Succeed, or Fall into Depravity as a Witch!

“Brother Qin, you really are heartless.” Jiangming complained, “We’re almost family. Your brother from another mother was being bullied, and you just stood by and watched?”

“What can I do? I can’t beat her, and the best-case scenario for me after that would be hanging on the tree as well and keeping you company. I might as well pretend to be a prickly cactus, that way I can wait for her to leave us alone, and then I come save you.”

Qin Wuyi was dawdling and held everything up for a long while, until the ropes were finally cut loose.

Jiangming was inexperienced, so she was just looking stupidly as she fell down, and almost slammed her head onto the ground like a kowtowing peasant. Luckily Qin Wuyi reached out and caught her in time, so she didn’t end up heels over head like a stalk of green onion planted upside-down.

The delicate and soft feeling just like that of a woman transmitted from the arms straight to Qin Wuyi’s brain, solidifying his expression.

A momentary confusion came and went like lightning. Qin Wuyi turned his hands around, helping Jiangming turn over and plant her feet firmly back on the ground.

After this brief display of physical ability, Qin Wuyi collected the hemp rope off of the ground, preparing to go back to his wing of the courtyard house. He didn’t want Jiangming to bumble after him, but bumble along Jiangming did.

“Brother Qin! Brother Qin! Hey, you’re pretty skilled! You a martial artist?”

“Well, I know a bit of swordsmanship, but only superficially so.”

“Oooh……learned a bit hoping for an apprenticeship¹Offering skills learned from another master in exchange for apprenticeship?”

“Not really, and I don’t know any special moves either.”

“How would you fare up against that shrew?”

Qin Wuyi couldn’t help but laugh, “What you’re asking is……let’s say fifty-fifty, fifty percent leaving an intact corpse, fifty percent not even ashes remain.”

He could roughly figure out Jiangming was thinking, so he turned around and kindly advised: “Hey look, don’t try to feel me out. Go look for that eldest senior brother Song Tianxing of yours for help. I’m just a small-timer, don’t expect me to hold off the ranked thirteenth Chaos Witch on the Prodigies Tier List.”

“Brother Qin, you know her?” Jiangming squinted slyly like a fox, “Prodigies Tier List, what’s that?”

“A silly list compiled by silly people with too much time on their hands. It only records Baiyun Continent’s top cultivators under the age of forty.”

Qin Wuyi seemed very familiar with the anecdotes of the cultivation world. He casually said:

“The senior sister causing you trouble is named Su Xiangzi, ranked thirteenth, who is a relatively famous figure in recent years. She’s temperamental, miserly and ungenerous, and obsessed with Song Tianxing to the point of mental sickness.”

“Song Tianxing had kept her suppressed earlier, so she was still somewhat well-behaved, but now……with Song Tianxing injured, no one can control her anymore, so I’m afraid she’ll stir up quite a storm.”

Jiangming felt a sense of emptiness deep in the heart. A lovesick yandere, no wonder she’s so neurotic.

Ho, despite having once been a man, yet transformed into a thin-waisted long-legged beautiful woman, and a ‘yandere’ at that, obsessively in love with a senior brother…...serves you right you crazy witch!

Said a certain fellow in her heart, who had temporarily forgotten about her current transformation into one ‘Beautiful Ms. Jiang’.

Thinking about the threat made by that crazy senior sister, Jiangming shuddered, knowing she had to be a hundred-and-twenty percent motivated. Not bothering to have any more small talk with her Brother Qin, she ran back to her room, and dedicated herself to cultivating in a lotus pose.

Only until twenty-four hours passed after her ‘Turn Yin’ transformation, did Jiangming finally stop.

“Alas……what a pity……”

Continuing further would mean being afflicted with ‘feminising’ side-effects, and Jiangming was loath to casually ignore the warnings. With a thought, she reversed the ‘Turn Yin Method’, and her body changed once again.

Not long after, ‘her’ returned to being ‘him’.

After regaining his manhood, Jiangming observed his reflection in the mirror for a long while, but the longer he looked the more confused he became.

“Is it just an illusion?”

He pinched his cheeks in suspicion, and it felt like……his skin had become a lot more supple than before.

“That’s strange. I haven’t gone past twenty-four hours, there shouldn’t be any side effects. Wait, could it be???”

Jiangming’s heart skipped a beat, as he suddenly remembered the [Incomplete Yin Psalm] he had been practicing had been exclusively for Joyous Union Sect’s ‘junior sisters’. This devilish method wouldn’t have any hidden issues, would it?

Then, as he tried to circulate his qi, he found a more fatal problem.

The flow of qi became sluggish, and the meridians felt obstructed…...Not only that, the rate of drawing qi from the surroundings and the recovery rate of expended artes were also greatly reduced.

