Wang Huo looked at his only disciple with a knowing smile and a twinkle in his eye. He sipped at his tea with a delicate grace befitting his station and the wisdom of his years. “At last, the student has come to ask for the wisdom of this old master.” Her shizun didn’t need to sound so delighted over this.

She bowed in front of him, fist in her palm, in a dramatic show of martial aptitude. “This disciple has come to ask this one’s shizun if he would be willing to assist this one in entering the upcoming Immortal Alliance Conference.” Best to get it all out in one go, that way there would be no extra deliberating on her actual goals.

Her shizun stroked his beard idly and hummed. “Enter, eh? Not content with just going, are we? Now you want to represent Qian Cao during the proceedings?” He hummed again. “Highly unorthodox. Most irregular. This old master would be delighted to assist. Provided, of course, that Han-er has a reason for desiring this.”

There was no logical reason. She had a reason, yes, but not one made with her usual logical thought processes. It wasn’t like she could just up and tell her shizun that she had made a deal with Liu Feng. Wait, why couldn’t she? “This lowly disciple has made a deal with this one’s friend. In order to repair this one’s friendship, this one was asked to participate in the upcoming Conference.”

Wang Huo set down his tea cup with a gentle clink. “So, young Liu Feng decided to emerge from his solitude and bid you contest to prove your worth? Dear Han-er, you would be a fool not to accept this chance.”

Unspoken went his true meaning: Wang Huo would permit his student many things, but willful foolishness was not one of them.

“Then will this one’s master assist this one in participating?” Was it really this easy? All she had to do was ask for help? There was no way her shizun would champion her cause just like that.

“Ah, my dear Han-er,” he began. “This old master looks forward to seeing the results of your studies.” Her shizun all but twinkled as he looked across his desk at her. “Perform your duties as a Qian Cao disciple, first and foremost, and then we shall see if there is merit to your request.”

She knew that tone. Her mother used it in her first life when she told Li Hanyi to clean her room before she could go out and play. There was just the faintest tinge of looming disappointment hanging over her head, where if she couldn’t manage to pass the exam then her shizun would be forever disappointed in his only student.

There would be no getting out of this exam now.

She bowed again, careful not to let her frustration show on her face. “Thanking shizun for his kindness.”

“Study hard, Han-er.” He flapped his hand at her, gently shooing her off to bury her head in her books and study guides. “Do not make this master regret giving you this opportunity.”

Li Hanyi scuttled off, newly determined to prove her scholarly worth. She would never hear the end of it otherwise.

***

Damn Airplane and damn his lazy world-building. May he rot in this hell of his own making, doomed to survive in this world full of overly potent aphrodisiacs and weirdly carnivorous plants. Thanks to him, she had two years to memorize as many of the godforsaken results of Airplane’s midnight ramblings as she possibly could, complete with every single one’s medicinal uses and treatments.

Why did so many flowers cause people with abundant yin energy to need to dual cultivate? Who knew but Airplane. Why did fruit make yang energy too abundant? Only Airplane knew that. This was a stallion novel world made by an idiot who didn’t know how to use a basic internet search engine. And now here she was, cursed to live here in a world where wife plots were so common as to be considered a mild inconvenience.

Qian Cao had an actual form for advanced disciples to fill out before they were allowed to begin further studies into medicinal plants. Most considered it a mere paperwork formality, but others used it as the politest way to request dual cultivation with longtime idols. Li Hanyi hadn’t paid it any mind when she initially needed to fill it out, and now she was regretting that. Who took a worldwide problem, one that affected every humanoid species, and boiled it down to a single form?

Qian Cao did and had.

Why be embarrassed about emergency dual cultivation when there was a form for your top three emergency candidates that your overseeing doctor would call to papapa you back to sanity? They even buried it in the stack of paperwork to be put on file about all the important things like your name, qi type, base meridians, and so on. Qian Cao was all about removing embarrassment by making everything as commonplace and normal as possible. There would be no losing cultivators to something as simple as a mutual orgasm.

Li Hanyi hadn’t thought much about it and simply put Airplane at the top, Liu Feng as her second choice, and her shidi as a good emergency third. In the event of a real medical crisis, her shizun would already be called, so she didn’t need to put him on any of her emergency contact forms. She hadn’t paid attention, and now that was coming back to haunt her.

