We Agreed On Experiencing Life, So Why Did You Immortals Become Real?

The following morning.

Xiao Mo had only just gotten up and begun washing vegetables when he heard Master Niu and the others chatting idly about how the Young Miss, Tushan Jingci, had been caught by a maidservant last night while trying to sneak out of the residence.

The Young Miss had been shouting "I do not want to go back!" the entire time she was tucked under the maidservant's arm and carried away.

The Young Miss was now being kept in her room by the Lady of Mount Tu to reflect on her mistakes facing the wall.

Remembering how confident and full of herself Tushan Jingci had looked the night before, Xiao Mo could not help but smile.

She was a five-year-old little girl, most likely possessing only the most basic innate concealment ability that every member of the Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox clan was born with. She had probably not even set foot on the path of cultivation yet.

How could she possibly have slipped out undetected.

Still, Xiao Mo was genuinely curious about something.

Immortal Fox City was not a lawless place. And within Immortal Fox City, who would dare show the slightest disrespect toward the Young Miss of the Mount Tu residence?

So why would the Lady of Mount Tu not allow her own daughter to set a single foot outside?

And as the matter of the Young Miss's attempted escape was put to rest, in a side courtyard of the Mount Tu residence, a beautiful woman sat in a wooden chair.

She wore a moon-white tube-top palace gown, with a sheer robe of the same color draped over it.

The sheer fabric was very fine, thin enough that the texture of the garment beneath could be glimpsed through it, yet not with full clarity.

Her legs were crossed, the right one resting over the left, her knees tilted slightly outward, so that her skirt had slipped along the line of her legs and revealed a length of thigh, pale and luminous as the finest mutton-fat jade soaked in warm water.

Higher up, her chest was cradled by the tube top, a small strip of skin showing above it. The fit was neither too tight nor too loose, supporting her with just the right degree of composure.

The sheer robe above rose and fell gently with each breath.

The beautiful woman appeared to be no more than in her early thirties, yet in truth she had long surpassed three thousand years of age.

Before the beautiful woman, a small girl knelt on the floor with her legs pressed together.

Her small hands were curled into fists resting on the skirt hem over her thighs, and atop her head sat a jade bowl filled to the brim with water.

The fox-eared little girl kept her eyes lowered and sniffled softly, looking utterly aggrieved.

"Do you understand what you did wrong?"

Tushan Xinhua looked at her daughter's pitiful expression and felt a complicated mixture of amusement and helplessness.

"Your daughter understands..." Tushan Jingci puffed out her soft pink cheeks, a faint mist of moisture gathering in her eyes.

"You little one, do you truly understand?" Tushan Xinhua shook her head in resignation. "Every single time you say you understand, and every single time you keep making the same mistake."

"Mother, your daughter truly understands this time."

Tushan Jingci reached back and rubbed her small bottom.

Beneath her skirt, the marks of her mother's hand were still there.

Her mother had not gone easy on her this time.

Her bottom felt like a blooming flower of pain.

It hurt so much.

"All right, get up." Tushan Xinhua uncrossed her legs. "Go back to your room. You are to reflect on your behavior for the next three days and are not permitted to leave. Understood?"

"Oh no..."

Tushan Jingci set the jade bowl down from her head, then stood up. Both her ears and her tail drooped as she trudged slowly toward her room.

"Alas... this girl..."

Watching her daughter's retreating figure, Tushan Xinhua let out a quiet sigh, and yet there was a thread of tender affection running through it.

"My lady... regarding the Young Miss's confinement... should it be strictly enforced?"

A maidservant stepped to Tushan Xinhua's side and asked softly.

The maidservant's name was Yueshi, a cat demon, and also Tushan Jingci's personal attendant.

"Never mind..." Tushan Xinhua shook her head. "That girl cannot be contained. Let her sneak out if she must. As long as she does not leave the residence grounds, there is nothing that cannot be managed."

"Yes, my lady. This servant understands." Yueshi gave a bow and withdrew.

And just a short while after Yueshi left, Tushan Xinhua looked toward a folding screen in the room.

"You came all this way and have been hiding behind there the entire time. You are making me feel like a widow caught sneaking someone in."

"Heh heh heh..."

A clear, pleasant laugh came from behind the folding screen, and a woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties walked out.

She came and sat down beside Tushan Xinhua, making herself entirely at home as she poured herself a cup of tea.

"What brings you to my place with all this free time?" Tushan Xinhua said flatly.

This woman was the First Madam of the Lu family in the city, by the name of Lu Xia, and she was also Tushan Xinhua's closest childhood friend.

"I have nothing to do at home. Am I not allowed to come and see you when I am bored?" Lu Xia laughed lightly. "Come to think of it, why do you hit Jingci every single day? That poor little thing, even I, as her auntie, cannot bear to watch."

"I do not hit her every single day." Tushan Xinhua let out a sigh. "It is just that this girl's temperament is too restless. She is always trying to sneak off and play outside, and now that the time limit is drawing near, I need to be even more careful."

"Mm." Lu Xia gave a thoughtful nod, then lifted her head and asked, "Next month is Jingci's birthday, is it not?"

"Yes."

When the subject of Tushan Jingci's birthday came up, Tushan Xinhua's expression grew all the heavier.

Her daughter's constitution was far too unusual.

Looking across the entire Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox clan, from the time the clan had come into being in its mountain valley origins until now, all the records of their clan counted, including Jingci, only five Nine-Tailed Celestial Foxes who had ever possessed such a constitution.

And Jingci's unique constitution was destined to bring a unique fate.

Jingci's grandfather had once divined a reading for her.

Before Jingci's sixth birthday, the first male she ever touched would become her future trial of love.

For the Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox clan, a trial of love was an indispensable part of every member's path but this particular trial of love was exceptionally difficult to pass, harder than ascending to the heavens.

Since this trial was so difficult, why not simply substitute it for a different one?

And so Tushan Xinhua did not allow her daughter to come into contact with any male whatsoever.

She wanted to deceive the vast Heavenly Dao just once on her daughter's behalf, to exchange this "most impossible to pass" trial of love for a different one but such an act of deceiving heaven could not be carried too far, or it would draw the attention of the Heavenly Dao.

So Tushan Xinhua had no way of locking her daughter in a room and simply forbidding her from ever coming out.

Nor did she have any way of ensuring there was not a single male anywhere in the residence.

What Tushan Xinhua could do was to arrange her Mount Tu residence into a small self-contained world.

Within this small world, there were males and females, grass and trees, humans and demons, everything coming and going like flowing water, all appearing entirely ordinary.

Even when it came to her daughter's game of "hide and seek" with the rules, she could only turn a blind eye and not restrict her daughter too tightly or deprive her of too much freedom but Tushan Xinhua had set one absolute rule: no male creature of any kind was permitted to touch so much as a single strand of her daughter's hair.

And under the rules of the Mount Tu residence, from the day of Tushan Jingci's birth until now, she had never once touched a male.

"Now, only one month remains. Once Tushan Jingci passes her birthday, everything will be all right."

Tushan Xinhua pressed her small hands together, her expression grave, and spoke slowly.

"That is true enough, and yet..."

Lu Xia trailed off partway through her sentence without finishing it, and simply looked out through the window.

If only love could be avoided, why would so many people in this world cast aside all thought of life and death, throwing themselves into it one after another, without end?