Bathing

“Of course.”

Shangguan Yunzhu smiled faintly and led Lu Qiancha to a slightly dim side room behind the main house.

She pushed open the wooden door, and steam billowed out.

Lu Qiancha’s gaze swept across the room—though the dwelling was simple, the bathing area was crafted with considerable care.

The floor was paved with smooth flagstones, and a bathtub hewn from polished stone was enclosed in one corner.

Opposite the door was a low table, upon which a bronze incense burner emitted a light, elegant fragrance, and a bowl of soap beans sat within reach.

In front of the low table were several small, round wooden stools, convenient for seated bathing.

With a slight flash of spiritual light at Shangguan Yunzhu’s fingertips, the bathtub filled with clear water out of thin air.

She then flicked out a crimson Fire Spirit Essence Stone, which embedded itself into the eye of an array inscribed on the floor tiles with a hiss.

Voom—

Warmth instantly filled the air.

The array patterns beneath the tiles lit up one by one, and a gentle heat rose, quickly turning the water vapor into curling white mist.

A warm, humid sensation washed over them.

“You can put the clothes you take off on the wooden rack over there, or put them in your storage ring,” Shangguan Yunzhu said, pointing to a simple, unadorned wooden clothes rack by the door.

“The conditions are limited; there are no cabinets here.”

“What are you looking at me for? Get undressed.”

Shangguan Yunzhu turned to look at Lu Qiancha, her eyes filled with genuine confusion.

“…”

Lu Qiancha’s blue eyes were wide.

She pointed a finger at the door and said bluntly, out of sheer helplessness, “You, get out.”

“Eh?”

Shangguan Yunzhu froze for a moment, then broke into a laugh of realization.

“Why make it so troublesome? I need to bathe too. It’s not easy to heat the water once, so saving a Fire Spirit Essence Stone is a good thing.”

She spread her hands, her expression as frank as if she were discussing the weather.

“You’re not taking what I said earlier to heart at all, are you? Besides, it’s just one Fire Spirit Essence Stone, it’s not that expensive.”

Lu Qiancha felt a throbbing in her temples, her tail swishing back and forth behind her in annoyance.

“My monthly allowance was suspended for a year. I definitely have to be frugal with things like spirit stones.”

Shangguan Yunzhu said, perfectly justified.

“I’ll pay you for the spirit stones, double.”

Lu Qiancha said, blinking her eyes.

“No,” Shangguan Yunzhu said righteously, as if upholding some noble creed.

“How can we cultivators bow to such a small temptation?!”

Lu Qiancha’s mouth twitched.

‘That’s not where you’re supposed to draw the line, you know!’

Utterly helpless, Lu Qiancha could only utter one last sentence: “It is improper for men and women to be so close, and it is a disgrace for an unmarried man and woman to be in the same room.”

“Aunt Xuan Mo taught that ‘cultivators should not be bound by worldly customs.’ She said so herself! Why should we two imitate the coyness of mortals?”

Shangguan Yunzhu’s eyes crinkled in a smile, remembering her aunt’s “admonition” perfectly clearly.

Lu Qiancha felt like a pufferfish that had just been pricked with a needle, all her puffed-up energy deflating.

“…I can’t win against you, hmph.”

Her puffed-out little face was a picture of resigned indignation.

She turned away in a huff, and her little paws began to untie the sash of her goose-yellow skirt.

Rustle—

The dress fell to the floor.

While struggling to pull the royal blue, waist-cinching blouse over her fluffy head, Lu Qiancha declared in a muffled voice, “Let’s get this straight first. You’re the one who wanted to stay. If I take advantage of you… you can’t blame me!”

As the little wolf cub struggled to undress, she silently told herself—‘In any case, I’m not the one at a disadvantage, so who cares.’

“Mhm, I know, Senior Brother Qiancha.”

Shangguan Yunzhu’s voice, tinged with obvious, cheerful amusement, drifted lightly to her ear.

All her clothes were put away into her storage ring.

Lu Qiancha took a deep breath, her small feet making soft pat, pat sounds on the cool flagstones.

She was just about to lift her foot to step into the tub—

“Ah—!”

Without any warning.

Two warm, strong hands suddenly slipped under her armpits, lifting her entire body steadily into the air.

Her feet left the ground, only the tip of her tail swinging futilely in the air.

“Hey! Shangguan Yunzhu!”

Lu Qiancha, like a startled cat, whipped her head around, her blue eyes glaring at the triumphant smile on the other’s face.

“Put me down! What are you doing!”

Amidst the billowing steam, Shangguan Yunzhu’s smile was as bright as a flower, her tone as light as if she were teasing a kitten.

“Can’t you tell?”

She deliberately bounced the light little body in her hands.

“I’m—lifting—you—up—high—!”

“Hmph…”

Lu Qiancha puffed out her cheeks, sulking.

‘Just as I thought, this girl is treating me purely like a cub.’

Shangguan Yunzhu carefully placed the huffy little furball onto a round wooden stool.

She then activated the shower branch of the array, and a warm stream of water, like a small waterfall, instantly trickled down from a device on the ceiling.

“Sit still and rinse off for a bit first,” she instructed warmly, pointing a finger at the steaming bathtub.

“Wait until you’ve washed off the dust before you get in for a soak. Don’t be too eager for the heat.”

After saying that, she herself walked to the side and began to untie the sash of her own robes.

“Hmph!”

Lu Qiancha instinctively turned away so as not to look, trying her best to issue a warning in her most ‘authoritative’ voice.

“If you get seen later… y-you’d better not cry!”

As she spoke, a blush quietly crept up the back of Lu Qiancha’s soft, white neck, and her fluffy tail, as if having lost its confidence, swept restlessly back and forth on the wooden stool.

“Don’t worry, I’m very strong. I won’t cry.”

