Peeking

Lin Sui did not open his eyes until the sun rose the next morning. Mindful that he still needed to draw the poison from Su Fuxi, the two immediately returned to the cave dwelling beneath the cliff.

"Hiss!" Su Fuxi once again felt the agony of ten thousand needles piercing her flesh. This time, Lin Sui did indeed draw out a little more of the cold aura, and she hurriedly stifled the cry of pain on her lips.

"Bear with it, Master..."

Perhaps the image Lin Sui had once held of Su Fuxi as an all-powerful figure had been completely overturned the last time the Crimson Immortal's poison was drawn out. His impression of her shattered, he knew that she too could be weak, helpless, and afraid of pain, that she could beg for mercy...

Like an ordinary person.

An ordinary woman.

Not the unreachably lofty Fairy Chongming.

So now, Lin Sui truly ached for her.

Hoping to distract her and ease her pain, he asked in a perfectly ordinary tone, "Master, this poison is dark and cold. How did you come to be afflicted by this kind of cold poison?"

Su Fuxi raised her eyes and answered just as ordinarily, "I entered a cold spring to evade Red Robe's insect technique, and that was how I was afflicted by the cold poison."

"A cold spring? There's a place like that in this secret realm? If I'd come back sooner, perhaps you wouldn't have been poisoned, Master. It's all my fault for finding you too late."

Su Fuxi's whole body was numb with pain. Hearing that, she fell silent for a moment. "The world is ever-changing. There are no 'ifs' in this world."

Seeing Lin Sui's serious expression and hearing that he meant what he said, Su Fuxi suddenly asked:

"There is little left that I can teach you... Lin Sui, if one day I had no choice but to wrong you, would you forgive me?"

What wrong? Was she asking about the last time he drew out the poison? Lin Sui's thoughts faltered, then he suddenly smiled.

"Of course I'd forgive you, Master. How could you ever do anything wrong?"

I could. Everyone makes mistakes. I'm only an ordinary mortal cultivator, after all. Su Fuxi lowered her eyes to their pressed palms. The cold aura being drawn out rushed toward his arm like threads of ghostly blue and silver light.

"Then... if, in the future, I caused your death for my own selfish desires, would you still not hate me?" There was hesitation in her voice.

"No," Lin Sui said without a moment's hesitation.

"...Lin Sui, I must teach you the most important thing of all: never trust anyone easily! Including... me."

All of Su Fuxi's reluctance was contained in those words.

Having said that, she closed her eyes. Once the cold aura had been drawn from both arms, her nerves suddenly relaxed, and her whole body went limp and tipped over. Lin Sui caught her again, but she immediately pushed him away and lay down on her own.

Lin Sui had no choice but to withdraw his hands. "Master, you're the only person in this world I trust. You can trust me too."

Su Fuxi took a long while to recover, partly because of the pain and partly because his words had left her speechless. Holding the fire spirit inner core, she thought that Lin Sui had still seen too little of the world and had yet to suffer the jianghu's beatings.

He would pay a heavy price for it someday...

"Master, if you're tired, go to sleep. I'll give you a massage."

This time, after drawing the cold aura from her legs, Lin Sui did not immediately stop. Instead, he continued kneading her feet. His hands were wrapped in spiritual power, and his pressure was just right. The massage was indeed comfortable and effective, and Su Fuxi gradually fell asleep.

Her sleeping face was peaceful, but her brows were slightly knitted, as if with a trace of worry. Lin Sui set his thumb between them and gently smoothed her brow.

Before he knew it, he was staring at her face in a daze. It had not changed in the slightest; she was still as breathtakingly beautiful as the immortal who had descended upon Locust Tree Village all those years ago.

One look at her was enough to make her unforgettable.

Lin Sui recalled what she had just said: not to trust anyone easily, including her. Why had she said that?

After pondering it carefully for a long time, Lin Sui's gaze suddenly darkened, and obscure emotions gathered in his eyes. He moved closer to the stone bed, bent down, and reached out to delicately pinch Su Fuxi's pretty chin. He leaned in for a kiss, his lips touching hers for a single breath before he pulled away.

A sudden inspiration came to him. "In that case, my dear Master, what are you after? Apart from my life, what do I have for you to covet? So be it. If I can't be a good disciple, then I won't be one."

He thought that if she was a wicked master, then it would only be natural for him to become a wayward disciple.

Deep down, Lin Sui actually began to feel a faint anticipation.

