We Agreed On Experiencing Life, So Why Did You Immortals Become Real?

Chapter 497: Xiao Mo, There Is Something I Want to Tell You

Within the bamboo courtyard, the breath of the Dao resonances around Xiao Mo faded like a wind passing over still water, layer by layer, until all had returned to calm.He slowly let out a long breath and looked around him, then lowered his gaze to look at himself.

The bamboo courtyard was unchanged in every way, exactly as it had been before he entered seclusion, every blade of grass and every leaf carrying a familiar comfort.

Only he himself had grown considerably taller.

Beyond that, his hair was disheveled, his nails had grown long, and his body was covered in grime. He was thoroughly unkempt in every direction, enough to make even himself a little uncomfortable.

"You are awake?"

Xian Xichun stepped into the courtyard and looked Xiao Mo up and down, a warm, satisfied smile rising to his lips.

"Very good, very good. Three years of seclusion, and you stepped directly from the Dragon Gate realm into the Golden Core realm. That is genuinely rare. It would seem the cultivation method you practice truly suits you to an exceptional degree."

"The teacher flatters me. I was simply fortunate." Xiao Mo gave a respectful bow, then asked, "But teacher, this seclusion of mine, how long was it?"

"Three years." Xian Xichun smiled and held up three fingers.

Hearing the answer, Xiao Mo was taken aback.

He had assumed it would have been a year at most, perhaps six months. He had never imagined he had been sitting in the bamboo courtyard for a full three years.

"I am deeply grateful to Teacher Xian for standing guard for me all this time." Xiao Mo bowed again with sincere and earnest feeling.

"I did not do much, really." Xian Xichun waved a hand with a smile, a meaningful look in his eyes. "If anything, it was someone else who came to see you at every spare moment, without fail."

Before Xian Xichun had finished speaking, something seemed to reach him. The corners of his lips curved upward. "And there she is, right on cue."

"Right then. I will leave you in peace. My duty as your guardian is done, and I need to go and sleep in my own bed properly. I have not touched it once in three years."

Xian Xichun gave a yawn, turned, and strolled away at his leisure and just as Xian Xichun moved out of sight, a young girl came running from the distance toward the courtyard.

Xiao Mo raised his head and watched the approaching figure draw closer and closer, and recognized immediately who it was but in Xiao Mo's eyes, a faint surprise showed.

Compared to three years ago, the young girl before him had grown fully into her form.

Both in her figure and her appearance she was considerably more mature than she had been three years before. The last of her youthful rawness had fallen away, and what remained was a quality that drew the eye and held it.

And if the girl of before had known only how to play and had a temperament innocent and carefree, unburdened by any of the world's concerns, then the young woman now looked altogether more poised and settled, more graceful and composed. These qualities, which had quietly settled into her over the years, had added a further dimension of beauty to her.

Only between her brows, there was a faint, barely perceptible trace of the kind of worry that comes only with maturity, as though she carried the particular private thoughts that all young women know.

"Young Miss." Xiao Mo gave a respectful bow.

Tushan Jingci did not answer. She only walked forward, step by step, drawing gradually closer to Xiao Mo and when she reached him and stood before him, those beautiful eyes of hers shifted gently, and her throat moved, but she only stared at him in a daze and could not say a single word.

Xiao Mo looked back at the young girl's bewitching eyes.

Whether it was an impression or something real, Xiao Mo had a sense that the way the Young Miss was looking at him had shifted subtly from before.

"Look at the state you are in." After a long pause, Tushan Jingci pressed her lips together, her voice carrying an emotion that could not quite be named. "Go and have a bath quickly. I will find you a proper set of clothes to wear, and then I will trim your hair for you."

"Many thanks for the Young Miss's kind thought, but I can manage it myself." Xiao Mo's instinct was to decline.

After all, how could it be right to have Jingci attend to him like this?

"What does it matter?"

Tushan Jingci pushed out her lips.

"When you first went into seclusion, it was me who cut your hair, cut your nails, and wiped your face. It was only when you reached the midpoint of your seclusion and the Dao resonances wrapped around you that I could no longer get close to you."

