Chapter 3 Oh, Crazy Woman

"I'll never dare not to marry an eighteen-year-old again!"

Startled awake from the dream.

The sensation of being chopped into minced meat in the dream was truly somewhat unbearable. He merely uttered a truth, yet unexpectedly, that fairy, though quite beautiful, bore such a grudge.

Ha, women.

He couldn't help but sigh, his expression carrying a trace of lingering fear. Such a strange method of cultivation was absolutely unheard of, and Jiang Feng even began to believe it was a hallucination caused by the excessive strain of preparing for his examinations.

But the fact was, every night as soon as he fell asleep, he would invariably dream of that somewhat venomous-tongued and aloof fairy holding a three-foot green blade, walking towards him.

He tried to struggle out of bed, but the intense pain across his whole body made him grimace. It was only then that he suddenly remembered that he was still a patient.

"Damn these things..."

He couldn't help but curse. The story dated back to three months ago.

That night, Liu Xianzi still chose to leave and did not take him as a disciple. The reason turns out to be his past life's history as an Evil Cultivator, which had almost infuriated him to the point of coughing up blood.

Regret and annoyance were of no use now. One always needs to look forward and if the path of cultivation was truly impassable, then one must simply switch to another. Just in time, the village examinations were about to start, and Jiang Feng promptly registered.

So, filled with a surge of ambition, he chose to leave Qingshui County and, in the end… accidentally fell off a cliff.

"Jiang Lang, you, what do you mean by marrying an eighteen-year-old?"

His body quivered as he suddenly remembered. Ever since the incident of falling from the cliff, there was always an extra busy figure around the house.

He stiffly turned his head.

A young girl dressed in a light green Flowing Immortal Skirt stood beside his bed, her eyes brimming with tears, fingers clutching at her sleeves, looking at him so pitifully. Even the tone of her inquiry was cautious, as if afraid of annoying Jiang Feng.

"Do you prefer mature and sensible older sisters?"

Hmm, the words were still sharp.

For contemporary women, the prime age was twenty-eight, and they could be married at sixteen. In Yan Yurou's eyes, eighteen indeed made one an older sister, especially since her fiancé had been muttering strange words every time he woke from his nightmares recently.

Furthermore, Lady Yan, who frequently visited her betrothed, would occasionally see Jiang Feng sitting in the courtyard in a daze.

He would sit for an entire hour, sometimes picking up sticks from the ground to go through a few motions of Swordsmanship, which looked somewhat terrifying with his distracted demeanor. Each time she spoke to him, Jiang Feng seemed as if he was woken from sleepwalking, completely bewildered.

"Yes, right, I like mature and... no, what nonsense." He stopped in the middle of his sentence, almost accidentally voicing his true thoughts, caught up in the thoughts of that fairy.

Seeing his fiancée's pitiable expression, he immediately corrected himself.

"Yu Rou, you've been getting jealous too easily lately. Just now, I was just mumbling some words in my sleep. Dreams and reality are opposites; naturally, what I like most is a young and beautiful girl like you, gentle and virtuous."

He said these words with a straight back and head held high, not showing a hint of guilt.

And he was telling the truth.

Looking up, the girl before him had a graceful figure and a delicate face, with the softness of satin accentuating her curves, the childishness on her features gradually fading and beginning to slowly reveal the allure that belonged solely to a woman.

Her big eyes blinked, and paired with her fragile appearance, it was quite easy to trigger a man's protective instincts.

At such a young age, she was already known as a beauty within miles. Give her a few more years, and she would most likely be trouble.

"Just now you clearly said... Could it be that you've given your heart to another? Is it that brothel where you often go to listen to songs? Those singers who just happen to be eighteen… are they the Green Snail Maiden and the Nightingale Maiden?"

Her pretty face turned pale, and she couldn't help but take a few steps back, those aggrieved small eyes almost made Jiang Feng burst out laughing.

Although this little girl didn't seem all that big, she sure knew quite a lot. He himself barely knew a few people at the brothel, yet it seems she even knows the names and ages?

"How can you make baseless accusations and defame someone's innocence? When a scholar visits a brothel, it's not called frequenting; it's called..." Noticing the glimmer of tears reemerging in Yan Yurou's eyes, he stopped joking around and quickly lifted his finger to correct himself, "I really just went to listen to a song."

"I stake my life and my family lineage as a guarantee, I did nothing more at the brothel than listen to the music, and I didn't have any contact with any woman for more than 15 minutes."

"I didn't do anything to wrong you; I didn't even touch their hands."

"How could I be interested in other women when I have you, such a virtuous fiancée? If I were to pursue anyone, it would only be you."

The shimmering tears immediately receded.

Her pretty face flushed crimson, spreading all the way to her neck. While she muttered "you just love to tease me," she turned her back with a smile, wiping the tears from the corner of her eyes, afraid that her fiancé would see her in such an embarrassing state.

He sighed in relief. If he couldn't coax an old woman, surely he could manage to soothe a young girl?

Seeing his fiancée's smiling face, Jiang Feng felt he could finally end his midday rest. He got out of bed, and although the doctor had said there was nothing seriously wrong, the three months of recovery were indeed a torment for Jiang Feng.

His anger grew stronger, as even thinking with his toes, he knew someone must have been plotting against him in that so-called "accidental fall."

"Damn it."

"Those bastards have been trying to undermine me for three years now. Each time they tried to steal my fiancée, I sent them packing. Now that they know about the engagement, they've tried to get rid of me more than once."

"This time when I traveled to State City for the exam, Uncle Yan even sent some trained servants to escort me there, but the horse went suddenly mad and charged off a cliff... Mad, huh."

His chest roared with indignation.

He never showed any negative emotions in front of his family, but in his mind, he began to plan his approach to the usual haunts and whereabouts of those good-for-nothing sons.

It is not gentlemanly to leave a wrong unaddressed, and while he might have continued to bear it in silence in the past, waiting for the right moment to retaliate, his recovery from injury had slowly led him to start practicing the Swordsmanship he saw in his dreams, in the backyard.

For several months, he dreamt nightmarish dreams where he was killed over and over again, from every angle and by all means, until he had memorized every weak point, every fatal pressure point, and every major artery in the human body.

It was undoubtedly an excruciating process. Physically, he had suffered many broken bones when he was betrayed and rolled down the cliff, taking three months of rest just for a reluctant recovery.

Mentally, the countless times he died in his dreams, and the swordsmanship exquisite like works of art, etched every move and technique into his memory in the most unforgettable way.

"Alas."

"If you didn't want to accept me as your disciple, couldn't you have used a friendlier way to teach me?"

"Instead, you kill me over and over again in my dreams. I cater to you with good food and drink every day, and yet you repay me by killing me hundreds of times in my dreams just because I said once, 'I want to marry an eighteen-year-old'..."

As usual, he slowly went through the motions of Liu Tangxi, the Maiden's Longsword movements in his mind, and although his mouth said no, his body was honest; whenever he had time, he would diligently practice in the backyard.

Rather than calling it Swordsmanship, it was more like a fundamental training, teaching him how to identify every vital point in the human body and how to respond to an attack targeting those points.

Yan Yurou, who was nearby, turned her head inadvertently, about to share some recent observations, only to see her fiancé looking dazed and muttering to himself with a smile on his face.

Her pretty face turned deathly pale.

Little did she know that this was the long-awaited cheat code her fiancé had been hoping for. Thinking of how Jiang Lang had been talking about dreaming of a fairy maiden lately, and how he often picked up a stick to practice moves in the courtyard, Lady Yan was even more convinced of what she was suspecting.

Could it be that he had banged his head too hard?