Chapter 45: Leaving the Academy
“Miss Gu, please don’t blame Miss Lu. She’s… well, she’s been going through a difficult time lately. I’m sure whatever she did wrong was completely accidental.”
“No, no, no! That’s not what I meant at all! Miss Lu definitely didn’t seduce me!”
“I should probably head back now. Next time I need to borrow a book, would you mind helping me with it, Miss Gu?”
Luo Qi stammered out the words, his face deathly pale. He shot several uneasy glances at Lu Yunxi before turning on his heel and bolting. Watching his retreat, he looked like a man fleeing for his absolute life.
Miss Gu hurriedly tried to chase after him, but she lost his trail in the winding corridors within moments. Her usual entourage of girls quickly swarmed around her.
“That woman must be throwing herself at Brother Luo! Why else would he be too terrified to even step foot inside the library?”
“Sister Gu, we have to teach that peasant a lesson! If we don’t make an example of her, every shameless wrench in the city will start throwing themselves at Brother Luo, and then what will you do?”
“I’m going to find the supervisor right now and have her fired. She needs to pack her things and get out of our academy!”
Surrounded by the squawking crowd, Miss Gu raised her hand to cut them off. “Enough! None of you are to touch her until we find out the truth of what happened.”
“Sister Gu!” The girls stomped their feet in a collective fit of petulant rage.
Miss Gu ignored their protests. She stared off toward the library, her brow furrowing as she muttered under her breath, “Could Miss Lu really be that kind of person?”
With their own separate schemes brewing, the group eventually dispersed from the courtyard. Once the coast was entirely clear, Lu Yunxi stepped out from behind a decorative rockery, her expression deeply calculating.
Miss Gu was turning out to be quite different from what she had initially imagined. Yunxi had assumed Luo Qi’s noble fiancée would be a tyrannical heiress accustomed to snatching whatever she pleased. But the more she observed the girl, the more she realized Miss Gu wasn’t malicious at all.
After a moment of deliberation, she penned a quick note, tied it to her carrier pigeon, and sent it off to Yasi to dig into the matter.
Yasi—true to the bold spirit of a girl who would willingly pretend to be a bandit hostage just to scout a mountain den—proved to be an absolute prodigy at intelligence gathering. By nightfall, Yunxi received her reply.
The Gu family was indeed a massive, near-untouchable power in the imperial capital. Because Miss Gu was the only child of her generation, her parents absolutely doted on her. To shield her from the brutal political schemes of high society, they decided to look past the grand noble houses and choose a husband from a slightly less influential background. That way, backed by the Gu family’s immense leverage, the boy would never dare mistreat their precious daughter.
Luo Qi had caught their eye during the imperial examinations. With his exceptionally handsome features and polished demeanor, he easily stood out among the sea of provincial scholars.
The Gu family immediately dispatched investigators to vet him, asking point-blank if he was married, if he harbored a prior engagement, or if he was courting any local maidens.
However, the ambitious Luo Qi had already mapped out the layout of the capital’s elite. He understood precisely what an absolute behemoth the Gu family was. Facing their cross-examination, he looked them dead in the eye, shook his head, and lied seamlessly. He claimed he had never been betrothed, nor had he ever given his heart to a woman. He painted a picture of a pious scholar entirely devoted to his studies, who had spent his youth observing the mandatory mourning period for his late parents before journeying to the capital.
The Gu family was ecstatic. Their joy only grew when their background checks confirmed that Luo Qi’s ancestors had held minor official titles in the past. They concluded that a boy from a cultured lineage would make the perfect match for their daughter.
Once Luo Qi officially passed the examinations and achieved the rank of Jinshi, the family finalized the marriage contract. Luo Qi then used the convenient excuse of returning to his ancestral home to pay respects to his relatives to sprint back to the province. There, he systematically ruined Yasi and Zhou Xiaoyu, intentionally twisting their perceptions so they would destroy one another, before scurrying back to the capital completely unscathed.
As for why a certified Jinshi was currently biding his time as a student in the academy, it was entirely a political maneuver orchestrated by the Gu family. While a passing graduate could easily secure a baseline administrative post, climbing to the coveted fourth or fifth rank required decades of grueling bureaucracy. Spending a year refining one’s record within the prestigious academy was a recognized fast-track—a golden ticket to high office that bypassed years of provincial exile.
Finishing the report, Yunxi spent a long moment in silent thought. She quickly fired a warning letter back to Yasi, telling her to prepare their sanctuary. The Gu family’s elite shadow guards would likely be making their move very soon.
A few days later, within a private chamber at the academy.
“Miss, we have successfully verified the timeline of the incident,” a trusted maid reported, bowing deeply to Miss Gu. “During your brief absence from the grounds, Master Luo did indeed attempt to arrange an illicit meeting with the librarian. However, Miss Lu flatly refused the invitation and remained strictly within her quarters. Furthermore, because you received an emergency letter and cut your excursion short, Master Luo was forced to abort his plans and return to the academy before any meeting could take place.”
