"Where were we?"
Just as Lou Ji had said, the caustic beauty's poison art originated from her; within mere breaths after Xu Yuan realized he had been poisoned, he regained control of his body.
Straightening up, Xu Yuan casually brushed the fallen snow from the shoulder of the older sister before him while muttering to himself, "Oh right, we were just talking about how you planned to set up a scheme against my father after entering the capital. What happened after that?"
"What else could happen? I failed."
Lou Ji brushed aside Xu Yuan's pretense of dusting her shoulder, lightly scattering an invisible powder over the caustic beauty lying on the ground.
Upon contact with the torso, after a brief lull, the caustic beauty's corpse rapidly withered away amid the drifting snow.
Xu Yuan watched in silence, but a hint of astonishment soon surfaced in his eyes.
It was common knowledge that intelligence operatives carried corpse-melting powder to destroy evidence, but Xu Yuan suddenly realized that this woman was no ordinary mortal.
To render his current self unable to react, and to dare attempt controlling him right before Lou Ji, this middle-aged beauty was almost certainly an Origin Realm expert.
Yet this powder could actually...
"Spirit-Dissolving Powder," Lou Ji casually explained, looking at the empty human-shaped hollow in the snow. "It's harmless to the living. The powder reacts with Source Qi; channeling your cultivation even slightly will turn it to blue smoke..."
At this point, she paused for an instant, the corner of her lips curving slightly, and added:
"Oh, this was also concocted by that fourth sister of yours. Supposedly, it was meant to carve precise array groove patterns into scale armor. Later, I found it works on human bodies too, so I took it, renamed it, and started using it."
"..." Xu Yuan was speechless.
Inwardly sighing that without Little Fourth, this family would fall apart sooner or later, he watched Lou Ji walk away without the slightest lingering attachment.
Xu Yuan hurried after her, asking in a hushed voice:
"Sis, I heard that woman call you elder sister just now too?"
"And here I thought you weren't curious at all."
Lou Ji glanced sideways at Xu Yuan and said softly:
"Xinming... is a child I picked up over in Black Alley."
*Black Alley?*
Xu Yuan raised an eyebrow.
He had heard of this place because it was right here in Di'an City.
Just as most lords in this world possessed tender hearts and couldn't bear to look upon human suffering, the imperial capital of Great Yan was naturally no exception.
Because the dignitaries and nobility inside couldn't bear to see human suffering, they drove all those miserable wretches into Black Alley.
In plain human speech: the slums.
Just as Xu Yuan was thinking that caustic beauty was merely an SR character Lou Ji had pulled on a whim, Lou Ji murmured:
"I picked her up during my second year in the capital. At that time, she seemed to be only five years old, about this tall."
Saying this, Lou Ji lowered her gaze and gestured around her waist:
"Wrapped in a tattered cloth, shivering in the corner of a wall. Passing by, I caught sight of her and saw myself in her, so I gave her a piece of felt and some food I'd snatched from other beggars..."
"Wait." Xu Yuan interrupted Lou Ji's narrative for the first time tonight.
"Hmm?" Lou Ji looked slightly surprised, lifting her eyelids as she waited for Xu Yuan to speak.
Xu Yuan sorted through his thoughts.
First, upon entering the capital, Lou Ji had set her sights immediately on his father, planning a scheme to ingratiate herself with him. But now, why the sudden turn in the conversation to snatching food from beggars?
Weighing his words, Xu Yuan asked softly:
"Sis, didn't you say earlier that you had your sights on my father?"
"Yes." Lou Ji took it as a matter of course. "Didn't I just say I failed?"
"And after failing, you went to Black Alley?"
"..."
Lou Ji pondered for a moment, then chuckled softly, murmuring:
"True. One moment plotting against your all-powerful father, and the next reduced to fighting beggars for scraps—the contrast is indeed quite stark. But there was nothing for it."