"Well..." Xiao Mo felt it was still not quite appropriate, and for a moment did not know how to respond.

"All right, all right, come along quickly. You are absolutely filthy."

Tushan Jingci's words were dismissive, but her soft, pale hands reached out without the slightest hesitation and took hold of Xiao Mo's wrist, pulling him out of the courtyard.

They went to a spring deep in the bamboo grove, where Tushan Jingci had Xiao Mo bathe in the pool. She then turned away to go and fetch him a clean set of clothes.

She carried the clothes on a cushion of spiritual energy and brought them to the edge of the pool from a distance, setting them down gently.

After bathing, Xiao Mo changed into the clean clothes.

To his surprise, they fit him with a perfection that went far beyond anything bought ready-made from a market stall. They were as though tailored precisely for him, every measurement exactly right.

Back in the bamboo courtyard, Tushan Jingci moved to trim Xiao Mo's nails, but Xiao Mo flatly refused.

After some insistence on his part, he trimmed his own nails but when it came to cutting his hair, he could not prevail against Tushan Jingci, and in the end he sat down on the stone bench in the courtyard and let Jingci tend to the long hair that had gone uncut for years.

Lock after lock fell lightly from Xiao Mo's head and drifted to the ground.

The young girl's boneless little hands moved slowly through his hair, and the scissors met the dark strands with a clear, soft snip-snip-snip but Xiao Mo gradually became aware that Jingci was standing rather close to him.

The young girl's own hair swept across his cheek from time to time, carrying a faint, clean fragrance.

What made him even less certain of how to conduct himself was that now and then he could feel the soft, cotton-like warmth of the young girl's presence, separated from his shoulder and back only by the thin layer of her dress, in contact with him one moment and retreating the next.

Xiao Mo straightened slightly, trying to put a little distance between them, but his head was immediately pressed back down by the young girl.

"Stop moving. I will cut it badly if you move. How would that look?" She pushed out her lips, a faint reproach in her tone.

Xiao Mo had been on the verge of saying, "Young Miss, you are standing too close."

But seeing that Jingci herself seemed entirely oblivious to it, raising the matter himself would only make things more awkward, so he could only pretend to notice nothing and sit still.

In reality, Tushan Jingci, in the very act of cutting his hair, was of course perfectly aware that his head was brushing against her now and then without meaning to.

The young girl's cheeks had already flushed a quiet red some time ago, and she was simply holding on without saying a word.

Perhaps sensing herself that the atmosphere had grown a little delicate, Tushan Jingci took the initiative to speak, and began recounting to Xiao Mo, one thing at a time, everything that had happened in these three years.

It was thus that Xiao Mo learned that Elder Sister Liu Shui had left the Hanshan Academy three years ago, though she was now on her way back.

He heard Jingci speak of her companion Xu Bei'er's story as well and what surprised him most was that Jingci had truly passed the Worthy examination at the Hanshan Academy.

Though a Worthy title from the Hanshan Academy did not carry quite the same weight as it would in the Ten Thousand Laws Realm, it was a remarkable achievement regardless.

The thread of literary fortune upon her was not something that could deceive anyone.

Beyond all of that, Tushan Jingci also rambled on at length about many other small things.

In the bamboo courtyard, the sunlight fell quietly down, and only the young girl's clear, gentle voice drifted lightly through the spring wind.

She spoke.

He listened.

Though three years had passed without their seeing each other, there was not the faintest trace of distance between them, as though time had never flowed through the space that lay between them at all.

Only as she talked on, Tushan Jingci gradually lowered her head, her gaze settling on the figure before her, and her voice became a little softer.

"Xiao Mo."

She held the scissors in her hands, and her fingertips tightened slightly.

"There is something I want to tell you."

"What is it? The Young Miss may say it directly." Xiao Mo replied.

"I..."

The corners of the young girl's lips pressed together of their own accord. Her heartbeat began to quicken little by little, and with it the flush on her pale cheeks deepened further, like the most vivid shade of peach blossom in spring.

"I think... I may have someone I like."