Far away in Eastsea City, little princess Xu Xiaoyan pinched her dad Xu Chengxing's face, looking furious. o(´^｀)o
"Dad, couldn't you have done it sooner? My Prince Charming has already gone to Shrek City. Waaaah~"
The more Xu Xiaoyan thought about it, the more aggrieved she felt, and the more miserably she cried.
Seeing his daughter cry pained Xu Chengxing too. Even as the deputy vice minister of Eastsea City's Finance Department, he was at a loss.
"Don't worry. I'll bring him back for you. Once he returns to Eastsea City, I absolutely won't let him leave again."
His daughter was still so young, yet already showing signs of growing up and leaving home. Xu Chengxing, who was still young by Soul Master standards, was so distressed that a few strands of his hair had turned white.
He secretly thought that once he got home, he'd have to beat Xu Xiaoyu, that little brat, to vent his frustration. As for the excuse, he'd say it was because Xu Xiaoyu had stepped into the room with his right foot first.
If Xu Chengxing hadn't seen his daughter lose her appetite and brood over that damn blond boy until she'd become noticeably thinner in just a few days, he wouldn't have wanted to use his authority over such a childish whim.
At first, he'd thought she'd gotten too caught up in romance novels and would forget about it after a few days. Who could've guessed she was serious this time?
To get his daughter eating properly again, Xu Chengxing immediately sent people to investigate Yang Fan's recent whereabouts.
The results of the investigation only made him angrier. Wasn't this just a suspicious little-girl-chasing pervert with an unknown identity?
He had appeared in Eastsea City at some unknown time. With no identification, he had apparently spent the night inside a shopping mall. Later, he had entered the Spirit Pagoda without any ordinary people noticing and watched a Martial Soul Awakening from close by.
That much was still normal, but afterward, this suspicious individual had found a little beggar in the park who was about the same age as Xiaoyan. It had happened on the very day Xiaoyan had talked to him in the car about love at first sight.
He wasn't even that old, and he still wouldn't leave little beggars alone. Just how desperate was he?
The child was quite lucky, though. That very night, she and the little beggar had been taken in by a wealthy woman with green hair and put up in a luxurious suite at a hotel near the park.
A few days later, that special lady had quickly arranged identity documents for him and the little beggar. That was when Xu Chengxing learned the brat was called Yang Fan. Then the two of them had taken the Soul Guidance Train from Eastsea City to Shrek City.
Yang Fan had no idea that, far away in Eastsea City, a little girl was crying and making a fuss because she couldn't find him, furious all the while.
Temporary cultivation room, fifty-first floor of the Spirit Pagoda
Yang Fan stared in dismay at the towering stack of books Leng Yaozhu had sent someone to deliver.
Soul Spirit Encyclopedia, Spiritual Power and Perception, Contract Array and Soul Guidance Synergy, Guide: Contract Laws...
It had been ages since he'd seen so many books.
The last time he'd read this many had been his senior year of high school, before he'd crossed over.
"For the next few weeks, I'll be helping Na'er guide her bloodline and form her innate Soul Spirit. Read all the books I've selected for you. Once we're out of seclusion, come find me in my private office on the sixty-sixth floor."
Reading the message Leng Yaozhu had sent him, Yang Fan sighed and resigned himself to picking up the top book, the Soul Spirit Encyclopedia.
The moment he opened to the first page, a dense array of Soul Guidance runes and illustrations of Soul Beasts assaulted his eyes, making his head ache.
"This isn't cultivation. It's grad school..."
He muttered to himself, his gaze drifting to the broad Soul Guidance sofa in the corner of the cultivation room. He hesitated, but in the end, didn't go over to sit on it.
Although Leng Yaozhu wasn't there, the pressure she exerted as vice tower master seemed to linger in the air, making him instinctively sit up straight.
The Soul Guidance lamps in the cultivation room cast a soft, steady light, designed specifically for long hours of reading. It was neither too glaring nor too dim.
Yang Fan flipped through the introduction to Spiritual Power and Perception and discovered that it even contained handwritten notes by Leng Yaozhu.
Her graceful handwriting carried a hint of sharpness. She'd marked several key points, adding, "Easy to get wrong here. Remember this."
"...She really takes being a teacher seriously."
A faint smile tugged at Yang Fan's lips. Suddenly, the book didn't seem quite so hateful.
