Personal Disciple

Su Fuxi took the boy straight to the main hall to meet the sect master and formally acknowledge him as her disciple. Even if his spiritual root test half a month later revealed him to be a genius, no one would dare compete with her for him.

"Oh, and who is this?" A black longsword often floated behind Li Yuanqing, giving off a faint lavender halo. It was one of his magic treasures.

"Sect master, his name is Lin Sui. He is my newly accepted personal disciple. Evil cultivators slaughtered his village, leaving the child without a family or home. I saw that he could cultivate, so I accepted him as the inheritor of my mantle."

Li Yuanqing glanced at her. She had not even taken him as a nominal disciple, but had made him a personal disciple outright. It seemed she had thought things through.

He slowly stroked his short beard and nodded. "That's just as well! If you cannot form a nascent soul, taking a personal disciple means you will at least have someone to carry on your legacy."

To high-level cultivators like them, the limits of Su Fuxi's aptitude were clear at a glance.

"Precisely. Fuxi will trouble you no further, sect master. I shall take my leave."

After a brief chat, Su Fuxi took Lin Sui and bid him farewell.

Though the Azure Cloud Sect did not possess vast territories like the great sects, it was still one of the foremost powers in the Tianshui Kingdom. With two nascent soul patriarchs, it was not a force to be trifled with in the kingdom.

It was said that when the sect was founded, it had possessed five nascent soul patriarchs and enjoyed nearly ten thousand years of glory. As the patriarchs fell one after another, it began to decline a thousand years ago. By five hundred years ago, it had fallen to second place in Tianshui.

The sect now had eight golden core cultivators, including Su Fuxi. A century ago, there had been thirteen, but several had fallen on their journey to the Lost Land Secret Realm, all of them people who had considered themselves more gifted than her.

Now, only one other cultivator from her generation remained, and he was in seclusion. Severely injured back then, he had fallen from half-step nascent soul to late golden core.

Aside from the two of them, the other six golden core cultivators were disciples of later generations who had cultivated their way up over the past century or two. Among them were quite a few more talented than her, including one at half-step nascent soul.

These people were almost all cultivating in seclusion, paying no attention to mundane affairs. The sect provided their resources, and when the elders took disciples, most were only nominal disciples.

Only Li Yuanqing had taken three personal disciples of considerable talent, presumably to groom them as successors. Among them was a hundred-year-old golden core disciple who had surpassed his seniors.

Su Fuxi preferred solitude. Cloud-Capped Peak, in the Azure Cloud Sect's back mountains, was where the golden core cultivators went into seclusion, and ordinary people were forbidden entry. Personal disciples, however, could follow their masters there and attend to them.

Her Chongming Pavilion stood at the westernmost end, a courtyard of tranquil, elegant beauty.

"Follow me."

"Make sure you remember the route from Azure Cloud Peak to the back mountains. It's best not to go anywhere you haven't been before. There are restrictions everywhere."

Su Fuxi led him onto the rope bridge connecting Azure Cloud Peak and Cloud-Capped Peak. Its two ends were separated by several dozen zhang, and mist shrouded the back mountains year-round. At a glance, the far end of the bridge was nowhere to be seen.

The rope bridge was laid with thick wooden planks, and it seemed to creak and sway beneath their feet. As fierce winds swept up, Lin Sui felt the bridge rocking unsteadily, and he did not dare look beyond the iron chains.

A ten-thousand-zhang abyss lay beneath his feet. A single glance was enough to make him dizzy, as though he were about to fall.

The bridge was barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast, so Lin Sui naturally fell a step behind. The most dangerous thing he had done in all his years was climb a cliff without permission to pick herbs for his father when he was little.

There was only a single chain on each side of the bridge to serve as a railing, leaving it feeling terribly exposed. Lin Sui's vision swam, and he dared not walk too quickly.

Su Fuxi's voice drifted faintly back from ahead. He gritted his teeth and hesitated for a moment, but ultimately did not dare show such disrespect to an immortal as to call out and ask her to stop and wait for him.

