Mu Xunzhen stood at the cliff's edge atop Heavenly Evolution's mountain, gazing up at the sky.
The sun had slanted westward, and a full moon rose from the distant river, hazy as though steeped in water.
Jinyue's current state was rather like her own back then. There was affection and fondness, but not quite enough, so she had gone all that time without confessing to Brother A-Yan.
Not only had she wasted so, so much time, she had also given those foxy seductresses opportunities. She wondered whether those little bitches had all died off after so many years.
She had eventually made her feelings clear, but too late. She had not arranged to meet him early on, and by the time she wanted to see him, he was nowhere to be found.
Then why let Jinyue repeat her mistakes? Let the senior sister and junior brother spend time together. If feelings really did blossom, letting nature take its course was no bad thing. Better that than letting someone like Yun Ranyi steal a march on her, or having some accident leave her with regrets like Mu Xunzhen's.
Qi Yan's greatest shortcoming now was that he had started cultivating far too late. Fortunately, he was on the right path now and advancing rapidly. When Mu Xunzhen said she had not been this fast back then, it was true... except for one particular period.
In the period just after she met Brother A-Yan, she had advanced by leaps and bounds. Even her progress through the Golden Core Stage had been faster than other people's through Qi Refinement.
Mu Xunzhen gazed quietly at the moon, as though seeing that Golden Core trial that had changed the course of her life.
She had been confined afterward, the poor thing.
There was not really much to say about the process... The trial had lasted several days. Finally, amid poisonous miasma, just as she was about to risk seizing a Heart-Nourishing Lotus guarded by a pack of venomous beasts, sneak attacks had come from behind her on either side.
But she had already learned alchemy and used Brother A-Yan's recipe to refine a Liquid Condensation Pill, successfully breaking through to the middle Golden Core Stage. She was nowhere near as determined as people imagined to obtain that Heart-Nourishing Lotus, which was closely tied to the trial's objective.
She had only pretended to take the risk to bait someone into attacking.
And someone had indeed taken the bait.
What the attackers had even less expected was that she was already at the middle Golden Core Stage, rather than the early stage she appeared to be at. Their strike misjudged both Little Crybaby's vigilance and her strength, and she evaded it with ease.
Little Crybaby thrust out both palms, drawing the two attackers into the pack of venomous beasts, which instantly pounced.
Before the screams could draw anyone else over, Little Crybaby drifted away.
Whatever happened in there, whether they lived or died, whether the Heart-Nourishing Lotus was destroyed, what became of the task... not a ripple stirred in Little Crybaby's heart. None of it mattered anymore.
This was what Brother A-Yan meant by having a different foundation of confidence... It really was.
"Mu Xunzhen!" After the trial ended, the elder in charge smashed the table with a slap. "Your senior brother accuses you of pushing your senior brothers into danger. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Little Crybaby glanced over. Eldest Senior Brother had had an arm chewed clean off and was now crippled. Another senior brother lay on the ground, a mangled mess of flesh and blood, already dead. Had the rescuers not arrived quickly, Eldest Senior Brother would probably have been finished too...
A pity.
"If you say I pushed you, what proof do you have, Senior Brother?" Little Crybaby stood her ground. "Eldest Senior Brother is at the late Golden Core Stage, and Third Senior Brother was at the middle Golden Core Stage. I pushed both of them in all by myself and came away completely unscathed? Would anyone believe that?"
Clutching his severed arm, Eldest Senior Brother roared furiously, "Sophistry!"
"When Golden Core cultivators fight, at least some residual power remains." Little Crybaby was not the least bit cowed. She immediately asked, "With nothing at all, you simply blame a fellow disciple for injuries caused by your own rash advance? Is that how Eldest Senior Brother takes responsibility? I think Eldest Senior Brother should answer for Third Senior Brother's death!"
