The Girl

The new soul banner was no worse than the previous one.

Aside from the three hundred ferocious souls destroyed by the Golden Core elder, five or six hundred remained. With the Golden Core Soul Marshal she had just obtained, the banner was in a different league altogether.

With a Golden Core Soul Marshal, the banner was a fine magic treasure even if it was not a thousand-soul banner. Ordinary Golden Core cultivators would have to be wary of it.

This was an unexpected windfall. Even Su Fuxi had not expected the Golden Core Soul Marshal to be so formidable. Though this banner was not a thousand-soul banner, it surpassed one!

"Carefully refine the soul banner until it is fully yours. From now on, it will be another powerful magic treasure at your disposal."

Su Fuxi rose and waved her hand. The soul banner, over a zhang long, instantly shrank to half a chi and flew toward Lin Sui.

Lin Sui caught it and immediately drew out his spiritual sense to refine it. He had followed his master's example and placed special emphasis on training his soul.

Now, sweeping his spiritual sense through the banner, he found hundreds of ferocious souls surging within. When he saw the Soul Marshal radiating Golden Core pressure, a thought suddenly struck him-

Su Fuxi had purified the Golden Core Soul Marshal to make it easier for Lin Sui to control, but it lacked the ferocity a chief Soul Marshal should possess!

Lin Sui changed his hand seal, and a deep-black crystal flew out of his storage bag. Su Fuxi's brow twitched. This was clearly a crystallization of Slaughter Qi he had refined in the past few years. Seeing him fuse it into the Soul Marshal, she nodded inwardly.

With that, the Soul Marshal gained a murderous nature, doubling its strength.

Sure enough, after it absorbed a crystal the size of a soybean, wisps of dark red misty light began drifting from the Soul Marshal's originally blue eye sockets, and its aura abruptly rose to another level.

Su Fuxi watched Lin Sui continue adding crystals until he stopped after fusing eleven of them into it.

The Golden Core Soul Marshal's eyes turned completely dark red, and it let out a muffled roar. The other ferocious souls, including over a hundred Foundation Establishment souls and over a hundred Foundation Establishment and Qi Refinement beast souls, all froze for a moment before bowing their heads respectfully to the Soul Marshal in utter submission.

The soul banner immediately gained a fierce, baleful aura. The surrounding temperature plummeted, making it feel as though the depths of winter had arrived in an instant.

This boy's Soul Refining Art was even more practiced than hers. Such comprehension was also excellent.

Su Fuxi thought of herself. Her physique was poor too, and she had relied entirely on her comprehension and temperament to persevere until now and reach the Golden Core realm. Setting everything else aside, she quite admired Lin Sui.

The Nine Transformations of Blood Refinement was already inhuman torment, yet he had endured it alone for so many years. He had long since reached the eighth transformation and would soon attain a body of diamond and iron bones.

With physical strength far surpassing cultivators of the same level, he would henceforth be invincible among those in his realm!

Lin Sui spent three months refining the soul banner. Su Fuxi stood guard beside him and took the opportunity to make a concealment restriction flag.

It contained thirty-six types of concealment restrictions she had collected. Once it was finished, she handed it to Lin Sui.

"Thank you, Master." Lin Sui paused for a breath before reaching out to accept the restriction flag.

During his six years of training alone, he had also visited a small secret realm. Only after seeing more of the world did he realize how rare a master who thought of her disciple as Su Fuxi did was in these times.

It could only be said that the world was unpredictable; the two had never been thinking on the same plane.

As Lin Sui reflected on this, he naturally had no idea how much effort it took to study the Dao of restrictions on one's own without any guidance.

At that moment, he did not see that a few more white hairs had appeared over the past few months amid the silver streak in Su Fuxi's black hair at her temple.

The two rose. Su Fuxi glanced at the sky; it looked like rain. Purple Flower Valley was at least three thousand li away, so she simply took her disciple and dug out a cave abode for them to stay in temporarily.

They would soon be heading to the Forgotten Land, and these preparations alone were far from enough.

"Lin Sui, this is the sword intent the sect master asked me to give you. It is comparable to a Nascent Soul magic treasure. Refine it carefully and take it into your sea of consciousness."

Sitting on a meditation cushion, Su Fuxi opened her storage bag. A ball of light flew out and drifted toward Lin Sui. She cautioned him, "Sword intent can hurt people, so use it carefully."

Lin Sui nodded and sat down opposite her. He branded the sword intent, which radiated a keen aura as soon as it appeared, with his spiritual sense, then patted it into his forehead and took it into his sea of consciousness.

Unlike Su Fuxi's, his sea of consciousness was a dark, inky sea. Above it was a strange, enormous vortex of gray mist, vast and boundless, almost like the eye of a typhoon over the sea.

Some mysterious aura seemed to lie in the depths of his sea of consciousness. Even Lin Sui's own spiritual sense did not dare venture casually into the seabed or the depths of the vortex. He instinctively knew he had not yet reached that level.

His spiritual platform was completely enveloped in gray mist. Elsewhere, the dozens of slaughter cyclones he had collected but not yet refined were likewise surrounded by a ring of gray mist.

He placed the ball of sword intent in another location, far from both.

"Master, are we going back to the mountain now?"

The next day, the rain passed and the sky cleared. Two streaks of rainbow light, one blue and one pink, cut across the sky toward Purple Flower Valley.

"There's no hurry."

"The trip to the secret realm will be dangerous. We need to prepare some things."

The two arrived at the Purple Flower Valley market that afternoon.

The Hundred Treasures Pavilion.

