Shrouding the Heavens: Those Years as the Empress's Strictest Master

Rainwater and mud covered her entire body, but she did not care in the slightest.

Splash!

At some point, a wisp of clear radiance rippled out, and Tan Lin's remnant soul manifested.

His figure hovered amid the woods beside the girl. He appeared indifferent, yet a faint trace of aura quietly emanated from the glimmer of his primordial spirit, driving away several venomous snakes nearby that had been disturbed by the wind and rain and were preparing to attack his young disciple.

He needed her to endure hardship. He needed her to become increasingly ruthless and mature. But he would never truly want her to die here.

Whoosh...

[All-Cause Vision] activated, and Tan Lin examined the ends of those mixed and tangled Causal Lines from his past lives that had begun to glow faintly.

After taking note of the changes in the positions of several "Anchor Points," he once again saw the change in the Causal Line between himself and the young empress.

That line had become an increasingly deeper crimson!

It was now almost somewhere between a Light Crimson Point and a Deep Crimson Point!

This change secretly alarmed Tan Lin. Before meeting this young disciple, he had never encountered a Causal Line displaying such a phenomenon.

He knew that this was most likely due to the empress's uniqueness.

"Could this line eventually become a Deep Crimson Line? If so, wouldn't it directly generate Deep Crimson Light Points..."

As the thought passed through his mind, Tan Lin was suddenly shaken by the idea.

After all, in his first lifetime, he had spent thousands of years gathering only enough Causal Points for a single Deep Crimson Light Point.

Rustle... rustle...

Li Qingjue crawled for a long time before finally nearing the wild fruit grove she remembered.

She and her brother had once eaten one kind of small red fruit there when they had been starving. It was sour and astringent, but it could fill their stomachs.

She struggled to her feet and reached up to pick some, only to discover that the fruit high in the branches was plumper. In her current condition, she could not reach it at all.

"Fool."

Tan Lin's icy voice rang out:

"You have already opened your Sea of Bitterness. Though you have yet to uncover a Divine Power Source and cannot generate divine power on your own, can you not even guide a thread of faint vital essence into your limbs to increase your strength?"

Li Qingjue froze slightly at his words.

That was right. The heavy rain had muddled her mind, and she had nearly forgotten that she was already a cultivator.

No sooner said than done, she tried to focus and sense the tiny Sea of Bitterness below her navel, newly opened and filled with only a thread of life amid deathly stillness.

Her first attempt was inevitably incomparably difficult. She was in poor condition, and waves of dizziness kept washing over her.

Yet, relying on an inexplicable fierceness, she forcibly guided out a weak warm current that was nearly nonexistent and directed it toward her legs.

Tap...

She leaped up and reached out again.

This time, her fingertips touched a high branch. Though they trembled, she truly managed to pull down a cluster of fruit.

Rustle...

Within the curtain of rain, Li Qingjue inhaled the fragrance of the wild fruit. Yet instead of hurriedly stuffing some into her mouth, she held up the cluster toward where Tan Lin's phantom stood and softly said:

"Master, you... you eat first."

Tan Lin said nothing. He merely looked at her calmly, though for some reason, it felt as if a warm current had flowed through his heart.

Naturally, he could tell that she had simply forgotten that he was only a remnant soul.

After starving for so long, for her to still have such a thought was truly rare...

The girl, having received no response from her master, immediately realized something. She lightly bit her lower lip and fell silent.

Nannan, Nannan, you will definitely restore Master... won't you?

That was what she told herself in her heart.

Growl...

Her stomach urged her to eat. Sour, astringent fruit juice mixed with rainwater as she swallowed it, and the feeling that she was about to die gradually faded. Her muddled head also felt a little better.

Now that she was at least a Sea of Bitterness cultivator, no matter how low her cultivation was, with food in her stomach and her own intelligence, she quickly put her knowledge into practice without Tan Lin's reminder. She mobilized that thread of vital essence within her Sea of Bitterness, circulated it through her body's meridians, and gradually warmed up.

Afterward, when the wind and rain weakened somewhat, she picked more wild fruit from the tree and packed it away.

"Not enough."

Tan Lin's remnant soul returned to the ring, but he continued pouring cold water on her plans:

"This place is remote. Once you leave, fruits and vegetables will be hard to find, and they cannot be stored for long...

"You also need salt. Cultivation consumes much energy, so you need meat as well...

"Once you have rested, head northeast. There is a mountain stream three miles away, and there may be fish there. But there may also be ferocious beasts... or even other things."

Li Qingjue silently memorized the direction. After resting for a while and regaining some strength, she continued onward with difficulty.

This time, she walked more steadily, and her use of that thread of Sea of Bitterness essence had become slightly more practiced.

Tap... tap...

The rain finally stopped. After traveling another three miles.

Sure enough, after passing through a dense forest, a rushing mountain stream appeared before her, with fish shadows flickering beneath the water.

Li Qingjue's eyes lit up. She was about to step forward when a sudden change occurred!

