The Librarian and the Fox Princess: a Donghua Dijun and Bai Fengjiu story, V.I

Chapter 77 - The Trade

"Dijun, let's trade."

"Oh?"

"Yes, since you gave me your purple handkerchief, you can have my white one."

After she had cleaned his long slender fingers with the lavender tea she had conjured it to be immaculate and gave it to him.

She had not been brave enough to bring his beautiful hands up to her nose to smell his fingers like he had done to her. She just trusted that she had done a good enough job.

The almighty god had been the recipient of numerous handkerchiefs from countless people over his long immortal life. He had never really even looked at them much less kept any of them.

He held hers up to admire it. He ran his thumb over the embroidered phoenix flower.

"Did you make this?" he asked with an indifferent tone. "You're quite skilled."

She looked over at it. "Yes, it's the best one I made. My grandmother taught me how to embroider. The first two didn't turn out so well. The phoenix flower ended up looking like a chili pepper."

"The other handkerchiefs. Did you give them to ... that wolf boy? Or anyone else?"

She shook her head, "no."

Dong Hua felt relieved.

"But I didn't want to waste the fabric so I turned them into undergarments."

"Oh?" It was already too late when he realized his reflexive response sounded like a question. He didn't want her to think he was inquiring about her undergarments. Somehow intrusive images made their way into his mind's eye.

To make matters worse for him she thought he needed clarification so she nodded and moved her hands across her chest. "For here" and then she moved her hands across her hips and said "for here."

Her candid ways were both endearing and also eviscerating to him.

He carefully stashed the handkerchief into his sleeve and just nodded blandly. "Very practical repurposing."

---

She had finished copying the first scroll and was onto her second in the pile Dong Hua left for her. To her surprise the task was actually soothing and meditative. She had been working diligently until she started to feel her hand cramping. She kept trying to push through until she had to stop because the tingling numbness was starting to feel constant.

Dong Hua was sitting across the room doing some writing when he noticed that she was massaging her hand and wrist. Wordlessly, he got up from his low table and walked over to sit next to her.

"Why didn't you tell me that you were getting tired?" He began gently inspecting her hand.

"I wasn't getting tired. My hand was getting tired. I thought I could push through," she explained.

"Xiao Bai, if you want to live as long as I have, you'll need to learn that there are times where pushing through just stresses out your cultivation. If we have the luxury of time, we should take it. If we have resources, we should use them. Work at a pace where you suffer less and you'll end up producing more."

He began applying acupressure to the many acupuncture points in her hand.

"No more copying scrolls for you today, little fox. I need to give you the rest of the evening off, anyway," he said impassively as he focused on doing deep tissue work on her wrist and fingers.

"Dijun, I can do more," she insisted. "My hand already feels better thanks to you."

"No," he said softly. "Isn't there anything else you want to do now? Why don't you go visit Cheng Yu? You need to make more female friends in the Nine Heavens," he said as he thought of her harem of male toddlers.