Chapter 21 : You Don’t Understand Your Master’s Beauty
Chapter 21: You Don’t Understand Your Master’s Beauty
As soon as Long Tao’s words fell from the listening insect, the atmosphere inside True Person Mingzhu’s room instantly became exceedingly subtle.
The three female disciples wore different expressions, all at a loss for how to respond.
For one thing, that man spoke far too bluntly.
Words like “the number one beauty,” while crude yet not entirely unreasonable, still sounded vulgar and frivolous to the ear.
Behind the curtain, True Person Mingzhu’s mood was likewise complicated.
There was surprise, and even more so a sense of absurdity.
Being evaluated so directly and without the slightest restraint by an Outer Sect disciple still in the Qi Refining stage was an entirely unfamiliar experience for her.
That feeling… was like being lightly pawed once by a small stray wild cat wandering along the roadside—not painful, but distinctly strange.
Naturally, there was also a trace of lingering embarrassment, especially with all three disciples present.
She could only cover it with a light cough and say,
“Just a child from the Outer Sect who doesn’t know how to measure his words.”
Just as the few of them were pondering how to break this awkward situation, Nan Yuchen’s voice once again came through the listening insect.
“Oh! So that’s what you think, Senior Brother Long. What a pity though—most of the male disciples in the sect think that True Person Liuxia and True Lord Qingyu rank first and second instead.”
“Tch!” Long Tao’s voice carried obvious disdain.
“If you ask me, the biggest problem in the sect right now is that this bunch of male disciples have terrible taste and eyesight! I haven’t seen True Lord Qingyu much, so I won’t comment. But that True Person Liuxia…” He seemed to pause, swallowing back a rather inelegant word.
“…she deserves to rank ahead of your master? What an absolute joke! In my opinion, among all the Golden Core female cultivators in the sect, the only one who can even be mentioned in the same breath as your master is probably True Person Zhiying.”
“Th-thank you for praising my master so much, Senior Brother,” Nan Yuchen said, sounding a little embarrassed.
“But… all the Golden Core seniors in the sect aren’t bad, right? I think they all look pretty good.”
Long Tao was truly feeling a bit of frustration at wasted potential.
He slapped Nan Yuchen on the shoulder and said earnestly,
“Sigh… compared to your ability to judge people, what you most urgently need to improve right now is your taste in women! You’re not wrong—Golden Core True Persons all look decent. After all, once you reach the late Foundation Establishment stage, you can subtly adjust your own appearance. Who would deliberately make themselves ugly?”
Nan Yuchen listened and nodded in agreement, a hint of curiosity appearing on his face.
This was the kind of topic he rarely had a chance to discuss; at most, he would overhear others talking about it in wine houses.
“But do you really think your master’s beauty lies only in something as shallow as figure and looks?” Long Tao’s tone carried a sense of pained disappointment.
“You… as the closest male disciple by True Person Mingzhu’s side, still haven’t discovered where your master’s true charm lies. What a case of a pearl covered in dust! Forget it…” His tone suddenly shifted, imbued with a sense of passing on knowledge.
“The night is still long—Senior Brother here will give you a proper lesson!”
……
At the same time, on True Person Mingzhu’s side, all four women were quite curious as well.
If not discussing looks or figure, what else could this man possibly say? It couldn’t just be the usual clichés about profound cultivation and lofty realms—that would be no different from other men’s flattery.
Who would have thought that the very first sentence transmitted through the listening insect would catch them completely off guard?
“First of all! True Person Mingzhu’s greatest defining trait is that sense of ‘girlishness’!”
“Gi… girlishness?” Nan Yuchen’s voice was full of confusion.
“That’s right. Although she’s a great senior who’s lived for several hundred years, you can’t see any sense of age or decay on her at all. Oh… and by decay I don’t mean her body, but her mindset and behavior! Every gesture of True Person Mingzhu exudes youthful liveliness, even a bit of naive charm. She completely lacks that stiff, old-fashioned air that other True Persons and elders have!”
“Mm… when you put it that way, Senior Brother, it really is true.”
“And I’d guess that the way your master usually interacts with you senior sisters isn’t like the rigid, overly respectful relationships between masters and disciples on other peaks. Instead, it’s more like sisters getting along.”
“Oh! Senior Brother Long, you really got that right!” Nan Yuchen’s voice suddenly became excited, as if he had found a kindred spirit.
“I personally saw it last time—Master was hugging Senior Sister’s waist, acting coquettish and pestering her, insisting that Senior Sister buy her something!”
“Pfft—!”
On the other side, Zhu Huaisu nearly burst out laughing and hurriedly covered her mouth.
Chen Qianyun was also holding it in so hard that her face turned red.
Both of them looked at the eldest senior sister at the same time.
The two directly involved, whose embarrassing incident had been exposed without warning, were even more flustered.
Eldest Senior Sister Su Muzhi felt a wave of heat rush straight to her cheeks.
Her panicked voice blurted out almost instinctively,
“No! At the time, Master just had a sudden whim and insisted on building another small island on the lake! I thought it would waste too many Spirit Stones and be of no real use, so I refused! She just kept clinging to me and making a fuss! It wasn’t about buying anything at all!” She spoke rapidly, trying to clarify, but in doing so directly confirmed the fact that there had indeed been acting coquettish and pestering.
