Child of Fortune
Demons had slaughtered more than half the people in Locust Tree Village. Corpses now littered the ground, but none contained a soul or any deathly aura.
Only after the immortal had chased the fiend away did the surviving villagers dare to whimper in terror.
Under the bleak, cold moonlight, the scene was desolate. In the courtyard of a thatched house, a child of twelve or thirteen knelt before his parents' corpses, tears streaming silently down his face.
While the others wept bitterly, he kowtowed in silence through his tears, then began digging at the earth with his bare hands, his expression blank. Clearly, he meant to bury his parents, who had died such tragic deaths.
The dazzling rainbow light was impossible to miss in the darkness. It landed and became Su Fuxi, and she noticed the boy at once.
For no other reason.
It was because a dense mass of golden light rose above this ordinary boy's head.
Golden. Light!
Gold.
It was the only color Su Fuxi had seen in hundreds of years. This was unmistakably the light of fortune!
"!!!" Su Fuxi could not contain her shock.
Ever since acquiring her spiritual sense, Su Fuxi had possessed a secret no one else knew: she could see the halos above everyone's heads.
Everyone, mortals included, had some measure of the light of fortune. She had spent a long time studying it and determined that these masses of fortune combined vitality and good luck. Unfortunately, she could not see her own.
Sect Leader Li Yuanqing had the largest mass of light above his head in the entire sect, but even his was only white, dozens of times inferior to this boy's!
What was more, the golden light was so dense that even she could see its color!
Th-this, what kind of rare treasure is this??
Su Fuxi was completely dumbstruck. She froze for a moment before striding decisively toward the little brat.
An excited glimmer gathered in the depths of her hollow eyes. Come, legendary child of fortune!
If I am destined to die when my lifespan runs out, unable to break through to the Nascent Soul stage, then I shall embark on the path of vicious immortal cultivation!
Su Fuxi's thoughts surged and tumbled. Let me see. Shall I devour your fortune, or possess your...
Pat. A pair of clean embroidered shoes entered the child's sight, accompanied by the sound of tears dripping from his chin. Startled, he raised his head and followed the shimmering hem of her skirt upward, seeing the immortal before him in the moonlight.
The boy-Lin Sui-froze on the spot.
The immortal possessed an unparalleled beauty the likes of which he had never seen in his life. Even with her eyes covered, her celestial grace and jade-like beauty were not diminished in the slightest.
"I am Su Fuxi, an elder of the Azure Cloud Sect. Are you willing to come to the mountain with me and cultivate the Dao?"
Hearing the immortal's melodious voice, Lin Sui stared blankly for three breaths before he understood what she meant.
He looked down at his dead parents. Now that he had nothing left, he suddenly kowtowed respectfully to the immortal. "This boy is Lin Sui. I am willing to follow you and cultivate the Dao, Immortal."
"Follow." The boy regarded himself as the immortal's servant.
He was rather too ready to belittle himself.
The corners of Su Fuxi's mouth lifted. She flicked a strand of spiritual power into him and sent it circulating through his body. To her delight, she found that eight or nine of his innate spiritual apertures were already open, qualifying him to cultivate. "Then are you willing to take me as your master?"
Lin Sui's heart gave a great jolt, and he immediately nodded. "I am!"
The village was remote, far from any immortal sect. There was simply no chance to travel to the prefectural city to attend an immortal sect's testing assembly, much less any places allocated to the village.
Immortal cultivation. It gave the newly orphaned Lin Sui's lost heart a direction in which to move forward once more.
"Very good. From this moment on, you are my personal disciple." Su Fuxi was quite pleased. She then brushed her storage pouch, and a small flag radiating a sinister aura appeared in her hand.
"Your parents were killed by a fiend. The souls of all the villagers are in this flag, so I shall release them to enter the cycle of reincarnation..."
Lin Sui wiped away his tears and stood. "What would happen if they did not enter the cycle of reincarnation?"
Su Fuxi cast a "glance" at the two middle-aged corpses on the ground. "Either they would be trapped in the flag forever, until one day it refined them and they lost any chance of being reincarnated as humans, or they would simply dissipate between heaven and earth."
"Your magic power knows no bounds. Please send them into the cycle of reincarnation, then." Though he could not bear to part with them, the dead had to return to heaven. Lin Sui gazed at his parents' corpses, reluctant to let them go. "I want to bury them."
Su Fuxi tossed the Soul-Refining Flag into the air and formed a seal with her hands. A violent surge of black mist spread from the flag,
The flag instantly grew a zhang larger. Guiding it with her spiritual sense, she released the hundreds of bewildered souls that had only just entered it, allowing them to pass on.
Taking the opportunity, she swept her senses over the more than a hundred ferocious souls already refined within the flag. No wonder the black-robed cultivator had slaughtered the village; presumably, he had been trying to refine a Thousand-Soul Banner.
Su Fuxi put the flag away in one motion. What use is refining it with mortal souls alone? I could destroy a Thousand-Soul Banner with one hand! If I'm going to refine one, it has to be something higher-grade!
At that thought, she immediately regretted what had happened to the black-robed cultivator's soul. It was a bit of a waste, but she had not practiced any techniques of that kind.
"Lin Sui?"
Behind the Lin family's house, there was now a large burial mound. She had helped bury the boy's parents, and it was about time.
Su Fuxi walked over and patted the boy's thin shoulder. She had given him time to pay his respects to his parents, so it could be said that she was not entirely heartless.
It was only natural to be reluctant to part from one's loved ones.
"Come on, it's about time." Her spiritual sense swept over the golden light above the boy's head. Uncharacteristically patient, she spoke as though offering comfort:
"If you have the chance in the future, you can come home often. Cultivating the Dao does not mean severing your family ties."
"As long as you cultivate diligently, one day you will be able to travel a thousand li in a single step. Coming home will take no more than a thought."
The two rode a flying sword through the air.
Mindful that Lin Sui might be the key to her future breakthrough, Su Fuxi spared no effort in looking after him. She held him close, shielding him from the fierce winds with her wide sleeves, and in the blink of an eye they had traveled hundreds of li.
Lin Sui had just lost his loved ones. She held him in her arms like a little chick, her embrace warm, as though she had held up the sky for him. The immortal's pleasant fragrance filled his nostrils as she carried him safely over towering mountains and lofty ridges, unharmed.
Mustering his courage, he secretly raised his head to look at the immortal, who was much taller than he was, but all he could see was the full swell of her breasts.
Just then, as though sensing something, Su Fuxi lowered her head and opened her hollow eyes to "look" at him. She spoke in a calm voice. "If you're afraid of heights, don't look around. Hold on a little longer; we'll be there soon."
With that, she closed her eyes beneath her long lashes and looked at him no more, though her flying sword sped up a little.
At that moment, the young boy's face reddened slightly, and he made a silent vow: he would surely respect his master and honor the Dao, treat his master as the parents who had given him a second life, be filial to her, and stay by her side for the rest of his life, never leaving or abandoning her.