Shangguan Yunzhu’s amused and matter-of-fact reply came from behind her.

“I can’t be bothered with you…”

Lu Qiancha muttered under her breath, defiantly grabbing a loofah sponge covered in soapberry foam.

She habitually raised her paw, just as she used to with her own large, male body, and aimed for her smooth, slender arm… with a fierce, hard scrub.

“Oww~ That hurts!”

The coarseness of the sponge, combined with the force Lu Qiancha applied, instantly turned a large patch of the incredibly delicate skin on the inside of her arm red.

“See! Of course it’ll get hurt if you use a boy’s strength to scrub this delicate body. A girl’s skin is very tender.”

Shangguan Yunzhu, alarmed by Lu Qiancha’s action, rushed to her side, a look of disapproval on her face.

“…”

Lu Qiancha’s movements froze abruptly.

She stared at the glaring red patch, her soft lips pressed tightly together.

A wave of stubborn defiance washed over her—‘Pain? Pain means it needs to be trained!’

She gritted her teeth again, squeezed the sponge even harder, and gave the reddened skin another vicious wipe.

“Nghh—!”

Another sharp, stinging pain!

Tears instantly welled up in the corners of her eyes.

“Hmph! What’s a little pain like this?” she declared in a slightly nasal yet incredibly cold and hard tone.

“In this cultivation world where the strong prey on the weak, a delicate and easily injured body is the most fatal weakness! A few more pains, and it’ll be trained up just fine!”

“Absurd!! What kind of logic is that?!”

Shangguan Yunzhu’s expression turned cold as she shouted.

Lu Qiancha was stunned by her shout and hadn’t yet reacted—

Whoosh!

A gust of wind carrying bath water vapor swept past.

The paw holding the sponge, just about to continue its ‘tempering’, was suddenly empty.

With a mixture of incredulous anger and intense heartache, Shangguan Yunzhu moved like lightning.

She snatched away the “murder weapon” in an instant.

The force was so great that a few drops of water flew off.

“Hey! Shangguan Yunzhu! Give me back the sponge!”

Lu Qiancha shot up from the small wooden stool in a rage, her small, snow-white feet standing on tiptoe, her two small, fluffy paws flailing and scratching futilely in the air, like a kitten that had its fur ruffled and its toy stolen.

“Sit down properly! Today… let your senior sister teach you what the correct amount of force is!”

Shangguan Yunzhu easily dodged the completely non-threatening paws and firmly pressed her back down onto the stool.

She then picked up the sponge, soaked in slippery soap bean foam, and covered Lu Qiancha with it, extremely gently.

“This is the kind of force, remember?”

Shangguan Yunzhu said in a soft voice.

“Mmm~”

The warm, moist sensation, accompanied by the gentle caress of the foam, instantly dissolved some of Lu Qiancha’s tension.

An irrepressible feeling of comfort made Lu Qiancha let out an involuntary, delicate cry.

This level of force was less like washing and more like tickling.

“Feel it clearly. This amount of force is enough to wash away the dirt. Being too rough… will only leave behind pain.”

Shangguan Yunzhu’s voice carried a gentle yet undeniable insistence, her movements as gentle as if she were handling a rare piece of porcelain.

“Hmph!”

Lu Qiancha held on, refusing to yield, her small face stubbornly turned to the side.

“So many rules for just taking a bath… what a pain!”

But her two pointed ears, standing straight up, were honestly catching every movement and sound behind her.

‘She’s clearly listening intently.’

Shangguan Yunzhu looked at the pair of alert yet serious little ears, and the corners of her lips curved up silently.

When her gaze fell on that puffed-up, bun-like face, the adorable side profile that screamed “I’m angry, and very unhappy,” her expression softened into a pool of spring water.

‘Senior Brother Qiancha really is… just a child who likes to throw tantrums.’

“The next parts need to be washed by hand. The sponge is still too rough.”

Shangguan Yunzhu set the sponge aside, scooping up a large handful of fragrant white foam with both hands.

The fine, cool soap bubbles slid between her fingers.

“Ah! Mmm… Ngh! Hey, hey, Shangguan Yunzhu! What are you doing?!”

“I can wash the next parts myself!! Hiss… Mmm… Stop! I told you to stop!”

Lu Qiancha twisted her body, trying to struggle free, a strong sense of shame and… loss of control spreading through her heart.

“This part… needs to be especially thorough…”

Shangguan Yunzhu turned a deaf ear to her protests, her fingertips moving like a precise painter.

—Slap!

Suddenly.

Fingers, covered in foamy water droplets, unexpectedly and gently pinched the pair of nervously twitching, furry ears.

“Don’t, don’t touch my ears!!”

“…Aah!”

A sharp and strange, tingling electric current instantly exploded, sweeping through her entire body.

Lu Qiancha practically screamed.

Her body shot backward, but she was held in place by Shangguan Yunzhu.

“Don’t move around, or you might get hurt.”

Shangguan Yunzhu’s voice was gentle, her movements still focused, her fingertips even beginning to rub the sensitive inside of the ear.

Lu Qiancha: !!!

BOOM—!

The world seemed to be reduced to nothing but the ear being kneaded and controlled.

Her mind went blank, her body completely rigid.

And in that moment of stiff, blank emptiness—

Her fluffy, soft wolf tail was firmly wrapped in a warm, wet towel.

“You, you, you! Don’t touch my tail!!”

Her other hand, also covered in foam, began to gently yet firmly comb through and knead the large, wet tail, following the flow of the blue fur.

“Ngh… ying…!”

It was as if the final string of her sanity had been violently snapped.

The strange, irrepressible sensation coming from the base of her tail made her unable to move, as if her pressure points had been struck.

All that escaped her lips was a high-pitched, sweet, and broken whimper.