There really was no residual power. Little Crybaby had never used her real strength, merely following their momentum with a drawing spell that sent them plunging into the venomous beasts along the direction of their own force. No investigation could uncover traces of her energy inside their bodies.
The accusation did not hold.
Eldest Senior Brother was beside himself with anger, and his injuries were already grievous. Choking on his rage, he passed out on the spot.
An elder beside him hurried to support him and snapped, "Regardless, someone saw you nearby. How do you explain that?"
"I did pass nearby, but the poisonous miasma was so thick I couldn't see anything. The elders warned us about that beforehand." Little Crybaby looked terribly aggrieved. "I really wanted the Heart-Nourishing Lotus, but I couldn't find it no matter how I searched. My trial was ruined."
"You!"
Indeed, she had gained nothing from the trial, and there was no residual energy either. Neither motive nor evidence pointed to her. Under everyone's eyes, the elder could not force a verdict and could only sneer. "I hope you can give your master the same account when she emerges from seclusion."
"Master won't emerge for another half a year or more. She will judge the matter herself then."
"Regardless, you were nearby when it happened, yet failed to provide timely aid. You bear some fault as well." The elder said sternly, "Your punishment is one month's confinement on Chaotic Spirit Mountain. Do you object?"
Little Crybaby looked at the other elders' impassive expressions around her and knew there was nothing to argue about. Calmly, she said, "Little Seven accepts the punishment."
She was lonely wherever she went. What difference did confinement make? As long as the jade pendant could connect her to Brother A-Yan, anywhere was the same.
In the end, only Brother A-Yan ever kept her company.
On the return journey from the trial grounds to the mountain, although it was not far at all, Little Crybaby's heart flew home like an arrow, because she dared not take out the jade pendant among the group.
To everyone else, she had gone mad. She practically seemed impatient to be locked up.
She wondered what Brother A-Yan was doing right now... Surely he did not have some old woman and a cat beside him again.
Brother A-Yan was undergoing special training from his tutor senior sister. Whether she counted as an old woman was a matter of opinion.
Above Jiang Jinyue's garden, a crescent moon formed of purple lightning hung leisurely in midair.
"Strike!" A bolt of heavenly lightning descended from the sky, striking toward the purple crescent.
Just before it hit, the crescent gave an obnoxious little twist. The heavenly lightning missed, striking the garden's protective formation and dissipating without a trace.
"Strike!" Another bolt of heavenly lightning descended. The crescent zipped aside again, and the lightning's effort was once more in vain.
The crescent wriggled and twisted, as though taunting him.
Qi Yan was drenched in sweat. He had already unleashed more than a dozen bolts and nearly exhausted his magical power, yet no matter how he controlled them, he could not zap the target.
Having eaten until her belly was round, Jiang Jinyue lay comfortably on a recliner in the garden and sighed contentedly. "Your strength isn't even one ten-thousandth of your cooking..."
Qi Yan's face flushed red, but he had no retort.
Acting as his tutor, Jiang Jinyue had inspected his cultivation and asked him to demonstrate several skills. Her very first comment was, "Your spells are crooked melons and cracked dates. You use them terribly."
So the senior sister and junior brother had given it a try, and this was the result.
This purple lightning crescent was formed from Jiang Jinyue's lightning arts, held together without dispersing. The test was whether Qi Yan could accurately strike the target.
And Jiang Jinyue had not used any power beyond his level. In fact, she was using slightly less power than Qi Yan. With nothing but control, she made every one of his attacks miss.
During the desert illusion trial, Qi Yan had already sensed that his Orthodox Five Thunder Arts lacked accuracy, letting monsters slip through like a sieve. He had not expected his ordinary lightning arts to be so inaccurate too.
Lying comfortably on the recliner, Jiang Jinyue casually picked up a glass of fruit juice and slurped it. "When you trained in the illusion, all you struck were iron-shelled scorpions without any intelligence, and they were only simulations in an illusion. It looked as though you could hit some of them, but was that really your control making them hit? When you face an actual person, they'll dodge. They won't stand there and let you strike them."
