“呵呵… Senior Sister Gu, rest assured~ The position of Eldest Senior Sister will always be yours! I absolutely won’t compete with you~”
“I’m perfectly fine being your eternal second. Just let me return to the sect to pay respects to Master’s glory!”
Faced with Junior Sister Gu Qingying’s threat, the adaptable Gong Shangyu immediately chose to back down.
She fussed over her once little junior sister with a barrage of warm greetings, rubbing her shoulders and kneading her legs.
She was practically wearing the words,
“I’m your Senior Sister, your most loyal hawk and sycophant,”
written plainly on her face.
On the other hand, Gu Qingying was covered in goosebumps from this sudden shift and overt friendliness.
Her purple eyes brimmed with wariness and a silent
“Are you alright?”
kind of doubt.
Gong Shangyu acted as if she didn’t see any of it, continuing with her unsettlingly sweet voice.
“Senior Sister Gu~ You’ve always been clever and sharp. You definitely have a way to help me get back into the sect, right? Good Senior Sister~ Just help me this once, won’t you~”
Seeing the once arrogant Second Senior Sister now so thoroughly manipulated, Gu Qingying felt quite satisfied.
Recalling how Gong Shangyu had teased her earlier, she naturally felt a spark of revenge, eager to reclaim the upper hand.
“Hehe~ Help you? Why would I help you? What benefit would I gain by helping you get back into the sect?”
“My two-person world with Master is going so well. Why would I want to bring trouble on myself by inviting in a homewrecker like you who covets my Master?”
After exhausting all her kindness and still refusing to help, the little bastard Gu Qingying wouldn’t budge.
The faintly flattering smile on Gong Shangyu’s face instantly vanished without a trace.
She suddenly shook off Gu Qingying’s arm and spoke with an unusually cold, threatening tone,
“Fine, fine… Gu Qingying, since you’ve brought things to this point, don’t blame me for having no mercy.”
“Hmph! You won’t help me? Fine.”
Gong Shangyu’s lips curved into a nearly cruel smirk.
“You might be immune to my Time Stop, but Master isn’t. Nor are all those others in this world without systems!”
Raising her hand, she pointed at the frozen surroundings, her voice dark and ominous.
“Since you, Gu Qingying, refuse to let me live in peace, then none of us shall!”
“I’ll maintain this Time Stop Domain forever! Freeze it solid for a hundred, maybe even eighty years! Let’s see who can outlast whom!”
At these words, a near-obsessive madness flickered in Gong Shangyu’s eyes.
“Don’t think I don’t know your little scheme. You just want to have a two-person world with Master, don’t you?”
“I’ll make sure neither of you can say a single word! Let’s see if your Master-disciple bond can endure the test, or if my Time Stop system and Time Stop Domain last longer!”
Hearing this, Gu Qingying was first shocked but then filled with stubbornness.
“Hmph! Let’s see who lasts longer! You think I’m afraid of you? My special constitution lets me cultivate at twice the normal speed! Even inside the Time Stop Domain, I can train!”
“I’m not afraid of you! When your spiritual power runs out and you can no longer sustain the domain, or when I surpass you and forcibly break through, just wait—I’ll beat you to the ground, making you beg me to lift the Time Stop!”
“Hehe~ You surpass me? Do you really think I’ll give you that chance?”
A flash of killing intent passed through Gong Shangyu’s eyes as her spiritual energy suddenly surged violently.
“Gu Qingying! Believe it or not, I can kill you right here and now! End this once and for all!”
Gu Qingying’s heart jolted, but there was no turning back now.
She held her head high and said resolutely,
“Go ahead and kill me! Gong Shangyu, if you have the guts, do it now! Kill me and you can forget about ever returning to Master’s side!”
“From what I know about Master, if his disciple suddenly disappears or dies, he won’t let it go!”
“Master will find out the truth eventually! He’ll realize it was you who killed me! And then he’ll avenge me! At that point, not only will you never return, but you’ll become Master’s most hated enemy!”
Facing Gu Qingying’s threat, the fierce killing intent around Gong Shangyu suddenly faltered.
Just as Gu Qingying said, the consequences of killing her were far beyond what Gong Shangyu could bear at this moment.
