“Xue Qilin, you are the second person to touch my tail as well as the second person to nonchalantly ask me if I have something on my mind.”
“Ah?”
Beiming Youyu’s sudden remark caught Xue Qilin a little by surprise. Without caring about whether Xue Qilin can keep up or not, Beiming Youyu stated, “The first person is Qi Guiyuan, while you are the second.”
When she uttered Qi Guiyuan’s name, an indescribable emotion streaked across Beiming Youyu’s cheeks.
Xue Qilin, who accidentally caught this change, couldn’t help but make an inappropriate conjecture, guessing that there may be some feelings between Qi Guiyuan and Beiming Youyu.
Xue Qilin once heard Qi Qiqi mention that there is a deep friendship between Beiming Youyu and Qi Guiyuan.
However, Qi Qiqi doesn’t seem to be clear about the details. When she asked, the other party only answered with “I don’t know”. At that time, Xue Qilin began to suspect that there may be that kind of secret relationship between them. Now that she heard Beiming Youyu confess that Qi Guiyuan is the first person to touch her tail, she became even more suspicious.
“Tsk tsk! So that old man is the first person to touch your tail?”
Xue Qilin crooked her mouth into a meaningful smirk. This looks like an expression a rogue would make when seeing a beautiful woman.
“…”
Noticing Xue Qilin’s expression, Beiming Youyu, who wanted to say something, immediately closed her mouth.
“Hey hey! Why aren’t you speaking?” Xue Qilin urged with a mischievous smile, “Go on, speak. You and that old art, is there something… he-he.”
Beiming Youyu sneered, freed her tale from Xue Qilin, and mover it to in front of her face.
“Nosy.”
“Ah? Why are you like that? You spoke first, yet others aren’t allowed to make questions? Isn’t that too much? It’s like I having an itch that you can’t scratch.”
Xue Qilin complained discontentedly.
Phecda agreed with Xue Qilin, “Yes, yes, Qilin is right!”
“No one told you to be invested in it.”
Seeing that Beiming Youyu looks like she doesn’t want to mention Qi Guiyuan again, Xue Qilin frowned and murmured, “How boring!”
When she heard this complaint, Beiming Youyu looked at Xue Qilin coldly. But the latter caressed her tail again as if nothing happened.
Consequently, Beiming Youyu was stunned, and a “how can there be someone so shameless?” expression appeared on her face. Pretending not to see anything, Xue Qilin hummed some unknown tune.
“In any case, what do you mean by “are here”? You don’t mean that all the sects are here, right?!”
All of a sudden, Xue Qilin brought up the topic from before and made a guess about the meaning of Beiming Youyu’s words.
Not the least bit discomforted by the sudden change of topic, Beiming Youyu gave an answer straight away, “– are two other.”
“Two other?”
Xue Qilin, who still doesn’t understand her meaning, first asked, and then frowned and complained, “Beiming Little Fish, I don’t mean to rebuke you! But can you speak a bit more directly? You often leave things out when you speak! To speak in such a hard to comprehend way… are you Laozi [1]?”
“Xue Qilin, sometimes you are so stupid that it makes one’s blood boil.”
Beiming Youyu sighed wearily, her words filled with helplessness.
“I mean that there are two other people who can match me.
Wait, what did she say? Xue Qilin was shocked.
“Don’t tell me…”
“That’s right.”
Beiming Youyu closed her eyes.
“– two other Grandmasters are here.”
The voice that broke into Xue Qilin’s ears and reached her heart is concise and powerful, exuding an unquestionable dignity.
“What?” Xue Qilin was greatly alarmed, “Is this a get together –?”
Beiming Youyu’s tail ejected at once and covered Xue Qilin’s mouth, making it so the latter cannot finish her words.
“Don’t say it. Others might hear you, causing a panic.”
Beiming Youyu stared at Xue Qilin and threw such reproach her way, displeased.
“People here don’t know that two other Grandmasters are here — no, most people don’t know that I’m here, do you understand?”
Xue Qilin nodded with wide open eyes. Seeing her nod in agreement, Beiming Youyu slowly moved her tail away.
On the surface, there are three known Grandmasters — the Hua Dynasty’s “Moonlight Omnia” Beiming Youyu, the Western Regions’ “Asura’er” Jialan [2], and the Northern Kingdom’s “Lone Silverblue Wolf” Cang Lin.
Except for the Northern Kingdom’s Cang Lin, Xue Qilin has met two of the three Grandmasters. The first one is obviously Beiming Youyu sitting beside her, while the other one is Jialan, with whom she had a conflict in the Martial Demon Realm.
If Beiming Youyu’s words are true, then she will probably soon be able to see Cang Lin’s face.
Although she was momentarily surprised that all three Grandmasters were attracted by mechanism arts, but on second thought, Xue Qilin feels that if mechanism arts are as powerful as she imagines them to be, then the Northern Kingdom and the Western Regions would naturally want to get a share. As such, it isn’t strange for them to gather here.
After all, once the interests between states are involved, Grandmasters are likely to take the stage as a form of deterrence. This kind of conduct is not driven by those in power, but by their sense of patriotism.
However, Xue Qilin thought of question, which she subsequently asked, “You just said that others don’t know that you are here… really?”
“With he exception of people from the Spirit Moon Valley and you.”
“But…” Xue Qilin pointed to Beiming Youyu and muttered, “You’re just sitting here nonchalantly! Won’t others notice you like this?”
Beiming Youyu fell silent.
Through this reminder, Xue Qilin thought that the other party realized that she had been exposed and thus fell silent.
As she entertained such speculation, Xue Qilin’s eyes suddenly widened.
— the thing that should have been reflected in her eyes was gone.
All of a sudden, Beiming Youyu disappeared — her petite figure silently turned into a puff of smoke and disappeared like steam.
“Woah, Older Sister Little Fish is gone!” Phecda exclaimed.
“Eh, Little Fish?”
Xue Qilin stood up and looked around in astonishment.
However, Beiming Youyu didn’t enter her eyes.
What’s going on? How did she leave? Xue Qilin can’t sense the due fluctuations of true qi.
[1] – Laozi