"The key to this is his astonishing talent in the Way of the Sword, not the fact that he found himself a junior sister."
"If he didn't have great talent, could this old lady's few tricks have taught him anything?"
"At least you know your own limits."
"Quick, tell me how he found her. My Heaven-and-Earth Yin-Yang Union Mandarin Sword Sect hasn't had any fresh blood in ages, apart from you, who had nowhere else to go back then, and little You Su, whom I picked up."
"Or perhaps he didn't find her himself. Maybe she came to his door and asked to become his disciple. But I could tell she was here for You Su." Fairy's tone was indifferent. These events had taken place three years ago, yet in her memories, they seemed to have happened only yesterday.
"Well, well, the little brat's capable now. What's my second disciple called? Where does she come from? What does she look like? Is she as pretty as your female disciple?"
The woman on the other end of the sword sounded quite delighted as she fired off a string of questions.
"Her name is Ji Lingruo. Her background is unknown, but it's certainly not simple. As for her appearance, it has no meaning to You Su, and even less value to cultivators."
"Tsk, tsk. Keep pretending all you like. When the Heavenly Immortal Beauty Rankings came out and you discovered you'd taken first place, I bet you were secretly over the moon."
"I have never felt that way." Fairy's tone remained cold, revealing no emotion whatsoever.
All of a sudden, the glowing sword began to sway again, but not with the regular vibrations it had shown before. A rare trace of panic also surfaced in Fairy's limpid eyes.
Her tone finally lost that air of keeping everyone at arm's length.
"Chujun, what's wrong?"
After a while, the woman's rough voice came from the other end of the sword again. She spoke extremely quickly, forcing each word through clenched teeth as if she were making arrangements for her final moments.
"He Shutong! You must protect my precious disciple until the day I reunite with him, understand? You must also keep a close eye on his junior sister! It wasn't easy for me to make this trip out of the sea. Eight years of work nearly went down the drain, and I even drew out that thing! I do owe You Su a great deal, but what I'm doing now is a matter of utmost importance! Don't disappoint me!"
The sword shook more and more violently, without the slightest pattern. Fairy gripped the hilt with all her strength, trying to control the sword that had accompanied her for a century, but it was all in vain.
"Hey! Come over here to your granny! Evil creatures like you aren't worthy of setting foot on the earth. Go to hell—"
Before the word "hell" could push the force in her voice to its peak, it deflated rapidly like a punctured ball until it faded into silence. The sword in her hand also quieted at the same time, silently reflecting the moonlight.
Fairy lowered her head slightly and murmured:
"You have to come back alive too..."
She then put away the treasured sword, lightly touching her toes against the branches as she rose and fell among the trees, disappearing into the silent night.
There was, in fact, one more thing she had not mentioned.
On the night of the battle between You Su and that evil cultivator, she had sensed another strange force spying on the fight. She could faintly feel that an even greater conspiracy lay behind the sudden appearance of this evil cultivator. She had to follow the trail and investigate it to the bottom.
Unfortunately, the trail had gone cold when she reached this place. Just then, news came through the Evil Warding Token that a Dream-Eating Ghost had appeared. It was a powerful evil creature that even she, at the height of her strength, could not have fought alone.
The two matters seemed highly unlikely to be connected, but at her level of cultivation, she already possessed a faint sense of Heaven's Mandate. Through the dark night shrouded in black fog, she seemed to see a colossal dark cloud quietly taking shape above Chuyun City.
She could not tell Guan Chujun about this as well. It would only make her worry more. In such a perilous situation, rather than her disciple's life tablet, Guan Chujun ought to be more concerned about her own life.
You Su straightened up, marveling at how powerful this body's recovery had become. Aside from the dull aches all over him, he had already recovered a good deal of his strength.
Pretending that he could see the girl's utterly unguarded sleeping face, he shook his head helplessly. She was clearly exhausted, yet she had still forced herself to care for her senior brother.
You Su gently lifted Ji Lingruo from behind the knees. Since it was inconvenient for him to enter his junior sister's room, he planned to place her on his own bed.
The moment he held her, he felt that his junior sister was soft as boneless jade, her warm, fragrant body filling his arms. She was sleeping deeply and even rubbed against the crook of You Su's arm as if reluctant to let go. Asleep, she was even more delicate and adorable than she was by day, like a slender, supple little snake.
You Su did not linger over the wonderful sensation in his arms. He pulled the covers over his junior sister. The thin quilt clung to her body, outlining the graceful curves she had only just begun to develop.
You Su was not an absolute paragon of virtue. It was simply that the thought of the suffering his junior sister was enduring caused a dull ache in his heart, leaving him incapable of entertaining any amorous notions. He reached out and stroked his junior sister's head before leaving the room, silently cheering on the strong girl.
It was not only his junior sister who needed to work hard. You Su did too. Since he was no longer sleepy, he had to seize every minute and second to grow stronger. Wasting even a moment was a luxury he could not afford.
Meanwhile, if a lamp had been lit in his room, it would have revealed the girl's face, flushed red like a flower's tender petals.
After sensing that her senior brother had entered the courtyard, she quietly rolled over and buried her head in You Su's pillow. Like a little beast with insatiable desires, she greedily breathed in the scent that belonged to her senior brother.
The only part left exposed, the tips of her ears, grew even redder.
You Su sat cross-legged on a stone chair, increasingly grateful that he had obtained a treasure like the Universe Bag.
If he had merely obtained these books, a blind man like him would have had no way to study them independently. His only option might have been to keep deceiving his junior sister and ask her to read them aloud. But it was obvious that these things belonged to the top-tier Spiritual Treasure Sect, and they were hardly the sort of wager someone from this remote little city could produce.
Even if his junior sister was foolish, she should still have noticed something amiss. That would run contrary to the instructions his junior sister had given him in his dream.
But with the Universe Bag, everything became different. He could read these books directly in his Sea of Consciousness, as though he were reading them with his own eyes.
In the dead silence of night, You Su closed his eyes, his handsome, cold features vanishing into the darkness.
What interested him most was naturally the marvelous sorcery True Man Ling had unleashed with a casual raise of his hand, so he opened the first book, Selected Five Elements Sorcery.
It contained not only records of many basic spells, but also a certain amount of explanation about sorcery itself:
The Heavenly Dao of this world was composed of countless different authorities. Working together, they constructed the laws by which this world operated.
Sorcery was the power unleashed by borrowing authority from the Heavenly Dao.
Most spells required the recitation of incantations of varying lengths and unclear meaning. Their true purpose was to resonate with the Heavenly Dao and thereby obtain the right to control part of the corresponding laws.
The book's contents were basic, but their breadth made up for that. You Su encountered much that he had never heard of before and could not help becoming immersed in it, reading with relish. As he read, he also began forming hand seals with his fingers and embarked on his own cultivation of sorcery.
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