Miss Gu sat in absolute silence, her elegant face unreadable as she absorbed the details. “So… Miss Lu never once attempted to beguile Brother Luo?”
“Correct, Miss. In fact, rather than accusing Miss Lu of carrying on a tryst with Master Luo, it would be vastly more accurate to say that the noble girls in your social circle have been keeping… far closer company with him.”
The heiress remained perfectly still, her gaze drifting out the window as she weighed the implications. After what felt like an eternity, she stood up, her voice steady and commanding. “Order the carriages. Take me to see the two women your scouts located—Master Luo’s previous fiancées.”
Miss Gu traveled under strict confidentiality, slipping out of Jinzhou City in an unmarked carriage.
Yunxi had fully intended to shadow the carriage to watch the drama unfold, but unfortunately, a familiar wall of human flesh materialized to block her path. She didn’t know their names, but she recognized their snide faces instantly—they were the petty tag-alongs who constantly trailed behind Miss Gu.
“Oh look, Sister Gu is gone! What are you going to do now, peasant?”
“How dare a low-born trash like you target Master Qi? You’re asking for death!”
“Wait, don’t break her face yet! What if Master Qi feels sorry for her and rushes over to coddle her after we thrash her?”
Yunxi stood entirely speechless, watching a cluster of characters whose average level hovered around Level 3—with their absolute strongest individual topping out at a pathetic Level 5—seriously debating how to execute her ruin. It truly was a flawless demonstration of the phrase ignorant and fearless.
The girls whispered among themselves for a few moments, casting triumphant, smug grins her way before suddenly parting down the middle.
Yunxi raised an eyebrow. Wait, that’s it? They just came over here to walk in a circle around me?
Before she could finish her internal critique, the girls returned, escorting a stern-looking, middle-aged man into the archive courtyard. The entourage retreated to a safe distance, their eyes gleaming with malicious glee.
The man was the regional supervisor in charge of academy staff. He wore a heavy, somber expression as he approached her station. “Xiao Lu… do you understand the gravity of the mistake you’ve made?”
A cold, amused smile played at Yunxi’s lips. “A mistake? Pray tell, Supervisor, what crime am I being accused of?” She was genuinely curious to see what kind of absurd narrative these girls had spun to frame her.
The supervisor let out a heavy sigh, casting a wary glance toward the onlookers in the distance to ensure they were well out of earshot. Lowering his voice to a hushed whisper, he said, “Miss Lu, your work ethic in these archives has been flawless, and you’ve been an exemplary employee. But you have inadvertently stepped on a massive hornet’s nest! The aristocratic families backing those girls may not match the singular might of the Gu lineage, but they wield immense local leverage. They have collectively demanded your immediate termination, explicitly stating they intend to ruin your life if you remain.”
The old man shook his head, a trace of genuine regret in his eyes. He truly favored this hard-working girl from the mountains, but he was a mere low-tier bureaucrat; he lacked the political capital to defy the collective wrath of the merchant nobility.
“Gather your belongings and do not return to these grounds,” he instructed softly, turning on his heel and departing the moment the formal dismissal was delivered.
Yunxi put on a masterfully depressed facade. Slumping her shoulders, she slowly gathered her personal effects and marched out of the academy gates with heavy, dragging steps, perfectly mimicking the image of a heartbroken, destitute commoner stripped of her livelihood.
The exact second the academy walls vanished past the treeline, her dejected posture evaporated. Yunxi accelerated into a swift sprint, ducking into a secure, abandoned cavern along the ridge before pulling out the items the supervisor had covertly slipped into her bundle.
It was a personal letter wrapped around a thick martial manual.
[Xiao Lu, life will inevitably subject you to unfair trials…]
The letter was packed to the brim with comforting, philosophical advice. The old supervisor had clearly been terrified that a sudden, unjust firing would break her spirit and drive her toward a life of crime. To ease his own guilt and compensate her for the loss, he had looted the academy’s private treasury to gift her this text.
As it turned out, this specific manual was the absolute crown jewel of the academy’s secret archives. Aside from elite scholars who had rendered monumental service to the empire, or senior staff members who had dedicated centuries of labor to the institution, even the highest-born aristocratic students were strictly barred from accessing its pages without accumulating massive merit points. Within the general student body, the mere existence of this text was shrouded in total secrecy.
Parsing the letter, Yunxi’s eyes lit up with sheer, unadulterated joy. In other words, this is a legendary treasure that even Miss Gu and her elite circle couldn’t touch?!
Eagerly, she flipped open the copied text to inspect the system metrics, only to freeze dead in her tracks.
[System Notification: Blue-Grade Cultivation Manual detected.]
A Blue-grade technique…
Granted, it was technically superior to the garbage White and Green-tier trash floating around the public student archives. But this… this didn’t even come close to matching the Purple-grade healing spell Yasi had casually taught her weeks ago!
Heh. Incredible.
