⚡⚡⚡Publishing Schedule:⚡⚡⚡
★★★★ 4 to 5 Chapters a week ★★★★
★★★★ One on Saturday ★★★★
★★★★One on Sunday★★★★
★★★★One on Tuesday ★★★★
★★★★One on Thursday ★★★★
✨✨An extra Chapter on Friday depending on the power stones I receive.✨✨
Chapter Three: Lessons
The moon was still under the canopy when Rui Wei returned to the forest pavilion. Her feet were lighter tonight. She still carried laundry welts on her hands and her father's silencing disapproval in her heart, but they were lighter now.
Because the mysterious man has decided to teach her how to cultivate.
Long Shen sat beneath the weathered roof of the pavilion, his gaze on the rippled surface of the stream. He was a painting left outside in the rain, immortal and still, and somehow coming apart at the seams.
"You're early," he said without turning.
"You're welcome," she said, plopping down beside him. "I even brought more rice buns. You're a terrible host, by the way."
"I am not your host," he said.
"Then what are you?"
He didn't answer.
She stood with a bun held out. He took it.
They ate in silence as the night closed in around them.
Then they heard rustling.
Rui Wei stiffened. Long Shen's eyes narrowed.
Someone was in the woods.
Only a human could produce a noise like that.
Long Shen rose slowly, dust pouring from his robes. He floated out of the pavilion without a sound, eyes shut. Rui Wei waited behind him, uncertain.
Across from the treeline walked a figure in cultivator robes, dark green and gold, showing his Foundation Creation stage cultivation, Rui Jinhai, an older cousin and inner disciple of a visiting sect. He was smiling, but his eyes were poisonous.
"Third Miss Rui," he said, bowing slightly. "Out here so late. with a stranger."
Rui Wei's heart dropped. "Jinhai. I was just..."
"Spare me the lies. You disappear all the time. I thought I should find you in case you cause harm to yourself. Imagine my surprise."
He looked at Long Shen, eyes dwelling on the man's plain clothes and bare feet.
"Who are you?"
Long Shen met his gaze calmly. "A man who wishes to be left alone."
Jinhai laughed. "And here you are. Alone with a noble daughter, secretly. Suspicious."
He raised his hand. A burst of emerald Qi flared. His foundation creation pressure filled the clearing. Trees trembled. Rui Wei gasped and receded.
"You will return with me, cousin," Jinhai asserted. "And this beggar will be spoken to by the Patriarch."
Long Shen exhaled.
Then he raised his hand.
One leaf flew from the ground. One leaf. It floated carelessly before Long Shen's hand.
Jinhai chuckled. "Do you think to battle me with that?"
The leaf moved.
It was like a flash of lightning.
Jinhai shrieked.
Blood flew from his shoulder as his sleeve tore open. He sent flying backward, crashing through a tree trunk, landing on the earth.
Rui Wei stared.
Long Shen hadn't moved. The leaf just disappeared and instantly Rui Jinhai was sent flying.
He walked slowly. With each step, the air quickened.
Jinhai coughed, struggling to stand up. "W-what skill was that?"
"Understanding," Long Shen said softly. "Of the the universe."
Jinhai tried to slither away.
Long Shen raised a finger.
Jinhai floated upwards and with a light wave of his hand, he was sent flying out of the mountain with a speed so fast his body almost broke down.
Rui Wei rushed to his side. "Will he die?"
"No."
"Will he remember?"
Long Shen paused. "That doesn't matter if he can't speak right? "
Rui Wei fell. "That was. I don't even know what that was."
"Cultivation is only about your level of strength," Long Shen said. "It is the pursuit of eternity and the understanding of the universe."
She looked up at him. "And you're going to teach me that?"
He nodded. "Come."
They walked out to the edge of the stream. With a light wave of his hand the temperature of the stream incrased.
"Sit," he said. "On the water?" She asked confused "Yes, on the water" He said and she slowly sat on the stream, surprising she didn't sink
"Breathe. Not from your lungs. From your spirit. Feel nothing. Then feel everything."
"That's vague."
"Dao is vague."
She breathed out slowly, but shut her eyes.
Time passed. Or maybe it didn't. Rui Wei remained still, shifted, got restless, opened an eye, then guiltily closed it.
"Are you meditating or fighting an internal war?" Long Shen asked.
"I am attempting to, Master Cold-Voice," she muttered. "I feel sleepy."
