Wu Youren had always been a person of few words, but that wasn't born of his nature; he simply couldn't afford to say much.
Even lying was a luxury for him. His best option was to leave things blank and let others fill in the details with their own imagination.
"A troublesome matter?" Cynthia pondered for a moment before finally offering, "If you stick close to Hong Da, nothing too serious will happen to you at Red Pine."
Wu Youren remained silent until they reached their shelter, only then speaking up. "Her background... I'm a native of Jin!"
Seeing him sit down on a boulder, Cynthia hesitated for a second, then sat down not far from him and spoke slowly.
"Do you still plan to return to Jin in the future?"
"Liang may be wonderful, but it isn't home," Wu Youren answered with certainty.
A mountain breeze blew past, carrying a faint trace of the young woman's scent to his nose.
Yet in the end, he still stated, "I hope the friendship between Liang and Jin will continue, but I still want to go home."
The female martial artist fell silent, taking a long while before speaking. "I don't want to leave Great Liang!"
*The way she put that... Did I make some misleading suggestion in the past?* Wu Youren was somewhat at a loss for words.
In the end, he forced a faint smile. "With the Guizu situation so severe, I have to consider whether I can even graduate smoothly from the Martial Academy first."
"I don't want to hear that," Cynthia said bluntly. "I can help you stay in Liang!"
Wu Youren pondered for a moment before replying, "I still have an older brother, a younger sister, and a mother back home."
"What about your father?" Cynthia asked instinctively. Given his family's likely decent background, wasn't that something usually sustained by a patriarch?
"He has already passed away," Wu Youren said, keeping it brief—in truth, his cheap grandfather had passed away too.
The living allowance he currently received was likely sent by his uncles just to keep him pacified.
However, he felt absolutely nothing for those relatives. The only ones his predecessor had cared about were those three immediate family members.
"Then I'm sorry," Cynthia apologized first, then ventured tentatively, "Couldn't you bring them over?"
Liang had vast land and a sparse population, so its immigration policy was quite relaxed.
Of course, those who came without any skills were destined to remain at the very bottom of society.
However, this Jin youth possessed decent potential and should easily cross the threshold to become a knight. With his family's heritage, there was no way he would do poorly.
"There are obstacles in the environment back home," Wu Youren said truthfully. "It's rather difficult."
Cynthia mulled it over and said, "I heard you have talent as an ability master? If you're willing to stay, I'm willing to help you."
After a brief pause, she added, "The Mirage Sea League is very powerful!"
*My irresistible good looks...* Wu Youren rubbed between his brows. "Say no more. I've been badly deceived before."
"I can bear you a child first!" Cynthia stated without hesitation.
Women of Great Liang were indeed fierce, daring to love and hate openly. "Though, it'll have to wait until after I advance to knight."
Going from knight to grand knight took time to accumulate, but when an apprentice knight wanted to attempt a breakthrough, it was best for a female martial artist not to become pregnant.
Wu Youren touched his forehead. "You don't even know my background. Let's wait until we graduate from the Martial Academy first."
"I can give myself to you right now," Cynthia said, completely unable to hit the brakes. "Though, you'll have to go wash up in the mountain spring first."
Even an admirer of good looks had her standards; he had just crawled out of a pile of dirt, reeking of soil!
Wu Youren twitched his lips. This body hadn't tasted meat yet!
At sixteen years of age, he had already experienced his share of restless midnight chills.
Regardless of what her true motives were, he didn't mind having a taste.
At worst, he could eat the sugar coating and spit out the cannonball!
However, the qi he had harvested inside his body hadn't been digested yet. If... well, when one got excited, it was easy to lose control!
The thought that he had not yet chosen his path made him feel all the more that he needed to exercise caution.
If he chose the Daoist sect, they had concepts like embracing yang and preserving yin, not to mention virgin boy cultivation.
When it came down to it, he was still just a kid, not yet of age, right in the crucial period of laying his foundation.
In the end, Wu Youren shook his head. "The Guizu situation is so severe, and we're assisting our instructor in completing a mission!"
For Cynthia to go this far was already throwing caution to the wind.
Seeing him still making excuses and dodging, she couldn't help feeling annoyed. "Tch, forget it then. As if I'm that desperate!"
*This kid!* Wu Youren shook his head between tears and laughter. "We're both young. What if the Guizu quietly sneak up on us... wouldn't that be humiliating?"
*Please get this straight, this is practically an active battlefield!*
Cynthia fell silent, taking a long while before saying, "Fine, it's my turn on night watch. Go get some rest!"
"Yeah, thanks for your trouble." Wu Youren said nothing more, turning and walking into the cave.
He felt a bit of wry awe inside. The old saying truly held water: once a woman went wild, there was really nothing left for a man to do!
With the female martial artist standing guard outside, but having gained a rich harvest today, his spirits were riding high, and for the moment, he truly couldn't fall asleep.
He tried releasing a sliver of experience points—bah, the qi he had harvested—and let it disperse into his muscles.
Then, trouble struck! Not only did the muscles of his lower abdomen twitch twice, but his temples also began to throb again!
Personally tested and confirmed effective, which meant he couldn't mess around like this anymore, or he wouldn't be able to suppress the urge to break through.