The more studying she did, the more she regretted ever putting any name on her list. Better to suffer an ignoble end than to ever actually need to rely on dual cultivation. She’d take the hit to her golden core before ever—

There were more wife plot plants with medicinal properties than she ever would have believed possible. Qian Cao put truth to that old adage that every poison had its purpose, and the sex-addling plants were no exception. She had wondered how a world made from Airplane’s sell-out tendencies would function and now she had first-hand experience of the lengths people would go to in order to have a functional society. This was the world she was stuck in for the foreseeable future, and it would serve her well to learn its rules.

Even if she thought said rules were the dumbest things in all known existence. Terrible things, sexist things, lazy cop-out things that had no reason to exist but pandering to the faceless and desperately horny internet masses. Li Hanyi didn’t even think Airplane had stopped to consider the ramifications of a world with such tropes mixed in, just downed another energy drink and hacked out another papapa scene.

The harem option gleamed still on the horizon, and every page deeper in the course of her studies made her all the more paranoid. No, why risk it? Better yet, she could change those supposed character settings some more so no one would consider her even remotely plausible as a spousal candidate. She needed to become a master of her craft, unapproachable, and just that right touch of damaged elder to be unpalatable to Luo Binghe.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

A shame her quest to become unapproachable didn’t work on any of her sect’s newest recruits. She wasn’t cruel enough to truly turn away a child in need and they seemed to know it at a glance.

Mu Xiang, her treacherous little shidi, made himself scarce. It was for the best, what with her temper already at its limit thanks to his unexpected betrayal. She was likelier to paralyze him from the neck down at ten paces than to welcome him into her clinic. He was smart enough to know that his welcome had temporarily worn out, but she had a feeling he’d be back to try to make amends. Boldly, probably with a bribe.

That did not explain why there were three fat little dumpling children standing on her clinic steps. None of them were visibly injured and none of them were in any sign of noticeable distress. No, instead the trio of young boys looked hopefully up at her, stars in their eyes, looking for all the world like they had a favor to ask.

Li Hanyi could feel a headache coming on just by looking at them. “Can this shixiong be of any assistance?” Please, say no. If there was a merciful ancestor, please guide these three away from her doorstep and let her study in peace.

“Li-shixiong! Mu-shixiong says you’re the best in the peak at studying,” piped up the smallest and fattest of the three.

So much for that. “So, what, you three want my old study guides? Your Mu-shixiong has all my old workbooks.” Let them pester him and leave her alone. She had the exam to study for on her own and very little time to waste on distractions.

They turned their little faces up to her and she could feel her resolve crumbling with every blink of tear-filled eyes. “Please,” the one on the left begged. “We just want to pass the exam and become real disciples.”

“The… exam to become disciples? Not the one for the Conference?” She asked, just to be clear, because she had the horrible looming epiphany that these three weren’t even full disciples. And the only exam she could think of was the one to become an outer disciple at ten in order to become the peak’s equivalent of modern trainee nurse practitioners. Why they thought an inner disciple with a specialization could help was beyond her.

The tiny trio nodded frantically. They couldn’t be more than ten, all three boys the very picture of studious little background characters. She considered the merits of closing her clinic door in their faces, locking it, then climbing out the window to escape the inevitable.

The gap-toothed one on the right blinked owlishly up at her. “We’ll do anything that Li-langzhong asks,” he wheedled.

“Anything?” She could have assistants for life with that kind of leverage. A dangerous amount of leverage to just give to someone like Li Hanyi, someone who could put them through the wringer and have it be entirely legal. She could do it, take them on, and never have to perform any of the irritating drudge work again. “And you said Mu Xiang sent you?”

They nodded again like a perfect cluster of bobble-head dolls.

Well, well, well, it looked like her shidi was trying to make amends for his mistakes in the tried and true way of Qian Cao: resource and knowledge sharing. Here were three baby disciples, outer ones at that, that she could train up from scratch and claim as her personal assistants. She was advanced enough for it, far enough in her training that she should have a little bevy of shidis and shimeis to help.

Sneaky of her shidi.

“Li-langzhong, we’ll do anything,” chirped the one on the right, his little doe eyes glittering. She could see the hope radiating from every little pore, in every little quiver of a lip as she watched them stand there in front of her.

Li Hanyi ran a hand through her white-streaked bangs, sighed, and closed her book. So much for studying today. “Fine. Come back, this time tomorrow, and we’ll see what we can make of you.”