Realizing this, the murderous aura slowly faded, but the coldness in her eyes deepened.
Then she suddenly let out a low laugh, tinged with self-mockery and a reckless resolve.
“Gu Qingying, you’re right. Right now, I really don’t dare to kill you.”
Gong Shangyu slowly raised her pink eyes, her gaze like a poisoned blade:
“You know, there are all kinds in this world. There are hypocrites who value appearances, like Eldest Senior Sister. Then there are real scoundrels—like me…”
“I, Gong Shangyu, might not be great at succeeding…”
She enunciated each word with the threatening tone of a street rogue,
“But when it comes to failure, I’m more than qualified!”
“Hehe~ Without your system abilities, I really wouldn’t have been able to enter the sect or get close to Master.”
Stepping closer, she stared at Gu Qingying’s face, which had gone a little pale:
“But… I can go tell Master right now! That his most ‘precious’ disciple…”
“Is actually a woman! And a female fraud who used system powers to deceive him!”
“Now, Qingying~ Tell me… since Master is ‘fearful of women’ and won’t even accept female disciples, what do you think he’ll do once he finds out his most trusted apprentice is a woman?”
Gong Shangyu’s smile twisted maliciously.
“Will he immediately expel you from the sect? Or will his Dao heart be shattered, refusing to take on any disciples ever again, perhaps becoming even more misogynistic?”
“Anyway, that kind of thing has nothing to do with me~ After all, you never planned to let me return to the sect in the first place~”
Her voice was resolute and uncompromising, as if bare-footed and unafraid of shoes.
“If I can’t have Master, then no one else will!”
“Since you refuse to let me live in peace, then you, Gu Qingying, won’t have even an inch of Master either!”
“I don’t care either way. At worst… we’ll just perish together, lasting as long as Heaven and Earth~”
Gong Shangyu’s words struck Gu Qingying’s heart like a hammer.
As Gong Shangyu said, Gu Qingying could outlast her in endurance and bet she wouldn’t dare to kill her.
But what she couldn’t dare to gamble on was Master’s reaction when he learned the truth about her being female!
In this lifetime, Lu Li had already been quite resistant to accepting female disciples.
If he found out that the most trusted apprentice who deceived him was a woman…
The consequences… Gu Qingying couldn’t even bear to imagine!
It could utterly destroy Master’s trust in her, and even all female cultivators, burying all her hopes and the hard-won closeness she’d gained.
Her face instantly went pale, all the satisfaction from her earlier revenge and the smugness of controlling the situation vanished.
Looking at Gong Shangyu’s eyes, which almost screamed “I’m completely going all in,” a massive wave of fear and resignation washed over her.
“Ugh… you!”
Gu Qingying trembled, purple eyes glistening with unwilling tears, but in the end, all her strength faded away.
Like all the fight in her heart had been drained, she slumped weakly and said,
“Despicable…”
Seeing this, Gong Shangyu knew she had found her junior sister’s fatal weak spot, and she sneered triumphantly.
“Hehe… Thanks for the compliment. Now can we finally sit down and talk properly, ‘little·junior·sister’~”
Gu Qingying bit her lip, struggling for a moment, but ultimately gave the faintest reluctant nod.
After all… the situation was against her, and facing this pink-haired fox, she had no choice but to back down.
Two incense sticks later, inside a guest room of Dan Ding Pavilion redolent with the scent of elixirs.
Lu Li opened his eyes with a slightly pained expression, clutching his throbbing forehead as he stared up at the ceiling.
“Hm? Where am I…?”
“Ow… my head hurts. I think… I was investigating the barrier inside Dan Ding Pavilion’s secret chamber before…”
Just as Lu Li was puzzled, a somewhat soft, refined young male voice sounded beside his ear.
“Ah! Immortal Lu, you’re awake~”
Lu Li quickly turned toward the voice and saw a pink-haired youth with an elegant, refined air, holding a feather fan partially covering his face and squinting at him.
This pink-haired youth was none other than the Dan Ding Pavilion Head, Gong Shangyu, who had just used some tricks to force Gu Qingying to cast a Cognition Modification Barrier around her, hiding her true gender and identity.
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