Literacy and Nightmares

Hmm...

Su Fuxi had thought about many things and made many preparations.

The one thing she had never imagined was that the boy could not read.

"Then... can you understand this booklet?" Su Fuxi pinched the Disciple's Initiation Handbook between two slender fingers and gently took it from Lin Sui.

She lowered her eyes to glance at Lin Sui, then leafed through the booklet. It was covered in marks and annotations.

"M-mostly. Xiaohu took me to Deacon Wang and asked him to teach me to read." Lin Sui worried that she would dislike him for being too useless.

Oh, so Wang Yuan had written those annotations. Su Fuxi held the booklet and fell strangely silent for a moment...

The fairy had not read a book in three hundred years. For a moment, she had no idea how to teach her disciple to read.

After what felt like a long silence to Lin Sui, she finally spoke. "Mm, I see. Go wash up first. I'll wait here and help you read through this booklet later." She waved the booklet in her hand.

"Yes!"

The boy answered, went back to his room to fetch his things, and ran to the rear courtyard. Wang Xiaohu followed to attend to him.

"Azure Cloud rules, first rule: disci... disciples of the sect must not fight among themselves without permission..."

"...Outer sect disciples... must not enter the inner sect without permission."

"...All sect members must not go to Cloud-Capped... Capped Peak or the back mountain without permission."

Although the boy was a little slow, he remembered each rule.

He might not have recognized all the characters, but after Wang Xiaohu's explanations over the past two days, Lin Sui, who was clever himself, had long since committed these rules to memory.

Su Fuxi looked at Lin Sui, now washed clean and neatly groomed. His slightly chubby face still bore traces of childishness. Though his skin was wheat-colored from the sun, he had a fine foundation, with regular features and rather handsome brows and eyes.

She was secretly very pleased. He would surely be a handsome man when he grew up. The more she looked at this body, the more she wanted it.

Cultivation was wonderful. One day, she could even return to her original gender. At that thought, Su Fuxi became even more patient and attentive with Lin Sui.

Following her own idea, she personally guided his hand as she taught him to write his name. "Two trees make 'Lin.' Write it like this. It's very simple."

With his back against a fragrant, warm embrace, Lin Sui found it hard to concentrate. The pleasant voice quickly pulled his thoughts back, and he hurriedly reined in his emotions. He felt the immortal's fair fingers guide the brush through its strokes in his right hand, and sure enough, a graceful "Lin" appeared on the paper.

An hour later, Lin Sui had learned how to write his name, though it was a little crooked and splayed.

He had also learned the first fifty characters of the Thousand Character Classic.

Su Fuxi sat in a chair sipping tea, watching him write his name neatly one last time. Then she glanced at the dark shadows the boy could not hide beneath his eyes in the light of the spirit candle, and suddenly spoke.

"All right, that's enough for today. Lin Sui, go back to your room and rest."

"Yes, Master."

The boy carefully put the brush, ink, paper, and inkstone in order before leaving the hall.

"Lin Sui."

Just as he was about to step into his room, Su Fuxi suddenly called out, "I'll teach you the qi refinement formula."

"Huh?" The boy immediately turned around. Su Fuxi walked up to him, extended her index finger, and gathered a ball of white light at its tip before flicking it into the space between his brows.

A ball of light immediately appeared in Lin Sui's mind, then scattered into countless specks. In the blink of an eye, the specks formed line after line of characters.

Breath-regulation method: relax into natural stillness, let the breath flow as though it barely exists, and keep the mind on the dantian.

Breathing method: gather the mind and still all thoughts, drawing qi into the body. Let the heart be as still water and empty the mind of all thoughts. Draw a deep breath, then exhale in three breaths...

The formula was fewer than a hundred characters long.

Su Fuxi said, "It doesn't matter that you can't read. First, commit it to memory. The formula will remain in your spiritual altar for three days. By then, you must understand what it means."

"Yes!" Lin Sui nodded, determined to memorize the formula even if he had to stay awake all night.

In the end, he lasted only half an hour before falling asleep.

Su Fuxi sat meditating on her bed. Chongming Pavilion stood on Cloud-Capped Peak, where spiritual qi was relatively dense. Drawing in spiritual qi was more effective there than on the main peak; it was a true treasure land of the Azure Cloud Sect.

After her spiritual power circulated through several major cycles, steam faintly rose from her head. The qi inside and outside a cultivator's body circulated in alternation, and with time, this achieved the effect of cultivation and marrow cleansing. Her aptitude was poor, however, so the effect was countless times weaker.

Having finished her daily breathing exercise, she was just about to lie down, relax, stretch her limbs, and rest when she suddenly heard faint sleep talking from downstairs.

Dad... Mom... Ah... Don't come over...

"Dad, Mom..."