On one hand, because he changed back to being a man, his meridians were no longer as ‘limpid’ as before; on the other hand, since he was practicing artes used exclusively by ‘junior sisters’ after all, those artes were obviously ill suited for his current male body.

Jiangming’s first reaction was to quickly change again to another cultivation method, but then he realised: the sect did have methods other than [Like-Dragon Artes] and [Incomplete Yin Psalm], but those……were all for women.

After all, all the men in the Joyous Union Sect practice [Like-Dragon Artes], and those who can’t have long become junior sisters.

The other methods were prepared purely for the extreme minority of natural-born ‘junior sisters’ who joined the Joyous Union Sect, without the souls of men, so naturally they were all for women.

So, there were no chances there.

And it would be too late to go out hoping to find a wild cultivation method. That yandere senior sister only gave him seven days.

Jiangming once again felt like crying but had no tears. Does this mean……even in the future he could only use at most five percent of his power as a man, and only after transforming into a woman could he use his full power?

What does that make him?

Some sort of Magical ♂ Girl?

Life sure was tough for the macho man. Jiangming pondered for half a day and still couldn’t find a solution to the conflict between his cultivation method and his gender. His heart eventually made up, and he simply thought “Let it be” and “Whatever”.

— It’s not like he couldn’t cultivate, he just had to make it work.

The key here is that if he doesn’t make it work, could he really give up cultivating? If he let it rot and do nothing, before even the sect exam, he and his little buddy wouldn’t survive that yandere senior sister’s butcher knife.

Jiangming sighed as he walked out, just in time to see Qin Wuyi setting up a stove and roasting a freshly caught deer, turning the spit as he sprinkled on some crushed cumin seeds.

As soon as the aroma whiffed under Jiangming’s nose, all his worries had ascended beyond the Ninth Heaven²Chinese myth claims Heaven had at least nine layers. Bumbling his way over to the spit-roast, Jiangming made a superfluous attempt to lend a hand.

“Alright, step aside, you’re in the way.” Qin Wuyi could tell at a glance Jiangming wanted a portion but was too embarrassed to directly ask, and so was trying to find a reason to deserve one. He immediately scolded with an amused smile, “Don’t make trouble, and I’ll give you two of the legs when I’m done roasting.”

Having been promised a share, Jiangming immediately sat down all well-behaved, staring at the roast deer legs while both drool and words spilled out from his mouth.

“Brother Qin, you sure are good with your hands.”

“As they say, hunger makes a good cook. If my master could cook better than something akin to roasted pig feed, I wouldn’t have been able to practice this skill.”

“Your master?”

Qin Wuyi realised his slip of the tongue, so he hurriedly added, “My private school master.”

“Oooh……” Yet Jiangming didn’t think much of it, his watery almond eyes were purely focused on those oily and sizzling deer legs.

Although it was strange for a ‘private school master’ to take care of the cooking, Jiangming had long believed that Qin Wuyi was no ordinary mortal, and at least had a repertoire of skills before joining the sect, so naturally he wouldn’t make a fuss either.

With the venison done roasting, Qin Wuyi reached out and easily wrenched off one of the deer’s hind legs, tossing it over to Jiangming with tendons, bones and all.

Jiangming had just started on the path of cultivation, have yet to achieve Bigu³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigu_(grain_avoidance) and thus still had a physiological need to eat. After cultivating for nearly twenty-four hours, the long empty stomach had already begun grumbling. Letting the eyes and nose have their share first and greatly stimulating the desire to fill his stomach, Jiangming devoured the meat, and he can’t help but give a full thumbs up.

“Brother Qin, your handiwork is absolute top tier. After you transform, whoever takes you as their bride will surely be blessed.”

“You and your mouth……”

Qin Wuyi was originally enjoying the compliments, but his smile froze mid-way as he heard the latter half, and his expression soured.

“Hehe.”

Jiangming wanted to laugh out loud when he thought that after the sect exam, this meticulous and reliable ‘elder brother Qin’ would most likely become a gentle and virtuous ‘elder sister Qin’.

The more he thought about it, the happier he became, and he couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from rising up.

Finishing off the wine and most of the deer, the two were packing up the grill half-drunk on alcohol, when suddenly they heard the main gate to the courtyard house “Creak” open.

Jiangming and Qin Wuyi looked towards the gate at the same time.

Only to find a ‘young lady’ in a bright green and purple silk dress fallen at the gateway. ‘Her’ shoulders were shaking slightly, trying hard to stand back up.

 Glancing at ‘her’ face, Jiangming was shocked:

“Bro-Brother Li?!”