Chapter 347 - The Failed Exchange and an Unfamiliar Feeling

Chapter 347: Chapter 347 - The Failed Exchange and an Unfamiliar Feeling

The familiar presence drew closer.

Ji Ruyue entered the courtyard with her usual quiet composure.

She stopped in front of Su Bai.

Before he could speak, Ji Ruyue held out a storage ring.

"Junior Brother Su, Master asked me to bring this to you. She said it is a small token of gratitude for helping her complete the Heartless Sutra."

Su Bai accepted the ring but did not immediately send his spiritual sense inside. Whatever Shen Youran had prepared could wait for a little while.

He glanced at the jade slip beside him before looking back at Ji Ruyue.

"Senior Sister Ji, are you busy right now?"

Ji Ruyue gave him a questioning look before shaking her head.

"Not particularly."

"Can you help me test something?"

Her gaze followed his toward the jade slip.

Su Bai picked it up and handed it to her.

"I created a technique last night. It should allow a cultivator to change robes almost instantly."

Ji Ruyue looked down at the jade slip, and although her expression remained calm, Su Bai could tell from the way her attention settled on it that she was interested.

He explained the basic principle while she listened.

"The robe inside the storage ring is marked beforehand with a spiritual imprint. The technique first maps the body and its orientation, then exchanges the robes being worn with the prepared set inside the ring. I already made it work on myself, but that is also the problem."

Ji Ruyue raised her eyes from the jade slip.

"You can use it yourself, but you are not certain whether others can?"

Su Bai nodded.

"My own circulation is unusual, so I cannot use myself as a reliable standard. I rebuilt the technique around ordinary meridian routes and added hand seals to guide the Qi properly, but I still need someone else to test whether the method actually works as intended."

Ji Ruyue looked at the jade slip again.

"So you need me to confirm the circulation."

"Yes."

Su Bai paused before adding, "I also need your permission to observe your Qi movement while you use it. If something goes wrong, I need to know exactly where the problem happened."

Ji Ruyue considered that for a moment before nodding.

"You may."

That answer came so naturally that Su Bai did not need to explain further.

He retrieved one of the spare robes Liu Meng had made for him. Since Ji Ruyue was close enough to him in height and build, the robe should fit well enough for the test.

He handed it to her.

"Start by placing the spiritual imprint here."

Ji Ruyue followed the instructions in the jade slip. Her spiritual sense entered the fabric and slowly formed the imprint Su Bai had designed. It was not a seal meant to control the robe. It only stored the structure, orientation, and arrangement needed for the exchange.

Once she finished, she placed the robe inside her storage ring.

After that, she spent a short while memorizing the circulation route and hand seals.

Su Bai watched her hands move through them once without Qi.

There was no hesitation.

"Try it slowly," he said. "I’ll watch the circulation."

Ji Ruyue nodded.

Her spiritual sense entered the storage ring and immediately found the marked robe. At the same time, Qi began spreading through her body according to the method recorded in the jade slip.

Su Bai stepped back and extended his spiritual sense.

The first hand seal guided her Qi through the arm and wrist. The second redirected the circulation through the chest. The next moved it downward before returning it toward the Dantian.

At first, everything followed his design exactly.

Su Bai’s attention sharpened.

Something was wrong.

Ji Ruyue’s Qi was moving through the route more smoothly than he had expected. There were almost none of the tiny pauses he had included when calculating the timing between the two spatial commands.

He had based the technique on the circulation speed he simulated while translating the Myriad-Path Meridian Web into ordinary meridian routes.

What he had failed to consider was that cultivation methods themselves could change how efficiently those routes were used.

The Heartless Sutra made Ji Ruyue’s circulation exceptionally calm and precise. Her Qi moved through the necessary junctions without the minor fluctuations he had unconsciously assumed would always exist.

The difference was small, but for this technique, it was enough.

Su Bai saw the storage command begin forming before the retrieval side had fully finished preparing the replacement robe.

His expression changed immediately.

"Senior Sister Ji, wait—"

Ji Ruyue completed the final hand seal before he could finish speaking.

A violent ripping sound broke through the courtyard.

Her robes were pulled toward the storage ring too early. The spatial force caught the fabric before the exchange had properly synchronized, tearing through several parts of the robe as it disappeared.

The replacement did not emerge.

Su Bai stopped breathing for a moment.

Ji Ruyue stood exactly where she had been, completely uncovered.

For several breaths, neither of them moved.

Su Bai had seen plenty of things during the past year that should have made him difficult to surprise, yet his thoughts still emptied for an embarrassingly long moment.

Ji Ruyue’s appearance had always stood out, but the restrained robes of Silent Orchid Peak usually hid most of her figure. Without them, the contrast between her cold composure and the graceful shape of her body became impossible to ignore.

Her skin was pale and smooth beneath the morning light, while years of cultivation had given her a healthy, balanced physique that remained slender without appearing fragile.

Su Bai’s gaze remained there longer than it should have.

His throat moved unconsciously.

Ji Ruyue blinked once.

Their eyes met.

That finally brought his mind back.

"My apologies, Senior Sister Ji. That was my mistake."

Su Bai turned away immediately.

The failure had come from his technique, which made the situation considerably worse in his mind.

He had asked her to trust the method he had created, and promptly destroyed her clothes.

