Chapter 9: The Female Servant Seeks Trouble
They rode their Tailwind Horses1 through the entrance, and they didn’t travel too far before arriving at the foot of the mountain range. The mountain range was covered in dense trees spreading across the area, and there were even circles of thorn bushes before them. They could only abandon their horses and enter.
“The Tailwind Horses could only come here. We need to continue by foot.” Ye Qing Han dismounted the horses, moving elegantly.
Lou Mu Yan nodded and also dismounted, then she heard Ye Qing Han blow a whistle. Following, the seven Tailwind Horses vanished from their view.
“These Tailwind Horses are quite intelligent, are they all your Spirit Pets?” Lou Mu Yan didn’t know a lot about the Spirit Beast Masters of this continent. She once obtained a Manual from the Beast Tamers Sect—she wondered if it worked or not for this world’s Demonic Beasts.
Ye Qing Han smiled and explained: “Tier 1 Demonic Beasts like the Tailwind Horses aren’t valuable enough to become Spirit Pets. We, Spirit Beast Masters, use the strength of our Mental Energy to determine the Spirit Pets we contract. So a Spirit Beast Master at the Spirit Novice Tier could only contract one Spirit Pet, so on and so forth. But one could only contract a maximum of ten Spirit Pets, so Spirit Beast Masters won’t randomly contract a Demonic Beast to avoid wasting the quota.”
“That is to say, Spirit Beast Master clans like yours have other ways of taming Tier 1 Demonic Beasts like the Tailwind Horse without a contract.” After hearing Ye Qing Han’s explanation, Lou Mu Yan had a general idea.
“Indeed.” Ye Qing Han’s eyes revealed some admiration towards her. Whoever said Lou Mu Yan was a good-for-nothing really were blind—making one point was enough for her to understand the rest, and she was also smart and charming. Such a woman was very attractive.
“Are Tailwind Horses hard to train?” Before Lou Mu Yan could fly on a sword, she wanted to obtain one for travel.
Seeing Lou Mu Yan’s bright eyes, Ye Qing Han also guessed a little bit of what she was thinking, so he promised with a smile: “It’s not difficult to train, but only Spirit Beast Master clans have special training methods. If you like, I could gift you one. You can pick one out of any of the seven horses just now.”
“Sure! Then I want the one I rode earlier.” Lou Mu Yan was very satisfied with how Ye Qing Han caught on—this man had a good temper.
With a gentle smile on his lips, he said: No problems.” Then he took out a whistle from his interspatial ring and handed it to her, saying: “This is a whistle to control the Tailwind Horses, you can use this to control it.” After that, he told Lou Mu Yan the control method.
After Lou Mu Yan learnt it, she waved the whistle in her hand, smiled and said: Thanks!”
Seeing that their Young Lord and the Imperial Capital’s infamous ‘Young Miss Trash’ were talking so harmoniously, the beautiful woman who followed behind them felt unpleasant. If it were any other person, perhaps she wouldn’t feel this uncomfortable, but who was that trash Lou Mu Yan to be worthy to speak to a person like their Young Lord.
Lou Mu Yan’s Mental Energy was very strong, so she naturally discovered the dislike of the icy woman behind them. She curled her lips in ridicule—she really disliked women who pretended to be aloof and virtuous.
Old Lu was rather polite to Lou Mu Yan all the way, and the reason he came this time was because he entered the periphery of the Blazing Mountain Range ten years ago, so he was familiar with this place.
“Young Miss Lou, let’s leave after a break.” Ye Qing Han said considerately with a smile as he saw Lou Mu Yan’s face growing pale, and a layer of sweat was dripping from her forehead.
Lou Mu Yan felt truly helpless about the condition of her body. She didn’t have any Spiritual Energy within her, so she could only rely on an ice jade, that Lou Mu Bai gave her before she left, to resist the heat. But it was truly overwhelming to travel in this high-temperature region.
“Yeah, sorry, I’m slowing down your pace.” Lou Mu Yan’s beautiful little face displayed an apologetic smile—she would try to adapt to this place.
“No worries.” Ye Qing Han smiled and told the others to rest in place.
The icy woman that came with them was called Ye Jing, a female servant to Ye Qing Han. Because she had good talent, she received training from the Ye Clan, and was currently a Middle-Phase Great Sword Master.
