Sir, Have You Wandered into the Wrong Book?

Xiao Yan's hand jerked at those words, and the Wooden Box nearly flew out of his grasp.

Luckily, he reacted fast enough to draw his arms in and clutch the box firmly against his chest. The boy who had just been rehearsing with such crisp, polished diction now scarcely dared to breathe.

Awake?

I'd only just worked out my gift-giving speech, and the man himself was already awake?

He lowered his head to look at the clear light shining through the crack in the box, his mind racing.

"Yao Lao, please hear me out first."

There was no sound from the ring.

Xiao Yan hurriedly set the box back on the table, arranged it neatly, and even smoothed out the soft cloth crumpled beneath it before saying solemnly:

"I never meant to turn my nose up at you, senior. My father's cultivation is high, and he manages the clan's medicinal herbs. You'd surely recover faster with him."

"Oh?"

The elderly voice seemed to take an interest.

"And once I've recovered, you'll take me back?"

The smile on Xiao Yan's face froze. He'd heard quite a lot, hadn't he?

"My main concern was sparing my father the strain."

The elderly voice sounded from the ring again:

"So you give me to him when there's work to do, and keep me for yourself when there's nothing to worry about."

"..."

Why was this future teacher harder to fool than I remembered?

Xiao Yan simply abandoned his excuses and respectfully cupped his hands. "I was foolish for a moment and miscalculated. Since you're awake now, senior, we can discuss whatever you need face-to-face."

A wisp of clear light rose from the face of the ring.

The lamplight around him suddenly froze, and even the night breeze blowing through the window stopped midway. The lifted corner of the bed curtain hung in the air without falling.

At the sight, Xiao Yan's pupils contracted slightly. He could scarcely believe it.

The clear light unfurled, and a Daoist appeared beside the table, wearing a loose robe and cloth shoes, his hair and beard white as frost. His sleeves bore no elaborate patterns, nor did he hold any earth-shaking magical treasure. He seemed merely an old man out for a stroll in the mountains who had grown tired and borrowed Xiao Yan's room to rest his feet.

Yet as the Daoist stood there, Xiao Yan felt the entire room grow still. Even the restless beating in his chest slowed without his noticing.

He examined the old man closely, then looked again, thinking:

Something's off. Why doesn't he have that insubstantial look of a soul body?

The old man reached out and pulled over the chair beside the table, the hem of his robe brushing lightly across the floor.

Xiao Yan opened his mouth:

"You are..."

The old man said:

"An idle man of the wilderness, called Bodhi."

At those words, Xiao Yan's expression instantly froze. He even thought he had misheard.

"Called what?"

He looked down at the ring, then back up at the Daoist, suddenly feeling that his earlier conclusions about his transmigration might not have been cautious enough. Was this not the Dou Qi Continent?

"Bodhi?"

The Daoist nodded.

Xiao Yan swallowed and cautiously ventured:

"Spirit Terrace... Mount Fangcun?"

The Daoist's gaze lingered on him for a moment.

"The Cave of the Slanting Moon and Three Stars?"

A trace of amusement finally appeared in those previously tranquil eyes.

"So you do know my old abode."

Xiao Yan braced himself against the edge of the table, disbelief written all over his face, and thought:

Could he really be that man? Grandmaster Bodhi, who taught Sun Wukong? But why is he here? Where did my perfectly good Yao Lao go?

A moment ago, he had been calculating how to find someone to support Yao Lao. In the blink of an eye, the teacher capable of raising the Great Sage Equal to Heaven had emerged from the ring instead.

This was no longer a matter of wheedling a few extra bottles of pills out of his teacher.

"Sir, have you... wandered into the wrong book?"

The moment the words left his mouth, Xiao Yan wanted to bite his own tongue.

Why did I ask that?

Bodhi did not ask what book he meant. He simply picked up the empty teacup on the table and inspected its bottom.

Seeing this, Xiao Yan immediately lifted the teapot and tipped its spout, but not a single drop came out. Only then did he remember that he had been thirsty earlier and had already drunk all the cold tea.

"Please wait a moment, senior. I'll fetch some water!"

"No hurry."

Bodhi set the empty cup on the table.

Water appeared inside it.

A thin veil of steam rose from its surface, and a green leaf from some unknown source unfurled within it. Its delicate fragrance instantly overwhelmed the smell of lamp oil in the room.

Xiao Yan stared at the cup of tea and swallowed the string of questions already on the tip of his tongue. He had never seen immortal arts before, but he recognized the cup he had drained dry.

"Senior, why did you come here?"

Bodhi lifted the tea, blew on it leisurely, and explained:

"To hide from a certain monkey!"

"After that monkey became a Buddha, he grew diligent about searching for people. So I simply dispersed my true body into countless soul fragments and lodged them throughout the myriad worlds. With my aura scattered across these worlds and my whereabouts no longer fixed, he could no longer follow my old traces to find me."

At this point, Bodhi lowered his eyes to the tea leaf unfurling in his cup.

"As for the one before you, I am merely one such wisp. This world's foundations are still shallow, and it can accommodate only this little portion of my soul's power. Any more, and I would burst this quiet place I went to such trouble to find."

Xiao Yan's eyes widened at those words.

He looked at the old man, then at the corner of the bed curtain still suspended in midair, refusing to fall.

This was only a tiny soul fragment?

He had barely even gotten comfortable with the Dou Zhe realm, yet the man before him was already so powerful that he had to weigh whether he might burst someone else's world simply by finding a place to stay.

