Chapter 169 - 116: Ling’Er Returns

Chapter 169: Chapter 116: Ling’Er Returns

Mu Xiaoyu froze. Only after Li Yinsheng’s "reminder" did she realize what had just happened.

Yinsheng had asked from outside, "What about Xiaoyu’s Cultivation Fruit and Fire Seed for today?"

When she opened the door, she had only seen the Cultivation Fruit, but he had distinctly mentioned both the Cultivation Fruit and the Fire Seed.

"This... Yinsheng, you did that on purpose!" Mu Xiaoyu glared at Li Yinsheng, her cheeks puffed out in anger.

Li Yinsheng smiled and ruffled her hair. "And who was pretending to be asleep this morning because she didn’t want to refine her Fire Seed?"

The angry pout on Mu Xiaoyu’s face instantly dissolved into a guilty grimace.

"Hehe, you know I’m terrified of pain, Yinsheng," she said, grabbing his sleeve and gently tugging it.

"Don’t be afraid, Xiaoyu. I never said I was going to punish you." Li Yinsheng chuckled. "Do I look like the kind of person who would resort to corporal punishment at the drop of a hat?"

Mu Xiaoyu frantically shook her head.

Back home, her tutors had often caned her palms for misbehaving during lessons, but Yinsheng had never laid a finger on her. Of course, ever since she joined Xuanzhen Temple, she felt that the pain of a palm caning was completely trivial anyway.

"You’ve worked hard refining the Fire Seed, Xiaoyu. Have a Cultivation Fruit to recover," Li Yinsheng said, casually picking up one from the table and handing it to her.

Mu Xiaoyu thanked him, took the Cultivation Fruit, and popped it into her mouth.

A familiar sweetness. A familiar fragrance. And a familiar... surge of heat!

Her eyes widened, and she pointed an accusatory finger at Li Yinsheng. "Yinsheng! You..."

Before she could finish, the searing heat plunged into her Dantian. Mu Xiaoyu had no choice but to sit down cross-legged and circulate her Magical Power and Three Yang Spirit Fire once more to refine the Fire Seed she had just swallowed.

Perhaps because her Three Yang Spirit Fire had grown sufficiently strong, the searing pain of this refinement seemed slightly lessened, and the process took a quarter of an hour less. After completely refining her second Fire Seed of the day, Mu Xiaoyu snapped her eyes open.

Seeing Li Yinsheng sitting nearby reading an Array Dao Book, she leaped up without hesitation and lunged at him.

"I’ll fight you to the death, Yinsheng!"

She was determined to bite this evil man to death today! She opened her gaping maw and clamped down hard on Li Yinsheng’s palm.

Li Yinsheng’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. He merely marveled at how Xiaoyu had indeed mastered the Fourth Layer of the True Blood Secret Scripture; the sheer force of her bite was probably unmatched by many monsters.

However, this was nothing to him. Even a single Red Jade Mosquito, which he had bred and nurtured with his own True Blood for several generations, would find it difficult to pierce his skin.

Mu Xiaoyu used Li Yinsheng’s palm as a teething toy for a while before realizing that, aside from making her own jaw ache, she wasn’t eliciting any reaction from him at all. She had no choice but to give up.

"You’re evil, Yinsheng! So evil!" she puffed out her cheeks. "For the next seven days... wait, five days... no, three days! For the next three days, I’m ignoring you!"

"I’m actually doing this for your own good, Xiaoyu," Li Yinsheng said with absolute sincerity, setting down his Array Dao Book.

Hearing this, Mu Xiaoyu—who had just sworn to ignore him—instantly widened her eyes and instinctively retorted.

"You tricked me into eating two Fire Seeds in a row, and you have the nerve to say it’s for my own good!"

Li Yinsheng’s expression grew even more earnest. "But didn’t you feel that the pain wasn’t as intense when you refined the second Fire Seed?"

Mu Xiaoyu paused, then nodded. "The burning pain was indeed a tiny bit lighter."

"And the refinement speed was faster too, right?" Li Yinsheng asked.

Mu Xiaoyu nodded hesitantly.

"The refinement sped up because your Three Yang Spirit Fire grew stronger.

"As for the reduced pain, aside from the strengthened Three Yang Spirit Fire, the main reason is that you had already experienced the pain from the first one. By immediately moving on to the second, your body had somewhat adapted to the sensation.

"To put it bluntly, you were just getting numb to the pain," Li Yinsheng explained.

