Volume 1: Little Alpaca
Who are you calling a dog!
The teahouse where a life was previously lost had already closed its doors and ceased business, yet this surrounding area was still a stretch of prosperity.
Speaking of which, although the deceased was a son of a wealthy family, and this life could be said to be precious, to most people, it was merely a topic of conversation of no importance.
But this teahouse was different. The person had died here, and since that family could not find the murderer, they blamed everything on the teahouse owner.
This owner had also encountered great misfortune. For a time, unable to bear the harassment, he closed the main doors of the teahouse, hoping day and night for the immortals of the Xianlu Sect to descend from the mountain, so they could settle this troublesome matter for him.
Diagonally across the street from the teahouse, there was a small tavern.
You Yan ordered a few small dishes and a pot of wine, and sat with a calm and composed air in a corridor seat on the tavern’s second floor facing the street. Her indifferent gaze watched the pedestrians coming and going on the street below, as if she already had a fully-formed bamboo in her chest1, and fundamentally no variables would occur.
Yes, Yi Qiu remembered, in the original text, the protagonist and the villain did indeed meet at the place where the demon first started causing trouble, but You Yan shouldn’t know that.
One must know that in the original text, You Yan had tailed them all the way here, only then seeking an opportunity to feign a chance encounter with the protagonist.
How is it that now in the world of the novel, You Yan is like she has activated a cheat? She clearly just holed up in the inn for two days, yet she knows the male and female leads will come to this place?
The more Yi Qiu thought, the less she understood. For a moment, she was so curious it felt like her heart and lungs were being scratched2. Unable to resist, she took advantage of a moment when no one around was paying attention, moved close to You Yan’s side, and muttered in a small voice, “Master, how do you know the people from the Xianlu Sect will come to this place? What if they don’t come, haven’t we waited for nothing?”
Hearing her words, You Yan couldn’t help but lower her brows to glance at Yi Qiu, asking with great interest, “Don’t you want to do something for me? If I didn’t come to this place, where would you want to lead me?”
Suddenly faced with a counter-question, Yi Qiu couldn’t help but ponder in the bottom of her heart for a moment.
She was now an alpaca with a great deal of self-awareness. Considering that her own IQ had been crushed to a certain degree, in the end, she still didn’t dare to tell a lie. “I, I probably would have come to this place too…”
You Yan smiled faintly. “Tell me the reason.”
Yi Qiu’s head instantly started to ache.
Tell her the reason? What reason could there be? She just knows the direction of the story, just knows the plot trigger point is at this place, but this kind of reason, how could she dare expose even a tiny bit of it to You Yan?
The mission given by that crappy little system, to put it bluntly, was to have her lurk by You Yan’s side, think of all possible ways to work against You Yan, and thereby save the male and female leads from water and fire.
If she exposed the slightest fraction of this, once she was interrogated down to the root of the matter3, stammering would be a mistake, and confessing honestly would be even more of a dead-end road.
She stood stiffly on her four short little legs, foolishly meeting You Yan’s gaze for a long while. Finally, a flash of inspiration went through her mind. She blinked her eyes and said, “Isn’t this very simple? Master previously caused trouble at this place. When the Xianlu Sect people come down the mountain to investigate the situation, they will certainly come to this place first.”
You Yan gave a nonchalant 「En」, and with an outstretched finger, she stroked back and forth along Yi Qiu’s neck a few times. Only then did she curve her good-looking brows and eyes and laugh lightly, “You’re not considered too stupid, either.”
It took Yi Qiu half a second to react, but she roughly understood You Yan’s meaning behind her words—Even someone as stupid as you knew to come to this place, didn’t you?
She couldn’t help but grit her teeth.
Yes, she admitted it. She had indeed asked a very stupid question, but she didn’t think it was because she herself was stupid.
She had just fallen into a kind of mental trap. Because the novel had the two keywords 「close attention」 and 「tailing all the way」, she had thought, as a matter of course, that You Yan must go through this kind of process to be able to get the answer that led to the goal.
But the facts proved that this 「answer」 was already very obvious from the very beginning, so it made no difference whether the process in between existed or not.
So why did “Xiao Niao Gugu Fei” deliberately write this section that was like drawing a snake and adding feet to it?
To water the word count4?
I’ve gone Buddha5. The original work misled me!
She increasingly suspected that her past self’s brain must have been broken. Otherwise, why would she have, with true feelings and real emotions6, chased after an abuse literature7 that was full of plot holes?
For a moment, Yi Qiu couldn’t smooth over her anger, and had no choice but to turn her head away to give birth to muffled anger8 at the bustling street market below.
“Hey, Drool-sheep?” You Yan poked the back of Yi Qiu’s head.
“…” Yi Qiu shook her head slightly to show her dissatisfaction.
