I Just Won’t Play by the Book - Chapter 34

Chapter 34: Brother Was Clearly So Capable
After finding an open space with flat terrain, Jiang Beiran took out the materials from the storage ring and asked the Sisters to set up camp by themselves.

It was the first time any of the five girls slept out in the wilderness, and they were inevitably a little excited. Yu Guishui looked at the huge canvas on the ground and said to the others, “Why don’t we set up a bigger tent? We can sleep together at night.”

“Sure, sure,” Fang Qiuyao immediately responded.

After hearing this, Liu Zijin also nodded in agreement.

However, after an hour had passed, Jiang Beiran was already making a fire and preparing to cook a meal, and the five Sisters were still struggling over how to set up the tent.

“Weird… I clearly remember that this is how the tent is set up. Why can’t it stay up?” Yu Guizhui held a thick round log, perplexed.

“How about… asking Brother?” Yu Guimiao instinctively looked over towards Jiang Beiran.

“But…” Yu Guizhui was a bit reluctant to speak.

Along the way, the five Sisters had figured out the temper of the senior Brother for a bit. That was, regarding something that the senior Brother had not taken the initiative to help them with, if they went over to ask him, they would be scolded.

At that point, Liu Zijin spoke up. “If we go on like this, I’m afraid that we will really have to sleep on the floor at night. I will go and ask Brother.”

“No!” Yu Guishui suddenly shouted, “This is too unfair to you, Sister Zijin. We can’t always hide behind you. Let me go this time.”

“It’s okay. Brother is actually not as harsh as you think, I…”

“No, I have to go this time,” Yu Guishui said and went walking towards Jiang Beiran.

“Hey!”

Liu Zijin was just about to stop her when Yu Guizhui and Yu Guimiao came up and each grabbed one of her arms, saying, “Let our sister go this time, Sister Zijin. You just wait here.”

“It… It’s fine then.” Liu Zijin could only sit down again with a heart full of disappointment after she finished speaking.

“Snap!”

Breaking a branch and throwing it into the fire, after sensing that Yu Guishui had walked over, Jiang Beiran asked without raising his head, “Before descending the mountain, didn’t your Etiquette Protector teach you how to pitch the tent?”

“Yes… yes,” Yu Guishui replied with her head low.

Although Jiang Beiran’s tone was not very harsh, for Yu Guishui, who had grown up with compliments, this kind of critical question alone was enough to make her feel ashamed of herself. This was why she had been afraid to ask him questions to his face.

“Tell me, what do you not understand?” he asked.

“Those copper components are so fragmented that we really have some trouble telling which ones should be put together,” she said.

“Alright, then. I’ll teach you all again.” Jiang Beiran stood up and walked towards their tent.

Actually, Jiang Beiran had expected that they wouldn’t be able to set up the tent by themselves because the tents in this world were really complicated. They were completely different from the modern tents that could be set up with two poles supporting each other. The tents here had 102 pieces of copper components alone, and there were various ways to combine them, so it was really not easy to set up.

Walking up to Liu Zijin and the others, Jiang Beiran picked up one of the pegs and socket components and carefully explained them to the five Sisters. He then guided them in setting up a large part of the tent.

“Thanks a lot, Brother.”

Looking at their big tent getting set up in the blink of an eye, the five Sisters joyfully said thank you to Jiang Beiran.

At night, after eating and practicing, Jiang Beiran sat in front of the campfire and said to the Sisters, “Go to sleep. I’ll keep watch for you all.”

After hearing this, the five Sisters bowed to Jiang Beiran and said, “Thank you, Brother. Good night.”

They then eagerly went into the tent.

Listening to the laughter coming from inside the tent, Jiang Beiran couldn’t help but smile and shake his head. They didn’t look like they had come out for a trial; more like for an autumn trip.

‘But based on their age, these five are indeed just in the high school years. It’s normal to be naive.’

But by 1:00 am the banter in the tent still didn’t stop, so Jiang Beiran had to stand up and walk to the tent. He said, “It’s late, get some rest. We still have quite a journey tomorrow.”

“Yes!” came the reply from the five Sisters in the tent in unison.

Nodding in satisfaction, Jiang Beiran sat down again on the bench and added some firewood to the campfire. He continued to study more possible ways to improve the Suit of Blending In.

After ten minutes, Yu Guishui, who had been tossing and turning in the tent for a while, whispered, “I can’t sleep!”

“Me too!” Yu Guizhui was the first to respond.

Then the other three girls also said they couldn’t sleep at all.

“Then let’s talk for a while more, shall we?” Yu Guishui suggested.

“But Brother will scold us, no?” Yu Guimiao responded in a small voice.

“Why don’t we snuggle closer and talk in a low voice so that Brother can’t hear us?”

“Good idea!”

Yu Guishui’s proposal was immediately accepted by all the girls, and soon the five of them were face-to-face in a circle.

“That should be fine, right?”

The five Sisters looked at each other and smiled after they finished saying so. Yu Guimiao twisted her head to look at the senior Brother’s shadow on the tent, and after finding that he didn’t move, she said, “Then since Brother can’t hear us, why don’t we just talk about him?”

“Sure!” Yu Guizhui was the first to agree and began speaking about him directly. “Do you guys think that it was Brother who broke that formation yesterday or not?”

Yu Guishui immediately said after hearing that, “No way. Surely no one really believed what Brother said about that formation disintegrating by itself, right?”

“I didn’t!” Yu Guizhui immediately retorted, “I just want to make sure that everyone is thinking the same thing as me.”

“Shh! keep your voice down.” The four girls immediately made a gesture of silence at Yu Guizhui because of her overly excited tone.

“Oh, oh.” Yu Guizhui nodded hastily, then asked, “How do you think Brother broke the formation? I’ve heard Father say that it’s much harder to break a formation after entering it than when you are outside it.”

“Yes, and the formation is so powerful, it didn’t take long for me to feel dizzy.”

Fang Qiuyao immediately continued after hearing that, saying, “Me too. I wonder how the formation works. The more I walked, the dizzier I got, and I felt a wave of panic in my heart as well.”

Yu Guimiao nodded. “Yesterday I was really scared. If Brother wasn’t there, I’m afraid that we would have fallen into the hands of those thieves by now, right?”

“Yes. So, it begs the question, how exactly did Brother break that formation? I remember that Brother is a disciple of the Order of Blue Heart, right? Isn’t it the Order of Starry Arrangements that teaches about formations? And…” Yu Guizhui suddenly trailed off for a bit. “Brother seems to really know a lot. Did you all realize that the straw hats and shoes that Brother prepared for us are also very special? It’s my first time on the streets with no one noticing me.”

“We realized it long ago,” the other four girls replied at the same time.

“Not only that.” Fang Qiuyao wanted to talk about the situation that night where the senior Brother had saved her, but after thinking about it, she didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she said, “I think there’s an 80 percent chance that the pills are also made by Brother himself. Ordinary pills don’t have that fragrance.”

Yu Guishui heard her. She looked at Fang Qiuyao and said, “Speaking of fragrance, the Honey of Various Flowers brewed by Brother is really fragrant. These two days I’ve grown a little reluctant to take off the scorched cloth.”

Then the five Sisters had a lively discussion again, talking about Jiang Beiran’s various actions over the past two days.

Finally, Yu Guimiao concluded, lamenting, “Brother is clearly so capable, so why have we never heard of him for so long after joining the sect?”

After hearing this, Yu Guizhui first secretly glanced at Jiang Beiran’s shadow on the tent before whispering, “Why don’t… we go and ask him directly?”