Xue Wei was annoyed, but he also found it rather funny. Was this Lin Xiao an idiot? Although he did not think it would be too difficult to pretend to be a woman, he quickly understood that it would be absolutely impossible for him to look like a woman when he finally wore the dress.
"This is perfect," Lin Xiao said while doing his very best to keep a straight face, but he would tremble from time to time and turn his face away to not let Xue Wei see the smile he could not suppress.
"Are you all done laughing now?" Xue Wei asked before moving to take the dress off.
"Stop!" Lin Xiao stopped him before he could. "Try the mask! If you still think it is impossible after putting on the mask, then I will say nothing, but at least give it a try!"
Xue Wei glanced at Lin Xiao. Did this man have some strange hobbies? Was he interested in seeing a male body with a female face? This was enough to make him shiver in fright. Was Lin Xiao not the strongest of them all? He was the strongest, and he had strange hobbies. This was terrible!
Seeing Xue Wei’s perplexed expression, Lin Xiao could guess his thoughts. His lips twitched.
"Don't think too much and just wear it!" he exclaimed, understanding that he had now been labeled as a rather perverse person.
Xue Wei wondered. He had already dressed up in the gown and supposed it could not get worse than this, so he shrugged his shoulders and took the mask, placed it on his face, and looked down at himself. His eyes widened in shock.
"I told you already!" Lin Xiao gloated. "This is the highest class face mask! It alters not only your face but also your entire body."
"How can it do that?" Xue Wei was shocked when he saw that his figure had turned lithe and delicate. His height was the same, but his physique seemed completely different.
Hei Gou and Bai Tianyi completely forgot to laugh as they looked at the woman who had appeared in front of them with wide eyes. There was no doubt that Xue Wei looked exactly like a woman now. Although a tall woman, he looked like a woman.
"There’s an illusion inside the mask," Lin Xiao explained. "It is an inscription. As long as there is Qi within the mask, it will keep you looking like a woman, and you can store your own Qi within as well. It is perfect!"
Xue Wei was shocked. So it was an inscription. He had to examine it later when he had the chance!
But for now, he felt a great loss. He was really supposed to pretend to be a woman now, which was something he had never seen coming, but in the end he understood that this would make their journey much easier. The only thing was that he was not too keen on the whole cross-dressing idea.
"Put your pride behind you!" Bai Tianyi was the first to speak up. "You know that you need to visit Lan. This will make it smooth and easy, so stop complaining. Is it not just pretending to be a woman?"
Xue Wei's lips twitched at the words from Bai Tianyi, and then he walked towards the child. "My dear son, is that how you speak to your mother?" he asked with a voice so sugarcoated that every word dripped with sweetness.
Bai Tianyi felt a shiver run down his spine. It was obvious that the other three had their own roles to play as family if Xue Wei had to pretend to be a woman. Since there was one woman and one child. it was reasonable that the child had to be hers.
"Uh." Bai Tianyi was stunned. "Well, I guess it is just pretending to be a child, right? I can do that," he said with self-assurance, but both Xue Wei and Hei Gou looked at him skeptically. Although he had looked like a child since the day he made his soul body, he had never behaved like one. In fact, they had never seen him act like one.
Knowing that he was not the only one who had to pretend to be something he was not, Xue Wei felt slightly better. He placed his hands on his now very narrow waist and turned around.
"So who are the two of you supposed to be?" Having come to terms with the fact that he had to be a woman, Xue Wei wanted to at least have this planned out.
"I will be your husband, he will be your brother," Lin Xiao said as he pointed at Hei Gou. However, Hei Gou objected it, "Why do you have to take the role as the husband?"
"Why don't we just say that we are four siblings?" Xue Wei sighed after seeing that Lin Xiao was snickering and Hei Gou was fuming.
"No can do! We should look like a family!" Hei Gou and Lin Xiao yelled out at the same time. Xue Wei was taken aback, realizing that these two dunces were actually having a lot of fun. At his expense.
"Well then, why don't you duke it out, the winner gets to decide?" Xue Wei could not be bothered to deal with it, so he just said whatever, but Hei Gou immediately looked at him with the pitiful eyes of a lost puppy.
"Listen here, my little ancestor, me fighting against him, is it not the same as saying that I have no chance? No matter what way we look at it, he will win over me, and he is even a Diviner!"
Xue Wei understood Hei Gou's thoughts. Not only was he a Primordial Beast against a Diviner, but he was also just on the verge of breaking into the Ordinary Knight rank, while the opponent was already an Earth Knight! This was an unfair fight if he had ever seen one.