Just as the two junior sisters were about to tease both the senior sister and their master a bit more, Long Tao’s voice sounded again.
“See… isn’t my assessment of your master spot on?” Long Tao’s voice carried a hint of smugness.
“And then there’s True Person Mingzhu’s second point of charm—maternal nature!”
“Ma… maternal nature?!” Nan Yuchen sounded as if he had been choked.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Long Tao said knowingly.
“You think ‘maternal nature’ contradicts what I just said about ‘girlishness,’ right?”
“It… it does feel a bit contradictory,” Nan Yuchen said in confusion.
“I… I’m a little lost.”
“Don’t be lost!” Long Tao said confidently.
“Some women are born with maternal nature deep in their bones. Even if they look young and lively, like little girls, there’s still this indescribable feeling about them that makes people really want to… well, pounce on them and call out ‘Mother.’ True Person Mingzhu is exactly like that! She has both that naive liveliness and, at the same time, this warm, outward-radiating maternal glow.”
Seeing Nan Yuchen fall into silence, clearly struggling to digest these seemingly contradictory yet unified traits, Long Tao suddenly raised his voice, his tone taking on an interrogative edge.
“Let me ask you, Junior Brother Nan! Back when you entered the sect, three Golden Core True Persons were all fighting to take you in. Why did you choose your master in particular?”
“Th-this… this…” Nan Yuchen was clearly stuck.
“It definitely wasn’t because of looks, right? The other two True Persons were beauties as well!” Long Tao pressed step by step.
“Just admit it honestly! Wasn’t it because you saw the feeling of a mother in True Person Mingzhu? The entire sect knows you grew up without a mother, so that deep-seated longing for maternal love made you unconsciously choose True Person Mingzhu, didn’t it?”
“I… I… um!” Nan Yuchen’s voice instantly became flustered.
After stammering for quite a while, he finally said in a small voice, “Alright… Senior Brother Long… you guessed right again. Back then… I didn’t know why either. Even though Master looked the youngest… I just felt that she would definitely be the one who doted on me the most, so I…” He abruptly stopped.
“Th-that… Senior Brother! You absolutely must not tell anyone about this! Please!”
“Relax. If what the two of us said today ever got out, at worst you’d just lose a bit of face. I’d be completely dead.”
However, in True Person Mingzhu’s room some distance away, Eldest Senior Sister Su Muzhi had already stood up, gritting her teeth as she said,
“No need to wait for it to spread. I’ll go let him know right now what ‘completely dead’ means!”
“Calm down, Eldest Senior Sister. He didn’t say anything bad about Master. Sure, a lot of it crossed the line, but he was praising her… it’s not to the point of killing someone,” Zhu Huaisu quickly stood up as well to persuade her.
She couldn’t bear to let that person die just yet.
Thanks to him, she had eaten gossip to her heart’s content today—especially all of junior brother’s secrets, which had been completely dug out in less than half a day.
“Praising her?!” Su Muzhi’s expression softened slightly.
“Listen to what he was saying! ‘Wanting to hug Master and call her mother’? Is that something an Outer Sect disciple should be saying? Even though Master truly has extraordinary bearing…” Her voice lowered, carrying a trace of awkwardness she herself didn’t notice.
“That’s still not something he’s allowed to harbor thoughts about!”
“Exactly!” Chen Qianyun, who had been quietly sitting the whole time, suddenly chimed in.
“Master’s ‘maternal love’ is, of course, for us personally transmitted disciples! Mother!” The sharp, mature woman suddenly called out sweetly.
“Pfft—cough…”
Behind the curtain, True Person Mingzhu, who had been forcing herself to remain calm the whole time, finally couldn’t hold it in.
A very soft laugh slipped out, which she quickly covered up with a cough.
“Alright, alright.” She paused, her voice carrying a trace of curiosity she herself hadn’t noticed.
“But… let me ask you. Do I really have the kind of… maternal nature he described?”
That question immediately drew the attention of all three disciples.
“Yes, yes, of course you do, Master. That guy really put it well. Master, you’re both lively like a young girl and dignified and gentle like a mother. That kind of bearing is something True Person Liuxia simply can’t compare to.”
True Person Mingzhu fell silent for a moment, as if digesting this somewhat unfamiliar evaluation of herself.
“I’ve never thought about it that way, let alone imagined that… Yuchen choosing me would be for such a reason. Sigh… with such a lack of understanding of myself, it seems my breakthrough to the Nascent Soul stage will have to be delayed a bit longer.”
Hearing this, Su Muzhi said urgently,
“Master! Your Dao Heart is clear and unobstructed—breaking through to Nascent Soul is only a matter of time! How could you let the nonsense of an Outer Sect brat—”
True Person Mingzhu merely smiled in response.
“The greater the deviation in one’s self-understanding, the stronger the inner demon when forming a Nascent Soul after the Golden Core shatters. Sometimes, listening to outsiders’ evaluations of oneself like this is quite a good method. This time, Huaisu actually hit the mark by accident.”