He did not respond, but she swore that she saw the edge of his mouth twitch.
She tried again after a bit. This time she felt somethinf,a ripple, a tingling feeling behind her ribs. She gasped and sat up.
"Ow! That was it! I think I felt it below my ribs just now!"
Long Shen raised an eyebrow. "Dao does not reside in your ribs."
"Well maybe she does in mine. I'm a special case."
He stared at her for another moment, then turned away with a sigh, before returning to the pavilion.
She followed him back to the pavilion, muttering under her breath.
"Maybe I'll invent elbow cultivation. That'll show them."
That night, she stayed longer, chatting about random things how she once tried to teach a duckling how to swim and almost drowned instead, or how she painted a flower on the Patriarch's robe and blamed it on her little sister.
Long Shen didn't laugh. But the silence was gentler.
The next day, she woke up rumpled under her cloak beside the stream, Long Shen already in meditation beside her.
Her hair was mussed every direction.
He gazed at her for a moment and told her bluntly, "Your hair looks terrible."
"It's called a bedhead," she growled, trying to comb it out.
He wagged his finger. Her hair smoothed neatly into place.
She blinked. "You could do that all along?!"
"Yes."
"And you watched me wrestle with knots for ten minutes yesterday?"
"I have never seen you dressing or cleaning your hair before, Right? Even if I could I'm not obligated to help you with it."
She flailed. "You're wicked."
He stood up. "Right again."
As they continued training her, Rui Wei tripped, fell into the stream once, got bitten by a fish, and then declared herself a "water cultivator" for the next half hour.
Long Shen kept quiet, but her soaked state was not ignored.
When she tripped again, he finally spoke, "You lack balance."
"That's because the Dao is off-balance in me!"
"No. That is because you have two left feet, I obviously ensured where you sat was made solid and you still somehow move forward and fall into the water"
She sulked for the rest of the session.
Later during the day, she confronted him, saying, "Why were you in a coffin, if you were once so powerful?"
Long Shen hesitated. "I lost a tribulation."
"Which kind?"
He looked away. "Love."
She batted her eyelashes. "Oh. So heartbreak brought you low?"
"No. My need to forget everything I had done in the past and start afresh brought me low."
She nodded wisely. "You sound like a sorrowful poem. Should I start calling you 'Mister Rainy Heart'?"
He sighed.
She smiled.
That evening, they sat out under the stars.
She lay back. "Do you think one day I shall be strong?"
"Yes."
"Stronger than you?"
He looked at her. "No."
She threw a pebble at him.
He caught it without wincing.
She scowled. "One day I shall defeat you."
"That's a delusion"
They sat together in silence.
And far away, the world continued without realizing that under the toppled pavilion, a legend was teaching a girl who had slipped off a roof some time back chasing butterflies how to care.
Long Shen remained quiet again, gazing at the moon as if trying to read a message it had specially for him.
Rui Wei shifted beside him. "You're always like this moody, or is it a post-coffin side effect?"
He opened one eye. "Moody?"
"You know. Looking up at the sky like you just remembered you forgot to leave the heavens open before you took your nap."
His lips twitched. "I did leave something behind."
"What?"
"My favorite sword."
She gasped. "You had a favorite sword?"
"I had seventeen," he said dryly. "They were all powerful and wanted by everyone in the Divine Realms"
"You are worried about your swords?."
He nodded his head. "They were all committed."
"Wait, your swords were female?"
Long Shen simply said, "All good swords have names. All swords with names have personalities, and my swords had immortal bodies."
"And I'm told I'm weird."
Rui Wei suddenly narrowed her eyes in the direction of the woods. "Wait a minute… did that bush just move?"
Long Shen did not even glance. "Yes."
"Do I need to worry?"
"No. It's already dead."
".What?!"
A thud echoed in the distance. Rui Wei sprang to her feet. "Was it another spy?"
Long Shen shrugged his shoulders. "A spirit beast."
"Ah," she said, then knitted her brow. "Wait—what?!"
He stood up and brushed his robe. "A little one. A fox-bird hybrid. Mischievous beasts. High agility and a weak constitution."
"You just killed a fox-bird?!" Rui Wei stared at him. "Those animals are cute!"
"It had murderous intent and you don't know how dangerous spirit beasts are."
"How do you know?!"
"It told me so."
She glared at him. "It talked to you?"
"I could hear the tiny little voice in its head telling it to eat us for more power."
