"THE HORROR! THE WRINKLY, SAGGING HORROR! AHHH!!! I AM BLINDED! I REQUIRE IMMEDIATE PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPENSATION! I AM SUING THE SECT FOR WORKPLACE HAZARDS!"

She kept her hands clamped over her eyes, violently shaking her head, pretending that she had just witnessed a monstrous atrocity rather than a Greek god taking a bath.

"You disrespectful, feral little brat."

The voice didn’t come from the hot spring.

It came from directly beside her ear.

Before Ji’an could even react, a large, wet, incredibly strong hand clamped down onto her left ear, pinching the cartilage and hauling her upward with the effortless strength of a Sovereign immortal.

"OW! OW! OW! OLD MAN, LET GO!" Ji’an yelped, stumbling to her feet, keeping her eyes squeezed tightly shut as she was dangled by her ear.

Master Jiu Zui had teleported.

He was now standing right beside her, having casually summoned a loose white inner robe to wrap around his waist.

"You disappear for five months," Jiu Zui growled, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that smelled distinctly of premium plum wine, giving her ear a sharp, disciplinary twist. "You don’t send a single transmission talisman, nor did you send a single jar of pickled radishes. And you return only to kick down the door to my private bathhouse and dry-heave at your own Master? Where is your filial piety, you useless cook?!"

"Filial piety dictates that Masters wear clothes!" Ji’an shrieked back, swatting blindly at his hand. "I am traumatized! I am a delicate flower of the Inner Sect, and you have exposed me to your ancient, wrinkly anatomy!"

"Wrinkly?" Jiu Zui scoffed, an offended, deeply arrogant huff escaping his lips.

He let go of her ear, though he smacked the back of her head lightly. "Open your eyes, you blind bat. I possess the physique of a Celestial Dragon! Women have thrown themselves off mountains just for a glimpse of this core!"

Ji’an cautiously cracked one eye open.

Jiu Zui was standing there, his white robe tied loosely at the waist, his chest and abs completely exposed, still dripping wet.

He crossed his massive arms over his chest, glaring down at her with a mixture of immense irritation and undeniable, hidden fondness.

Ji’an looked at the eight-pack.

She looked at the scars.

She looked at the impossibly sharp jawline.

She refused, with every single ounce of her stubborn pride, to admit that the old drunk was actually hot.

"It’s gross," Ji’an lied flawlessly, crossing her arms and sticking her nose in the air, adopting a look of profound disgust. "You look like a piece of over-tenderized beef jerky. Put a shirt on. You’re embarrassing yourself, Master."

Jiu Zui snorted, reaching out to ruffle her hair aggressively, ruining her messy bun. "You have no taste, brat. It is good to see you haven’t been eaten by a swamp toad. Though I pity the toad that tried."

"I missed you, too, you alcoholic menace of a master," Ji’an mumbled, swatting his hand away, a genuine, warm smile finally breaking through her theatrical panic.

She stood there in the courtyard, looking at her Master.

He was a Sovereign.

He was easily over who knows how many years old.

But cultivators aged differently. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Because he had achieved high-tier immortality at a young age, his body had locked into its physical prime.

And suddenly, completely unbidden, Ji’an’s brain, which was still heavily influenced by the hormonal rollercoaster of the past week and the unexpected shock of seeing a shredded immortal, made a deeply inappropriate connection.

’Wait,’ Ji’an’s internal monologue paused, a sudden, dangerous realization dawning on her.

She looked at Jiu Zui’s massive shoulders.

She looked at the terrifying, lean power of his torso.

She thought about Xie Wangchen.

Wangchen was currently nineteen.

He was tall, lean, and possessed the flawless, ethereal beauty of a jade statue.

But he was still growing.

He was still filling out his frame.

If he continued to cultivate the Flawless Ice Root... if he reached the absolute pinnacle of his physical prime...

Ji’an’s vivid, highly active imagination completely betrayed her.

An image flashed in her mind.

It was Xie Wangchen, but five years older than now.

In her mind’s eye, the Ice Demon was standing in a hot spring.

His dark hair was slicked back.

His pale, flawless skin was corded with the same thick, dense, terrifyingly powerful musculature as Jiu Zui’s.

His shoulders were broad enough to block out the sun.

And his dark, bottomless eyes were looking down at her, not with icy indifference, but with that heavy, suffocating, possessive heat.

’Oh my god,’ Ji’an’s brain short-circuited. ’Little Puddle is going to be an absolute, unmitigated, world-destroying problem when he hits his twenties! He is going to be so wide. He is going to be so... so...’

The sudden, intensely graphic mental image of a fully mature, shredded, dripping-wet Xie Wangchen hit Ji’an’s system with the force of a nuclear strike.

The sheer, overwhelming amount of suppressed romantic tension and physical attraction completely overloaded her sensory pathways.

Ji’an stood frozen in the courtyard.

A single, thick, bright red drop of blood slowly slid from her left nostril, dripping down her chin.

Master Jiu Zui stopped wiping his hair with a towel.

The Sovereign of the Drunken Peak stared down at his apprentice.

He looked at the boy’s flushed, brilliantly red face.

He looked at the glassy, unfocused, highly degenerate stare in the boy’s eyes.

And he looked at the incredibly cliché, highly incriminating nosebleed.

Jiu Zui was an ancient immortal.

He had seen everything.

But he was also a man who firmly believed his apprentice was a but teenager.

The old man’s face instantly twisted into an expression of horrifying disgust.

"You..." Jiu Zui whispered, taking a slow, very deliberate step backward, clutching the collar of his loose robe tightly across his chest as if protecting his virtue.

"You degenerate little freak," Jiu Zui gasped, his voice trembling with a mixture of horror and disciplinary rage. "You are getting a nosebleed on what?!"