They cheered, and Li Hanyi’s headache began.

***

It wasn’t that Li Hanyi was smarter or more talented than her peers. She was, and she would be the first to admit it where the System couldn’t hear, merely a product of her generation. The way modern students took notes was different than how they did it in ancient fantasy China, simple as that. Li Hanyi was less concerned with the poetic flow that permeated every level of scholarly endeavors and more focused on what was behind every metaphor.

Poetry did no patient any kind of good, but knowing where on the arm to apply a tourniquet was a practical advantage. She had two years to study and three new pupils. Li Hanyi had zero time available in her packed schedule for the kind of classical memory games her peers liked to play. A good set of notes was useful, color-coded, done in shorthand as needed, organized in tables, and more boring than it was artistic.

For a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, Li Hanyi was an aberration of modern ingenuity. Eccentric by this world’s nonsense standards, sure, but the masters of Qian Cao Peak couldn’t deny that Li Hanyi knew and understood her chosen specialization. She could rattle off meridian locations and their functions in her sleep, just don’t ever ask her to make it sound pretty. As a scholar, Li Hanyi was an abject failure. But as a doctor? Oh, Li Hanyi was a wonder.

Her new students, desperate to pass their exams, would learn nothing from her but efficiency. They might fail the outer disciple exam, but they’d be ripe to pass Wang Huo’s selection process and become her new shidis. Once that happened? Oh, the silly little dumplings would never be free to work for anyone else again. This was probably not what Mu Xiang had in mind when he sent them to her in the first place. He had probably only intended her to get, at most, some clinic assistants out of the deal, not a trio of fat little shidis to replace him.

If he didn’t want her to use them, he shouldn’t have sent them to her in the first place. It would be no one’s fault but his own if her answer to his treachery would be to move on. She didn’t appreciate when men, even thirteen-year-old ones, tried to run her relationships for her.

Bold of him to think she would let him. Then again, he was a thirteen-year-old with what she was beginning to suspect was a long-running case of puppy love and a first crush. Puppy love at its worst had made him do something unspeakable. At least, she thought it was a crush. It made no sense why he would try to keep her away from Liu Feng, of all people, but who was she to try to figure out the mind of a teenage boy?

Let him grovel. She had study guides to make and new little shidis to train.

***

Chang Min, Zhang Lin, and Yang Jin were not actually triplets. They were also not even remotely related. Despite their physical similarities, they weren’t even distant cousins. The only thing they three truly had in common was that they had entered the peak at the same time. This did not stop them from being called the Brothers Pang by the crueler members of Qian Cao until it had caught on and that was what everyone knew them as: Tall Pang, Short Pang, and Eldest Pang.

Li Hanyi wasn’t even sure if they were even aware that they were being made fun of, so she carefully avoided using the nickname.

She couldn’t tell them apart at a glance. Her little trio of soon-to-be assistant shidis quickly endeared themselves with their unbridled enthusiasm and cheer even in the face of her crankiest outbursts, enough so that she couldn’t just make them wear something demeaning like different color hairpins or some other accessory. Li Hanyi would have to pay enough attention to learn their differences.

Chang Min was the one with the gap between his teeth, the shortest of the three. He spoke with the lightest lisp and the most conviction. Zhang Lin was the tallest of the trio, the nominal head of the batch, and slow to speak but every answer was well-thought-out. But Yang Jin?

Yang Jin thought everything was a joke. If there was a such thing as a class yearbook in ancient fantasy China, he’s have won the Class Clown category by a landslide. Yang Jin was the one that came from nothing and rose up to become something, then realized at the age of six that his dream of being an amazingly cool sword-using cultivator was nothing but a dream. Becoming an assistant shidi to the most martial member of the peak had reignited his hope for the future.

The only one not terrified of becoming a human pin cushion for disturbing Li Hanyi was Yang Jin.

Zhang Lin and Chang Min cared more about the workbooks and flashcards that Li Hanyi had them make. But Yang Jin? Oh, he thrived on copying her acupuncture charts on his slate. Li Hanyi was forced to admit that she had become… fond of Yang Jin after only a few weeks in his presence.

Now, if only she could get them up to snuff enough for Wang Huo to seriously consider allowing them to become his newest disciples. They were pleasant enough, mild-mannered little ten-year-olds, and took to instruction well. She shouldn’t have any problems with endearing them to her shizun.