The Jiuhua Sect's Five Elements Master specialized in water, so his disciples had naturally refined ice techniques to a sharp edge. When they saw their senior brother seal Yu Chen in a block of ice before he could even draw a trick, the rest broke into laughter. "Su Yishui raised this kind of trash? Why do they bother throwing punches and making noise?" The young Xishan disciples who had come up the mountain behind their senior brother burned with anger at that. Senior brother Takakura was already moving to rush forward when junior sister Ranran caught his arm from behind. Their Uncle Shi had been frozen solid before he could pull off a single move. What good could a few green recruits do against disciples who could manage that? Takakura assumed his junior sister was frightened, so he only glared at her and said, "A man of honor cannot swallow this humiliation. These bastards are walking all over us. Are we supposed to tuck our heads in like turtles?" Ranra...
Xue Ranran crouched down and quietly gathered the scattered Qingxin pills her master had thrown to the ground. When she straightened up, she pressed her lips together and waited for the scolding. Su Yishui stood in silence for a long moment, then turned and walked away without a word. She felt no relief at all. She had been frail since childhood, always a burden to her parents. Now that she had finally found a path forward by learning to refine medicine, she had nothing useful to show for it. How could that not wear on a person? Qiu Xi, standing nearby, had no sense of his junior sister's low spirits. He let out a small sigh on her behalf and said quietly, "Looks like Master couldn't even be bothered to scold you properly. Go back inside and keep your head down." Xue Ranran gathered the remaining pills into their box without a word, planning to compare them against a proper batch later to figure out where she had gone wrong. Then she went obediently to her room, sh...