“Wu Long”, Gong Cui called.

“Yes, Cui’er?”, Wu Long asked as they sat in a gazebo above the pond, the one that became the place of sudden enlightenment before.

“Hehe, nothing, I just like hearing you say my name”, she chuckled, snuggling into his embrace.

“I will call you as many times as you want, Cui’er”, he gently smiled, tightening his embrace.

Her Zither was placed a bit further from them, still where she was training just a few minutes ago before he came and snatched her into his embrace, to have her sit in his lap.

She didn’t resist or protest the interruption of her training, instead making a happy giggle and then adorably wiggling her body to more comfortably nestle in his embrace.

The surface of the pond around the gazebo was still and peaceful, as the frog that Gong Cui met here sometimes seemed to be resting at the bottom, as the heat of the two suns was in its peak at this time of day.

Usually, the heat would be substantial even in the shade of this gazebo, but there were talismans that Wu Long placed on the columns, creating a formation that always adjusted the temperature ideally for her.

Perhaps that was why she chose this place to train her Zither the most when she needed to train alone, not because it simply was tranquil and beautiful, and thus helped her to achieve the ideal state of mind, but more because it was a place that Wu Long spent some care into making comfortable for her. Though if she liked any other spot, he would’ve done the same there as well, no matter how many spots she picked.

“Oh, by the way, I think there’s another Music Dao Cultivator nearby”, she then suddenly remembered, looking up at him.

“I see, was it a good performance?”, he smiled, nodding. It wasn’t unusual for her to be more sensitive to Music Dao being practiced within a certain distance.

She was far more attuned to it, so she could feel it even if Wu Long didn’t notice it. Especially if it was the only Music Dao performance within the area she could sense or if it was a particularly great performance.

“Mm, it came from tha~t mountain over there”, she nodded turning to point her finger to the only distant mountain that could be seen from the city, the mountain of the Emperor’s Palace.

Wu Long slightly raised his eyebrows, as that bit was slightly unexpected.

“From the mountain itself?”, he asked.

“Mm, from that palace sitting halfway up, though despite being a good and skillful performance, I somehow didn’t like it”, she confirmed it was indeed from the Emperor’s Palace.

“I see, well, my Cui’er’s performance is better anyway, so I didn’t miss much”, he chuckled as her cheeks became a bit rosy.

“You didn’t even hear it, how do you know? The person playing is very skillful, I would even say exceptionally so”, she said while bashfully turning her gaze away.

“I don’t have to hear it to know. My Cui’er is better”, he adamantly spoke as her lips curled up even as her eyes filled with shyness, adding, “Besides, even if they’re skillful, you said you didn’t like it, I trust your taste”

“Hmm”, she placed her index finger on her lower lip in thought as her eyes turned to look up at the ceiling of the gazebo, “I just didn’t like the… the foo~ sound when they played Minor cords, and the… gogong~ sounds when playing Major… or maybe I just didn’t like the… the mood?”, she spoke, making a noise not really telling him much about what sound she was talking about.

It was a common theme when discussing music with her, but she could not accurately put it into words. Being an intuitive genius, she felt the music far more than logically analyzed it. So even though her knowledge and comprehension of Music Dao was already immense and grew exponentially, she still spoke about music in ways that were difficult for even those practicing Music Dao to understand, let alone those who were not versed in it. Relying on ambiguous sounds she made up to describe what she felt.

But even if he did not completely understand it, he still listened intently, trying to.

He liked hearing her speak, and seeing her adorable facial expressions as she did.

But even aside from that, he wanted to understand her more, so he paid attention to her ways of expression, slowly, bit by bit, finding patterns in what sounds she used to express a thought, paying close attention to the intonation and pitch, minute changes in expression.

For him, it was like reverse-engineering martial techniques his opponents used against him, or which cultivation techniques they used, which structure and secrets were always incredibly obscured from how the techniques manifested in the open. Partially by design, in order to preserve the technique’s secrets, but also partially by the very nature of the difference between knowing how something works and performing it.

It was sometimes deemed impossible to know how something works by just seeing someone perform it. And yet, Wu Long was someone for whom this feat was possible.

But even though he understood her more and more, he shuddered at the thought of himself speaking in this way, so he wasn’t really learning it to respond, he was content with just being able to understand what she wanted to say.

And at some point, she started to notice it in his eyes. For the first time in her life, when she spoke, she saw genuine understanding in the eyes of those she was speaking with. This brought her indescribable joy, and a warm, tender feeling.

The only other person who understood her in this way was Nie Xiwang, whose Truth Seeking Eyes allowed her to do what Wu Long did with his mind, though to a lesser extent, showing just how intricately Wu Long’s analysis was.

It was perhaps because of that, that Wu Long saw Gong Cui and Nie Xiwang spend more and more time around each other, by now, almost as much as the trio of Luo Mingyu, Shen Min and Hua Ziyan were spending together, or as much as Cao Mei and Wei Lan.

He did not worry about these smaller groups forming within his Dao Family, since he knew it did not mean that they didn’t get along on the whole, rather, it was the opposite.

Their individual groups made their relationships altogether stronger.

Aside from that there were also general trends, as everyone liked being around Gong Cui for example, and everyone relied on Ye Ling as the wisest and most mature of them emotionally, thus coming to her for support.

It was just natural to have slightly better relationship with a smaller group of kindred souls, which was why these groups formed.

Not to mention, that the groups weren’t mutually exclusive, like Luo Mingyu still having a close relationship with Feng Yi whom she knew since early childhood, or like Bi Rui and Yu Huan still were as close as they were before meeting Wu Long, despite Bi Rui forming another group with Feng Yi and Yu Huan forming her own with Xue Bing.

As Gong Cui spoke, Wu Long nodded along, enjoying the sound of her voice.

“Hehe, will you have time to listen to the new piece I learnt?”, she asked with hope in her eyes.

“Of course, Cui’er. I just want to hold on to you a bit more”, he chuckled.

“Ehehehe”, she giggled with joy as she leaned onto his chest, hearing the sound of his heart which felt like the most beautiful music in her ears.