"Hmm?" Mo Yan's brows furrowed, anger flashing across her horse-like face. She finally realized she had been played by Fang Yuan.
"Heh, what gall — daring to fool even your elder sister!" As she spoke, she reached out her right hand, ready to grab Fang Yuan through the doorway.
Fang Yuan didn't step back a single inch. He lifted his head and laughed heartily: "You'd better think carefully, Mo Yan!"
Mo Yan's movements halted. She was still standing outside the door, her outstretched right hand frozen in mid-air, while a flicker of hesitation and irritation crossed her face.
The clan had explicit rules on the matter. Students within the academy were protected, and no one was allowed to barge into the dormitories to seize a student. Mo Yan had only wanted to teach Fang Yuan a small lesson today, to make him taste a bit of suffering. She absolutely did not want to risk violating the clan rules.
"Even if I violated the rules myself — fine, I could take that. But I'm afraid of implicating my family, dragging Grandfather into it." At that thought, Mo Yan retracted her hand with gritted teeth.
She stared at Fang Yuan inside the room, her eyes wide. The fury in her gaze, if transformed into flames, could have reduced Fang Yuan to ash in an instant.
"I never deceived you. I said I'd take you to find Fang Yuan, and now you've found him. It seems you have something to say to me." Fang Yuan stood with his hands clasped behind his back, wearing a faint smile. He showed no fear whatsoever of a Second Transformation Gu Master's imposing aura, meeting Mo Yan's furious gaze head-on.
The distance between him and Mo Yan was only a single step. One person was inside the room, the other outside.
But that distance had become a chasm as vast as the sky.
"Heh heh heh, Fang Yuan, oh Fang Yuan — you certainly know your way around the clan rules." Mo Yan suppressed her rage, her face twisted into a frigid smile. "Too bad that hiding behind the clan rules can only buy you a little more time. You can't stay in this dormitory forever, and I want to see exactly how long you think you can hide!"
Fang Yuan let out a bright laugh and looked at Mo Yan with disdain: "Then I'll be watching to see how long you can block me. Ah, it's already evening. You have a bed to sleep in — what about you? If I don't show up in class tomorrow and the academy elders investigate, what do you think I'll tell them about Section Thirty-Three: Don't—"
"You!" Mo Yan flew into a rage, pointing her finger at Fang Yuan, practically trembling with the urge to act. "You really think I don't dare come in and grab you?"
Creak.
Fang Yuan swung the dormitory door wide open. A smile curved at the corner of his mouth, his eyes dark and fathomless like a deep pool. His voice carried a certainty that spoke of a man who held the entire situation in his palm as he addressed Mo Yan in a tone that was half provocation, half plain truth: "Then go ahead."
"Heh heh heh..." Mo Yan actually calmed down. She narrowed her eyes and studied Fang Yuan. "You think I'll fall for your goading?"
Fang Yuan shrugged. He had long since seen through Mo Yan's temperament.
If he had closed the door, or left it half ajar, there was at least a fifty-fifty chance Mo Yan would have barged in by force. But by deliberately throwing the door wide open, he had actually made Mo Yan calm down and become more cautious — the likelihood of her forcing her way in was now practically nil.
Five hundred years of experience had long given him insight into the weaknesses of human nature.
He turned around with deliberate composure, exposing his entire back to Mo Yan. If she were to seize him now, the chances of catching him in one move were extremely high. Yet Mo Yan stood motionless outside the door, as though an invisible mountain stood between them.
Mo Yan kept watching with bitter resentment, teeth clenched, until Fang Yuan settled cross-legged onto his bed. She never made a move.
"This is the tragedy of being human," Fang Yuan thought as he sat in meditation, gazing at Mo Yan standing foolishly in the doorway. "Sometimes, what stops people from acting isn't a material obstacle, but the shackles of their own minds."
In terms of cultivation, Fang Yuan was no match for Mo Yan at this point. Yet despite possessing the power of the Second Transformation, she could only stand and watch him, not daring to lift a finger.
She was only a few steps away from him, the door wide open, with nothing to obstruct her. What truly bound her hands and feet was herself.
"People study painstakingly to understand the world and learn the rules — all so they can make use of the rules. To be restrained by the rules, to find oneself hamstrung by one's own knowledge — that is the real tragedy." Fang Yuan gave Mo Yan one last look, then slowly closed his eyelids, sinking his consciousness into his Yuan Sea.
"This Fang Yuan is actually cultivating right in front of me! He doesn't take me seriously in the slightest!!" Seeing this, Mo Yan's chest churned with frustration so intense she nearly coughed up blood.
She longed to charge in and land a few punches on Fang Yuan right then and there!
But she knew she couldn't.
A sliver of regret crept into Mo Yan's heart. Standing outside the door, she felt the acute awkwardness of having mounted a tiger and being unable to dismount.
She was unwilling to give up, but her pride simply wouldn't allow her to back down gracefully. She had rallied a show of force to teach Fang Yuan a lesson, only to end up humiliated herself.
Especially with a servant watching her the whole time.
"Damn it! This brat Fang Yuan is far too uncooperative, far too cunning!" Mo Yan fumed silently, then began hurling abuse through the doorway, trying to provoke Fang Yuan into coming out.
"Fang Yuan, you little brat — if you've got the guts, come out here!"