Saying this, Lou Ji lifted her gaze to glance at the sky and said wistfully:
"The years spent wandering outside gave me an illusion back then. I always believed that as long as I set my mind to something, I was bound to achieve it. Looking back now, it was truly naive.
"In the beginning, my goal was indeed to approach and use your father, and I put in the effort. After many twists and turns, my scheme finally succeeded in the third month."
In the forty-third year of Yongqing, Lou Ji met Xu Yinhe alone for the first time.
Yet the approach she had painstakingly calculated was nothing more than a joke in his eyes.
In the tavern pavilion where the fragrance of tea overflowed,
The gorgeously dressed youth gently ruffled the little girl's dirty, messy long hair, his voice soft and smiling:
["Little girl, don't let there be a next time, okay?"]
Their first meeting ended after that half-joking sentence fell...
Speaking up to this point, Lou Ji's expression turned somewhat complicated.
Looking at his elder sister's profile, Xu Yuan felt curious:
"What, did your heart skip a beat?"
Lou Ji looked back and rolled her eyes at him:
"It skipped, all right. My heart beat so fast I nearly suffocated and passed out."
"Nervous?"
"Terrified."
"Huh? But from your description, my father didn't do anything to you."
"Hmm... it was probably innate instinct."
"Instinct?"
"Looking at him from afar, I didn't feel much. But the instant I met your father alone, only one thought remained in my mind: I had to get as far away from this person as possible. Because instinct told me that standing before me was not a human, but a monster."
Lou Ji spoke in a hushed voice, then let out a scoff and smiled radiantly:
"Looking at it now, my instinct back then wasn't wrong. The person standing before me at that time was indeed a monster."
Xu Yuan fell silent.
He didn't really understand metaphysics like intuition, but the thing seemed to genuinely exist.
While chatting on the way back to the capital, Old Man Luo had mentioned that when he had prepared to ambush and kill the plot protagonist in Jingjiang Prefecture, Qin Mo had briefly felt an urge to evade—it was just that he hadn't chosen to trust his instinct, so he died on the spot.
Thinking of this, a thought suddenly crossed Xu Yuan's mind.
Rather than intuition, this feeling might be better described as destiny or fortune, akin to karmic luck.
The treasure-hunting maiden trait of the Big Block of Ice had already been proven time and again, and the unlucky jinx trait of himself and the breast-binding princess was also plain for all to see.
Perhaps in this cultivation world, karmic luck truly existed.
It was just that present-day cultivators hadn't discovered or learned to utilize it...
His wandering thoughts ground to a halt here, for there was no need to dwell on it; pondering it would change nothing anyway.
Even if destiny and karmic luck truly existed, slaying the story's protagonist had already proven that karmic fortune was not absolute.
Man can triumph over heaven.
Thinking of this, Xu Yuan suddenly chuckled under his breath:
"Sis, speaking of my father like that—aren't you afraid I'll go tattle on you?"
Lou Ji shrugged nonchalantly:
"He wouldn't care about such things."
"True."
Xu Yuan nodded in agreement, then asked, "Still, I don't think my father would just let you walk away like that."
With his father's cultivation, there was no way he couldn't see Lou Ji's talent for cultivation.
Furthermore, a mere nine-year-old girl who could methodically scheme for three months just to approach him and actually succeed—with an SSR character jumping into one's pockets like this, had it been Xu Yuan, he probably would have taken her under his wing on the spot.
Lou Ji's ensuing explanation set Xu Yuan's doubts to rest.
Xu Yinhe had indeed noticed the little girl named Lou Ji, but he had also seen her terror toward him, so he simply let nature take its course without forcing anything.
Leaving her to fend for herself outside: if she turned out capable, that would be best; if she died halfway, it would only prove that her capacity reached no further.
And during that period of being left to roam freely, Lou Ji was naturally forced to go to Di'an City's notorious Black Alley, where she took in the girl named Xinming and also met Granny Long, who gave her shelter.
Chapter 514