His body was also choosing that exact moment to make the situation even less dignified.

Su Bai closed his eyes briefly.

At the worst possible time, he remembered an idiotic phrase one of his coworkers in his previous life liked to use whenever an unfortunate situation like this occurred.

’Something is rising... and it’s not the Shield Hero.’

He immediately crushed that thought.

This was neither the time nor the place.

Besides, it was not as though he had never seen a woman’s body before.

He forced his attention back to the actual problem and pulled out his notebook.

The moment he reviewed what had happened, the flaw became obvious.

The technique still depended on timing.

The storage command and the retrieval command were separate, and he had only synchronized them by calculating how long the circulation should take to reach each point.

That worked for him because his Myriad-Path Meridian Web compensated automatically.

It did not guarantee anything for someone else.

Different cultivation methods, different meridian conditions, different levels of control, and even different circulation habits could all alter the timing.

Ji Ruyue had simply exposed the problem immediately.

Su Bai began writing.

The two commands could no longer be allowed to activate independently.

The replacement robe had to be completely identified, mapped, aligned, and prepared before the old robes were permitted to enter storage.

Once both sides were ready, one final trigger would execute the exchange simultaneously.

That would remove circulation speed from the equation.

Whether a cultivator moved Qi slightly faster or slower would no longer matter.

Su Bai was already considering how to restructure the final hand seal when a faint fragrance reached him from behind.

He paused.

Ji Ruyue had moved closer.

She leaned slightly over his shoulder, looking at what he had written.

"Junior Brother Su, did I perform it incorrectly?"

Su Bai stiffened.

He turned his head.

Ji Ruyue was still standing there without putting anything on.

Su Bai nearly coughed.

"Senior Sister Ji, why are you still undressed?"

Ji Ruyue looked down at herself as though the answer should have been obvious.

"My robes were destroyed."

Su Bai closed his eyes for a moment.

Of course they were.

He had been so focused on fixing the technique that he had somehow forgotten that part.

"You may use any of the spare robes here."

Ji Ruyue glanced toward the scattered clothing but did not immediately move.

Su Bai finally looked at her face again.

"Senior Sister Ji, aren’t you embarrassed being seen like this?"

Ji Ruyue seemed genuinely puzzled by the question.

"What is there to be embarrassed about?"

Su Bai stared at her.

She continued calmly.

"A body is only flesh, bone, skin, meridians, and organs."

For a moment, Su Bai had no answer.

He remembered what the incomplete Heartless Sutra had done to her over the years. Ji Ruyue had been taught to sever unnecessary disturbances so thoroughly that even something as ordinary as modesty had probably lost most of its meaning.

Su Bai sighed.

"That does not mean you should let people see you like this whenever they want."

Ji Ruyue considered the statement.

"This is the first time my robes have broken in front of someone."

"That was not what I asked."

Ji Ruyue looked at him quietly.

Su Bai rubbed his forehead.

He had survived the Heavenly Burial Palm.

Somehow, this conversation felt more difficult.

He took a slow breath and decided that panicking would only make everything stranger.

If Ji Ruyue herself was standing there calmly, turning away as though he had witnessed some terrible taboo might only confuse her further.

He faced her properly again.

"Senior Sister Ji, whether you personally care about it or not, other people will. Your body is still something private. You shouldn’t expose yourself casually."

Ji Ruyue listened without interrupting.

Su Bai tried to keep his expression composed.

Unfortunately, while explaining the matter, his gaze drifted downward for a brief moment before he caught himself.

Ji Ruyue noticed.

Nothing changed immediately.

She had already been standing there for some time without feeling anything unusual.

Yet now that Su Bai had drawn her attention to the idea of being seen, she suddenly became much more conscious of his gaze.

The morning air against her skin felt different.

The distance between them felt closer.

Even the simple fact that Su Bai was looking at her began to carry a meaning she had not considered a moment earlier.

A faint warmth appeared inside her chest.

Ji Ruyue frowned slightly.

There was no pain and no threat.

The feeling did not resemble fear or anger.

It simply made remaining uncovered feel increasingly uncomfortable.

Her hand moved toward herself almost unconsciously before stopping halfway.

That movement surprised her more than the feeling itself.

She turned toward the spare robes.

Su Bai’s gaze followed her movement.

Ji Ruyue noticed.

The unfamiliar warmth grew stronger.

She picked up one of the spare robes and, for reasons she could not explain, turned her back to Su Bai before putting it on.

Once the fabric covered her body, the discomfort eased.

Ji Ruyue looked down at herself.

Her heartbeat had not changed much, yet she could feel it more clearly than usual.

When she turned around again, her eyes met Su Bai’s.

This time, she looked away first.

Su Bai paused.

That reaction had definitely not been there before.

Ji Ruyue herself seemed even more confused.

She had spent years recognizing killing intent, hostility, and countless disturbances that might interfere with cultivation.

This feeling belonged to none of them.

She only knew that being seen had not bothered her at first.

It had started bothering her after she realized that Su Bai was truly looking.

The difference remained difficult to understand.

For now.

Su Bai quietly returned to his notebook.

He decided that continuing to analyze Ji Ruyue’s reaction would be dangerous for entirely different reasons.

The Cloudshift Dressing Art still needed fixing, and fortunately, meridian routes were much easier to understand than women.