As for the Daoist methods, too many unexpected things could happen, making them unsuitable to attempt right now.
That meant the harvested qi had to be saved. Once an opportunity arose in the future, he could take his time figuring out how to use it.
Obtaining this fortuitous encounter had been extraordinarily difficult; who knew when the next one would come, or if there would even be another.
Over the past eight-plus years, his predecessor had lived under extreme financial strain, long accustomed to living within his means, while the soul that had crossed over was equally adept at careful calculation.
Still, since he couldn't sleep, he couldn't resist pondering the underlying mechanics behind this encounter.
It was easy to imagine that the azure armadillo's Guizu mutation was eight or nine parts out of ten tied to that treasure.
The treasure wasn't necessarily a Guizu relic, but since it could cause an azure armadillo to undergo Guizu mutation, it probably wasn't from a conventional path either.
Wu Youren didn't quite understand why an object capable of triggering Guizu mutation had helped him without causing any negative side effects.
This wasn't mere wishful thinking on his part; he had always been extremely cautious when coming into contact with abnormal phenomena.
Cynthia had also inspected him with the biguijue and confirmed that there was genuinely no issue, so it shouldn't just be his personal subjective assumption.
Yet what was the underlying logic behind these experience points?
Before he realized it, he drifted into a deep sleep. In a daze, he seemed to vaguely hear someone mentioning an important matter.
He felt it made immense sense and quietly committed it to memory.
Then, when he woke up, the sky was just beginning to gray with dawn. He felt refreshed and clear-headed, all his fatigue entirely swept away!
The quality of this sleep had been simply superb! He slowly got up, intending to sort out what he had gained in his dream.
Then he froze. *What on earth did I... dream about last night?*
It should have been a hypothesis that straightened out the logic, hovering right on the edge of his grasp, yet no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't remember it!
While he was wracking his brains in thought, Cynthia, outside the cave, heard his movements. "You're awake?"
"Yeah, come on in and rest," Wu Youren said as he stood up. "Did anything happen in the second half of the night?"
"Just a moment ago, three vehicles fled past," Cynthia replied. "They didn't look like they were from the Martial Academy."
"If they didn't report, just make a note of it," Wu Youren answered casually. Currently, those entering and leaving this area weren't just people from Red Pine.
The Martial Academy shouldn't go out of its way to take on outside troubles either; while carrying out their mission, their role ought to be mere observers!
However, Cynthia stared at him in astonishment.
After a pause, she pointed at her own nose and spoke in disbelief. "Are you... bossing me around?"
She wasn't genuinely throwing a tantrum, just caught off guard. In Liang, for a person from Jin to tell a local what to do...
The main issue was that their statuses were comparable. If one were a knight and the other a grand knight, it naturally would have been a different story.
"Alright, my apologies for being presumptuous," Wu Youren said after a brief pause, giving a casual reply.
He had indeed been somewhat hasty this time, largely due to the soul from the Blue Star... Whatever, a mistake was a mistake, why bother overexplaining?
Cynthia also came to her senses, realizing that she had inadvertently displayed a condescending attitude toward people from Jin.
She hurriedly said, "I didn't mean it like that. Let me explain."
"I didn't think you meant anything else," Wu Youren answered solemnly. "When it comes to understanding Liang, I'm indeed a bit lacking."
He said the words, but what he truly thought inside was known only to heaven.
He had no desire to dwell on this subject; some things only grew murkier the more one tried to explain them, so it was better to talk about something else.
"It's quite normal that some people aren't willing to tell us the truth. Last time I was near here, I even ran into people from the Intelligence Bureau."
Cynthia fell silent, pausing before speaking. "They asked over the intercom which Red Pine instructor was leading the team."
Hearing that, Wu Youren instantly fell silent. The other party hadn't even stopped, yet they already knew that people from the Martial Academy were guarding this post.
Cynthia said timidly, "I said Instructor Keli was scouting the Guizu situation overnight... We couldn't leave them without an explanation, right?"
Keli had left the mission post without authorization and had failed to fulfill his duty to notify Red Pine.
Even if there was no formal crime of dereliction of duty in the Martial Academy, his attitude was at least questionable. Fortunately, he had left two people behind.
"As long as we do our part, that's enough," Wu Youren said, unable to judge the nature of the matter himself. "Go get some rest."
"I'll just sleep for a little while," Cynthia said with a yawn, then asked hesitantly, "You're not angry about what I said earlier, are you?"
Wu Youren replied impassively, "After standing watch all night, who wouldn't have a bit of a temper?"
"As long as you're not angry." The corners of Cynthia's mouth curled up, and she skipped into the cave.
Wu Youren shook his head. This kind of life was truly enviable; young people ought to act like young people...
Reining in his thoughts, he took advantage of the broad daylight to quickly inspect the various traps and mechanisms.
Once the inspection was complete, he was about to find a vantage point to observe when, unexpectedly, his wristwatch vibrated.
It wasn't a notification sent by the Martial Academy, and the sender's identity was unknown—a rather peculiar occurrence.
There was only a single line of text:
"Beware of the female martial artist at your side!"
*What the hell... well, thanks a lot!* The Jin youth was genuinely left speechless.
Chapter 56