Crash...

Two vicious-looking men carrying machetes sprang out from the bushes beside her.

Their clothes were ragged. They appeared to be bandits or routed soldiers from the mortal world who had fled into the mountains.

"Heh heh heh, who would've thought we'd run into a little girl in this damned weather! We're sick of eating the fish in that stream already. This little girl is a bit skinny, but her meat should be tender. We can finally have a decent meal!"

One of them, a one-eyed man, grinned viciously. His gaze roamed over the girl's body with undisguised malice.

Li Qingjue took a step back, her face turning pale.

Demonic Art Reveals Its Might

The danger descended without warning. Li Qingjue instinctively held her breath, and her small body stiffened.

"What, scared?"

Tan Lin's voice rang directly inside her mind. It was still cold, but carried a trace of guidance:

"Remember your hatred. These creatures who prey on the weak and fear the strong are no different in essence from those cultivators who regarded you as less than grass.

"Your Sea of Bitterness may be weak, but if you concentrate all your strength on one point, you may not be unable to protect yourself. Aim for their eyes, their throats... their vital points. Treat them as the people who caused your brother's death..."

Brother...

The desperate situation brought the vicious dragon in Li Qingjue's heart to the surface. Li Fan's death undoubtedly stirred the ruthlessness that had been growing within her lately.

She recalled her brother's miserable death and those indifferent gazes that ignored everything. A wave of savagery surged into her heart in an instant!

She no longer retreated. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the one-eyed man walking toward her.

The man felt his scalp tingle under her stare and found it unbelievable. Then he cursed as he raised his blade and chopped down:

"You little bitch, you dare glare at me! I'll chop you to death!"

Whoosh...

The machete howled through the air, its fierce wind rushing straight at her face.

At the critical moment.

Buzz...

At that instant, Li Qingjue felt as though everything between heaven and earth had slowed down slightly.

She silently mobilized all the vital essence in her Sea of Bitterness and poured it into her legs. Then she lunged fiercely forward and to the side, narrowly avoiding the blade.

Almost at the same time, she pulled out a shard of broken porcelain from her bundle and slashed it viciously toward the one-eyed man's ankle with all her strength!

"Ah!!!"

The one-eyed man screamed, startling countless birds into flight from the forest.

His ankle was cut open. Though the wound was not deep, it had damaged his tendon and hindered his movement.

"Second Brother, get her together!"

The one-eyed man cried out in pain and immediately called for his companion.

The other lean man also moved in, cutting off Li Qingjue's retreat.

With this, the girl inevitably found herself in grave danger.

She had indeed embarked upon the path of cultivation, but she had only just opened her Sea of Bitterness and did not possess even a thread of divine power. At present, she was still a child under ten years old, while her opponents were two grown men whose size completely overwhelmed hers.

How could she fight two alone?

Thump!

Thump...

Her heart pounded violently.

"Dodge left."

"Lower your head..."

"Attack this man's lower body!"

Tan Lin guided her whenever it mattered most.

Even so, in the brief span of seven or eight breaths, she had already faced danger several times. She relied entirely on a desperate ferocity to barely hold on, gaining several scrapes on her body.

If she had not witnessed the ugliness of human nature many times in the years since her brother left, if she had not dealt with certain filthy matters and often carried broken porcelain for self-defense, she would likely have already fallen into the hands of those two men.

"Your aura is too scattered. Focus your will. Condense that thread of vital essence at your fingertip, and imagine it as a needle."

Tan Lin said coldly.

This was an initial exercise in her control over "force." It was the prototype and foundation for condensing Divine Marks after uncovering a Divine Power Source in the future, or even for wielding secret arts.

A needle...

Thoughts raced through Li Qingjue's mind. In a flash of inspiration, she followed his instruction.

"Come here, little girl... Hahaha!"

Seeing the girl's range of movement compressed to the limit, the lean man grinned viciously. He spread his arms and lunged directly at her.

At this moment, Li Qingjue no longer wildly waved the shard of porcelain.

Tap!

She dodged the lean man in a flash, then spotted the opening beneath the one-eyed man's armpit as he swung his blade. A faint glimmer seemed to gather at her fingertip as she thrust fiercely!

Pfft...

With a faint muffled sound, the one-eyed man jerked as if struck by lightning. His entire arm instantly went numb and weak, and his machete nearly slipped from his hand!

He stared at the girl before him in horror, as though he had seen a ghost.

"This girl... there's something strange about her!"

For no reason, a desire to retreat rose within him.

Whoosh!

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Li Qingjue pressed on ruthlessly. Her small body suddenly leaped up, and she viciously drew the porcelain shard across the one-eyed man's throat.

Pfft...

"Ghk!! Ghk..."

Blood gushed from his throat like a fountain. The one-eyed man dropped his machete, clutched his neck with both hands, and screamed as he fell to the ground.

Seeing that things had gone badly, the lean man moved to help his companion up and flee into the forest in panic.