Cultivation Retirement Plan (BL)

39. Picking Up the Pieces

Sect Leader's Quarters, Star Pavilion Sect

"Ouyang Che, I am not your personal scribe!"

With a whump, Mu Yelian dumped another stack of scrolls on the acting sect leader's desk. "Will you just finish reading these before they all pile up again?!"

"N...no more..." Collapsed against the table, Ouyang Che raised a hand in feeble protest. "Can't I get my core disciple to do it instead? Learning to run a sect...is also part of cultivation..."

"You slacker, you're foisting bad habits on your disciple too?!"

"Yelian!" Ouyang Che sat bolt upright with an aggrieved air. "Can't you see I'm only dispirited because our dear Brother Mo is missing? Where's your heartbreak? Your sympathy?"

"It's only been five days since Senior Brother Mo left," Mu Yelian sniffed imperiously.

"Don't you miss him?"

"Of course I do!" she huffed, "But I'm not going to bother him in the middle of a mission like you do!"

Her eyes trailed to the table where Mo Yixuan's origami boat had returned that afternoon with a simple message:

- I'll be back after my disciple's cultivation improves twofold like you promised.

"You and your ridiculous claims," she disdained. "You know Senior Brother Mo would do anything for that clingy disciple of his. Did you trick him off the mountain that way?"

"Yelian, you've seen yourself how much I've changed," Ouyang Che protested. "Yixuan and I are true sect siblings now—look at all the times I helped him in the past few months!"

"Hmph, you're only being nice to him because he's acting differently all of a sudden," Mu Yelian exposed him. "You never liked the old Brother Mo!"

"I can't tell why you liked him before either," Ouyang Che muttered.

"How would you understand? You and Senior Brother Jun are both so—so...!" Mu Yelian shook her head. "Never mind. But it's true, isn't it? He is different from before."

"Mm, much more tolerable."

"Stop joking already. So it's permanent? This isn't some temporary state induced from qi deviation?" Mu Yelian wondered anxiously.

Qi deviation, sometimes called cultivation insanity, often occurred after a great disturbance to a cultivator's mental, emotional, or physical state. If death didn't occur, then other effects included painful backlashes or changes in the mind that affected personality. Some cultivators were permanently damaged by the deviation while others gained the chance to grow in leaps and bounds. In Mu Yelian's eyes, Mo Yixuan was a mix of the two: improving his cultivation while distorting his personality.

A part of her missed the flawlessly elegant Mo Yixuan of old, who always knew the right thing to say and charmed her effortlessly into his whims. This new Senior Brother Mo was still refined and graceful but lacked the warmth of the old and actively kept his distance. It was as if his very being had been thrust into a snowstorm and brought out coated in a layer of frost. Any attempts to get close only froze you with his ice. Even when Ouyang Che had brought her Mo Yixuan's hand-made food, she felt like she was dealing with a stranger. She'd accepted it with a smile and happily left her Senior Brother Mo alone for two months, but inside she knew better.

The old Mo Yixuan couldn't cook.

Ouyang Che saw the wrinkled crease in Mu Yelian's brow and couldn't help sighing. "So you did notice," he stated.