Luo Hongxia and Elder Zhu Hong froze in place, utterly at a loss.
Elder Zhu Hong admitted she was fond of children, but she had never imagined that so many little kids would suddenly appear in the Immortal Palace.
"Did someone cast a time-reversal spell that turned the Immortal Palace back to the past?"
"No, returning to the past wouldn't look like this."
The palace disciples varied greatly in age, yet every single one of them had turned into a young child. Time reversal couldn't explain that.
What on earth had happened?
The two of them had only been away for three days—how had the Immortal Palace become so unrecognizable?
"Are you... Lu Yang?" Luo Hongxia asked hesitantly. Even shrunk down this small, the boy still bore Lu Yang's original features.
"Not right now," Lu Yang firmly denied. He hastily gathered his clothes from the ground and wrapped them tightly around himself.
"Now I'm Lu Yang."
The bare-bottomed kid standing out in the ice and snow a moment ago had nothing to do with him.
"What is going on here?"
"I don't know either! We just ate some roast rabbit, went to sleep, and woke up like this." Lu Yang was entirely innocent, utterly baffled as to how he had turned into a child out of nowhere.
"Fairy, stop sleeping! Wake up!" Lu Yang shook the Immortal Fairy, who was lying on her bed of snow with her fingers laced over her chest.
In sleep, the Immortal Fairy was breathtakingly beautiful—so gorgeous that Lu Yang could overlook all her past antics and acknowledge that she truly deserved to head the Ten Ancient Beauties.
Yet this was hardly the time to admire how pretty she was!
The Immortal Fairy was sleeping even more deeply than Lu Yang had been, equally reluctant to wake.
When she finally stirred and saw Lu Yang looking like a young child, she perked up instantly.
"Oh! Why did you get so small?"
The Immortal Fairy sat bolt upright, excitedly sizing up Lu Yang's height against her own. Standing before her, Lu Yang barely reached her waist.
"You've truly become Little Yangzi now!"
"Didn't I come here to ask you for a diagnosis, Fairy?" Lu Yang pleaded for help.
"Aiya, being this tiny suits you quite nicely!" The Immortal Fairy giggled as she crouched down and patted his head, showing not the slightest intention of actually helping.
...
In the outside world, the palace disciples woke one after another. Screams erupted in succession, yet their voices were so soft and childish that they sounded like a chorus of crying toddlers. Lu Yang felt as though he had wandered into a kindergarten—and that he was the only little adult in the room, neither crying nor throwing a tantrum.
Luo Hongxia and Zhu Hong rushed about, soothing one disciple to stop screaming only to turn right around and soothe another. Their bodies weren't exhausted, but their spirits certainly were.
Elder Zhu Hong felt that perhaps she didn't need the water of the Twin River after all.
"Senior Brother Lu Yang, what happened to us...?"
Lan Ting bashfully bundled herself in her oversized clothes, even wrapping her head so that only half her face showed.
Lu Yang pressed a hand to his forehead. *Junior Sister Lan, please don't look at me like that, as if something happened between us last night.*
*Combined, the two of us barely add up to an adult right now—what could have possibly happened?*
Fortunately, the palace disciples were not real children. Accustomed to heading out on missions and handling major crises, they cried out once or twice upon waking and quickly regained their composure.
Even so, this was a sight none of them had ever witnessed before.
Hearing that trouble had broken out, the other elders hurried over.
Only the disciples had eaten the rabbit the night before; mindful of their status, the elders had not joined the lavish gathering.
"Junior Sister Yulu, take a look and see what happened here." Luo Hongxia summoned Elder Zhou Yulu, who was the most skilled in medicine; it was Elder Zhou who had treated Xue Shilou's bloodline affliction.
Elder Zhou Yulu's eyelids twitched at the sight of children covering the ground. Drawing upon her professional discipline as a healer, she composed herself, resisted the urge to record everything with an image-recording orb, and went around checking their pulses one by one.
"Poison? Doesn't seem like it... A tonic?"
"Could there have been something wrong with what they ate yesterday?" Luo Hongxia looked toward the demon rabbit skeleton resting on the rack.
"That shouldn't be. I inspected the demon rabbit before they ate it, and there was nothing wrong with it."
Even so, Zhou Yulu scraped a tiny piece of meat from the skeleton and immersed her divine sense into it, analyzing it thoroughly.
"The meat is indeed completely fine."
Lu Yang breathed a sigh of relief. As long as it wasn't his fault, that was all that mattered.
Suddenly, Elder Zhou noticed the charcoal in the pit, which looked rather unusual.
"Did they split a moon laurel tree and burn it as firewood?"
She drew a piece of charcoal into her hand with a flick of spiritual energy and immersed her divine sense into it to analyze its composition, finally pinpointing the source of the trouble.
"There's something wrong with the moon laurel tree. Someone tampered with it, adding several substances that have the effect of shrinking a body."
"When burned, the fragrance of the moon laurel masked the other scents, so anyone who breathed it in succumbed without even realizing it."
In fact, smoking the rabbit meat with the wood had also deposited those substances onto the food, though only onto the surface meat; the flesh clinging to the bone had remained untouched.
Lu Yang sucked back the breath he had just exhaled in relief. In the end, it still had something to do with him.
"Will Xiao Lan and the others be all right?" Luo Hongxia asked, most concerned about their well-being.
"It's nothing serious. Their bodies have simply shrunk; leave them alone for a few days and they will return to normal on their own."
"They'll probably recover before I can even formulate an antidote."
"As long as it's not dangerous, that's a relief."
"Palace Master, the issue right now isn't Martial Niece Lan and the disciples, but the moon laurel trees."
Elder Zhou pointed at the skeletal remains of the demon rabbit and said gravely, "That demon rabbit grew massive because it ate mooncakes filled with osmanthus blossoms, which led to the discovery that Zhang Guihua's moon laurel tree had been tampered with to produce an enlarging effect."
"Now, we've found another moon laurel tree with a shrinking effect."
"Who on earth is meddling with the moon laurel trees, and just how many of them have been affected?"
Luo Hongxia's expression turned grim. This was indeed a grave matter.
The Immortal Palace was protected by defensive formations that kept outsiders from entering. This had to be the work of someone inside the sect!
*Fairy, do you know who did this?*
The Immortal Fairy shook her head. "No idea."
She wasn't the kind of person who lacked boundaries and kept her immortal sense trained on every corner of the Immortal Palace all day long.
The matter of the moon laurel trees was important, but it wasn't the most urgent.
The most pressing matter at present was these little children.
"Lu Yang, why don't you head back to the guest quarters first?" Luo Hongxia suggested.
Lu Yang was the only male cultivator present, and the palace disciples, having shrunk into children, had clothes that no longer fit. With him standing there, they squirmed awkwardly and refused to move, terrified that Lu Yang might catch sight of something he shouldn't.
"Understood." Lu Yang naturally understood the boundaries between men and women.
Certain individuals, however, clearly had no concept of such boundaries—such as the Immortal Fairy.
Inside his spiritual space, the Immortal Fairy held Little Lu Yang up by the arms and spun him around in circles, chanting rhythmic "oohs" and "aahs" while the spiritual space rang with her cheerful laughter.
Lu Yang wore an expressionless deadpan, staring at her with dead-fish eyes as she played with him like a ragdoll.
"Fairy, men and women should maintain proper distance. Physical contact is improper," Lu Yang kindly reminded her, attempting to improve his treatment.
The Immortal Fairy crouched down, poked his forehead, and found him utterly delightful in this state, giggling, "What difference does man or woman make for a little shrimp like you!"
Chapter 1022