Xiong Meng asked the junior sister beside her to cover her shift, then took Li Yu out of the city toward Cuckoo Dove Village. Along the way, she told him about the owner of the house.
As it turned out, three years earlier, the man of the house had received guidance from a Phoenix Bird in a dream. It told him he had been an immortal of Penglai in his previous life, reincarnated to undergo tribulations in pursuit of a higher realm. Now that he had tempered his heart in the mortal world and perfected his realm, he could return to the immortal ranks.
After the husband, Jin Guang, woke up, he immediately abandoned his wife and daughter, chartered a boat, and sailed out to sea. He had yet to return.
A household without a man was like a roof without its supporting pillar, and their lives had begun to slide into poverty. Fortunately, the family had originally been fairly well-off and had built three rooms. Two could now be rented out to supplement their income.
When Li Yu arrived, he found that the conditions were indeed rather shabby. The house had mud-brick walls, a timber frame, and a thatched roof.
Still, the spiritual energy was decent, reaching the second tier.
This was because Haо City had a fifth-tier spirit vein. Although most of its energy went toward supplying the Sun God Stone, the central areas of the twenty-four villages in the outer city generally enjoyed third-tier spiritual energy.
The fact that this place had only second-tier spiritual energy meant it was already at the edge of the outer city, close to the countryside.
Li Yu and Xiong Meng waited for a while before the mistress of the house, having received word, hurried over.
A woman in coarse hemp clothing approached along a distant field ridge with a little girl of five or six. Both mother and daughter carried woven bamboo baskets filled with fresh mulberry leaves still beaded with dew.
Before she even reached them, the woman spoke. "Sorry, Sister Xiong. Sorry to have kept you and the immortal master waiting."
The woman's name was Shi Sang. To Li Yu's surprise, her belly was slightly swollen, as though she were pregnant.
Xiong Meng's voice transmission sounded in his ear. "Sister Shi was already pregnant with her second child before that faithless man left, but she still hasn't given birth."
Three years pregnant without giving birth? What on earth was she carrying?
"Are you a cultivator?" a childish voice asked just then. It was Shi Sang's daughter, her face full of hope.
"I'm only an ordinary disciple of the Five Lotus Sect," Li Yu replied. The Five Lotus Sect had once been known as an evil sect in the Eastern Lands, and he was a little worried Shi Sang might refuse to rent to him because of it.
After asking about Li Yu's circumstances, however, Shi Sang suddenly said, "If you could guide my daughter in cultivation, immortal master, I would be willing to waive the rent."
[Free rent!]
Li Yu's eyes lit up at that.
"May I ask what sort of spiritual roots the young lady has?" Li Yu asked.
Cultivation in the Eastern Lands required spiritual roots. Li Yu, for instance, had roots of three attributes: water, wood, and earth. This counted as above-average aptitude, which was why an elder in his lineage had valued his talent and advised him to join the Five Lotus Sect.
Song Lingxi, by contrast, had dual metal and water spiritual roots, giving her superior aptitude. That was why Ge Jin had taken her as a personal disciple as soon as she joined.
Shi Sang hesitated, but still answered honestly. "When the village tested her at the beginning of the year, there was no response from any spiritual roots."
No spiritual roots? How could he teach her, then?
Li Yu very much wanted free rent, but he could not get past his conscience. He shook his head and declined. "Spiritual roots are essential for cultivating immortality and longevity. Without them, I would only be leading your child astray."
At the Five Lotus Sect, Li Yu had seen many people who lacked spiritual roots but still longed to seek immortality and the Dao, trapped in the mist outside the sect's gates. Some unscrupulous disciples tricked them into offering spirit stones, claiming they could bring them into the sect to cultivate. In the end, they merely squandered the best years of their youth. Once they had been cheated out of all their spirit stones, they grew old and died alone as menial servants.
Although Li Yu was no saint, he still had a basic moral bottom line. Such things were beneath him.
At his words, the hope in the little girl's eyes immediately dimmed.
Shi Sang was also deeply disappointed, but she seemed to have expected this. After a brief silence, she nodded.
Afterward, Li Yu settled the rental arrangements with her.
Shi Sang accepted the spirit stones Li Yu handed her, took three from the payment, and gave them to Xiong Meng as a fee for the introduction.
"Thank you, Sister Shi. When you have another room available, I'll introduce another fellow disciple to you." Xiong Meng was delighted to receive the spirit stones.
Hearing this, Li Yu pointed at the mud-brick house in surprise. "Besides mine, has the other room been rented out too?"
"That room is rented to the old teacher who teaches in the village. His rent is paid by the clan." The little girl answered. Her name was Jin Ling.
Next, Shi Sang opened Li Yu's room. Inside, it was extremely bare, with only a bed, a table, and two stools.
"If you want to cook, immortal master, you can use the kitchen outside." Shi Sang looked a little embarrassed. Everything valuable in the house had been sold off when that faithless man left. After all, chartering a boat to sail out to sea was quite expensive for a mortal.
Li Yu shook his head, indicating that he would not need it.
Before leaving the sect this time, he had bought a large batch of fasting pills. Taking one a day would keep him fed, and he had enough to last until next year.
Then Li Yu waved his sleeve. A gentle breeze swept through the room, gathering all the dust into a clump and blowing it out the door.
The miraculous sight made Jin Ling's eyes widen, her face full of longing to learn.
"There's a clear river not far to the east. Everyone in the village draws their water from there..." After explaining a few more essentials of life in Cuckoo Dove Village, Shi Sang took her daughter back to their own room.
As a cultivator, Li Yu had keen senses and could detect faint fluctuations of life. Recalling that the mother and daughter had just returned from gathering mulberry leaves, he realized they were probably raising silkworms.
The silk brocade of Zhao was famous throughout the Eastern Lands, and some enchanted robes were made from it.
To enjoy some peace and quiet, Li Yu took a talisman from his storage pouch and stuck it to a roof beam. It could prevent others from spying on him and isolate any sounds inside the room. Then he took out a meditation cushion and began to meditate.
Although it was not the right time to cultivate the Purple Cloud Art, the Supreme Unity Scripture had no such restriction.
After obtaining the True Explanation of Supreme Unity, Li Yu's understanding of this cultivation method had risen several levels. Comparing it with Jiang Taiyi's notes, the doubts that had troubled him during his earlier cultivation suddenly cleared, as though a broad vista had opened before him.
The outer sect's Supreme Unity Scripture contained four spells in its Qi Refining section. Through fourteen years of painstaking cultivation, Li Yu had mastered three, but he had never managed to grasp "Supreme Unity Starlight."
He had originally thought his aptitude and comprehension were inadequate. Only after reading the True Explanation of Supreme Unity did he learn that the sect had held something back: the spell's text in the Supreme Unity Scripture he practiced was incomplete.
No wonder the inner disciples were generally a level above the outer disciples. Their own instructional text was a mutilated version, and they even had to learn it on their own. It would have been stranger if they could compete.
Li Yu carefully reread Jiang Taiyi's explanation of "Supreme Unity Starlight" several more times, then closed his eyes and cultivated.
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