Collette kept her panic in a stranglehold. Then, summoning the calmest voice that she could muster, she asked, “Are you alright?”
Focus returned to Wuzhi’s eyes. He shifted his gaze from the crystal ceiling and onto the worry-worn face of his female questioner. He fell into a slight daze and absentmindedly said, “Beautiful.”
Collette felt her face grow hot. Her ears flushed and turned translucent, shimmering as light from the room filtered through her crystal-like ear lobes. Suddenly, Collette appeared to resemble a magnificent ice sculpture that glimmered with a halo of mystical light.
Wuzhi was stunned into speechlessness. Of all the beautiful sights that he had seen thus far, this sight surely ranked at the very top. He felt an awe that did not stem from seeing a beautiful woman but the awe that one felt when viewing beautiful sceneries of nature. It was that sort of pure, untainted and innocent awe.
Of course, the more that his eyes bored into her, the shyer and more bothered Collette grew. Eventually, unable to bear his gaze, she quietly whispered. “Please… stop staring at me.” Rather than calling it a request, it sounded more like an embarrassed plea.
Wuzhi broke out of his stupor and replied with a smile. “Alright. I shall stop looking then.”
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly spoke. “To answer Fairy Collette’s question from earlier; yes, I am alright now. I must apologize for startling Fairy earlier.”
Breaking out of her pink-coloured fantasies, Collette hurriedly asked, “Right! What was that earlier? You were convulsing and bleeding from your eyes and ears! I almost suffered a heart attack from the shock!”
Collette was incredibly expressive in her emotes causing Wuzhi to break into a short chuckle. He now saw the resemblance she had with her fraternal twin sister. “I see the resemblance that you share with your sister; it’s your cuteness.”
The beautiful Legacy Disciple felt the gears within her mind grind to a halt. ‘This guy! How can he utter such honeyed words with such a straight face!’
Truth be told, Wuzhi was neither trying to seduce her or tug at her heartstrings. In fact, he wasn’t even aware of the effect that his words were having on this poor young lady.
Ever since a young age, Wuzhi’s exquisite handsomeness meant that his interactions with the fairer sex were always favourable. They always approached him with flowers and gifts, and the naïve kid-Wuzhi happily accepted them all. It also helped that he was incredibly friendly and easy-going, further increasing their affection toward him.
Eventually, news of these interactions with the fairer sex reached the ears of his teacher, the Heaven Scheming Devil. And the latter, in typical fashion, saw this as a fantastic opportunity to play a prank on his student. During their next lesson, the Heaven Scheming Devil personally spent a few hours teaching Wuzhi how to speak and interact with the ladies.
Naïve kid-Wuzhi did not realize the sinister motivations of his teacher back then. Instead, he had simply been happy that his teacher was finally being reasonable for once and happily learnt all that he taught him.
Since, a monster ‘heart-breaker’ had been born. He had unknowingly flirted with and led on innumerable girls without really meaning to. Meanwhile, his teacher had recorded every single such instance and nearly laughed himself to death.
After a while, when the cries of the heartbroken girls broke past a certain volume, news of the matter reached the ears of Wuzhi’s mother, who then punished him and dragged him home after home to apologize to the girls and their parents. Since then, he had dialled back on the flirting and compliments. However, traces of his teacher's corruption still clung to him.
Like now. Wuzhi was merely speaking from his heart and appreciating Collette with honest and innocent words. He did not aim to mean anything other than the simple face value of those words.
Unfortunately, in the ears of literally any other person, Wuzhi’s compliments appeared flirty and caused unnecessary misunderstandings.
Unknowing of Collette’s blissful, pink-coloured thoughts, the young scholar replied to her earlier question. “Those convulsions and bleeding were the result of an emergency treatment that I administered upon myself. For now, I’ve installed a few temporary measures upon the root of my illness to prevent those ‘episodes’ from appearing at random.”
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Wuzhi suffered from an ‘episode’ whenever a particularly large chunk of the sky fell within his mental world and impacted the village below. That village was the physical manifestation of his psyche.
What he meant by ‘installing temporary measures’ is that he had set up a monitoring system that would monitor the changes in the sky and warn him about the arrival of an ‘episode’ beforehand. Of course, setting up such a measure was not easy as Wuzhi had been required to permanently sacrifice a part of his psyche -and by extension his strength- to set this up.
