A Loan from Fate

Before entering Yellow Bamboo Town, Qin Yi had voluntarily exited Cultivation Sight to avoid any mishaps. Now, he was completely unable to survey anything.

Should he resist?

No.

Meng Peijiu's martial strength should far surpass both his and Ruan Su's.

Thinking that, Qin Yi relaxed.

It could be considered each taking what they needed.

Ever since he had chosen to continue dealing with the Meng Family mother and daughter, he had already prepared himself for something like this.

Besides, today's gains had already exceeded his expectations. He had originally only intended to sell the wealthy young lady's Disrupted Scripture to Meng Peijiu, framing someone while trading it for some cultivation medicines and stones. Instead, he had unexpectedly obtained two breathing secret arts.

Or rather,

One complete copy, and two half-copies.

Every breath the human body took had to follow the rise and fall of the chest, yet Meng Peijiu's chest movements were out of sync with the expulsion and intake of breath.

It was very unscientific, but this world did not seem to care about science.

Drawing on his own cultivation experience, Qin Yi guessed that this was some secret art capable of simultaneously absorbing Spirit Resonance and releasing Spirit Resonance. Through physical sensation, he had already memorized Meng Peijiu's breathing rhythm, as well as the amplitude and cycle of the undulations of her chest.

From another angle, the little trick Meng Peijiu had secretly done to his body was, to the current Qin Yi, intelligence more precious than precious.

Once he returned home, he could use the Disrupted Scripture to enter Cultivation Sight and see what had appeared in his lower abdomen. That would let him determine, to a certain extent, the Meng Family mother and daughter's attitude toward him.

There were also some miscellaneous scraps from the cultivation side.

Meng Peijiu was not forming seals with either hand.

She was not forming seals, yet she could still mobilize and release Spirit Resonance.

He just did not know whether it was a difference in cultivation methods or a difference in realm.

With the wolf-hair brush's final light touch upon the rice paper, a book titled Nine Songs had been completely transcribed from memory.

Qin Yi glanced at Meng Peijiu and suddenly asked,

"Big Sister, is this poetry from Qin?"

Meng Peijiu leaned back against her chair and casually replied,

"You could say that."

"Huh? Isn't this a cultivation method?"

Hearing that, Qin Yi immediately shifted in her arms. As he reached for the money pouch on the table, he protested,

"Big Sister, I don't want it anymore. Give me my money back..."

"Don't rush, little brother."

Meng Peijiu's hand resting on Qin Yi's lower abdomen exerted a little force. Gently holding him steady in front of her, she casually drew a few strokes across the rice paper with the wolf-hair brush. Half a breathing method was already ready to leap off the page.

"Big Sister will circle the important parts for you~"

"..."

Qin Yi feigned surprise. After a brief silence, he muttered under his breath,

"Who came up with such a way of hiding secret manuals? They actually used poetry."

"Well... Big Sister doesn't know either~"

"Then how did you learn the way to decipher it?"

"Because Big Sister is a genius."

"Hehe... Then who wrote this Nine Songs?"

"Let me think..."

Meng Peijiu thought for a while. As she marked the key passages, she casually replied,

"Looking at the inscription, it seems to have been written by that former emperor of the Qin Kingdom."

"..."

Beneath the cover of autumn leaves and warm sunlight,

Meng Peijiu unhurriedly circled every passage in Nine Songs related to cultivation with ink.

After finishing, she held Qin Yi and set him on the ground, then handed him both the ancient Disrupted Scripture and the translated copy of Nine Songs.

Qin Yi took them and looked them over.

At least she had not faked this part. It was completely identical to what Qin Yi himself had extracted.

And just as Qin Yi had expected, Nine Songs' cultivation method was more complete than the Disrupted Scripture's, and it even came with several techniques.

Meng Peijiu crossed her legs, propped her elbow against the chair back, and rested her cheek on her hand. Sideways, she watched the handsome boy basking in sunlight, her eyes curving in a smile.

