Chapter 249

Ye Tinglan was moved to the point of being clingy, her trust in the little man at this moment unparalleled.

She never imagined that not long after she withdrew her divine sense, the conversation over there would slowly start to go wrong.

In fact, the very next sentence was already a bit off. Dugu Qingli hung her head and muttered in a low voice: "You... are quite good to her."

"Why, do you think I'm just lusting after her, or that I'm doing this just to annoy you?" Lu Xingzhou squinted at her: "Change your name. How about White Fish?"

Dugu Qingli didn't understand why he always wanted to include fish, but she blushed for once and felt like she was sitting on pins and needles: "It's... it's not like you didn't tell me those things before..."

"I told you before, this is a matter between two people. If she isn't willing, can I mind-control her? Do you really think she's some sheltered young lady who knows nothing, easily swayed by a few sweet words?"

"Of course not..." Dugu Qingli steadied herself and finally said in a low voice: "You are quite worth it, but you have a lover, isn't that a bit..."

Lu Xingzhou said, "Do you care about this?"

Dugu Qingli's face was tight, not knowing how to answer.

She wasn't planning on finding a man, so why would she care? She wouldn't care even if he had a harem. The problem was Master—knowing the other party had Shen Tang, what was she thinking right now?

Dugu Qingli naturally didn't know that Master harbored thoughts of forgetting love in the future, which meant she wouldn't care if the other party had a harem either. For Dugu Qingli, this was the most baffling point; she couldn't imagine the scene of Master and Shen Tang fighting for a man out of jealousy—that would be the end of the world.

Especially since the identities of these two weren't as simple as ordinary women fighting for a man.

One is a Great Qian Princess, the other is a Great Qian State Preceptor. If you two fight over a man, wouldn't Great Qian fall into civil war first...

But the parties involved couldn't possibly not know this. If they didn't care, what could she, a little white-haired disciple, say?

After holding it in for a long time, she turned her head and said: "I don't care at all."

Lu Xingzhou said, "You really don't care?"

"Of course I don't care."

Lu Xingzhou's smile seemed somewhat meaningful.

Dugu Qingli: "?"

She suddenly realized and said angrily: "I was talking about her, not myself!"

"Then what about yourself?"

"What does that have to do with me? You could find ten thousand women and it would have nothing to do with m—mmph..." Dugu Qingli's voice grew louder, and Lu Xingzhou suddenly reached out to cover her mouth.

Dugu Qingli didn't expect this guy to launch a sneak attack. Just as she was about to resist, Lu Xingzhou's voice rang out urgently: "Someone is coming. Do you remember what we are supposed to be pretending?"

Dugu Qingli: "..."

She was at the Third Grade, and Lu Xingzhou was only at the Fourth Grade, yet Lu Xingzhou was the one who reacted to the movement outside first.

The "heart as clear as ice" that Ye Tinglan imagined for her disciple had actually long since collapsed when chatting about such topics alone with a man; her CPU was a tangled mess.

It was even messier now. The two were originally sitting side by side, and now Lu Xingzhou had his arm around her shoulders and one hand over her mouth. She was struggling unconsciously, looking exactly like a cold female swordswoman being forced—it couldn't have been more realistic.

Footsteps could already be heard outside.

Lu Xingzhou whispered in her ear: "It needs to be more realistic. It would be best to seal your cultivation, but that's too easy to go wrong, so we won't do that. Just say you took our poison and are being controlled. Act a bit more realistically."

Dugu Qingli said indignantly: "I don't know how to act."

"You just need to not use your power, and act naturally for the rest," Lu Xingzhou said, leaning in to kiss her face.

Dugu Qingli instinctively wanted to explode with Qi to beat him away, but she held it back desperately, using only the strength of her body to push him.

Lu Xingzhou restrained her, having already kissed her delicate cheek, which was cool and refreshing, like ice cream.

Dugu Qingli knew what he meant by "it's not like it hasn't happened before," but judging from the previous arrangements, it shouldn't have happened, so she was calm in her heart—only for it to suddenly happen.

It had indeed happened before, and it went far beyond this; there was tongue involved, something Shen Tang hadn't even had!

At the time, that damn contact was something Dugu Qingli could have forgotten; it was nothing more than an accident, nothing to dwell on.

But Shen Tang's three questions deepened the memory of shame and anger. That aside, what truly made her unable to forget to this day was that the accident had boosted her cultivation.

At that time, she hadn't been at the Fourth Grade for long, and she was still a long way from the Third Grade hurdle. Logically, that disturbance of her state of mind should have dragged her down, making the Third Grade hurdle even further away... but the facts were not so.

At that time, Lu Xingzhou had used a reverse-harvesting method to give his own cultivation to her... and that wasn't all. Combined with the result of Yin and Yang union, it gave her a huge boost. In the short period of cultivation that followed, her Fourth Grade cultivation skyrocketed, and by the time she went to the capital, she was at the Third Grade hurdle.

In Dugu Qingli's life, where she had been called a genius since childhood, this belonged to an extremely rare period of rapid growth.

Dugu Qingli had a special physique, but it wasn't fully reflected in her cultivation speed; it was more reflected in her power. As for her cultivation speed, while faster than the average person, it couldn't crush other geniuses. On the contrary, compared to geniuses like Shen Tang and Pei Chuyun, because her icy nature was too intense, it was a typical case of "isolated Yin not growing," and her cultivation speed was actually dragged down slightly, not as efficient as Shen Tang or Pei Chuyun.

When she first met Pei Chuyun, the little demoness was already at the Fourth Grade, while she was still quite far off... yet the time it took for them to break into the Third Grade was about the same.

The role of that tongue kiss at the time accounted for at least 70 or 80 percent of the weight; it was more than just a little boost.