“Well, look who it is, the little runt from Yunshan Sect. Haven’t even grown all your hair yet, and you’re already strutting around?” The scar-faced man knocked over the pastry basket. “How about letting me try one?”
Yao Qingqing shrank back, twisting her handkerchief into a crumpled wad. “No, I saved them for my master...”
“Got a bit of fight in you, huh?” The scar-faced man reached to snatch one, while his junior brothers jeered, “Can’t even protect a pastry?”
Just as her second senior brother was about to step in, Yao Qingqing cried, “Oh!” and dropped the basket. Osmanthus cakes rolled through the mud. Her eyes reddened, and tears began to fall. “You’re being so mean... I can’t beat you...”
The people from Blackwind Valley laughed even louder. “Crying now? And you think you’ve got what it takes to cultivate immortality?” The scar-faced man raised his foot to crush the cakes.
Yao Qingqing suddenly stopped crying. She crouched down and poked a mud-smeared cake, her voice soft but edged with coldness. “My master says wasting food brings retribution.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, the ground sank beneath the scar-faced man’s feet. The cakes scattered around them turned into slender vines that wound around his ankles, while vines bound his wrists so tightly they creaked. The other cultivators were thrown to the ground before they could react.
Yao Qingqing stood up and brushed the dust from her clothes. Gone was the fear in her eyes, now bright as stars. She picked up a clean cake and stuffed it into her mouth, speaking indistinctly: “I told you, I can’t beat you...”
She tilted her head with a smile and lightly tapped her fingertips. The vines cinched tight, and the scar-faced man howled in pain.
“But I never said I wouldn’t fight back.”
