I wonder how many people actually believe the show her father is trying to put on, and if that number includes himself to some degree. I rather doubt it, but I have a feeling that the author will try to have him feel remorse at some point for the way he treated her and her mother.
Well, at least one person in the sect understands. Though, I think it may have been a bad idea to reveal that Lu Mingshu will be powerless for the next several months. That's basically just inviting people to try and assassinate her. Of course, it's a different story if the Elder plans to come live at the valley for those several months or something. I wonder if she will.
If she had to leave, I honestly don't know why her master wouldn't simply follow her. Well, unless she was leaving temporarily to "gain experience" or somesuch. Or, I suppose his inferiority complex might stop him, but I'd like to believe that she wouldn't let it.
Honestly, he should have realized that a long time ago, and then left with her and her two servants and gone someplace else. With his skills, it would not have been difficult for them to establish themselves in almost any random backwater, assuming that they didn't just go back to her home town. Now, I assume he has to stay behind because too many people are paying attention, and all of them leaving together would just be asking them to send out a kill squad and manufacture evidence of them betraying the sect or some such nonsense. Not that they might not try that anyway, but it'll be a lot easier for her to runaway if she only has to worry about herself. Still, it would have been nice if he'd told her to find him in her old village sometime next year, waited a bit, and then quietly disappeared from his valley while no one was paying attention. All that aside, I wonder how many points she'll get from winning the competition, and if she'll get invited to join any other sects. If nothing else, I just hope she's not caught up in a forced marriage plot.
I wonder why it hasn't occurred to either of them that Lu Mingshu rejecting her overtures is exactly what she wants? It allows her to paint the MC as uncooperative, unfilial, ungrateful, etc. if spun correctly in places where the MC won't have a chance to offer her side of things. Of course, accepting the servant would still have been a worse idea as anyone sent by her stepmother would definitely stab her in the back, likely at the earliest possible opportunity. Honestly, I'm also not sure why she thinks that the consumables were safe to consume either. I mean, sure, they won't kill them immediately, but there's all manner of harm that can be done that doesn't involve immediate death.
Honestly don't know why she didn't stop them from going into her room in the first place. There's no telling what was in that luggage.
They keep calling this country China. Is this supposed to be an AU or something? If so, why does magical transport move so slowly? Six months to cross china is an abysmal rate for something that can fly. Heck, you could probably get out and walk faster than it if you were traveling over a flat plain. "Eldest Miss? Hah. What’s the worth of an Eldest Miss exactly?" Well, at the most obvious level, it allows them to take some degree of credit for all of your successes and grants them a certain level of control over your future. If this is a major city, then why would a small enemy force bother attacking them when they're right next to it? Is it just a complicated method of suicide or something? It's not like their small sect is worth harassing for political gain.
So, after the tournament arc, we get a gladiator arc while we wait for the next tournament arc. I think the author might be running out of ideas.
If she's not planning to enter the arena, then I wonder how she's planning to earn the money. Become a bookie? I'm pretty sure the local bookies wouldn't be at all happy with her for that, nor do I believe that she would survive their displeasure. There's some strange gaps in that intelligence. The circumstances of her mother's death and her joining the sect aren't exactly a secret after all. That aside, I wonder what the point of having her meet the emissary is. Are they hoping that she'll do something to piss the emissary off? Or is there a spare prince lying around whose marriage the emissary has a large say in?
I would say they probably hope for marriage to a prince there, since that seems to be all the Zhou's know how to do with the women of their family
Are they not worried that a VIP will buy everything they have and simply resell it at half their normal price? It wouldn't be difficult at all to drive them out of business. I figured she'd go for that. It's quite hard to identify herbs from a different universe after all. I do wonder how she plans to defend the title though when she's not that good at actually making medicine. Or does she only have to defend in the same category in which she won? Also, what does she even get if she wins? It sounded like she gets nothing if she doesn't win continuously for three days. Assuming that she does win continuously for three days though, I wonder if she'll buy out everything in the shop and resell it through the network. The profit margins would be quite extreme for her if she could sell it for something close to what that hall normally charges. Honestly, if they're willing to sell the raw ingredients, she can probably sell it for even more than their normal price if I'm remembering correctly. Honestly, unless the prince was some sort of monster that got off on torturing and killing his concubines/wives, her getting married to him would be very bad for them. Her status would instantly rise above theirs and she'd be able to screw them over in a myriad of ways.
