Xu Ziyan jolted and stared wide-eyed at the disheveled cultivator. The other man stared right back. The master and disciple glared at each other for a long while before Xu Ziyan finally gave up and looked away.
The ragged cultivator snickered. “Come on, dear disciple, call me Master. I had quite a time snatching you away from my senior brother, the sect master.”
“Master, please forgive your disciple for being unable to kneel due to his injuries.” To the man’s surprise, Xu Ziyan showed no anger. Instead, he used his now-mobile arms to perform a respectful bow.
The disheveled cultivator was so shocked that the apple fell from his mouth, rolled across the bed and picked up bits of dirt.
Seeing him look so foolish made Zirong feel wonderfully refreshed. The frustrations of the past few days evaporated.
“Didn’t you hear me?” The cultivator sounded dissatisfied. “I said I stole you away from the sect master. He wanted to take you as his disciple. If I hadn’t interfered, you’d have become the sect master’s personal disciple!”
“Your disciple heard you clearly. Thank you, Master, for your kindness,” Xu Ziyan answered with a gentle smile. “To be able to learn under you is the good fortune of three lifetimes.”
The shabby cultivator was speechless. It was secretly gratifying to have Xu Ziyan value him above the sect master, but the boy’s complete lack of anger robbed him of all the satisfaction he normally took in teasing his disciples.
Rubbing his nose, he looked at Xu Ziyan with interest. “Hey, dear disciple, are you stupid? If you’d become the sect master’s disciple, you might have inherited the position someday.”
Xu Ziyan smiled calmly. “Master sees clearly. Your disciple is naturally dull and unfit for such a heavy responsibility.”
The cultivator choked again and glared at him. “How did I end up accepting a disciple with so little ambition?”
Xu Ziyan’s eyes curved. “Master’s insight is extraordinary. You can even see my lack of ambition. Such wisdom!”
“Enough, enough. Flattery won’t get you anywhere.” The cultivator shot him a sour look. In the illusion formation, the brat had seemed nothing like this. How had he become so slick and impossible to pin down after waking? Had he injured his brain?
Unable to outtalk Xu Ziyan, he turned on Zirong instead. “What are you staring at? What time is it? Have you watered the medicinal herbs in the garden? Tended my spirit grain? If my harvest drops, neither of you brothers will have an easy time of it!” He bared his teeth in an exaggeratedly threatening expression.
Zirong gave him a flat stare and turned to work. So much for the image of an exalted expert. Maybe the sect master tolerated this fellow simply because he was a scoundrel!
“Tch! What an unlovable child!” the cultivator complained. Shouldn’t an ordinary eleven-year-old be shouting in protest? A boy from a fairly prosperous family like Zirong’s would usually be thoroughly spoiled. With a brilliant elder brother, the Xu boys must surely have been treated like treasures at home.
Yet this brother was slippery as an eel and the younger one completely expressionless. The man had traveled in the mortal world many times and had rarely encountered a pair like them.
Xu Ziyan knew that the man before him was a Nascent Soul Dao Lord and his new master. Reason told him to curry favor, but he could not help defending Zirong when anyone criticized him.
“Zirong is sensible and well-behaved. He’s polite and modest. If he weren’t worried about my injuries, he wouldn’t be so discourteous.”
The cultivator glanced at Xu Ziyan and secretly scoffed. Of all those descriptions, the only one that fits your brother is that he’s worried about you.
But… who cared?
The disheveled cultivator thought little of it. He wanted Xu Ziyan as a disciple; Zirong had insisted on coming along. He could judge the younger boy’s nature well enough. Even if Zirong was cold by nature, his devotion to Xu Ziyan meant that as long as his brother remained loyal to the Flowing Light Sect, Zirong would never go against his wishes.
As for his relations with fellow disciples… who cared? Had the sect lacked rebellious people over the past thousands of years? Every peak and hall had its share of difficult personalities. As long as Zirong did not betray the sect, the Flowing Light Sect rarely interfered in personal matters.
Perhaps precisely because of that freedom, the Flowing Light Sect alone among the major righteous sects could serve as an intermediary between the righteous and demonic paths, holding both sides together.
Minor disputes could be settled privately. When serious conflict arose, the Flowing Light Sect served as arbitrator.