“Eat something?” You Yan started to fiddle with Yi Qiu’s ears.
“…” Yi Qiu rolled her eyes.
I’m not going to pay any attention to you!
【You Yan Favorability +10】
It’s starting again, this favorability that comes with its own mockery.
On normal days, no matter how well-behaved and docile she was, she couldn’t even see a single-digit increase. Every time favorability was added, it was either when she was making a fool of herself, or when she was angry.
Yi Qiu considered herself to have grasped a bit of a pattern. This female demon lord You Yan was just bored. She just especially liked to build her own happiness upon the sadness of others; the more unhappy others were, the happier she became.
“Have you ever drunk wine?” You Yan lifted the small wine cup, her gaze on Yi Qiu’s fluffy head, and said in a flat tone, “In the human world, there is a saying called 「one bout of drunkenness can dissolve a thousand sorrows」9. If you’re not happy, it’s not that I can’t give you a little to drink.”
“I’m not unhappy,” Yi Qiu muttered in a small voice, her dissatisfied emotion especially strong.
“Is that so?” You Yan laughed. “Then give me a laugh.”
What do you mean, ‘give me a laugh’? Am I a little alpaca in a brothel? Do I need to shout 「Great Master」 with a tilde10 or something?
Yi Qiu bared her teeth and turned her head to glare at You Yan.
At the same time, You Yan’s gaze actually turned ice-cold by several degrees.
Yi Qiu subconsciously shrank her neck.
She had originally thought she had been too unrestrained and had angered the already capricious11 You Yan. Only after a short-term panic did she discover that You Yan’s gaze had already left her.
Yi Qiu followed You Yan’s gaze and looked toward the tightly closed teahouse diagonally opposite.
She saw only Luo Mingyuan standing outside the teahouse, looking all around. His lip color was somewhat pale, and he had several bruises on his face. It was just as it was written in the novel; he had been bullied by people again.
And beside him stood a figure like an exclamation mark, its whole body emitting a golden light.
【Main Quest Target! Please take note!】
【Main Quest Tar…】
“Quiet!”
The system stopped repeating.
“Turn off special effects!”
The exclamation mark and golden light dispersed. Only a woman in blue clothes could be seen, currently knocking on the door. She held a longsword in her hand, her brows and eyes were cold and clear, her gaze was steady, and her appearance was even more so a rarity in the world.
Adding to that, there was also a top-tier “little white face,” publicly acknowledged as such in the original work, standing to the side. For a moment, this attracted the people passing by, who stopped in their tracks one after another and turned their heads, unable to resist wanting to take another look.
This was actually about the same as You Yan. On normal days, wherever she went, she was stared at by countless pairs of eyes. Even at this moment, just casually finding a place to drink a little wine, there were not a few gazes glancing in this direction from time to time.
As expected, when a person is good-looking, the head-turning rate is just high.
Just as Yi Qiu was admiring the beauty, she suddenly heard a cold laugh from behind her. In an instant, she stood at attention and put her line of sight back onto You Yan.
“Master, that woman, she doesn’t look simple,” Yi Qiu reminded in a small voice.
“I can see that,” You Yan said, her eyes closing slightly as she spoke coldly, “Just now, some people’s eyes were staring straight.”
“Some people… which people are those?” Yi Qiu asked sheepishly.
“Who do you think?” You Yan counter-asked.
That’s certainly not me. I’m just an alpaca.
Thinking this way, Yi Qiu put on a face full of righteousness: “A pile of people has surrounded the outside of the teahouse. They are all common people12 who can’t walk straight13 when they see a beauty. Every single one of them, their eyes are all staring straight.”
You Yan looked at Yi Qiu thoughtfully for a few seconds, then suddenly smiled and stood up, patting her head. “Since you can walk, then let’s go.”
Hearing this, Yi Qiu hurriedly followed You Yan and ran down the stairs.
The passing pedestrians all looked on with curiosity or admiration at the man and woman standing before their eyes at the doorway of this teahouse.
The scorching sun was overhead and people’s hearts were restless. Luo Mingyuan was already covered in sweat, but Jiang Yuyao’s expression was still as usual, her gaze as still as stopped water.
Jiang Yuyao knocked on the door three times. Finally, after waiting, the main door of the teahouse was gently pulled open by someone.
A shop assistant poked his head out. Seeing that the appearance and dress of the person before him resembled that of the immortal folk, he couldn’t help but be stunned for a moment.
“You two are…”
“Xianlu Sect, Jiang Yuyao.” The woman performed a salute with her sword held14. “I have heard there is a demon here and have specially come to investigate to the bottom of it.”
Hearing this, the assistant busily welcomed them inside.
The people outside watching the show wanted to follow closely, but were blocked outside by the quickly closed main door. For a moment, they looked at each other in blank dismay and began to discuss in small voices.
