A short-tempered mad dog x a patient human leash
Everyone knew Cheng Xin was a mad dog: unruly and wicked, destined to be struck dead by heavenly lightning sooner or later. In the end, she wasn't struck down. The immortals joined forces to hunt her down.
When Cheng Xin came back to life, she learned that her master had died. She flew into a rage on the spot, turning the entire cultivation world and the Nine Heavens upside down
Her master had said he would never see her again, but if she ever did anything wrong, he would surely step in.
Only then did everyone ask, their voices trembling: Your master... is that Lord Lin Xuanzhi, who sits high above the clouds?
But the Lord Immortal is as pure as the moon. How could he have raised someone like you... a mad dog?
Yet even as the heavens and earth changed color and blood rained from the sky, her master never came.
Cheng Xin stood amid the ruins and sobbed uncontrollably.
Through her tear-blurred vision, she saw someone who looked very much like her master.
She couldn't stand it, so she drew her sword to kill him.
The young man clung to her leg with a thump. "I have an idea! Pretend you've taken someone else as your master. Your master will be jealous, and he'll definitely show up!"
Her sword stopped in midair.
She didn't trust him, but that face looked so much like his
So much like him that, in the feverish haze of her illness, she gripped the young man's collar and rubbed against his palm, whimpering like a puppy:
"Master... I'm sorry. Did I make things difficult for you again?"
Just like when she was little, curling up into a ball after every mishap and waiting for him to scold her.
The young man froze in place.
After a long while, he gently took her trembling hand.
"No."
His voice was hoarse, like that night in the snow, when he held little Cheng Xin's hand and couldn't stop crying.
﹡
Lin Xuanzhi had once planned to end his life on a winter night.
Then he found Cheng Xin in a snowdrift, nearly frozen to death: filthy and soaked, using the last of her strength to bite the hem of his robe.
"I'll leave when winter is over," he told himself.
But the puppy wrecked the house one day, bit someone the next, then frolicked and rolled around in a rubbish heap the day after that.
He had no choice but to keep postponing that date.
"Until she behaves a little better."
"Until she learns to read."
"Until..."
Until even he almost forgot: the only reason he had stayed in this world at first was that he was afraid a little puppy might get cold.
﹡
[Bonus Scene]
Lin Xuanzhi thought Cheng Xin's cultivation had improved enough that it was time for some socialization training, so he disguised himself and took her to a competition.
In the spectator seats, a cultivator beside him struck up a conversation. "Fellow cultivator, did you bring your disciple here to gain experience too? Is your disciple obedient?"
Lin Xuanzhi was silent for a moment. "...Not really."
"That's all right. They'll learn to behave when they grow up," the other cultivator consoled him.
Lin Xuanzhi nodded, but his gaze drifted toward the arena
Cheng Xin was crouched in a corner, earnestly gnawing on a fragment of her opponent's dropped magic weapon. After a couple of bites, she decided it tasted bad, spat it out with a "ptooey," then pounced on another cultivator who was eating a spirit fruit.
Lin Xuanzhi's vision went black.
He thought he was about to faint from anger, but Cheng Xin had actually launched herself at him and knocked him flying.
Theme: Sincerity for sincerity
