Xie Xie's emotions had been all over the place.
Before the fight started, he'd been riding high with confidence, already daydreaming about skipping the laps afterward and heading to the snack street outside the academy for a slow-braised beef pot. His absolute favorite.
Once the fight began, Gu Yue's two purple soul rings sent cold sweat pouring down his back. Not only did the slow-braised beef disappear from his future, he was now just hoping he wouldn't lose too badly. Losing to a girl was embarrassing enough on its own.
Then halfway through, Gu Yue had frozen up out of nowhere, and hope flickered back to life. He'd been ready to jump on the opening and take her down.
And then Gu Yue had somehow slid three meters sideways out of thin air.
Xie Xie went numb. There was nothing left to work with.
Once she got serious, Gu Yue made it look effortless. Multiple elements erupted at once.
The moment Xie Xie took half a step forward, the ground beneath his feet lurched like something alive, sharp earth spikes punching upward. He scrambled back in a hurried leap.
But before he could even land, a blue-grey cyclone churned up behind him, bristling with wind blades.
He wrenched his body sideways to dodge, and the instant he tried to break left or right, he found himself already ringed by three fireballs.
Boxed in on all sides, Xie Xie's silhouette was trapped inside a net woven from cyan light and scarlet flame, with nowhere left to go.
"Stop." Wu Changkong's voice cut through. "Gu Yue, you win."
The elements surrounding Xie Xie dissolved.
Xie Xie looked down without a word. It had been a complete loss. He turned and walked back to join the students running laps, taking the iron vest from Tang Wulin's hands without saying anything.
"Teacher, does this mean I can enroll?" Gu Yue looked toward Wu Changkong.
"I made you a promise, and I'll keep it. But first, tell me your background and what your martial soul is."
Gu Yue reached into her chest pocket and produced a letter. "This is my letter of recommendation. As for my martial soul, it's the Elementalist."
Elementalist?
Just from the name it was obvious, exactly as Arthur had said: a martial soul that commanded multiple elements.
Even with Wu Changkong's depth of experience, this was the first he'd ever heard of one.
"Very well. You're part of our class now, Year One, Class Five." He pressed down his curiosity and chose not to dig further. There would be plenty of time for that.
"Thank you, Teacher." Gu Yue smiled faintly.
"You should first..." Wu Changkong paused. He'd been about to have Gu Yue join the others for their laps, but it suddenly occurred to him that Arthur seemed to know her.
"Go find Arthur and get the lay of the land from him." He shot Arthur a glance, then turned and walked away.
He needed to head to the administrative office and find Long Hengxu to handle Gu Yue's enrollment paperwork.
That left Arthur and Gu Yue alone together.
"Why aren't you running with the others?" Gu Yue blinked her wide eyes, curious.
"Because I'm not in this class."
Gu Yue's breath caught. She spun to look at Wu Changkong's retreating figure in the distance. Was it too late for regrets now?
"I'm joking." Arthur had done a fair amount of thinking in the moments just past, and said easily, "Why I don't have to run, you'll find out eventually."
"Come on, I'll show you around the academy."
Since Gu Yue had chosen to approach him this way, it meant his relationship with Na'er still carried some weight, enough to make Gu Yue hesitate.
Otherwise, she could have simply resorted to force.
And if she had... Arthur might have pulled back his blanket one night to find a Titled Douluo who'd been waiting inside for quite some time.
She could have whisked him away without anyone being the wiser.
Hearing that he'd been joking, Gu Yue let out a quiet breath of relief and fell into step beside him.
In the time that followed, to Arthur's surprise, Gu Yue was remarkably well-behaved. She didn't say a single unnecessary word or stray off topic.
As Arthur walked along the tree-lined path, pointing out the academy's various buildings one by one, she stayed quietly at his side and listened.
In the brief pauses when he stopped talking, she'd let out a soft "mm" as acknowledgment.
Her eyes wandered everywhere with open curiosity, like someone from a small town seeing a big city for the first time.