The teahouse owner was a middle-aged man of about forty. As soon as he heard that immortals from the Xianlu Sect had come, he immediately rushed out from the inner room, heaving sighs and groaning in despair with a round of complaints.
“That day, Young Master Wu was sitting right here. On the table were two pots of new tea, just him alone. Everything all around was fine. In another moment, the storyteller we had invited was about to arrive. At that time, I happened to be right on the first floor, and was just about to call for Xiao Zhao15 to go and receive the master, when suddenly, something happened!”
The teahouse owner said, pointing to the broken table and chairs placed by the wall, and then pointing to an empty space to the side, “I also don’t know what happened. This set of table and chairs that should have originally been placed there shattered, and then, and then…”
Jiang Yuyao: “And then what?”
“And then, and then I also don’t know how to say it!” the teahouse owner said, looking somewhat anxiously toward the assistant at his side. “Xiao Zhao saw it too.”
The assistant scratched his head and said, “I didn’t see clearly. I just suddenly heard a movement, and when I turned my head, I saw Young Master Wu’s leg was broken. The surface of the break was very neat, as if it had been cut open by something… Blood, he bled a lot of blood! And then he was just pinching his own neck, kept pinching it…”
The owner frowned and said, “We heard someone shout for help, and someone else shouted ‘Murder!’, but no one could see the murderer. Many people wanted to escape, without even paying their money, but the doors and windows were suddenly all shut dead, and no one could push them open!”
The assistant’s eyes were full of lingering fear. “Even later, the doors opened, and Young Master Wu was dead. I heard the coroner16 examined the corpse, and it seems he said all the bones in the neck were shattered… It was especially scary!”
“Two pots of tea, one person?” Jiang Yuyao couldn’t help but frown.
“Yes, I haven’t remembered wrong,” the assistant said with certainty. “I was the one who cleared the table later. Two pots of tea, one person!”
“The person died at this place?” Jiang Yuyao stood at the position the teahouse owner had previously pointed to.
The teahouse owner hurriedly nodded his head. “It was right here. The bloodstains have all been cleaned away.”
Jiang Yuyao couldn’t help but frown. “Perhaps it is a demon spirit, but the remaining spiritual breath is too weak.”
Luo Mingyuan squatted down, the pulp of his three fingers touching the wooden floor. He contemplated for a moment, then got up and said, “Shijie, it should not be a demon.”
“Are you certain?” Jiang Yuyao asked seriously.
“Not… not certain.” Luo Mingyuan, with no confidence in his heart, lowered his head.
“Then let’s make certain!” A young girl’s silver bell-like voice17 came from the second floor. The four people downstairs looked upward one after another, only to see a woman in white clothes leap from the second-floor corridor. Stepping with light steps, she walked to Luo Mingyuan’s side, tilted her head, and smiled. “Luo-dage, if you don’t mind, perhaps I can help a little!”
Luo Mingyuan said in surprise, “Miss Bai! How are you here?”
A trace of bewilderment flashed in the bottom of Jiang Yuyao’s eyes.
The teahouse owner, for his part, had an expression like he’d seen a ghost. “You, how did you get in!”
“I flipped in from the second-floor outer corridor. Who told you to lock the door and not let people gather for the excitement?”
After the woman in white finished speaking, just as if she were entering her own home, she walked a few steps to the side of the door and, under four pairs of bewildered gazes, opened the teahouse’s main door.
The next second, a fluffy little fellow walked in from outside the door with its head raised and chest puffed out. It looked like a sheep, but was also not quite the same as a sheep.
Jiang Yuyao couldn’t help but frown. “What is this?”
Luo Mingyuan explained, “Miss Bai’s spirit pet.”
The little fellow was seen striding with steps that recognized no kin18, all the way toward the 「crime scene」. Luo Mingyuan subconsciously made a path for her, and a trace of 「approbation」 actually flashed in the bottom of her eyes.
Very quickly, she used her small nose to sniff at the ground, and then turned and walked to the young girl’s side.
Yi Qiu: “Hnnn—”
You Yan: “She says the remaining spiritual breath here does not belong to a demon.”
Jiang Yuyao subconsciously glanced at the Shidi19 beside her, and then hurriedly pursued the question, “Not a demon, then what is it?”
Yi Qiu: “Hn! Hnnn—”
You Yan: “She says it is the Demon Clan.”
The shop assistant at the side, having heard this, couldn’t help but exclaim with emotion, “How godly! This little sheep’s nose is as sharp as a dog’s!”
A 「pfft」 sound came from the side, from a certain three-thousand-year-old young girl who was extremely deep in her role.
Yi Qiu couldn’t help but glare at the assistant.
My fist… no, that’s not right, my hoof has hardened20.
Who are you calling a dog!
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