It was as though the wind had finally stirred a layer of mist shrouding his heart, revealing a few tiny gaps through which he could glimpse the slightest trace of what lay hidden and forbidden.

Between poison-drawing sessions, Su Fuxi studied the soul restriction. A month later, she finally discovered that it was a restriction used to seal beast souls. She changed a few details and unexpectedly derived a method for refining soul guards.

She ordered Lin Sui to catch a second-tier lesser demonic beast for practice. A ten-meter-long python beast was branded with the soul restriction, and Su Fuxi used some materials to refine it from the early second tier to the middle second tier.

It had no spiritual intelligence, only a beast's instincts, so making it was as easy as lifting a hand. For a spirit beast with spiritual intelligence, that intelligence would first have to be dispersed to make it easier to turn into a beast-control puppet, one type of soul guard.

There were no suitable targets. Low-tier targets were not good enough in quality, and any soul guards made from them would be nothing but cannon fodder. This method still needed further research.

Meanwhile, the cold aura in her body had been reduced by half. It was as though her body had adapted to the pain of drawing out the poison; after that, whenever Lin Sui increased the amount he drew out, she no longer found it unbearable.

Although the pain still sent her into a faint sleep at the end of every session, the entire course of treatment was shortened by a month. She thought it was worth it.

What she had not noticed was that... every time she fell unconscious, Lin Sui would gaze at her for a long while.

Sometimes it was her face, sometimes her lips, sometimes her slender, fair fingers... Kissing and touching them had already become one of his daily pastimes.

But he still did not dare go too far. After all, Su Fuxi was now two minor realms above him. If she grew angry and wanted to kill him, he still could not defeat her.

"Master, do you really not want this Origin Crystal fragment?" Lin Sui asked again as they meditated beneath the stars one night.

It could delay the onset of the five decays of heaven and man, making it a very useful treasure.

"Pah! You ignorant junior, you're actually squandering a heavenly treasure!" In his mind, the sword spirit, having recovered a little energy, could no longer hold back and cursed him.

But Su Fuxi shook her head. "Keep it yourself, and don't show it to others lightly. If you have the chance to gather the high-tier materials in the future, forge a natal treasure of your own."

The crucial point was that it would be no use to her now. If she could not break through, merely delaying the five decays of heaven and man would accomplish little. She had a faint feeling that, apart from taking over another body, she had no road left to walk.

If she did not happen to possess a cauldron cultivation technique, even body possession would probably be impossible.

She had only ever heard of rebirth through body possession as a method in which Nascent Soul Stage experts shed their bodies with their nascent souls. Taking over a body with a soul alone was truly rare.

And... she fixed her gaze on Lin Sui for a moment, then quickly looked away, wicked thoughts bubbling up in her heart. If she truly succeeded in taking over his body, everything he had would be hers.

Lin Sui said, "All right, then. Gathering materials of the same grade as this crystal would probably be too difficult, and using lower-grade materials would waste it. I'll just refine it and use it to temper the No Falsehood Sword."

"Hahaha, good, good, good! Junior, you have a discerning eye!"

The delighted sword spirit immediately sent the thought to him.

"After I've drawn the poison from Master next month."

The sword spirit accepted that without comment.

Su Fuxi still did not know the sword spirit's true identity. Hearing him, she nodded. "That works too. Once you have fully mastered the No Falsehood Sword, you may be able to slay a weaker Nascent Soul cultivator."

"Seventeen of your spiritual apertures are already open. Perhaps you can use that cold spring to temper your physique. I'll go with you when the time comes."

Lin Sui thought of something. "Master, we still have time to spare. There's a small spirit crystal vein in the cavern where I found the crystal fragment. Do you have a way to excavate the spirit vein?"

Su Fuxi looked utterly blank. "...?"

Spirit what crystal?

She suspected she had misheard a word. It was a spirit stone vein... right?

The next second, a transparent crystal two feet tall appeared before her. The pure spiritual energy it emitted could no longer be described as dense, but viscous; the spiritual radiance around it was almost a white mist.

Good heavens! Damn! Su Fuxi tried to stay calm and let out a breath. The entire Azure Cloud Sect might not even have a piece of spirit crystal the size of a standard coin.

So...

Su Fuxi, who had been poor for hundreds of years, nearly had her vacant eyes turn into glittering spirit crystals.

"If there wasn't enough space, we wouldn't be able to take the spirit vein away even if we excavated it, so I had no choice but to give up on it at the time..." Lin Sui said.

The corner of Su Fuxi's mouth twitched. She glanced at the golden light above his head and nodded calmly. "...I do."