“Master.” Seeing that the cultivator was distracted, Xu Ziyan called to him. He had been wondering for a while about the herb-watering and spirit-grain duties assigned to Zirong.
“Hm? What is it?” The cultivator came back to himself and looked over lazily.
Xu Ziyan voiced his question. The man yawned. “Nothing important. I don’t keep idlers here. You’re my disciple and badly injured, so you can rest in comfort. But your little brother insisted on joining us, and I only grudgingly accepted him as a disciple. Naturally, he has to do some chores.”
“Besides…” He glanced at Xu Ziyan. “The materials for your medicinal baths come from the sect. Don’t imagine they’re free. That’s a debt you owe. Since you can’t move, your brother will repay it for you. Every day he has to water a hundred mu of medicinal fields and remove pests from thirty mu of spirit grain. Tsk, these past few days have worn him out so badly he’s looking pale.”
“What?!” Xu Ziyan was furious. “Zirong is only eleven! How can you make him do such hard work?”
A hundred mu! Just imagining little Zirong carrying two heavy buckets, wiping sweat from his forehead while watering all those fields, made Xu Ziyan’s heart ache.
“So what if he’s eleven?” The cultivator scratched his ear. “He’s a cultivator, not an ordinary child. Watering a hundred mu of fields might tire him, but it won’t kill him.”
“Master!” Xu Ziyan shouted, incensed by the casual tone.
The cultivator glared back. “Why are you yelling? Your master isn’t deaf!”
Xu Ziyan forced himself to calm down. “Master, please let Zirong rest for a few days. I’ll take over the work afterward.”
“You?” The cultivator glanced down and nudged Xu Ziyan’s senseless legs with his foot. “Are you planning to crawl out to water the fields?”
Xu Ziyan was at a loss, and could only look at the man pleadingly, hoping he would at least reduce Zirong’s workload.
“All right, I know you’re close. When I tried to take you away, that little brother of yours nearly fought me to the death. You’d think I was some monster planning to eat you,” the cultivator complained.
“Master, how about this? I’ll repay the sect contribution points I owe at twice their value later. Please don’t make Zirong work so hard.”
“You worry too much.” The cultivator rolled his eyes. “Your brother is plenty capable. A few fields won’t kill him; call it training. As for you, rest properly. We haven’t had inner-sect candidates this good in decades, and I worked hard to steal one away. If you fail to recover and develop hidden injuries that affect your future, those old fellows will laugh me out of the hall.”
Seeing that pleading was useless, Xu Ziyan fell silent. But inwardly he grumbled that more than a hundred mu of fields could hardly be called training. It was child labor!
The cultivator saw that Xu Ziyan was still unhappy and realized he was worried about his brother. He felt irritated that his new disciple had so little trust in him. Then again, this was practically their first meeting, and he had forcibly taken Xu Ziyan as his disciple. A lack of trust was understandable.
“Honestly, you leave me no choice,” he muttered. He formed a hand seal, and the water in the basin Zirong had brought rose into the air, becoming a water mirror before Xu Ziyan.
The ripples settled and revealed Zirong’s figure.
Zirong was carrying water buckets along a mountain path at remarkable speed without the slightest sign of effort.
“Look carefully.” Afraid Xu Ziyan would miss the important detail, the cultivator pointed to the places where Zirong stepped.
Xu Ziyan concentrated and saw a faint green flash wherever Zirong’s feet touched the ground. He knew that light well. It was Zirong’s wood-element spiritual power.
Every blade of grass bent beneath Zirong’s feet pushed upward under the nourishment of his wood-element spiritual power, and Zirong used that push to spring forward.
He seemed to be running, but was really traveling on the plants’ strength. It cost little spiritual power, worked beautifully, and also trained his control over wood-element energy. Several benefits at once!
“See? Your brother’s clever.” The cultivator was secretly frustrated himself. At first he had disliked Zirong and deliberately made things difficult. As a mighty Nascent Soul cultivator, he usually rejected even outstanding disciples offered to him. After finally choosing Xu Ziyan, he had found this little brat treating him as though he meant to harm his elder brother!
Of course he had seen the amusement in the sect master’s eyes. He might have looked disheveled from studying the formation and deliberately suppressed his cultivation level, but there was no excuse for Zirong to look down on him like that!