Immortal Mortals

Transformation

Then thinking of Jie, Chang Li asked after him. "Have you both sorted out your issues." he asked, hoping to be able to leave the children safely with them, because as much he had tried to prevent it, he had fallen in love with them, seeing them as much as family as Bai Qian.  

"Yes, we have." she smiled brightly, but inwardly still seething.  She would deal with him when she got home, she thought to herself, not realizing Chang Li was accurately reading her thoughts, but he merely sighed and smiled back.  He would return regularly to check on them, taking the children off them if he had to, he thought to himself.

Bidding him farewell and giving him an open invitation to dinner, they left his home for their own.  Placing both children on her horse first and with Tais help, she rose up behind him to hold him gently in her arms.  Kissing the top of his head, he tried to shake her off, but laughing at his fake antics she pulled him in even tighter pleased he didn't resist her, instead he relaxed back into her as Meili took the reins and led them all home.

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Heading straight for Ai's little cottage, Jie had hoped to see her horse, but on arrival his heart sank, it was the first place he had thought she would come to having left unprepared, and she was a woman who was thorough, who thought things through.  That she had left in haste had him immediately arriving at the conclusion that this was the first place she would come to.  Sighing, he lowered himself to the ground and made his way to the front door before letting himself in to check anyway.

No sooner had he entered, than the musty odor of wine hit him.  The whole house reeked of it.  Storming into the main room, he had found where she had been for five days and as he looked about the room at the scattered wine bottles, he picked one up to inspect it.  He knew this particular strain having several of them in his own cellar on Kunlun mountain.

Then quickly counting the bottles he could see, he made his way to the bed chamber where he found even more of them.  She had been drinking in bed, in the main room and as he moved through the rest of the house he found even more and all of them and all of them were empty.  Counting the bottle she had arrived home with, she had imbibed 12 bottles of 100 year wine, a feat that not even Zhe Yan could have managed, he thought to himself in awe.

But it wasn't until he reached the kitchen that he found the unopened bottles, all eighteen of them.  "Thirty bottles of 100 year wine Ai?" he asked shocked.  Had she been planning to return to finish them off? he wondered to himself unable to comprehend the vast amount of alcohol she had brought back with her, and by the looks of it, had every intention of drinking. Jie was devastated. It was a preposterous amount of wine that could damn well kill her. 

Of course being of the Fox Clan who were all drinkers, who could manage large quantities of wine, in her Mortal form it was dangerous, though looking at the amount she had already drunk, Jie was surprised she only slept for three days, and that had him thinking that perhaps physically she was more Bai Qian than he realized, because no Mortal woman her size could have survived that amount of strong Immortal wine in just 5 days, it would have killed them. 

 And if her Mortal body was actually close to that of her true form, then perhaps her soft gentle nature was too.  Perhaps, the Bai Qian he had met twice already, was really the exception, he wondered to himself.  Is Ai the real Bai Qian?  If so, then he also realized he had made a very grave mistake.

But at that moment, he had 18 bottles of 100 year wine to deal with, because in her Mortal form, he could not allow her to have them, the amount was just too excessive.  Deciding to return them, he immediately erupted out of his disguise and once his powers and energy was fully opened, he immediately left for the Peach Tree woods.