The distance between them gradually widened. When Su Fuxi heard a voice calling from far behind her, asking, "Master, what are restrictions?" she looked back to find Lin Sui already six or seven zhang behind, inching along on trembling legs.

The little brat looked malnourished, his beanpole-like figure shivering in the fierce wind above the abyss. The sky was darkening, making the rope bridge over the chasm look even deeper and more frightening.

The child looked rather pitiful.

If he had been an ordinary person with such poor fortitude, Su Fuxi would probably have expelled him from her tutelage. But her divine sense glimpsed the great mass of golden light above his head, and she immediately smiled to herself. You need patience when raising a treasure!

She turned around, released her aura, and walked toward Lin Sui one step at a time as though on level ground.

The bridge swayed incessantly beneath her steps. Lin Sui looked at her with a pair of handsome peach-blossom eyes that had yet to fully mature, his face a little pale and his fingers gripping the iron chain beside him tightly.

Tap, tap. Her footsteps were rhythmic as she approached him with an invisible pressure that, mingled with the fierce wind from the chasm, nearly made it hard for him to breathe.

Her moon-white embroidered satin shoes, untouched by dust, came to a stop before him.

The bridge finally stopped shaking.

Su Fuxi had naturally done it on purpose. As his master, she could not allow her imposing presence or the bearing of an enlightened expert to be lacking.

"Scared? Why didn't you call me?" A light purple silk ribbon covered the bridge of her nose, and the red lips beneath its pert tip curved in a faint smile. Her voice was gentle as she slowly extended a lovely hand, her fingers like peeled scallion shoots stopping before him.

"Come on."

Lin Sui had not expected her to come back for him. For a moment, he was both secretly delighted and stunned. The tips of his ears grew slightly warm beneath his mid-length hair. Obediently, he reached out his own scrubbed-clean, rough hand, hesitated for an instant, then decisively grasped hers.

"Thank you, Master."

For a while, there was silence, broken only by the creaking of the planks beneath their feet. Just when the boy thought she would not answer him-

"Mm."

In her calm voice, she went on, "A restriction is a means of combining spiritual power and materials with the natural environment to create something capable of countless transformations..."

"It can kill or defend, disrupt or entrap... For example, like this-"

At the end of the rope bridge, Su Fuxi released Lin Sui and stepped onto the stone stairs. She flicked a small stone toward an empty spot on the path to the side. With a crack, the stone seemed to strike a transparent wall and was instantly crushed to dust by an invisible force!

"A highly lethal restriction like this can kill without leaving a trace, so you must be extremely careful when you go out," she said calmly, lowering her hand.

Lin Sui was startled. "H-how was that done? There was no sign of it at all. I didn't sense the slightest thing, yet such a dangerous trap was there!"

"Heh." Apparently amused by the boy's astonished reaction, Su Fuxi gave a soft chuckle. She raised a hand to sweep the hair blown across her face behind her ear. Her sleeves fluttered, yet she stood unmoving as a mountain, every bit the picture of an immortal.

"Once you have spiritual power, you'll be able to sense changes in the spiritual energy and spiritual power around you. Then you'll naturally be able to detect traces of restrictions."

With that, Su Fuxi turned and walked up the stone steps, the jeweled hem of her skirt fluttering. Her movements were like a spring pine brushing off snow.

Lin Sui felt that every gesture his master made possessed an elegance all its own.

He was but a mortal now, and the gap between them was as vast as that between clouds and mud.

He could not help the sudden urge that rose in his heart to cultivate diligently and become stronger.

How strong did he need to become? He had no idea yet. He only gazed at Su Fuxi's graceful figure ascending the steps ahead and felt that she seemed impossibly tall.

Far beyond his reach.

He thought he should become her equal, or... even stronger than her!

At this moment, the boy who had just entered the immortal path, his heart set only on cultivating diligently and relying on his master as she relied on him, did not know that his peerlessly elegant master regarded him as a tool to be used when the time came.