Nothing about her seemed like someone who had come specifically for him.
Arthur was actually pretty pleased by this. Not bad at all. Everyone getting along fine.
It was a shame he got happy too soon.
Come afternoon, the day's schedule shifted to theory lessons.
In the classroom, Gu Yue's first order of business was to shove Zhou Zhangxi out of his seat and plant herself at the desk directly in front of Arthur.
Zhou Zhangxi had absolutely no objections. He switched seats with something close to relief. He'd been desperate to stop sitting in front of Arthur for ages, and every single day had felt like sitting on a bed of nails.
Then, during class, Gu Yue began stealing sideways glances whenever she appeared to be looking at the blackboard, repeatedly turning to angle a carefully composed profile toward Arthur's line of sight.
It might sound ridiculous to put it that way, but Arthur would have bet anything on it: Gu Yue was absolutely sneaking looks at him.
He gritted his teeth and endured until the bell rang, then slipped out to the corridor for some air.
Gu Yue materialized silently at his side again, without a word.
"Hey, uh..." Unable to take it anymore, Arthur raised a hand to get her attention, about to ask what on earth she was trying to do.
She gave him a strange look, then immediately spun around and walked away.
Arthur stood there blinking. '...What?'
His hand froze mid-air, then slowly curled into a fist. He stood very still, breathing steadily, trying to pull himself together.
'Hold it together. I have to hold it together.' If he didn't know Gu Yue was the Silver Dragon King, he would have given her a piece of his mind a long time ago.
After that, Gu Yue kept drifting into his field of vision again and again, simply standing nearby at an angle, silent. The moment Arthur moved toward her to say something, she'd act like she'd just happened to be passing through.
It was the most refined form of torment he'd ever experienced.
'What on earth is Gu Yue trying to do?'
Arthur was genuinely baffled. He couldn't make heads or tails of it.
Then a classmate's voice rang out from across the room: "Arthur! Someone's here for you!"
He looked toward the doorway. Standing there was a girl with golden hair pulled into a high ponytail, slender and tall.
Mu Xi?
Arthur stepped out of the classroom. "What brings you here?"
"Hmph." Mu Xi smiled. "I'm here to invite you. I'm sitting my Level Three Smith certification this weekend and you absolutely have to be there."
"That soon?" Arthur was mildly surprised. By his estimate, Mu Xi still should have been a little short on strength.
"It's all thanks to your whale glue." The memory of that day drifted back, and a faint flush crept up Mu Xi's face.
Afraid of embarrassing herself in front of Arthur again, she'd quietly dipped into her personal savings to buy some whale glue. Once her strength was where it needed to be, the thousand-forging milestone had followed naturally.
From the shadows where she'd been quietly watching Arthur, Gu Yue took all of this in. She watched the two of them talking with easy familiarity, and something flickered behind her eyes.
She gave Mu Xi a measured look and filed it away.
"You could have just told me when I come by the Blacksmith's Association to practice. Why make a special trip out here?"
Mu Xi tilted her head and huffed. "I had nothing better to do. Is that a crime?"
'Besides,' she thought with private satisfaction, 'if I hadn't come, how would I have made my presence known in front of the girls in your class?'
And it had already worked on at least one.
She flicked a glance toward Gu Yue not far away. She'd noticed long ago that this girl's eyes hadn't left Arthur once.
Decent figure, but a fairly plain face. Nothing on her whatsoever.
Mu Xi dismissed Gu Yue from her thoughts in an instant. Not worth worrying about.
"Alright, alright, fine." Watching Mu Xi start to pout, Arthur waved her off and let it go.
Whatever. Who knew what was going on in Mu Xi's head anyway.
---
Night fell.
Since she had enrolled mid-day, Gu Yue hadn't been assigned a dormitory at the academy. She made her way back to a small house she was renting near campus.
The moment she got home, Gu Yue went straight to her bedroom and sat down at the vanity.
She stared into the mirror, studying her own face, tilting her head left and right.