In the dead of night, the boy lay in bed, his head drenched in sweat, muttering ceaselessly in his sleep. Trapped in his nightmare, he was already frantic and terrified, unable to break free.

A strange black mist had begun to rage at dawn. By daybreak, the village had long since lost its usual bustle, leaving only fear. At dusk, as the sun set, the black mist spread once more...

Everything was blurry and indistinct. There were only severed limbs and piercing screams, and a pair of red eyes suddenly devoured lives.

Dad, Mom, hurry and go!

"Quick... run... run..."

Lin Sui kept his eyes tightly shut and his teeth clenched, struggling to force the words out between them.

Su Fuxi's figure suddenly appeared beside the bed. She formed a seal with her right hand and flicked a wisp of pink spiritual light onto his forehead. A warm force dispelled the fear and nightmare in his subconscious.

Lin Sui stopped trembling and talking in his sleep.

She lowered her hand and was about to leave when she happened to notice that the boy was soaked through. Su Fuxi frowned. Oh, the temperature on the back mountain at night was comparable to autumn or winter. If he caught a cold, his progress in drawing in qi would be delayed again tomorrow!

Su Fuxi raised a hand in disgust, formed a seal, and tossed it onto him. Lin Sui was instantly dried and warmed all over.

"Dad, Mom...

Master..."

After taking one last look at the deep blue-black shadows beneath Lin Sui's eyes, Su Fuxi resignedly raised her hand and bent down slightly. She gently brushed her thumb over his eyes, and the dark circles quickly disappeared.

Presumably, this fellow had not slept well these past few days. He had just suffered a bloody catastrophe and come to an unfamiliar place. A subconscious sense of insecurity and dread had constantly shrouded his spiritual altar, so it was only natural that he suffered from sleeplessness and troubled dreams.

Su Fuxi had spent the past few days cultivating in the secret chamber, so naturally she had not noticed that her cultivation vessel was like a pitiful rabbit, daring to look for his parents only in his dreams.

When she was done, Su Fuxi glanced at the golden light above Lin Sui's head and sighed inwardly. A fierce look then entered her eyes.

Su Fuxi completely cast the trace of pity she had just felt out of her mind. She was about to get up and leave, only to find that the little brat was lying on her sleeve. She irritably pulled it free, but before she could react, Lin Sui rolled over and hugged her hand. He even rubbed his cheek against it, mumbling like a puppy.

"Mom..."

Who the hell are you calling Mom? I'm your dad!

Su Fuxi was so furious that she laughed. Her lips curved slightly in a cold smile, and she yanked her fingers free and vanished from the room.

Lin Sui's face dropped abruptly. He opened his eyes in confusion for a moment. There was no one in the darkness, but then his eyes flew wide as he caught a faint, lingering trace of a familiar fragrance.

Master?

As his mind caught up, he sat bolt upright. His teeth ached from clenching them in his nightmare. He really had just had a bad dream. He suddenly felt his clothes; they were dry and fresh.

"Master really did come... She really is a good master who only looks cold but has a soft heart," he thought to himself, unable to help feeling a little happy.

The more he thought about it, the more excited he became, until he could not sleep. Lin Sui simply sat cross-legged and began silently reciting the formula, regulating his breathing and cultivating on his own.

Su Fuxi lay in bed, her divine sense roaming her sea of consciousness as she practiced her techniques, condensed a whip of divine sense, and built a fortress in her sea of consciousness. Because she was blind, her divine sense, cultivated over these several hundred years, truly was much tougher than that of cultivators at the same level.

At that moment, within her boundless, deep-purple sea of consciousness, her spiritual altar was protected by formation walls woven from countless strands of golden light. Six purple-gold whips lashed out from the golden formation from time to time, faint arcs of lightning flashing around them.

If anyone attacked her spiritual altar with a divine sense technique, the golden formation she had constructed would immediately counterattack and destroy it.

She had killed Golden Core cultivators-not many, but not a few either.

She had taken all those golden cores, either exchanging them for pills or refining and absorbing them to form her nascent soul. Her two attempts had consumed nearly forty at the very least, but unfortunately, she had still failed.

She still remembered the expedition to the Forgotten Land a hundred years ago as if it were yesterday. She had gone over it many times: if not for the powerful magic treasure the sect master had given her, which allowed her to teleport away, neither she nor the other senior brother would have made it back.

That place was a veritable meat grinder for Golden Core cultivators.

But it would not be long before that secret realm opened again, and she wanted to explore it once more. Her hand-seal technique was called the Lesser Great Luo Seal, and Su Fuxi naturally wanted the second half so she could combine them into the complete technique.

She was constructing a golden palm seal in her sea of consciousness when she suddenly sensed a very distinct fluctuation of spiritual qi in Chongming Pavilion!