Not only did it require a permanent sacrifice but it also weakened Wuzhi to the weakest state that he had ever been. This was the reason why he hadn’t set up such a measure previously; when he had been in the South Aislan Continent or in the Mu Household.
Even now, he did not feel very weakening himself to such an extent. But unfortunately, he had run out of options. Besides, with only eight days, or rather 190 hours remaining of his life, the potential external danger was the last thing that he cared about.
“Fairy Collette—!” Wuzhi began only to be immediately interrupted by a high-pitched shriek from the former.
“Collette! Just call me Collette!” she intoned.
“…okay,” he said. “Collette, if I am not mistaken, then I am currently at the Sacred Snow Heart Sect. And you must be one of the Legacy Disciples that my aunt told me about.”
“Teacher spoke to you about me?” Collette shyly asked. She did not fully understand why her heart pounded so heavily when she heard this boy talk. Well, she comprehended some reason why but still felt that her emotions were running excessively. ‘It’s not like I am some inexperienced virgin with no knowledge about love and the other sex.’
She was exactly that.
Wuzhi offered a smile and replied, “Yes. She told me that you were the most talented practitioner that she had ever come across and the disciple that she is the proudest of. She also told me that you possess the mythical ‘Ice Heart Physique.’”
“Collette,” Wuzhi gently called her name. “Would you listen to a request of mine?”
She did not know why but she felt her heart pound harder. “A-anything,” she felt her throat go dry; like a traveller lost in an endless desert.
“This illness of mine,” began Wuzhi. “It requires a very specific treatment to cure it; the kind that doesn’t yet exist. It requires much research knowledge, rare materials and repeated experimentation to turn it from an idea into a usable cure. Fortunately, I possess the research knowledge and the experimentation is nothing but innumerable trial and error. And as for the material…”
Wuzhi unwaveringly and earnestly stared into Collette’s eyes. His beautiful argent pair fixedly locked onto her icy-blue pair, causing the latter to endlessly ripple from an overload of emotions.
Her heart both furiously anticipated and dreaded the request that he was about to speak.
“Collette,” repeated the scholar. “Could you lend me your body for my use?”
Collette felt her mind go blank. A trickle of icy-blue blood spurted out from her nose. Only a single thought echoed within her mind.
‘SCCCCOOOOOORRRRREEEEEEE!!!’
---
Misunderstandings aside, what Wuzhi meant with his very poorly phrased request was that he wanted to study her unique physique.
His aunt, the Everfrost Fairy, had clearly realized that Collette’s unique physique had a beneficial effect on his condition. This was the prime reason why she had placed Collette –and her twin sister Mana, who also possessed the same physique- in charge of caring for her nephew.
While this background was not explained to him, the scholar possessed a sharp mind and deep wisdom. He instantly realized the unique nature of her physique and the effect that it had on his condition when she used her blood to calm the aftereffects of his ‘episode.’
The plan was therefore simple; the Ice Heart Physique was beneficial to the damages of his psyche. Wuzhi simply had to study this, isolate the exact nature of the effect, and use that result to come up with a prognosis for his affliction.
And he had eight days to do so. Failure would mean that he would die.
Fortunately, Wuzhi’s strongest suit was his genius and his research ability. After all, he was a Star.
Unfortunately, his unintentional toying of his research material— sorry, Collette’s heart meant that she was feeling very cross with him and refused to cooperate with his request.
Wuzhi was utterly confused. Wasn’t she very favourable to him previously? What changed in such a short period of time that caused her to hate him now?
The young scholar wasn’t dense in the slightest. Still, it took him a full minute to realize his mistake. And when he did, he knew that he was completely at fault; he even felt like trash.
Facing the sobbing woman whose tender feelings he had ruthlessly toyed with, Wuzhi could do nothing but profusely apologize and beg for forgiveness. “Collette, I am extremely sorry. I realize my mistake. It is my fault entirely for phrasing my request in such an open-ended and suggestive manner. I’m very, very sorry.”
“Please don’t take it to your heart. You are a wonderful person and a beautiful woman. It is I, who was in the wrong. Please do not doubt yourself or your appeal.”
For some reason, the more he spoke such words of apology, the harder the heartbroken young lady cried. Wuzhi was soon rendered helpless.
He was a walking repository with knowledge regarding many topics. However, the heart of a woman was something that could only be learned through experience. No amount of bookish knowledge would help him in this field.
“What is going on in here? Disciple Collette, why are you crying?” A cold voice echoed within the room.
The Everfrost Fairy had arrived.