“Knowing you would drag people down and yet you still came, who knows what you’re really thinking, trash.” Seeing that the Young Lord was so considerate of and amiable to Lou Mu Yan, a trash, Ye Jing couldn’t help but ridicule.
Back when she was in the Immortal Cultivation World, very few people dared to offend Lou Mu Yan, not to mention ridicule. Yet in this life, because she was a trash with Terminal Meridians2, she was being mocked and ridiculed everywhere she went. It really fitted that saying: ‘a tiger leaves its forest, ends up in the plains, and gets bullied by a dog’.
“Your master hasn’t even said anything, what’s a dog like you barking about.” Lou Mu Yan never had a tolerant temperament. In her life, she had never offered her right cheek over to be slapped after her left cheek was.
Lou Mu Yan could naturally see that Ye Qing Han and Old Lu didn’t actually like this female servant, and with her own identity and background, she wasn’t afraid of offending a female servant of the Ye Clan.
“You…” Ye Jing’s face darkened. She didn’t expect that Lou Mu Yan, a trash, would say something like that to her, so she pulled out her sword and wanted to stab her.
“Stop it. Young Miss Lou is the Physician I invited. Ye Jing, you are too presumptuous.” Ye Qing Han looked at Ye Jing coldly.
This female servant was becoming more and more impudent. In the Clan she exploited her status as his personal servant to bully others, and even secretly sought profit for her family using questionable means. He hadn’t even settled those with her, and now she even blatantly ridiculed the person he invited directly in front of him. It seemed that his usual behaviour was too kind, was this egoistical servant going to take advantage of her master now?
“Jing Jing doesn’t dare.” Ye Jing bit her lower lip and retracted her sword, but she didn’t conceal her indignant look.
After becoming the Young Lord’s personal servant, she obviously would become his concubine in the future, so she naturally saw Ye Qing Han as hers. She definitely wouldn’t allow a trash like Lou Mu Yan to get involved.
There was a hidden coldness in Ye Qing Han’s eyes. He originally wanted to leave Ye Jing to interfere with his second uncle’s intel, but it appeared that he couldn’t keep her any longer.
Lou Mu Yan naturally caught the coldness in Ye Qing Han’s eyes. She curled her lips into a smile—this servant sure felt too self-important. She didn’t even realise at all that her master didn’t have feelings for her, not to mention he even hated her. But Ye Qing Han sure was more than what he appeared.
“Let’s go.” Lou Mu Yan rested for a while and stood up while rubbing her slightly numb feet. She didn’t want to drag down the progress of Ye Qing Han’s group.
When Ye Qing Han saw Lou Mu Yan endure her discomfort and continue with a firm heart, his impression of her improved another layer once more—this woman would definitely be extraordinary in the future.
The deeper they walked, the fewer Mercenaries or adventurous Sword Masters they met. Lou Mu Yan took out a book bought from the blue-clothed young boy, observed the map, and discovered that the path they took was indeed the same route as the one on the map.
She took out the book on Spiritual Herbs and flipped through it. The book recorded that the Flame Fruit was only found in the border between the periphery and the outer ring. Her brows knitted subconsciously.
“The Demonic Beasts we’re looking for are also at the borders, so we can help you find the Flame Fruit.” Seeing Lou Mu Yan frown, expression serious, Ye Qing Han smiled and soothed her.
Seeing Ye Qing Han’s sincerity, Lou Mu Yan nodded: “Ok. Hopefully we can all reap something from this trip.”
Translated product by May Our 梦 Come True
1Instead of 顺风马, the author changed it to 踏风马. They basically mean similar things so I’m leaving the translation.
2For returning readers, I decided to give a name to Lou Mu Yan’s constitution—in fact, it was given a name in the novel, except I didn’t know how to translate it. In the novel it’s 绝脉体质 (‘Terminal Meridian Constitution’ is the translation now). And the person with that constitution was called 绝脉者 (aka. Person with Terminal Meridians). ‘绝脉’ was what was difficult for me to translate, and I only thought of a good translation for it now. Well, good enough at least, I hope haha. Sorry for any confusions!
Note: Next chapter coming 6pm AEST