Mu Xiaoyu realized she wasn’t hurting as much simply because she had gone numb. She suddenly felt incredibly sorry for herself.

"Although a stronger Three Yang Spirit Fire slightly reduces the burning sensation, the Fire Seed still has to circulate completely through your body’s meridians during each refinement. In reality, the pain won’t decrease that much just because your fire is stronger.

"Think about it, Xiaoyu. If you refine one Fire Seed a day, every single day will be just as painful as your first refinement today.

"But if you take advantage of the fact that your body has already adapted to two Fire Seeds and refine the rest in one go, the pain will only get lower and lower.

"Remember, it is always better to rip the bandage off quickly than to drag out the pain," Li Yinsheng said, gently stroking her hair to patiently guide her reasoning.

Hearing this, Mu Xiaoyu instinctively panicked, but an uncontrollable thought soon popped into her head.

She wondered, "Does Yinsheng actually make some sense?"

When refining the second one today, it had still hurt, but definitely not as much as the first. And just as he said, the time needed for each subsequent Fire Seed would only get shorter. In that case, it really did seem better to power through all of them today rather than suffer once a day for a week.

After a moment of internal struggle, Mu Xiaoyu made up her mind and looked at Li Yinsheng. "Yinsheng, I’ll refine them all today!"

"That’s the spirit!" Li Yinsheng praised.

"Where are the remaining Fire Seeds, Yinsheng?" Mu Xiaoyu asked, wearing the resolute expression of someone marching to their death.

Li Yinsheng pointed at the remaining six Cultivation Fruits on the table. "They’re all in there."

Mu Xiaoyu was speechless.

Walking over to the table, she reached out with a trembling hand and shakily pinched a Cultivation Fruit between her fingertips.

Squeezing her eyes shut and bracing herself, she shoved it into her mouth.

The moment she felt the searing heat drop into her Dantian, Mu Xiaoyu missed Shangguan more than she ever had before.

She thought, "UGH... If only Shangguan were still here to watch over me, I wouldn’t have to suffer like this!"

As the burning agony swept through her body once more, Mu Xiaoyu sent out a fervent, silent prayer.

She thought, "Please come back soon, Shangguan!"

The next morning, Mu Xiaoyu pushed open the door to her bedroom and stepped outside. Bathing in the vibrant morning sun, she looked completely refreshed and invigorated.

Because the refinement of each Fire Seed grew progressively faster, she had successfully finished all eight by the early hours of the dawn. The first one had taken nearly two hours, but the final one had taken less than half an hour.

Though the process was a grueling ordeal she didn’t even want to recall, she had finally survived it.

She thought, "I probably won’t have to refine another Fire Seed for a very long time, right?"

The mere thought made the sunlight seem even brighter.

She had to thank her rock-solid determination from yesterday for actually pushing through and refining eight Fire Seeds in a single day! Even without Shangguan, she, Mu Xiaoyu, could muscle through with sheer willpower!

Her exceptional hard work had even earned her a half-day off as a reward from Yinsheng, allowing her to sleep in today!

Of course, it would still be best if Shangguan returned before her next refinement session. With her around, the burning pain of refining a Fire Seed would be reduced to something barely comparable to the Blood Refining Core. She was practically a fairy sent to deliver her from suffering!

Just as this thought crossed Mu Xiaoyu’s mind, a streak of Five-Colored Escape Light appeared on the horizon.

Mu Xiaoyu froze for a moment. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head, muttering to herself.

"I miss Shangguan so much that I’m actually hallucinating..."

When she looked up again after rubbing her eyes, she saw that the distant streak of Escape Light had already closed the distance.

The light landed on the ground right in front of her, revealing the figure she had missed countless times the day before.

Shangguan Ling’Er was still wearing her flamboyant Five-Colored Feathered Robe. Smiling radiantly, she greeted Mu Xiaoyu.

"I’ve come back to visit you, Yu. Where is Yinsheng?"

Mu Xiaoyu stood there blankly, completely unresponsive.

Slightly confused, Shangguan Ling’Er took two steps forward and waved a hand in front of her face. "Yu? Are you listening to me?"

Mu Xiaoyu still didn’t react.

Countless chaotic thoughts surged through her mind like a whirlwind, intertwining and tangling until her brain temporarily shut down.

After a long period of stunned silence, the first clear thought that surfaced in her mind was...

She wondered, "Does Yinsheng have any more Fire Seeds left?"

Shangguan had finally returned. Wouldn’t it be a massive waste if she didn’t take this opportunity to refine a few more Fire Seeds?