“Qi Miaohan? How did you find this place?”
“Nie... Senior Nie Li told me,” Qi Miaohan started to say ‘Senior Nie,’ but then remembered the man in front of her also shared that surname. Not wanting to give him the satisfaction of being addressed so formally, she forced herself to change her phrasing.
“He said you sent a letter saying you were doing well in the City of Blossoms and had even opened a shop!” Qi Miaohan looked around, judging the place like a grand expert. “Though I found it easily enough just by asking around town, it’s just a little shop. I thought you’d moved on to big business.”
Qi Miaohan was the type who felt uncomfortable if she wasn't being at least a little bit prickly. Having not seen her for a long time, Nie Shiyun wasn't at all surprised that she started with a few insults.
“Then my little shop might be too small to accommodate such a great deity as yourself.”
Qi Miaohan glared at him indignantly. “You wouldn't dare! It took me forever to reach the City of Blossoms. I’m staying for at least a few days before I head back.”
“Does your master know you’ve come to the demon cultivators' territory alone?”
Qi Miaohan choked for a moment, then dodged the question. “I was grounded for a whole year. What’s wrong with coming out to clear my head?”
Nie Shiyun couldn't help but laugh. Although her arrival was sudden, he was genuinely happy to see a familiar face. He learned that after leaving Yunqing Pavilion, Qi Miaohan hadn't returned to her own sect but had headed straight south to find him. He casually asked why Qi Xuan’er hadn't come along.
“Business at Yunqing Pavilion has been very good lately. Xuan’er and your father are both very busy; otherwise, they probably would have come to see you together.”
Business being good at Yunqing Pavilion was naturally due to the unrest in the world. Many cultivators were in need of magical tools. Nie Shiyun reflected once again on the truth that having a craft was the key to a much easier life.
Nie Shiyun pulled over another chair and placed it behind the counter. He had a tea table and armchairs in his bedroom in the backyard, but Qi Miaohan was an unmarried young woman. Entering the bedroom of a grown man—even one who was a "cut sleeve"—would be improper. Thus, she had to make do with sitting in the cramped space behind the counter.
“Here. Your father said it’s not easy for you being out on your own. When he heard I was coming to find you, he specifically asked me to bring this to you.”
Nie Shiyun took it from her hand—one hundred thousand spirit stones.
...His father was truly a practical man who knew his son well.
“This is from your cousin.”
Nie Shiyun then received a masterfully crafted smithing hammer—a very practical gift, exactly the sort of thing Nie Xing’an would send.
“And this is from Xuan’er. She finished it, but then told me not to give it to you, saying she was afraid of embarrassing herself. I stole it when she wasn't looking.”
Qi Miaohan handed Nie Shiyun a palm-sized pure bronze golden toad. It was a three-legged toad with a copper coin in its mouth, symbolizing the attraction of wealth and a prosperous business. Nie Shiyun turned it over and saw a tiny wealth-attracting array carved into the base. Although its effect would be limited, it was a sincere gesture from his junior sister, rushed out upon hearing he had opened a shop.
“Junior Sister is very thoughtful... but you shouldn't take things without permission.”
“If it weren't for me, this wouldn't have even reached your hands!” Qi Miaohan said arrogantly.
“Then I suppose I should thank you,” Nie Shiyun said, placing the golden toad ornament facing inward on the counter. “So, what are you giving me?”
Qi Miaohan cried out in shock, “How can you be so thick-skinned? You dare ask a senior for a gift? ...Wait, your cultivation...” She hadn't noticed when they first met, but a casual sweep now revealed that Nie Shiyun’s cultivation was faintly on par with her own.
“What about my cultivation, Fellow Daoist Qi?”
“You... you’re a fake dual-root, aren't you!” Qi Miaohan was fuming at his deliberate use of such a formal address.
“You can’t say that. I’ve put in a lot of hard work too,” Nie Shiyun said casually. He spent no less time or energy on cultivation than anyone else, though the details were not for outsiders to know.