"What can I show you two guests?"

A Qi Refining Stage shop assistant was listlessly dusting the counter with a beast-feather duster when he suddenly saw a man and a woman of extraordinary bearing enter. His eyes immediately lit up, and he warmly welcomed them.

The pair were naturally Su Fuxi and her disciple.

A shop like this mainly sold magic treasures, pills, graded materials, and the like. Su Fuxi swept her spiritual sense lightly over the assistant and gestured with her chin. "We're looking for magic treasures."

"Haha, yes, of course! The magic treasures are all upstairs. Please, both of you!"

The assistant grew even more enthusiastic at her words and led them to the second floor. "Guests, what sort of magic treasure do you need?"

Su Fuxi pondered briefly, trying to describe it:

"Well... the kind of magic treasure that lets two people send messages to each other and sense each other over a long distance. If both wear one, they can easily contact each other."

Lin Sui stood behind her, as quiet as a wooden puppet in human form.

The young assistant replied, "Yes, yes, we have some. An artifact refiner happened to leave some similar magic treasures here on consignment a while ago."

The assistant turned and took a storage bag from a hidden compartment in the wall. He squeezed it, and several clusters of colored light immediately flew out.

They were all magic treasures of different shapes: a pair of small silver bells, a pair of twin-fish jade pendants, and a pair of bronze bracelets.

Su Fuxi examined them carefully. The jade pendants could send messages to each other and sense each other at a maximum distance of a thousand li.

The bracelets did the same and also contained a Golden Core attack, but unfortunately, their sensing range was less than a thousand li.

The bells could not transmit messages or attack; they could only sense each other, but their range was ten thousand li!

Once both users refined them with drops of their essence blood, the bells could give advance warning whenever the two came within sensing range of each other.

They were a must-have magic treasure for finding people!

The Forgotten Land was unusual. Su Fuxi wanted to make it easier to find Lin Sui and prevent him from losing his way because of his low cultivation, so she said at once, "All right, I'll take the bells! How many spirit stones?"

"Eight thousand..."

"Creak-"

Before the assistant could finish, the door suddenly swung open. A slender, graceful girl walked in, her hair styled in two buns. She looked charming and lovely. Looking at the people present, she said:

"Oh! It's only a communication treasure. Why would it cost eight thousand spirit stones? For the sake of this... Young Master Lin, give them a discount. Just... just make it five hundred spirit stones!"

"Y-young Miss... this..." The young assistant was on the verge of tears. "We really can't do that!"

Lin Sui, who had been silent all this time, finally spoke. "Miss Mu! This is my master. Since she wants to buy this magic treasure, she should pay however many spirit stones it costs."

He spoke to Mu Qingqing, but his eyes remained on Su Fuxi, afraid that she might be displeased because of him.

He had met this girl only by chance last year, and only now did he learn that she owned the Hundred Treasures Pavilion. Lin Sui did not want to owe anyone a favor, and he knew his master would also disdain making things difficult for an assistant.

"You... you're Fairy Chongming! So you're Young Master Lin's master."

Mu Qingqing had noticed the woman of lofty bearing earlier, but Lin Sui had captured all her attention. How could she spare any for anyone else?

But now that Lin Sui had spoken, she took a few more looks at Su Fuxi. A little displeasure at having lost face rose in her heart, and because of the protective intent in Lin Sui's words, she could not help feeling a little jealous of Su Fuxi.

Su Fuxi was one of the foremost beauties in the Azure Cloud Sect and even the Tianshui Kingdom. Mu Qingqing's cultivation and status were lower than hers, and her face was not as pretty. As she thought about it, she felt even more jealous.

"My disciple is right. Miss Mu, please let me pay without worry." Su Fuxi finally spoke in a neutral tone, seemingly unaware of the young girl's appraising gaze.

As a result, Su Fuxi, who had intended to bargain because the bells were not worth eight thousand spirit stones, could hardly haggle now.

She looked at the assistant and tilted her head slightly. "How much are they, then?"

The assistant looked at Mu Qingqing and gritted his teeth. "I didn't know you were Fairy Chongming. For this pair of silver bells, you need only pay five thousand five hundred spirit stones."

Su Fuxi raised an eyebrow inwardly. So that worked too. Still, it was more reasonable than five hundred spirit stones. It seemed magic treasures really were heavily marked up in this market.

But aside from having only one function, the bells were of decent quality and were worth about five to six thousand spirit stones.

The two left the Hundred Treasures Pavilion under Mu Qingqing's reluctant gaze.

Lin Sui was as tight-lipped as a stoppered gourd, speaking even less than before. Su Fuxi glanced at him in mild surprise and asked as they browsed, "You and that Miss Mu..."

"No! I don't know. I'm not close to her."

"..." Su Fuxi was speechless and inwardly amused. She glanced at Lin Sui, that wooden fish.

Sure enough, the girl's affection was like a barber's pole, hot at only one end. She had set her sights on such a blockhead.

Fortunately, Su Fuxi was not his real parent and could not be bothered to concern herself with Lin Sui's love life. She only said, "Oh, I didn't ask you anything."

"Master, I..." Lin Sui realized what he had done and immediately felt embarrassed and annoyed with himself.

Su Fuxi then added casually, "But don't offend her too badly. Be careful-a willful young girl can be hard to handle when she gets angry."

Lin Sui: "..."

He was baffled. He had not done anything, so how could he have offended anyone?

He could only say, "I understand." Then he followed Su Fuxi to the next shop to purchase consumables, and they also went to the open market to buy a large batch of materials.