"I know," Qi Yan said honestly.
The attacker in the tomb had fallen for his dirty trick; he had not struck him head-on. Had his opponent's main attention been on him then, the bolt probably would never have landed.
"So if I want to reach Foundation Establishment, I actually need to practice spell control extensively first? Will that slow me down?"
"No." Jiang Jinyue leisurely drank her juice. "People always blindly pursue advancement in cultivation, but the term 'cultivation' has actually been narrowed in meaning. It doesn't refer purely to the level of your magical power, but to mastering the principles you need to know. That includes power, but also investigation and insight. That is cultivation. Mastery of spells is merely one part of putting it to the test. Do you understand lightning? Do you understand the principles that make your incantations work? You want to break through without knowing anything?"
Qi Yan listened attentively.
Damn it, only now, after taking a master so long ago, do I finally have a real teacher... That irresponsible old woman.
Jiang Jinyue finished her juice, set down the empty glass, and said leisurely, "If you haven't adequately mastered what you need to grasp at your current stage and single-mindedly pursue breakthroughs, it can lead to two outcomes."
Qi Yan hurried forward, took half a watermelon, and continued squeezing juice for her like a lackey.
Very pleased that the young fellow knew how to read the situation, Jiang Jinyue continued, "First, your foundations are flimsy and your understanding incomplete. As a result, even though your energy seems to have reached the threshold, you simply cannot break through. That creates the impression that Foundation Establishment is exceptionally difficult, as though it were a greater hurdle than even Golden Core. In truth, people's thinking has gone astray. If you don't even understand the lightning that is your main discipline, how can you forge the foundation of the immortal path?"
Qi Yan played along. "And the second?"
"Second, you use some ferocious medicine to force a breakthrough. But with that kind of cultivation, someone at a lower level might defeat you, you know. And there are quite a lot of people like that..."
Qi Yan: "..."
"Actually, practicing spells trains your control and mental power, which in turn helps consolidate your cultivation and aids breakthroughs in magical power. Technique and power complement one another; you can't view them separately. So don't worry that spending effort training your techniques will slow your cultivation." Jiang Jinyue pointed a slender finger. "Keep striking, little brother."
Qi Yan did not move. Silence fell.
Jiang Jinyue eyed him sidelong. "What, trying to slack off already?"
"No." Qi Yan earnestly asked for guidance. "Do I just keep practicing and striking blindly like this? Are there any techniques? I'm completely lost. Also, why does heavenly tribulation seem to lock on, making it impossible to dodge?"
"As for heavenly tribulation, I haven't reached that level either, so I don't know." Jiang Jinyue leisurely sipped her second glass of watermelon juice and said indistinctly, "As for techniques, there is a little something..."
"Please instruct me, Senior Sister."
"If you keep being so formal, I won't teach you."
"...Dear big sister."
"Haha, hahaha..." Every time Jiang Jinyue saw Qi Yan's little look of enduring humiliation and bearing a heavy burden, she especially wanted to laugh.
But because she had eaten too much and her stomach was rather full, laughing made it hurt. Her face twitched as she clutched her belly and half sat up.
This time, it was Qi Yan's turn to give her an exasperated sidelong look.
"Ahem." Jiang Jinyue gave a dry cough, preserving her dignity as a teacher. "First, extensive practice is certainly unavoidable. Only through extensive practice can you wield it as naturally as your arm commands your fingers. There are no shortcuts there."
Qi Yan's expression grew a little bitter. "And second?"
It was not that he feared hardship, but that, following this model, he did not have enough time.
Seeing Qi Yan's woebegone expression, Jiang Jinyue found him utterly adorable, her eyes curving. "We'll leave the second point aside for now... How about this? Tomorrow morning, big sister will check your practice progress. If I'm satisfied, there'll be a reward."