Yan Xuehen slammed the table. “What nonsense are you spouting, demoness?!”
Yun Jianyue gestured to Yan Xuehen’s book with her chin. “You’re asking the obvious. Aren’t you reading it yourself?”
“This is utter nonsense! How can anyone believe it?!” Yan Xuehen’s face heated up as she hurriedly stowed away the book. She hadn’t expected the other party to catch her with it.
“Is it? I thought it was written quite well. It depicts you accurately,” Yun Jianyue said gleefully.
“Accurate, my ass...” Yan Xuehen was so angry that she uttered curses. She wondered how a human could achieve true indifference. Recent events had been challenging her tolerance.
But the years she'd spent cultivating weren’t in vain. It didn’t take her long to compose herself and retort, “Are you acknowledging the novels’ depiction of you too?”
Yun Jianyue’s smile froze. “Ridiculous! It should go without saying that the parts about me are all lies.”
“What double standards!” Yan Xuehen scoffed. She was feeling humiliated due to the novels, but seeing Yun Jianyue in the same plight comforted her.
“Hah! How much of those novels is about me? Compared to you, the stuff about me is a drop in the bucket?” Yun Jianyue had honed fast wits from years of rivalry with Yan Xuehen. “Besides, I'm the Devil Sect’s demoness. Shouldn’t it be normal even if I rear some male slaves? This is nothing for me!
“You, on the other hand, pretend to be some fairy untouched by secular desires, only to play such games behind everyone’s back. Don’t you feel ashamed calling your disciple’s lover into your room in the middle of the night?” Yun Jianyue clicked her tongue in disdain.
Yan Xuehen couldn’t take the insult. Her flying sword flew out of her sheath, and snow rained within the room. Countless ice shards shot toward Yun Jianyue at the speed of light.
Yun Jianyue was already prepared for this attack. She drew her crescent wheels, and the two of them came to blows.
Boom!
It didn’t take long for the residence to crumble under the shockwaves.
Many people from the academy rushed over to spectate the battle.
“Look, they are fighting again!”
“It must be over the libationer.”
“Shouldn’t the libationer deal with it?”
“How is he supposed to resolve this conflict? He can’t side with either of them. Speaking of which, have you read today’s novel?”
“I did. It’s so explosive! I didn’t expect them to be so wild...”
...
Yan Xuehen and Yun Jianyue’s eyebrows twitched uncontrollably. Even though the crowd had suppressed their voices, their discussions couldn’t escape the pair's ears.
Killing intent flared from Yun Jianyue. Had it been anywhere else, she wouldn’t have hesitated to teach them the consequences of gossiping about the master of the Devil Sect. Even Yan Xuehen nearly went on a rampage.
They would only embarrass themselves if they continued fighting, so they tacitly stopped the fight and flew off, leaving the residence in a mess.
Not long later, a new novel surfaced.
This time, the protagonist was Yun Jianyue. It detailed her frustrations in being unable to surpass her long-time rival—her prestige and popularity even paled in comparison to Yan Xuehen’s—so she decided to go about it from another direction. Since both their disciples were the regent’s lovers, she thought she could at least defeat Yan Xuehen in the field of romance. So, she leveraged her strength as the only person in the history of the Devil Sect to have mastered seduction arts to seduce the regent, to give her disciple a helping hand.
But she had underestimated the strongest person in the world. Not only did her seduction arts fail, but she even suffered a backlash and uncontrollably fell in love with the regent. Due to the special nature of her seduction arts and the regent’s charm, she became his plaything.
She was the Devil Sect’s most outstanding demoness. Her looks, figure, and skills were impeccable. Even the regent was infatuated with her. The book elaborated about how Yun Jianyue used the techniques passed down through generations of the Devil Sect’s Holy Maidens to please the regent. It also depicted the regent’s immense strength and how he made her submit.
Yan Xuehen, who had still been brooding over the last book not long ago, was overjoyed. She happily took the book to Yun Jianyue’s room. Meanwhile, Yun Jianyue was throwing a tantrum after reading the book’s contents.
This culminated in yet another huge fight. They learned their lesson and fought in the suburbs. There were fewer spectators this time, but their clashes caused such a huge commotion that it inevitably drew experts over.
Even Zu An rushed over to check on them, fearing they would kill each other.
When they saw Zu An, the two ladies felt conscience-stricken. They felt as if the crowd was looking at them and Zu An with gossipy eyes, which prompted them to escape despite Zu An calling them to stop. They were worried the crowd would assume the rumors were true if they exchanged even a single word with Zu An here.
Zu An shook his head bitterly. The crowd looked at him with eyes of awe, admiration, disdain, and so on.
Zu An returned to Mount Yuquan’s residence and called Pei Mianman over. “You're behind the commotion, right?”
Pei Mianman stuck out her tongue. “Look how hard I have to work to clean up your lousy mess!”
“What are you thinking? How can you make those things public?” Zu An was frustrated. The capital and the academy were in an uproar. Many people had secretly approached him to verify if the rumors were true. Just dealing with those people was troublesome enough.
“Do you intend to hide it forever?” Pei Mianman asked. “It’s only a matter of time before everyone finds out, so we might as well take the initiative to reveal it. At least we’ll have some control over the situation this way.”
“Control?” Zu An was starting to get an idea of what was going on.
Pei Mianman nodded. “That’s right. Haven’t you noticed how, despite the huge commotion this scandal has caused, there aren’t many people criticizing Yan Xuehen or Yun Jianyue?”
“No criticisms? There are plenty of people saying they're shameless!” Zu An had been paying close attention to the crowd’s responses.
“I was the one who spread those criticisms,” Pei Mianman calmly replied.
Zu An was speechless.
“Someone else would have said those words either way. I’d rather take control of the narrative and make the criticisms even uglier. That would evoke the crowd’s revulsion and encourage them to speak up for the two,” Pei Mianman replied.
“The 50-cent army!” Zu An was shocked. He hadn’t expected Pei Mianman to learn these tricks by herself. She would have been a marketing genius in the modern era!
Pei Mianman had no idea what the ‘50-cent army’ referred to, but she continued her explanation. “I intentionally exaggerated the contents of the novels. The first two books are 30% true, but the subsequent ones are less than 10% true. Some people are even questioning the credibility of the novels now.”
Zu An nodded in agreement. All the talk about Yan Xuehen dressing scantily and drugging him just sounded too far-fetched. The recent book about Yun Jianyue was highly exaggerated too. Its content was explosive enough to draw eyeballs, but the smarter ones had already calmed down and shrugged off the books as the publishers’ money-making scheme.
Pei Mianman continued, “Under such a setting, the extreme rhetoric I sowed on the streets would evoke the masses’ revulsion. Even those who truly intend to besmirch Sect Master Yun and Sect Master Yan will be ignored. The masses are beginning to understand and even side with them. When the time is ripe, I’ll give it one last push so that the masses will come to terms with this matter.”
Zu An was awed. “Manman, you’re a genius!”
Pei Mianman dodged his embrace and harrumphed. “With your wits, you should have thought about that too; it’s just that you didn’t dare to take the gamble.”
Zu An fell silent. He had indeed been worried about the situation going out of control.
“It’s too early to celebrate. I've dealt with the public opinion for you, but you’ll still have to find a way to make them come to terms with this matter,” Pei Mianman coldly pointed out.