Qi Miaohan was envious for a while, but also felt a bit guilty. She had always considered herself a genius with a mutated wind spiritual root. She usually spent her time traveling and enjoying herself, yet her cultivation still stayed a head above ordinary cultivators. Over the last few years, however, she had felt an increasing sense of crisis. She immediately began thinking that perhaps she should only play for a few days before returning to Pinyin Pavilion to cultivate properly.
“Here, I don't have anything else. Take these.”
“...” Nie Shiyun took a large pile of unprocessed spirit herbs from Qi Miaohan.
“If Pinyin Pavilion’s herb garden is second best, no other sect would dare claim to be first! These are all good things,” Qi Miaohan said matter-of-factly. “But I don't know how to refine pills anyway, so you can just have them.”
“Thanks.” Nie Shiyun accepted them. Although spirit herbs and pills were the things he lacked least over the past six months, he was still grateful. Pinyin Pavilion was located in the northern ice plains, and the species in their herb garden were quite unique. While the effect wouldn't differ much if fed to his internal space, if he asked Zhai Bairong to refine them into pills, they would likely be very popular in the City of Blossoms.
After a year of running this little shop in a foreign land, Nie Shiyun had finally received his belated grand opening gifts.
The two sat and chatted for a while. Nie Shiyun tried to subtly ask about Xu Yehua, but Qi Miaohan knew nothing. It seemed that after his early warnings, the two men who had broken her heart—Duan Mingyu and Xu Yehua—had truly exited her life early and become mere strangers.
Knowing this made Nie Shiyun quite happy. Although he didn't know if things would change in the future, at least for now, it seemed he had successfully altered Qi Miaohan’s doomed life trajectory.
Qi Miaohan was someone who couldn't sit still for long. Not long after they finished catching up, she lost interest in the game of sitting behind the counter and greeting customers, and she hurried out to explore.
Nie Shiyun checked the time. This girl couldn't even stay still for the time it took two incense sticks to burn. He shook his head helplessly and let her go.
When they met again in the evening, they went to a restaurant for dinner. During their conversation, Nie Shiyun learned that Qi Miaohan had grown bored of wandering the city in the afternoon and had immediately headed out of town. She had run deep into the Monster Forest, fought a few battles, and brought back several good items.
He was truly afraid that if anything happened to her, Pinyin Pavilion would take their anger out on him. However, Qi Miaohan’s cultivation was actually similar to his own; it was only because she was so unreliable that he tended to view her as a junior.
Qi Miaohan was clearly someone who loved her comforts. After the meal, she heavily criticized the quality of the spirit food in the City of Blossoms.
“How long are you staying this time?”
“Three to five days. I want to visit some other places on the way back. If I delay too long, Master will punish me...” Whenever she mentioned her master, Jiang Baixiang, Qi Miaohan always looked like she had lingering fears. If Nie Shiyun hadn't read the original work and known that Jiang Baixiang was a senior who still looked like a girl of sixteen and was generally fair and kind, his impression of her might have been stuck on that of a harsh old woman.
Three days was enough time to prepare return gifts.
After dropping Qi Miaohan off at the entrance of her inn, Nie Shiyun calculated the time on his way back, thinking about what to make. Since several people had gone out of their way to send him gifts, he couldn't just accept them for nothing. Sending something he had forged to Nie Li would be like trying to show off his slight talent before a master. Knowing Nie Li also enjoyed fine liquor, Nie Shiyun decided to send him some high-quality spirit wine, a specialty of the demon race.
Nie Shiyun gathered some smithing materials that were common here among the demons but rare in the human territories and put them all into a storage bag.
As for Qi Xuan’er and Qi Miaohan, Nie Shiyun was a bit stumped. After some thought, he suddenly remembered the Dew Crystals he had set aside long ago. These were among the materials he had received from a flower demon cultivator in exchange for spirit stones. As the name suggested, Dew Crystals were formed from the moisture produced at the tips of the flower buds where flower demons lived at night. Over decades, this moisture would accumulate and condense into crystals. They were completely transparent and exquisite. Although not as hard as precious minerals like diamonds, they were saturated with abundant spiritual energy.
