After Qian Mei had proclaimed him her disciple, Ling Yun was brought to her home and soon found himself alone in a wooden tub with a bath of water and several handmaidens cleaning his body. The sensation of another touching skin he would prefer remain private left him burning with shame.
However, he had been in this world for thirteen years and this was the first time he even had the option of bathing, thus he ignored the woman scrubbing the dirt of his body and tried to relax.
Several candles had melted by the time he was dried and dressed in proper fashion. There were no clothes his size, so he was dressed in Qian Mei's oversized robes. Luckily for him, she was not the type to wear flashy or revealing clothing, thus besides the long hem of the robe dragging onto the floor, he held no objections towards wearing a woman's dressing.
Anyway, he had long forgone the comfort of shorts and shirts when he entered the sect earlier this year as an extra hand to help clean the horse stalls. He was escorted by the servants to the dining room of Qing Mei's residence. A long table with six empty seats on both sides of the table and one on each end filled the centre space of the room.
Plenty of dishes rounded the table; none of which were touched by the figure sitting at the opposite end of table. It was Qing Mei, and she was now scrutinising his appearance to the point that she had unconsciously stood up to lean closer.
"You." Qing Mei noticed her strange posture and sat back down. "Are you really a boy?"
"Isn't my voice enough to tell?" Once more, a hoarse voice left Ling Yun's throat. "Malnutrition has led to my stunted growth."
"Malnutrition? It seems that you can copy both martial arts, and the words of the educated."
'..I learned this in middle school.' Ling Yun left this thought unvoiced. No one would believe that specialised knowledge regarding the medical arts were taught in basic classes for children. At least not in this world.
"Eat." She gestured to the food. "Only the strong survive, and I will not have a weak disciple."
Ling Yun required no further encouragement to fill his belly. He bit into a tenderly roasted duck leg and after swallowing once, started to choke. He glanced at Qing Mei for help, but she watched him in silence.
Ling Yun was prepared to die, but there was no way in this lifetime was he going to be killed by a piece of duck meat. He grabbed a ceramic cup filled with water and gulped it down, quenching his thirst and allowing the meat to flow down his gullet.
He slowed his pace and took his time eating. He hadn't tasted food this rich for the last thirteen years of his life, and was surprised to find that despite his voracious appetite for more, he had only finished one and a half plates worth of food.
The reality of his current lifestyle hit him. His body wasn't used to consuming so much food, thus it had hardly expanded to the size a healthy child would have. He couldn't eat much, because he had never eaten more than half a plate of food per day. This wasn't like those fantasy novels he used to read where starving orphans could eat mountains of food.
"Done?"
Ling Yun nodded.
"Good." She clapped her hand two times and a maid entered the room. "Niang Er will bring you to your room. Rest well, you will need it tomorrow." Leaving those words behind, she stood up and swept a piece of duck leg into a napkin before exiting the dining room.
Ling Yun departed soon after, trailing after the maid Niang Er. Despite her name, she seemed to only be two years older than him. She had a plain face, but kept a straight back. This posture was what attracted his attention, as the handmaidens he had been acquainted with so far always seemed to be so subservient to his every whim. "Da Jie, how long have you been here?"
"Erm, since I was ten, so five years." Niang Er glanced down and patted Ling Yun's head, causing him to recoil in disgust and shy away from her hand. "What about little sister? How old are you?"
Ling Yun's face blackened. "Have you not heard my voice?"
"It's okay, plenty of girls I know have deep voices as well."
"I'm a man. A man." Ling Yun emphasised.
Niang Er footfall paused. She looked at Ling Yun's face once more before poking gently at his throat. "Well I don't really know the difference between the two anyway, but you are a very pretty boy with a very nice voice."
Ling Yun did not know whether to take it as a compliment or an insult, simply resolving to give this maid the silent treatment lest he be infuriated by more of her words. However, it seemed as if he had unleashed an evil influence on himself as this chatterbox never seemed to stop trying to get him to talk.
He finally managed to escape into his room. Closing the door behind him, he surveyed the contents of his bedroom. Besides the obvious bed, there was a closet and a small desk with a mirror hanging over it. Ling Yun first checked the closet only to find it empty.
It was to be expected since this was the first day he arrived in Qing Mei's home. He then pulled open the desk drawers and found a dagger with a small slip of paper on it saying 'Kill yourself with this if you're kidnapped. I can't rescue you if they can grab you under my nose.'
Appreciating Qing Mei's brutal honesty, Ling Yun used it to shear off and shorten the hem of the dress so that he won't trip over himself. If a tailor saw the quality of the fabric being dumped onto the floor randomly like garbage, they would be shedding tears. However, there were no such people here, thus Ling Yun destroyed the value of the dress he was in to make himself more comfortable.
Finally, the moment he had been dreading. Ling Yun looked into the mirror --- and nearly smashed it. He had darkened skin due to years under the sun, but after cleaning up it did nothing to hide his delicate features. He had a dainty nose, with slender eyes that curved up in the outer corner and down in the inner corner, akin to a phoenix. A narrow jawline that ended in a pointed chin, he looked like a doll. Ling Yun hated this face.
It was because it looked exactly like the twin sister he had in this strange new world, and nothing like the face he had back on Earth. He had nothing left from that world, besides his memory. Nothing left to remind him that he had existed once elsewhere.
Ling Yun felt another existential crisis coming and crushed the seed before it sprouted. He had overcome that trial. He didn't need it again. He pushed his worries aside and looked on the brighter side of things.
At least he had a face to remind him of his goals everyday. To kill his older brother Ling Xiao Jun, and murder his twin sister Ling Ruo.