, Ye Fangcao—now stripped of the remaining half of his hair—almost burst into loud, puppy-like sobs.

“Lin Fuyu! Prepare to die!”

All around, the watching youths looked at Yi Xuefeng with contemptuous, fearful eyes, whispering in clusters.

“Ye Fangcao is to attend the Immortal Grand Assembly in a few days. Going up like that, he’ll surely catch Sect Master Nan’s scolding. That Little Immortal Lord’s heart is truly vicious.”

“Strike a man but never his face; shave bone but never hair. Tsk, tsk.”

“How vicious, this Lin Fuyu.”

Gripping the wooden sword, Yi Xuefeng bent his supple waist and folded aside, barely dodging one of Ye Fangcao’s wild swings. Catching the spectators’ chatter from beyond the grounds, his lips twitched. He felt wronged beyond words.

Cold Huai River’s youths were too well-bred to even curse properly. Back and forth, all they could say was “vicious.”

Even Yi Xuefeng was starting to feel his heart really was vicious. He apologized in earnest once more. “I’m sorry, I truly didn’t mean it. How about you shave my hair too? Then we’ll be even.”

At those words, Ye Fangcao’s hands began to shake.

Yi Xuefeng marveled inwardly. One mention of shaving his hair and the kid’s hands tremble with excitement. Ah, the passion of youth.

Yi Xuefeng had been sickly and disaster-prone as a child. His Shizun, from some source unknown, firmly believed that long hair accumulated blessings, and never permitted him to cut so much as half an inch. Whenever Yi Xuefeng found it tiresome and thought about trimming it, even his ever-gentle Shizun would scold him into a stupefied daze.

And so, right up to his death, Yi Xuefeng had kept floor-length hair. But having moved into Lin Fuyu’s shell, Yi Xuefeng had few such scruples left.

Comfort yourself, he thought. With looks like these, even bald I’d still be ten times prettier than any of you. Sort this mess out quickly, then think about getting Qieyun back.

Ye Fangcao trembled for a long while—trembled the hood right off his head—before finally managing, “You—how vicious you are!”

Yi Xuefeng: “…”

Vicious again?

The watching youths began whispering among themselves once more.

“How vicious, this Lin Fuyu!”

“Sect Master Song protects him so dearly—if she ever learned who shaved the Little Immortal Lord’s head, she’d shave theirs off with a sword.”

“Vicious. Simply vicious.”

Yi Xuefeng, the “so vicious” one: “…”

Ning Yu, not far away: “…”