A Master and Disciple with Nothing to Hide

After using the Tianquan Sword twice in succession to unleash power beyond his body's limits, Qin Chuan instantly withered. His cheeks were sunken, his vitality was depleted, and his spiritual power was exhausted as he fell from the sky.

Qin Chuan had dealt with the danger before him himself, so Shen Qingyuan did not interfere any further. Most importantly, those two attacks had not damaged his foundation, so there was no need for her to intervene.

"This minor secret realm is too low-level. It's about to collapse, but Chuan'er is still training. It can't collapse yet." Shen Qingyuan acted to stabilize the minor secret realm for the time being. If it wanted to collapse, it would have to wait until her Chuan'er finished his training. With her help, the secret realm stabilized for the time being.

Then, since she had nothing else to do anyway, she decided to stay in the secret realm and protect Qin Chuan, keeping the realm stable at the same time so he could train without worry.

Thud. The sound of Qin Chuan hitting the ground finally brought Jin Pang out of his shock. He swallowed back the blood essence he had been about to spit out and hurriedly scrambled over to Qin Chuan.

"Junior Brother Qin, are you all right? You look completely worn out. You didn't run into a vixen spirit in your dream, did you? I saw you secretly enjoying yourself just now. Don't tell me you gave yourself to a vixen spirit to save me." As Jin Pang ran his mouth, he reached out and touched Qin Chuan's sunken cheek.

He wanted to keep feeling Qin Chuan's body, but the weakened Qin Chuan stopped him with a hand. "Stop touching me. You're not much better off than I am. Let's get out of here. I can't fight at all right now. If the wolf pack catches up, we'll both be wolf food."

"Oh, oh, right, right, let's go." Jin Pang was in slightly better shape than Qin Chuan and could still barely move. He put the corpses of the two false Nascent Soul wolf demons into his storage ring, hoisted Qin Chuan onto his back, and left as fast as he could.

Even as he fled, he couldn't keep his mouth shut. "Junior Brother Qin, you look pretty weak. How about I give you some pills to build yourself back up? I've got a secret recipe of my own. I guarantee you'll be as vigorous as a dragon and fierce as a tiger after taking them. You won't be afraid of any vixen spirit."

Qin Chuan paused in the middle of swallowing a pill. A hot-blooded man like him couldn't possibly be incapable, so he refused Jin Pang outright. "Thank you for the kind offer, Senior Brother Jin, but I'm very capable. I don't need those pills."

"All right. I just saw how weak you looked and wanted to help. Here, this is a qi and blood pill. It can restore some of your vitality." Jin Pang gave Qin Chuan a qi and blood pill.

"I won't stand on ceremony with you, Senior Brother Jin. I'll pay you in spirit stones." Qin Chuan accepted it without ceremony. In his current condition, he really did need pills to replenish his vitality.

"Oh, this pill isn't worth much. I can refine one whenever I want. Consider it a gift." Jin Pang spoke without a care.

As Qin Chuan refined the qi and blood pill, he marveled at how wealthy pill cultivators were. Unfortunately, he had no talent for pill refinement.

Then he thought of the vixen spirit Jin Pang had mentioned. A vixen spirit really had been pestering him just now. His master was even more of a vixen than a vixen spirit, stirring an itch in his heart.

He thought to himself, Master was willing to do something so intimate with me. Could it be that she also...

No, no, no. Master must have done it to save me. Sigh, one of life's greatest illusions is thinking she likes me. I'd better focus on healing first.

Qin Chuan immediately dismissed the thought and stopped thinking about such nonsense, concentrating on healing instead.

When the future Qin Chuan thought back on this, he wished he could travel back in time and slap his present self. If he had been a little more confident and confessed to Shen Qingyuan as soon as he returned, he would have risen a generation in seniority long ago.

For the rest of the journey, Qin Chuan refined pills to restore his spiritual energy and vitality. Jin Pang's body was also nearing its limit, so he decided to speak less and conserve his strength. Neither of them struck up any further conversation.

As for a certain vixen spirit, Shen Qingyuan silently followed the two. The more she looked at that little fatty Jin Pang, the more displeasing he became. She decided to find an opportunity to tell Qin Chuan not to listen to his friends' crooked reasoning, and not to let any vixen spirit casually bewitch him. Proper cultivation was the right path.

After running wildly for a quarter of an hour, Jin Pang really couldn't run anymore. He happened to spot a cave that had been abandoned for a long time and carried Qin Chuan inside. Having survived the ordeal, he patted his chest. "We're alive."

Qin Chuan tossed the Heavenly Origin Rejuvenation Pill Jin Pang had given him earlier back to him. "Senior Brother Jin, here's your Heavenly Origin Rejuvenation Pill. I already refined some pills while I was on your back. You heal first. I'll go set up a couple of formations."

"All right." Jin Pang didn't stand on ceremony either. He swallowed a Heavenly Origin Rejuvenation Pill, sat cross-legged, and began refining it.

Qin Chuan first set up a warning formation on the outside, so he would know if anyone approached. Then he layered a defensive formation over it.

"One defensive formation isn't secure enough. I'll add two more, and hide a few killing formations among them."

The crafty old schemer Qin Chuan came online. Half an hour later, he finished setting up all the formations and made sure that even a Golden Core cultivator would lose a layer of skin if they came. Only then did he dust off his hands and return to the cave.

He had just sat down when he thought of another problem. Every time he set up a somewhat powerful formation, it took time. If he had had formations to help him today, even if he couldn't defeat the false Nascent Soul wolf demons, he would surely have been able to escape from them.

I'll look into this when I get back and see if I can make prefabricated formations. If other people can make prefabricated meals, it should be reasonable for me to make prefabricated formations, right? Hmm, perfectly reasonable.

"But the most urgent thing is to heal first, then deal with Xie An and Gu Xiran. Everything else can wait." After muttering to himself, Qin Chuan took out pills to replenish his vitality and began refining them.

Shen Qingyuan watched Qin Chuan layer one formation over another and thought of the past. A smile spread across her face without her realizing it. "Chuan'er really is cautious."

The first time Qin Chuan had gone out to train, she had been worried and followed him. She had watched several cultivators trick him into training with them, but she hadn't stopped them. She had intended to let Qin Chuan suffer a little before rescuing him, so he would remember the lesson and not trust others so easily in the future.

But in the end, Qin Chuan had been pretending all along, and every cultivator who had tried to trick him had been tricked to death by him.

After Qin Chuan killed them, he had trembled as he methodically looted their corpses. That was how she learned that her disciple had been putting on an act all along, pretending to be innocent and kind in front of her.

She saw Qin Chuan kill without hesitation, and sometimes strike from the shadows to rob others. She also saw him save a complete stranger.

She watched Qin Chuan plot against others at every step, watched him carefully seize resources, watched him cultivate diligently... Watching everything Qin Chuan did, one thing after another, she grew curious about the disciple she had raised and increasingly wanted to understand him.

From then on, whenever Qin Chuan went out to train, she secretly followed him. At some point, she didn't even know when, she began to harbor illicit desires for Qin Chuan, but she suppressed them all. She also hid those desires well whenever she faced him.

She kept persuading herself that "Chuan'er is only my disciple," and seemed to have succeeded, suppressing those illicit desires for the time being.

As for those two things that shouldn't have happened, she naturally used helping Qin Chuan as her reason. Besides, she was only a strand of her soul, not her actual self, so it didn't count...

She and Qin Chuan were still master and disciple, a master and disciple with nothing to hide...