Xue Wei smiled wryly. What else could they do? He really did not care about who pretended to be what, as he had already taken the least desired of the roles.
"I can't let Lin Xiao be your husband!" Hei Gou said seriously. "He runs around with dresses in his storage ring, who knows what other hobbies he might have! I have to protect my brother's reputation."
"Do you really think that I have a lot of reputation to protect at this point in time?" Xue Wei said with ironic laughter. "The humans want to kill me, the Primordial Beasts wants to kill me. I am dressed as a woman, so you can forget about my reputation as a man amongst my friends."
"Also, considering he had this mask, it is not too odd that he is running around with those dresses. I mean, the mask is quite useless if one chooses to wear male clothes with it."
Hei Gou listened but did not know what to say. "Wei, are you telling me you want Lin Xiao to be your husband?" he asked with a sad expression on his face. Seeing this expression and hearing his words, Xue Wei could not help but want to facepalm himself.
"First of all, this is just pretend okay. I am not a woman, I will never be a woman, and I am not happy with pretending to be a woman. Second, it really does not matter to me. As I see it, the both of you drew the long straw pretending to be men. Even if one of you are pretending to be my sibling, at least you will not have to dress up in this getup," he said rather bitterly, listing a litany of reasons for him to cease his complaints. Looking down at his very female body, he could only shudder in desperation. Why had he ever said yes to this he wondered?
Hei Gou and Lin Xiao looked at Xue Wei before they started laughing again. He looked exactly like a woman, no matter what angle you looked at him from. His hands were resting on his hips and his face was dark and filled with stormy clouds so it was clear what he was thinking.
"Sorry, sorry," Lin Xiao finally was the one to withdraw. "I will gladly have a cute little sister like you," he said sweetly, but his words just made the storm that was brewing in Xue Wei's eyes increase in intensity.
"Who is your little sister?" Xue Wei swore beneath his breath. "Now, now, don't get upset," Bai Tianyi chipped in, also snickering. He had it easy too. Then he went next to Xue Wei and took his slim and elegant hand in his childish one. "Come now, mother dear, let us begin leaving this godforsaken place and move towards Heavenward City."
Having said this, he and the two others all wore their facemasks, but Bai Tianyi soon found that he had to use his own face. The face mask was made for an adult, and a child with an adults face was simply too odd and made it impossible for anyone to believe that they were not using facemasks.
Together, the four once again began moving. They quickly made it out of the forest and did not encounter any beasts or humans on the way out. Lin Xiao was deeply impressed by the fact that they cut through the very center of the forest without a beast coming to admonish them for entering their territory.
"It is strange, normally they would only behave like that if there was an elite beast around them," he said while looking over his shoulder all the time, but Xue Wei, Hei Gou and Bai Tianyi were not surprised. They just raised an eyebrow and said words like, "You don't say," "That was strange," and, "Who knows what happened."
Lin Xiao was no idiot. He quickly understood that the cause for the beasts strange behavior was these three, but he did not know which of the three was the reason.
He also understood that they were not the elites – that the beasts were hunting them in the same way as the Diviners were hunting him.
In the end, Lin Xiao was incredibly curious, but he was not going to ask about their secrets. He was not ready to tell them his, so why would they tell him theirs?
As the group made it out of the forest, they entered many small villages on the way towards the Heavenward City.
Some of these villages were so small that they did not even have an inn.
There was one main road leading through these villages and multiple smaller roads converged into the main road from all over, bringing with it many cultivators, merchants, and other people who were heading towards Heavenward City.
The road was scarce when they first arrived, but by evening and when they reached an inn, the area outside was bustling with life and many experts were sitting on the ground floor in the restaurant, chatting together.
The sound of loud chatter could be heard from the tavern before they even stepped inside. As they entered, a lot of the individuals inside glanced at the door, but most lost their interest when they saw that it was a family of four.
Going to the counter, Lin Xiao ordered one big room for all of them to share. No one thought too much about it, considering that they looked like a family and that they were likely trying to save some money.
Xue Wei was, for the first time, experiencing life as a woman, and he was in a foul mood. Everywhere he went, people would look at him – some with lustful eyes, other with appreciating eyes, but all in all, it was something he had never experienced before. And he was not happy with it either.
"Women have to walk through life with these fragile bodies," he muttered to himself. "They have to endure all those looks and be treated like objects. This can't be right… just because they are women. They deserve to be treated like any other person. I reflect on my behavior towards women so far…”