She crossed her arms. "Maybe it just had a bad day. Have you ever tried to fly and have feathers and fur at the same time? That's gotta be itchy."
Long Shen glared at her as if she were the fox-bird.
They sat for a moment in silence until Rui Wei sighed and sat back down. "Okay, okay. You win this round, Mr. Fox-Bird Slayer."
"I beat you every round."
She groaned into her sleeves. "You're impossible."
He regarded her. "You're improving."
"Really?"
"You only fell into the stream once today."
"Success!" she cheered, then remembered herself. "Wait. Are you messing with me?"
"Idiot" Long Shen said as he shooked his head, she had totally forgotten about the reason she say on the stream daily in the first place.
The following morning, Rui Wei came to training with a scroll she had pilfered from her sister's study.
"This," she announced dramatically, "is a cultivation scroll of 'Petal Footwork.' Refined, delicate, perfect for sneaking away to whip up a meal."
Long Shen looked at it briefly. "Trash."
She gazed. "You didn't even read it!"
He rapped on the scroll and it disintegrated into soft ash. "It can't even be called a level 1 technique. Watered down. Half the footwork is stolen from theater professionals."
"…I knew it looked familiar!" Rui Wei muttered. "Rui Mian performed it during the Harvest Festival."
"You don't need movement to move," Long Shen said, stepping lightly across the water's surface. Not a ripple followed him. "You need intent."
She squinted. "That's not fair. You're cheating."
He turned midair, still hovering. "Cultivation is cheating."
Rui Wei groaned and splashed after him, immediately falling in with a dramatic sploosh.
He would not lend her a helping hand. Simply stood there and commanded her, "Try again."
"I am going to drown before I receive a lesson or two," she groused, crawling out. "My cultivation path's going to be notorious as the Wet Path."
In the Rui manor, Rui Mian sat alone in her courtyard, her face turbulent.
She was thinking about the man she had noticed with Rui Wei, he wasn't like the rest. No one who could kick her off the mountain with a glance was.
And why wasn't Father stopping it?
She clenched her fan tightly.
Then a plan formed.
She would wait. Rui Wei always disappeared after nightfall. She'd follow again and this time, she'd have allies.
Meanwhile, deep in the forest, Rui Wei panted on the grass.
"Okay, fine. I quit. I don't have any root of Dao, no spirit meridians, my sea of the inner self is a wasteland desert, and now I'm sure my elbow technique isn't going to save me from this."
Long Shen remained calm, fingers loosely crossed. "You're missing the point."
"No! I'm missing Qi! That's the entire point!"
"You think too much about what you lack."
"Because I lack it!
He stood, came over, and placed two fingers lightly on her forehead.
She blinked. "Are you, wait, are you even employing a finger beam technique on me right now?"
"No."
Golden light exploded between his fingers. Rui Wei's body locked. A slow beat entered her body, warm, like the sun in winter.
Images flooded her mind. A lightning-split sky. A single lotus flowering in rock. A woman appeared crying inside the lotus.
Then silence.
She gasped, recoiling. "What… what was that?"
"Your soul root."
"You, you opened it?"
"No," he said with a smooth smile. "I saw it. It was always there."
She scowled. "And it took you so long to say so ?! Ify soul root eas already open I can manipulate the qi in nature"
"I was curious how long you'd complain first."
"You're heartless."
"You're stubborn."
They glared at one another.
Then she grinned. "Alright. Let's do it again."
Long Shen the looked at her seriously. "You would not succeed no matter how many times you keep trying"
"What do you mean by that?" Rui Wei asked confused, then Long Shen sighed.
"Your soul is troubled making it impossible for you to manipulate the qi in nature, this is my first time scanning through your soul so it only natural I found out now, even if you managed to absorb qi your body would erupt because it wouldn't be able to contain the energy"
Rui Wei face darkened as anger welled up in her eyes
"You obvious said I would be able to cultivate if I listened to you, what do you mean by this" she screamed hitting Long Shen with her first.
With a light flicker to her forehead she froze unable to move.
"First, I didn't say there's no solution to you problem. I'm an immortal, there is no problem I cannot solve. I will be presenting you with two options, option one, I rebuild your body for you giving meridians and the ability to absorb qi natural as for option two, it harder but it would allow your cultivation to move up at a terrifying speed." Long Shen then paused then stared at her.
"Come back when you've thought about it" he said and he waved his hand, before she could blink she found herself standing in her room.