Childhood (5)

For the promise she made to herself and for her own future, Yin Xue endured pain and hardships. Her visions of another time, place and life eventually faded into things of the past. 

However, although Yin Xue strived to be strong, she was not allowed to cultivate. When she demanded a reason, Bai Rong smiled secretly and said she should build up her foundations first.

There were two ways to cultivate. The first and easiest way was to advance level by level as one cultivated. However, as they advanced to a new level, these people would have to purify their spiritual power and cleanse their meridians again to be able to absorb more spiritual energy from their surroundings to advance.

This process would be an obstacle for non talented people, because they would take more time to purify their spiritual power and cleanse their meridians. Talented people had purer spiritual power and stronger meridians, and therefore were able to advance faster. 

The second method was dismissed because it often yielded half the results for twice the effort, but if you happened to be that one in a hundred, the results would be doubled with just half the effort.

Instead of cultivating and advancing normally, people who used this method would start by purifying their spiritual power and strengthening their meridians. After years of that, their abilities would be reflected by their innate potential. Even if they hadn't officially entered a cultivation level yet, their spiritual power would be tiers above other people. 

For example, in a duel, a person with extremely pure spiritual power, but used the second cultivation method would be able to defeat an opponent a level higher than them who had less pure spiritual power.

The second method was akin to spending more time on building a house's foundation than rushing to finish the house top to bottom. It was useful because it allowed the cultivator to advance in one big leap when needed, totally skipping the lower levels. Not to mention that cross level challenges would not be a problem at all as long as one's spiritual power was purer than the opponent's.

Another benefit was being able to hide one's true strength—people with purer spiritual power but chose to not advance in cultivation ranks yet would be stronger than the rank they remained at, which was the rank other people would see. But one important thing was that nobody could store up too much spiritual power for too long. Once the limit was reached, the cultivator's rank will have to match up to their spiritual power sooner or later. When that happened, they will have to repeat the process of cleansing their spiritual power and meridians again.

This method was very risky, so it wasn't very widespread. Failure meant one would never be able to catch up to their peers their whole life as years of patience were required to spend on it.

Bai Rong was grooming Yin Xue for the second method in the hopes that when Yin Xue reached her full potential one day, all of her pent up spiritual power would directly let her skip many levels. 

Bai Rong taught Yin Xue to use what she was born with to her advantage. Ever since she saw that Yin Xue was born a nine-tailed fox and had the power of hypnosis and face-changing, there was no going back. Besides that, she also taught Yin Xue the art of pretence. After all, you can't be hurt if nobody knows who you really are. Pretence was a part of life, or so Yin Xue learnt.

Yin Xue's daily routine became training, training, and more training. She was particularly talented at making poison and disguising herself, but the result of Bai Rong teaching her sword fight was a disaster, so they decided to cross that bridge after Yin Xue started cultivating.

Another thing Yin Xue did not inherit from her master was a knack for cooking, and that was a catastrophe for someone who wanted to travel the realms independently someday. Yin Xue decided to prepare herself for a future full of roasted mushrooms and grass salad.

In time, Bai Rong came to realise that she should have taught Yin Xue to not use her silver tongue on her own innocent master, but it was too late. In order to save herself, Bai Rong decided to throw the flaming baton that was her disciple out into the mortal world and let other people deal—

Er...no... let Yin Xue learn the importance of being honest by interacting with other honest people.

See? She was such a responsible master.

Reality, though, proved Yin Xue wasn't very popular with the masses. Bai Rong didn't know the details, but whenever they went to town and the shopkeepers saw Yin Xue, they would hurry up to close their doors, looking out the windows at her with fearful expressions on their faces.

At the end of the day, Bai Rong would also find Yin Xue's coin purse the same size even after shopping. Sometimes, the purse seemed heavier than when they had departed, instead of lighter.

Bai Rong, being the responsible master, decided to let Yin Xue do as she pleased, since managing their money was part of Yin Xue's responsibility and disciplinary training anyway. She remained completely oblivious to the woes of Mortal Realm's businessmen, just staying in her cave and pretending she didn't know where all that money came from.

Bai Rong knew that Yin Xue's fate wasn't confined within this meager realm, but who could predict destiny?

At Cloud Pavilion in Heavenly Realm, Yun watched the images on his fan play out and he just knew that his entertainment for the next few centuries was set. He also sneezed.

And Yin Xue? She talked her way into becoming the manager of one of the largest business enterprises in the realms, but that's a long and complicated story...