Little Lotus was so nervous that she could not utter a word. She only kept shaking her head, whether to say there was no need to thank her, or that she had never meant to help him at all and had been forced into it...
Liu S sui shielded her behind him and looked at True Person Taiping. "Speak."
True Person Taiping walked over to the desk, pulled out a chair, and sat down. Looking at him with a half-smile, he said, "Shouldn't you address me as Patriarch?"
"I left Bai Rujing's tutelage long ago," Liu S sui said. "I have even less to do with you."
"What about through Jingyang?" True Person Taiping asked.
"He is my young master. What does that have to do with you?"
True Person Taiping smiled at him. "You didn't start shouting about fighting and killing the moment we met. It seems you've become much more mature and steady over the years."
"I can't beat you." Liu S sui offered the simplest, most straightforward explanation.
True Person Taiping studied him for a moment. "The problem of the foreign true qi in your body has been completely resolved. Your cultivation realm is no lower than Zhao Layue's or Zhuo Rusui's, and you now count as one of the truly powerful figures in the Cultivation World. Don't you want to give it a try?"
Many, many years ago, Liu S sui and Little Lotus had lived in the vegetable garden outside Fruitful Accomplishment Temple, cultivating Buddhist Dharma under Jing Jiu's instructions in hopes of suppressing the foreign true qi within his body. That was when he first met True Person Taiping and received a great deal of guidance from him.
Of course, that had not stopped him from later following Zhao Layue in pursuing True Person