"This cultivation method is different from the internal arts of ordinary martial artists. Remember not to pass it around carelessly."

Qin Yi tucked the translated Nine Songs into his robe, nodded, and smiled happily.

"I understand. Thank you, Big Sister~"

As he spoke,

he stood on tiptoe and placed the ancient Disrupted Scripture back on the desk.

"Big Sister, I'm selling you the old book. Three hundred taels of gold, right?"

Meng Peijiu: "..."

As soon as he finished speaking, the boy bounced under Meng Peijiu's bewildered gaze, hugged her short blade to his chest, and looked up.

"With the remaining silver, I want to buy some cultivation medicinal ingredients. Oh, right, and a few pieces of jewelry and ordinary clothes my sister can use. If there's medicine that can treat her throat, that would be even better."

Meng Peijiu did not refuse Qin Yi's wish.

The girl of unknown origin stared at him for a long while, caught between laughter and tears, then directly fulfilled all his requests. She was so decisive that even Qin Yi himself felt somewhat dazed.

There were no gifts in this world without reason. Even if there were, the price would be marked elsewhere, waiting for you to pay it.

But Qin Yi could not concern himself with that now.

If she dared to give, he dared to take.

He would treat it as a loan. As for whether he would repay the interest and principal, how he would repay them, or whether he would repay them at all—he could talk about that when the time came.

After leaving Yellow Bamboo Town,

Ruan Su walked ahead with large and small bundles on her back, yet she skipped along as she went.

She was very happy today, because Little Yi had earned so, so much silver again, and he had bought her so, so many things.

Especially that outfit and that blade.

And the medicine that could treat her throat.

Hehe...

Unlike his elated older sister, Qin Yi walked while reading Nine Songs.

The longer he stared at the delicate characters that filled the pages, the stranger he found them.

It was not because there was anything wrong with the content, but because he had thought of something deeper.

Disrupted Scripture, Nine Songs.

Why did the cultivation methods of both Calamity Seeds have to be hidden this way?

The essence of cultivation manuals was that they were textbooks.

The first thing their authors should consider was how to explain them plainly and clearly, allowing whoever obtained them to learn and grasp them more easily.

The internal arts Qin Yi had seen before all followed this principle. There were no mysterious things like mental formulas and incantations. Even incomplete copies contained meticulous and detailed descriptions.

How much medicine to use, how many inches silver needles were inserted into acupoints, and how to respond to common cultivation risks—all were explained with illustrations and text in extreme clarity.

Yet the breathing methods recorded in Disrupted Scripture and Nine Songs were hidden far too obscurely.

Qin Yi could understand the scattered notes in Disrupted Scripture.

Perhaps the senior expert who wrote it had possessed a free and easy state of mind, traveling as he wrote down what he saw and felt. Whenever the mood struck, he would mix in certain cultivation insights he had explored.

But what about Nine Songs?

It was entirely filled with local customs, strange tales, love and hatred. What did any of that have to do with cultivation?

There was no logical connection at all.

The author had deliberately hidden the cultivation method within these poetic chapters collectively known as Nine Songs. But did that not completely betray the nature of a secret manual as a textbook?

Of course,

it could also be explained by saying that, as manuals of a higher order than martial artists' internal arts, Disrupted Scripture and Nine Songs required such secrecy.

To ensure that the method could not be casually passed on, the authors had, while writing these things, specifically left their descendants deciphering tools akin to "cipher texts."

But if that really was the reason for such miserly hoarding, Qin Yi should still be back home, scratching his ears and cheeks as he tried every possible way to decipher Disrupted Scripture. A coded text of several thousand characters was a massive undertaking even for him.

Besides,

the literary forms used by Disrupted Scripture and Nine Songs to carry their cultivation methods were the strangest part.

Scattered notes—especially poetry—were, from the moment they were created, destined for wider circulation.

In other words,

the people who founded these two methods had actually wanted more people, even the lowest commoners in the streets and markets, to come into contact with them.

That motive contradicted itself before and after.

Why?