He took a deep breath. Thinking of the Soul Spirit Contract he wanted most from this trip, he curiously opened the first chapter of Contract Array and Soul Guidance Synergy and began painstakingly working through it, word by word.
The cultivation room on the Spirit Pagoda's fifty-first floor was excellently soundproofed. He couldn't even hear the faint hum of the night wind brushing past the tower outside, in Shrek City.
Yang Fan sat cross-legged at the Soul Guidance desk, with three books spread out in front of him and a cup of tea that had long gone cold beside them.
"...The core of a contract Magic Array lies in synchronizing the resonance frequency of spiritual power. If a Soul Master's mental fluctuations exceed the Magic Array's tolerance threshold, a calming wave must be released through a Soul Tool within three breaths. Otherwise, the backlash from the contract will directly strike both parties' spiritual seas..."
He read aloud, his brows drawing tighter and tighter.
Within three breaths.
Back in his senior year of high school, even three seconds had felt too short when he was doing physics problems. Now he was supposed to make a spiritual assessment and operate a Soul Tool within three breaths?
"This is even more ridiculous than the college entrance exam."
Yang Fan rubbed his temples, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes to rest.
Back then, he'd thought senior year was hard. Looking back now, at least back then he hadn't had to decide two people's fates within three breaths.
"...Though I didn't have to memorize contract laws back then, either." He opened his eyes again and gave a wry smile.
His gaze returned to the book. This time, he read with even greater care.
Leng Yaozhu's notes were like the key points an experienced teacher marked on an exam paper, each one precisely hitting the blind spots he was most likely to overlook.
He could even imagine her frowning slightly as she wrote them, her pen pausing on the page for a moment before setting down those crisp, decisive strokes.
"...All right. Teacher Leng's putting in this much effort. I can't slack off anymore."
He sat up straight again, picked up his pen, and began taking notes in the blank spaces on the page.
Outside the cultivation room, the corridor on the Spirit Pagoda's fifty-first floor was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Every so often, a patrolling Spirit Transmitter passed by, sensed the steady fluctuations of spiritual power inside the room, and conscientiously tiptoed away.
But the patrolling Spirit Transmitter didn't notice, and neither did Yang Fan, as a streak of silver light flashed and the silver-haired little girl Na'er appeared on the broad Soul Guidance sofa. Curled into a ball, she stared unblinkingly at Yang Fan with her round eyes, then slowly drifted off to sleep.
Only after Lan Yin reminded him did Yang Fan realize that Na'er had somehow come into his room and fallen asleep.
Looking at Na'er's sleeping face, Yang Fan's eyes and brows curved gently, his smile faint and tender.
Quietly, Yang Fan took a thin blanket from his storage bracelet and draped it over Na'er. Then he went back to painstakingly studying the concepts he still hadn't figured out.
On the sixty-sixth floor, Leng Yaozhu stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing down at the night view of Shrek City.
She held a cup of warm tea, but her eyes rested on the evaluation report about Na'er's bloodline awakening on the desk. After a moment, she set down her teacup and lightly tapped the desktop twice with her fingertips.
"That kid on the fifty-first floor... He can certainly keep his composure."
Looking at the evaluation report, Leng Yaozhu realized that she didn't know when Na'er had left her office.
"Wait. Where did Na'er go?"
Leng Yaozhu wondered how she'd been so busy that she hadn't noticed Na'er leaving. She hadn't been watching Na'er with her eyes the whole time, but she'd kept her spiritual power extended toward the door. Had she been slacking off? she thought.
"Forget it. Where else could that girl have gone besides to find that brat who looks honest but is actually a playboy?"
There'd been quite a stir in Eastsea City. And since she'd taken on a disciple, she'd naturally needed to investigate her background. So the news that Xu Xiaoyan had fallen in love at first sight with Yang Fan had arrived just half an hour after Leng Yaozhu accepted her as a disciple.
If Leng Yaozhu hadn't used her influence to suppress it, Na'er might have been crying and making a fuss just like Xu Xiaoyan.
They were all young. Proper cultivation was the right path. They weren't ready to handle the bitter pangs of love.
She murmured to herself, the corners of her lips lifting in the faintest smile. Then she turned and walked back to her desk, continuing to deal with the mountain of pending work.
The lights were still on on the sixty-sixth floor, and the lights were still on on the fifty-first.