I think she'll plan on just trolling everyone with alternate plane plants so no one can identify them for 3 days, then wander off after buying as much as she can and selling it to the heavenly wheel to remove as much debt as she can. I think they just want to drum up as much business as possible and they think the guy who turned himself into a medicine pot thingy is nigh unbeatable. I just wonder if they'll actually stick to the claim after he loses, or if they'll try to get out of it by hiring assassins or rogue competition to try and take her down. I think Miaoru would try and get her distanced from the family if she can't control her (and she can't) but trying to have her married to an idiot prince that would benefit the Zhou family but screw over Mingshu since she'd be tied to that royal family and they would probably try and control her more thoroughly than the sect can. She may be thinking that since the sect has so much power, whatever royal family Mingshu would get married into wouldn't be able/willing to fight against them for her sake
I'm not clear on what she thinks she'll get from marrying the MC off to a crippled man with a much higher social status (and much deeper pockets and much wider connections) than anyone in her sect and the ability to damage her sect with little to no effort. He can't rape the MC, he's not likely to abuse the MC, it's even less likely that he'll block the MC from cultivating, and I doubt the embarrassment factor really even matters to the MC. There's basically no upside for her in the long run. Or is she thinking that it doesn't matter so long as the MC isn't in the sect anymore? If so, then that's incredibly shortsighted. I thought she'd use herbs that weren't locally available, but it would seem that she's going to leverage the extreme talents of otherworlders instead. That aside, I thought she gave up on learning to make medicine and decided to focus on gathering the raw ingredients and selling them so that she could just buy the finished products? As I recall, she did this really early on so her skills for creating medicine should be non-existent.
How did she get the process right though? The wheel only told her the ingredients, not the recipe or the proportions. I wonder who she'll say made her pill. Also curious how her actions in this arena will affect the proposed marriage. It should dramatically increase her value as both a potential partner and as a sect disciple. I never got the impression that her sect was anything special in terms of alchemy, so I have to wonder if they'd be willing to allow her to be sold off after she's shown to be a prodigy in the field. After all, one good alchemist can create hundreds of good/great martial artists, not to mention the mountains of money and political connections. Honestly, I could even see other sects or the government stepping forward to try to recruit her once word started getting around about her talents and her sect's unwillingness to see them.
"Was there really such a brilliant method in this world?" Nope So basically, anyone who's anyone knows that her sect is trying to discard her Though, their conversation does raise the question, "Just how strong is Yue Lingyin's backing that she's not worried about having been sent to the competition?" It's pretty clear she's not a sub-par cultivator after all. She wouldn't have been invited to that dinner if she was. I wonder if the official will try to cheat. Also wondering how much trouble it would cause if she were to just up and leave the city right now.
I'm not sure what the point of taking a circuitous route was when she was wearing her sect's robes... I didn't realize just how low her world's alchemy was. I mean, I knew it was much lower, but not to the extent that even the worst apprentice of the other world could be considered a grandmaster in hers. She should really take up alchemy again. Even if she doesn't make much progress, she'll make so much money that she'll never have to worry about money again, no matter how many centuries she lives. Though, she should probably wait on advertising her alchemy until she's got much stronger backing than a second-rate sect that's trying to discreetly dispose of her. I really didn't expect her to be able to communicate with her mount while it was in the portable stable. Most series just treat mounts like objects that do whatever their owners want them to do without thought or complaint, no matter how badly mistreated they are. That aside, I wonder how people in her sect will react when they see her walking around with a portable stable and a mustard seed pouch; assuming that they recognize them for what they are of course. So, is she going to keep going back to defend her title, or is she going to smash other signboards? It was a bit ambiguous.
I think it was implied she's going to go around to smash other signboards (if that's what the challenges are, and it wasn't just that specific one) since just defending her title would be too slow for her taste to earn points for the wheel. I think she's realized how much of a cheat/helping aid she has in the form of the heavenly wheel when it comes to alchemy and such, so she may privately take it back up since she realizes how far ahead she is of all the others around her.