Most importantly, they were very suitable for making jewelry because they were beautiful.
Nie Shiyun felt that women generally liked these sorts of crystal-clear things that reflected beautiful light in the sun. He might have some bias regarding what women liked, but having lived two lives without knowing many women, he couldn't be blamed.
Although Qi Xuan’er and Qi Miaohan already knew he was a "cut sleeve," he was still a bit worried about causing a misunderstanding. Thus, he decided to refine the crystal from a single flower into two halves, making them into a pair of matching bracelets to give to them separately. This would avoid any misunderstanding, and magical tools forged from the same source material would have a resonance with each other. While Nie Shiyun didn't think this would be of much practical use to them, for two sisters, it should be an interesting enough little gift.
No sooner said than done. For Nie Shiyun, who had undergone various training while running his shop for a year, forging two bracelets was a simple task. Over the next two days, this didn't even affect his shop hours; he used only his spare time after closing to forge a perfect pair of bracelets. The finished products were entirely transparent, with small seven-colored pearls embedded in the center of each. While they weren't top-tier items for defense or attack, they were at least very delicate.
Nie Shiyun had originally thought that if Zhai Bairong came by to deliver pills during these few days, he would inevitably run into Qi Miaohan. Whether Zhai Bairong knew Qi Miaohan was uncertain, but the latter definitely remembered Zhai Bairong’s famous name. Back when she still had a crush on Xu Yehua, she knew that Duan Mingyu and Zhai Bairong were a pair. Although the situation had changed significantly, Nie Shiyun was still a bit worried about a confrontation between the two sides.
However, whether by luck or coincidence, while Qi Miaohan came to visit every day, Zhai Bairong didn't show up once during that time.
Thinking this was for the best, on the noon of the fifth day after Qi Miaohan’s arrival in the City of Blossoms, she came to Nie Shiyun’s shop one last time to tell him she was heading back.
“Did you have fun?”
“It was alright, though the food was a bit poor,” Qi Miaohan pouted. Then, feeling she should say a proper goodbye before leaving, she said seriously, “Once I go back, I probably won't leave the sect again until the next Immortal Cultivation Conference. You’ll definitely be heading back for that, right? We’ll see each other then.”
“Alright. When you pass by Yunqing Pavilion on your way back, I’ll have to trouble you to stop there. I have some things to send back.”
Qi Miaohan grumbled, “Am I a delivery girl?” but after her complaint, she still told him to hand over the items.
“Consider this your delivery fee.” After handing over the return gifts for his father and cousin, Nie Shiyun gave the pair of forged bracelets to Qi Miaohan. He told her the other one was for Qi Xuan’er and explained the special property of the pair—how they might be more effective if worn by people related by blood. Whether Qi Miaohan actually listened was another matter.
Qi Miaohan’s attention was completely captured by the beautiful bracelets. she put hers on immediately, observing the reflections of the crystals from different angles. “So pretty! I guess you have a conscience after all... and you’re a decent senior brother to Xuan’er!”
With that, she carefully placed her sister’s bracelet into her storage bracelet.
The original owner might not have been a good senior brother, having treated Qi Xuan’er and even his cousin Nie Xing’an as if they were invisible. However, since coming to this world, Nie Shiyun felt he truly deserved the title of a good senior brother and fellow disciple, so he didn't bother being modest.
Nie Shiyun went to see her out, but Qi Miaohan waved her hand, telling him not to bother with such formalities.
“See you later then! And... thanks for this.” Qi Miaohan waved her arm vigorously, finally offering a reluctant word of thanks. Then, just as energetically as she had arrived, she hurried away.
Nie Shiyun had barely waved twice before Qi Miaohan vanished from sight. He lowered his hand with a smile and prepared to go back inside, only to notice someone standing not far from the door, quietly watching.
Nie Shiyun instinctively let out an “Ah.”
“I’ve come to deliver the pills. It seems I’ve interrupted you?”
Zhai Bairong asked.
