Spirit Cultivation

The bracelet shone brightly with golden light and started turning into liquid, wrapping his arm with it. When the liquid finally spread towards his palm and touched the Wisdom Tree's bark, the whole cave suddenly shook.

Bang! ​​

Another explosion crushed against his mind, causing him to feel enormous pain. He couldn't move no matter what and the pain was only intensifying. Even when he called for Ling, he didn't hear her voice, as if his voice didn't even reach her.

Feeling the pain all over his body, Xuefeng finally decided to resist it and focused all of his power to pull out the hand from the tree, but then he suddenly heard a familiar voice inside his head, 'Don't resist… I'm doing it for your own good. With me by your side, no one will be able to stop you.'

Xuefeng quickly recognized the female voice to be that of Little Ming and asked, feeling like his mind was going to explode, 'Little Ming? What is going on… It hurts…'

'Don't worry. It's going to pass soon. Just relax your body and let me help you.' Little Ming called out softly, feeling guilty of what she was doing but she could only apologize later as, in the end, she had no other choice anymore.

'What are you… planning to do…?' Xuefeng asked weakly, already feeling as if he was losing consciousness. He didn't know what Little Ming was planning, but with the way she worded it, it definitely wasn't something harmless.

Knowing that she was hurting him, Little Ming suddenly felt like crying, tears soon falling from her small eyes and she quickly apologized, 'Sob… It will only hurt a little… I'm sorry… I didn't know the bracelet was this strong… It began draining my powers too fast so my only solution is to—'

Unfortunately, before Xuefeng could hear the whole explanation, he lost his consciousness, arriving in complete darkness. Little Ming could only catch his Spirit and hug it into her body.

Xuefeng was huddled in her embrace as Little Ming didn't let him go, continuing to caress his cheeks as if he was her little kid. She wanted to look at him far longer but she didn't have much time left.

'I'm sorry… I will pay you back in the future…' She whispered as her body started ageing at a rapid speed. It hasn't been a moment but she already grew a few centimetres, turning into a mature young lady. Having no time, she leaned over and kissed Xuefeng's lips with tears still flowing from her eyes. She definitely didn't plan for it to happen like this, but she didn't have any other choice.

...….

Right when Xuefeng opened his eyes, he saw Nuwa's pretty face and heard her call out happily to him, "Xuefeng! You are awake!" Xuefeng looked around, still disoriented and found out that he was still inside the Wisdom Tree Cave, laying on Nuwa's lap.

There was a lingering headache roaming inside his mind which was disturbing his thoughts but he still asked in confusion, "What happened…?" He was slowly recalling that he actually lost consciousness while talking with Little Ming and soon more memories started flowing back into his mind.

"I found you laying on the ground about fifteen minutes ago. When I heard the rumbling I instantly rushed here." Nuwa explained before asking with worry, "Is everything alright? I checked you all over but I can't find any injuries. Even your Spirit is fine."

"I'm fine already…" Xuefeng stood up while shaking his head a bit and glanced at the bracelet on his wrist. It was still there in the solid form as it was before and other than having a golden hue shining on it the whole time, nothing else changed. The Wisdom Tree was still there, only having much fewer leaves than before with more than half of them gone.

'Little Ming?' Xuefeng asked inside of his mind, recalling her constant apologies. He didn't feel like anything changed inside of him, but he knew that she planned to do something to him.

Instead of Little Ming's voice, he heard Ling calling out to him in worry, 'Xuefeng, what happened? I couldn't reach out to you no matter how many times I tried. What happened after you touched the tree?'

'Can you check if there is anything going on with my Spirit?' Xuefeng asked, trying to figure out what Little Ming did to him. She must have done something, else she wouldn't create such a scene earlier.

Xuefeng also wondered what secrets that bracelet was hiding, but decided to leave that for later, as he knew it wasn't a subject for one sitting. If even Little Ming didn't know of the bracelet's powers, then he definitely shouldn't mess with it.

'With your Spirit? Let me check quickly…' Ling asked confused, but she swiftly entered into his body deciding to check him completely without question. It turned out that she quickly got blocked by an invisible barrier in Xuefeng's Spirit. It looked very normal and healthy from the outside but once Ling tried to ender inside, she couldn't pass it.

Realising that there was nothing she could do to fight the barrier, Ling asked in a panic, 'Xuefeng? Tell me what happened?! I can't access your Spirit! Something is blocking me!' For her, not being able to access it was definitely something worth worrying about. Ling already decided to connect with Xuefeng' Spirit, but how could she do it if she couldn't even access it.

At the same time, Nuwa also asked curiously, "What happened here? Did you do anything to cause the cave shaking? The amount of leaves on the Wisdom Tree also decreased." Nuwa didn't suspect him to do anything bad and simply just pointed out the fact.

"It was this bracelet. When I touched the bark of Wisdom Tree, it suddenly started going crazy, turning into a liquid that covered my arm and then it started doing something with the Wisdom Tree. I don't know what happened afterwards as I passed out from the pain." Xuefeng reported what happened to the both of them, but didn't mention anything about Little Ming yet. He wanted to reach out to her first to know what is going on before he tells everyone about it.

Of course, Xuefeng trusted Ling about this and told her the truth of what the situation actually was like, sending the memory clips into her mind as well. She was his Fate Spirit so she actually thought about this more seriously than others. On the other hand, if he told anything to Nuwa, she would probably get unnecessarily worried for him.

Just as he expected, hearing that he went through some pain, Nuwa quickly hugged him tightly and asked lovingly, "It doesn't hurt anymore, right?" Only when he shook his head did she relax, and focused on the other issue, Xuefeng's bracelet. She grazed her finger on the outside and said in wonder, "I have never seen such a bracelet before… Can I try it on?"

"Actually, I can't take it off as it is stuck on me. I still don't know how it works, but it was given to me by Little Ming so It has to be priceless. I will try to make contact with her and ask her to explain it to me in more details." Xuefeng showed her the stuck bracelet, knowing nothing about the mechanism to turn it into liquid like before.

Hearing his way of addressing, Nuwa frowned a bit, asking calmly, "Little Ming? Are you calling our Goddess Mingshu like that?" Even if she agreed for him to call her like that, it was still weird for her.

"Mhmm, she is a sweet girl, but she seems to not want to reply right now. I wonder what happened...?" Xuefeng nodded and called out loud, trying to get Little Ming to hear him but there was still no reaction from her whatsoever.

"It's okay. We can't expect her to reply all the time. Let's go, we won't figure out anything by standing here like this. I already arranged the matter with the auction so there shouldn't be any problems anymore. We can leave anytime." Knowing that her Goddess allowed him to call her that, Nuwa didn't delve deeper into it and pulled Xuefeng by the arm, deciding to leave.

Xuefeng was quite reluctant to leave as he still didn't get a reply from Little Ming but then Ling suddenly said anxiously, realising what this whole situation could be after some investigation, 'I think I know why she is not replying. She must have locked herself in your Spirit after kissing you… Damn, I think she wants to connect with your Spirit!'