Having finished his task, Gu Linshu did not dare disturb her. He stood aside, watching Wen Li's movements and carefully observing the array in its entirety.
He possessed an exceptional talent for talismans. Arrays—which, like talismans, required drafting, surveying, and calculation—were naturally something he had dabbled in. However, with his limited experience, he could not yet comprehend just how formidable and terrifying this array truly was; he only focused on learning Wen Li's techniques.
To his surprise, mending the array took three whole days. Fortunately, there was food in their storage bags, so neither of them starved.
Gu Linshu had not idled away the time either, conscientiously meditating and cultivating to the side.
“Finally done!”
A joyful cry tinged with exhaustion sounded beside him.
Gu Linshu opened his eyes and stood up, walking over to Wen Li, whose hair had become a messy bird's nest. “M-Master, can the array be activated now?”
Wen Li puffed up with pride. “With me around, nothing goes wrong. Of course it can be activated. It's just...”
“J-Just what?” Gu Linshu asked hesitantly, puzzled.
“I forgot where the teleportation array in the Eastern Province is located, and I have no idea what godforsaken place we'll end up in. If we get dropped right into some old monster's cave, we'll immediately drop to our knees, beg for mercy, and hand over all our belongings.” Wen Li frowned, sighing helplessly.
No, better make it just one-third.
“...” Gu Linshu's pupils trembled. It took him a long while before he choked out, “D-Did you... t-teach Senior Brother and Senior Sister like that too, Master?”
“Of course! That's the supreme art of self-preservation. I wouldn't dream of keeping it to myself.”
Gu Linshu, who had never acted so servile in his entire life, let out a long sigh and could only nod. “Okay.”
Fair enough. I can't stay sheltered by my parents forever; I have to learn how to protect myself.
The two took their places in the center of the array. Wen Li cast a spell to channel all the spirit crystals into the array eyes; fortunately, the stash she had prepared in the past was just enough for a single teleportation.
Once the final pile of spirit crystals had been set in place, the array's radiance intensified, shining almost blindingly. “No matter what you feel in a moment, don't panic. Put this on and hold onto my arm.”
Wen Li handed him the bracelet Feng Ling had given her to shield against the temporal flow of spacetime, then fished out another one from the nearby pile of spirit crystals—another fallback she had habitually left behind.
“Mm.”
The Interprovincial Passage began to connect. The cloud altar, ten meters in diameter, rippled as the deep-blue spirit crystals rapidly depleted and faded. The surrounding space started to warp.
Boom!
In an instant, a beam of light shot straight toward the mountain peak. Had it not been for the defensive barrier Wen Li had erected ten thousand years ago, this anomaly would have been discovered long ago.
Gu Linshu's palms broke into a sweat. He clutched Wen Li's arm tightly. A moment later, both vanished from the spot, and the spirit crystals within the array were instantly reduced to piles of spent ash.
Ten seconds later.
The light of the array dissipated, and the entire cavern returned to dead silence.
Darkness engulfed the surroundings once more.
No one knew when it would open again.
...
Eastern Province.
Fengyi City, Beiqiong Kingdom, a Fourth-Grade Cultivation Kingdom.
Two figures dragged themselves wretchedly out of a lake. The youth was drenched from head to toe, waterweeds clinging to his hair.
“Cough.” Gu Linshu choked on a mouthful of water and hastily spat it out.
“Sorry about that! I just remembered—back in the day, I offended someone in the Eastern Province and was hunted for twenty years. To make a clean escape, I set the array at the bottom of a lake.”
Wen Li plucked a wriggling creature from the sleeve of her robe and tossed it toward Gu Linshu. “Hey, extra food today! Catch!”
Gu Linshu instinctively caught it. Looking down, he saw a swamp eel. Having always harbored a dread of soft, limbless crawlers, his face instantly turned pale.
The slimy, squirming sensation in his palm repulsed him utterly, and in his panic, he hurled it away.
“Aaaah!”
“What, scared? Stir-fry this with some chili peppers, and it's delicious!” Seeing his reaction, Wen Li channeled spiritual energy to dry her clothes while walking over to pick up the swamp eel.
“Oh, I forgot to mention: your Second Senior Brother is a snake.”
“What?!” A snake! He's a snake demon!
Well now, the youth wasn't even stuttering anymore; the color had completely drained from his lips.
In that split second, he seriously reconsidered whether he should even take her as his master.
“Surprised? Your Second Senior Brother is an Ancient Soaring Serpent. When he takes his true form, he stands over ten meters tall, boasting a mouth full of fangs. He eats people—very imposing!” Seeing his terror, Wen Li's eyes flashed with a streak of mischief as she heaped on the praise.
“He can also turn into a little snake and coil around your wrist. Nice and cool in the summer.”
“...Y-You... you...” Gu Linshu's imagination ran wild, making his scalp tingle with horror. He stammered, unable to finish a sentence, his entire body trembling.
Seeing that he was genuinely on the verge of fainting from fright, Wen Li reined it in and tossed the swamp eel back into the lake.
“All right, all right. As long as I'm around, your senior brother wouldn't dare eat you. Besides, you won't be seeing him for ten years anyway.”
Those words brought immense relief to Gu Linshu, making him feel as though he had come back to life. He asked a question straight from the soul: “C-Can I just... n-never meet him?”
He had only wanted a master; he hadn't asked to make the acquaintance of any fellow disciples.
Wen Li shook her head, answering with deadpan certainty, “No.”
“Why?”
“Ten years from now, the Qingyun Gathering in each province will select the finest youths of the younger generation to compete in the Central Province. If my disciple can't even qualify for the Qingyun Gathering, they're not worthy of being my disciple, and I'll kill them with my own hands.” Wen Li rolled her eyes thoughtfully; even if she didn't kill them, she would put them under house arrest.
Gu Linshu's expression changed.
Wen Li continued, “If you can't even get into the Qingyun Gathering, wasting all my efforts, you can forget about defying your fate. All those tragedies will be set in stone, and begging me then will do you no good.”
Gu Linshu turned solemn at her words. He understood now: he was not merely her disciple, but also her chess piece. Yet she offered him the chance to defy the heavens and change his destiny; each was getting what they needed.
Or rather, even though she laid it all out so bluntly, he would still willingly become her chess piece. He had no other choice.
He had previously kept a wall up between them, but now that she had laid bare the transaction of mutual interest—combining exploitation with honesty—he found himself fully accepting it instead.
Seeing him still sitting on the ground in a daze, Wen Li stepped forward, her expression cool and aloof, her gaze devoid of emotion.
“Like I said, I'll teach you skills. As long as I don't die, you won't die, and you will have a chance to rewrite your fate. But I despise those who defy me. When I speak, you listen. If you can't do that, go die—I have plenty of spare chess pieces.”
“Perhaps in the first thirteen years of your life, your parents taught you not to bully the weak or fear the strong, to uphold the righteous Dao and care for the common people. But the Dao I teach you is to slaughter living beings to deliver yourself, and to throw away every shred of your conscience.”
“What do the common people have to do with you? They didn't birth you or raise you. If they don't die, the ones who die will be your parents, your clan, and you.”
Wen Li's words resonated forcefully. While they didn't completely demolish Gu Linshu's worldview, they radically reconstructed the principles he had been raised on.
She extended her hand, her tone calm. “Perhaps I didn't seem so bad back in the Northern Province—I didn't take you around murdering people or ripping out spiritual roots. Fearing you might not stomach what comes next in the Eastern Province, I'm laying it all out for you now. Once you've gathered yourself, let's move. I don't want to hear any pleas for mercy later.”
Rate on N.U.