Even more absurdly, he had scattered himself throughout the myriad worlds merely to hide from a monkey?

Xiao Yan instinctively looked out the window, as though a gleaming golden staff might pierce the night sky in the next moment, and asked curiously:

"Has that monkey followed you here?"

Bodhi smiled.

"Not yet."

Xiao Yan continued:

"Then you're..."

Bodhi said:

"I found him noisy, so I came out for a stroll."

Bodhi brushed a little moisture from the rim of his cup. "His questions never end, and he never leaves without a fuss. I finally found somewhere quiet, only to hear someone here assigning duties to his own father."

Xiao Yan lowered his head sheepishly.

So the patriarch hadn't been disturbed by the monkey, but by me first.

He looked at the ring again. The more he examined it, the more unremarkable it seemed. It was already strange enough that something his mother had left behind could house Yao Lao, yet it had actually caught this man's eye too.

"Can this ring conceal you?"

"The object is ordinary, but the ties of fate attached to it are rather interesting." Bodhi's gaze shifted from the ring to the space between Xiao Yan's brows. "You have two origins, yet they have settled within one body. A rare thing."

Xiao Yan's back abruptly tensed.

Clearly, the Grandmaster had discerned something. Xiao Yan pinched the corner of his clothes and was about to speak when Bodhi lowered his eyes to drink his tea. "There's no need to rush into inventing a story. Speak when you wish to."

Xiao Yan's mouth hung open for a long while. In the end, he merely answered with an obedient yes. The anxiety of being seen through had yet to fade when another warmth gradually welled up within him—immortal cultivation.

Those words circled through his mind, carrying even greater weight than his earlier thoughts of cultivating Dou Qi.

Divine Ability and transformations, longevity and everlasting life.

A true mastery that could step straight out of a storybook now sat before him on a chair.

Xiao Yan moved the little stool by his feet aside, lifted the hem of his clothes, and started to kneel. Before his knees touched the floor, a gentle force held him up.

"What are you doing?"

"I wish to take you as my master!"

This time, he did not beat around the bush.

"What do you wish to learn?"

"Divine Ability, longevity... I want to learn them all."

Bodhi looked at him.

Xiao Yan steeled himself and added:

"If I could learn some medicine-refining skills as well, that would be even better."

Bodhi smiled.

"Medicine refining? Quite an appetite you have! We Daoists do know a thing or two about pill refinement, but that art is not something you can master in a day or two."

Xiao Yan said sincerely:

"I can learn slowly."

Bodhi said:

"Even so slowly that you must first attend to me for three years?"

At those words, the corner of Xiao Yan's mouth twitched. Looks like I won't be getting past this Three-Year Agreement anytime soon.

"Yes. Spending three years with you is different from throwing three years away."

Bodhi pressed further:

"And for what purpose do you seek these skills?"

Xiao Yan had intended to say that he wanted to Slay Monsters and vanquish evil, but with the words on the tip of his tongue, he felt that saying them before those eyes would scorch his mouth and betray his heart. In the end, he said:

"I'm afraid of dying."

After saying it, he stole a glance at Grandmaster's expression.

"I'm afraid of knowing something is going to happen, yet being unable to do anything about it."

Thinking of those people from the Soul Hall in the original book, Xiao Yan's voice grew quieter. Though Wutan City's lights shone peacefully now, one day those things that seemed too distant to touch would come knocking at his door.

Bodhi neither laughed at him nor praised him. He said:

"Cherishing your life is no bad thing. But if your own life matters in your eyes, what of the lives of others?"

For a moment, Xiao Yan could not answer.

He had yet to fully grasp even Dou Qi, yet he had already planned how to seize opportunities in the future using his knowledge of the original story. Only now, questioned to his face, did he realize that there were things he himself could not seem to answer clearly.

Bodhi did not hurry him. With a finger, he nudged a drop of tea back toward the cup. The droplet paused on the rim, reflecting the boy's tightly pressed lips, then fell without a sound.

Xiao Yan looked down at his hands, then glanced in the direction his father had left, swallowing the fine words he had prepared one by one.

Bodhi did not agree immediately. He merely let the force supporting Xiao Yan disperse. Once Xiao Yan stood steady, he no longer dared rush to kneel and instead respectfully adjusted Grandmaster's teacup.

Two strikes of a watchman's clapper suddenly sounded outside.

It was already past midnight.

Xiao Yan snapped his gaze toward the gap in the door. If the Xiao Clan's night patrol saw a strange Daoist in his room, they would probably summon his father back.

"Senior, outside..."

"They can neither hear nor see us." Bodhi's casual reply put Xiao Yan at ease, though his gaze could not help straying once more toward the suspended corner of the bed curtain.

When he had thrown a punch earlier, all he could do was make it flutter upward.

When the old man sat down to drink tea, it did not even dare fall.

I have to take him as my master.

Xiao Yan's gaze grew firmer, and he said respectfully:

"If you're willing to take me in, senior, I can serve tea, sweep and clean, and attend to you."

"Don't make promises so quickly." Bodhi raised his eyes and looked through the half-open window toward another courtyard, saying mildly, "Go and see your father tomorrow first."

Xiao Yan paused, puzzled:

"What's wrong with my father?"

Bodhi set down his teacup, his gaze returning to the boy's face, and said with the ghost of a smile, "Now that you've met me, you no longer intend to lend me your father's cultivation?"