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“No, I did not.” Zhou Xuchuan shook his head in denial.

“Did you steal it from someone else?”

“No, I did not.”

“Then did you deceive someone to take it?”

“Absolutely not.”

Zhou Xuchuan kept denying the series of questions, his eyes filled with clarity just like Liu Zhengmu’s. His eyes were also filled with determination as though he had resolved on something.

“Then where did you get something like this?”

“It’s…”

Zhou Xuchuan told Liu Zhengmu the truth, but not the entire truth. He told Liu Zhengmu about leaving the sect in secret while the latter was away and visiting the underwater cave.

He didn’t say something crazy like how he knew the future because he had turned back time.

However, he didn’t make up any stories to replace it. No, to be precise, he couldn’t bring himself to do so.

“Hm.” Liu Zhengmu knelt down thoughtfully. “It seems you’re hiding something from me.”

Zhou Xuchuan was startled.

Although he didn’t say anything, his expression betrayed his thoughts. How did he know?

Liu Zhengmu softly wrapped his hand around the Water Spiritual Fruit in Zhou Xuchuan’s hand.

“I can tell from your eyes.”

“Master… I…”

“It’s fine.” Liu Zhengmu interrupted, taking the Water Spiritual Fruit. “I believe you.”

There was nothing after that.

That… was it. There was no interrogation nor any questions asked. Liu Zhengmu simply decided to believe the words of the nine-year-old boy. While he had questions, he didn’t ask them. He simply took the spiritual medicine that the boy brought.

“That’s… it?”

It was instead Zhou Xuchuan who became confused.

“How… can you believe me without any suspicion?”

It was him who wanted his master to not ask any questions about it, so this situation was strange even as he thought about it.

Hearing that question, Liu Zhengmu smiled gently, as he always did.

“If a master does not believe in his disciple, who will? If I truly suspected you, I would have confronted you a year ago.”

Zhou Xuchuan’s jaw dropped, and he was unable to hide his shock.

So he knew…

Upon his return from the future a year ago, he acted like a child to avoid suspicion. He thought his act was perfect, but it turned out to be in vain. Liu Zhengmu truly knew everything.

Seeing Zhou Xuchuan’s shock, Liu Zhengmu smiled bitterly and added, “I do not know what it is exactly. However, some time back, I could tell that you had matured, but you were trying to hide it.”

There was a limit to how fast a child could grow. From what Liu Zhengmu had seen, his disciple was strange.

At first, he thought that the little boy under him was suffering from cultivation deviation. After all, it wasn’t uncommon to train in a martial art the wrong way and go crazy.

Young children were supervised by their masters for a reason; they were immature and prone to making mistakes. However, no matter how many times he looked at Zhou Xuchuan, that didn’t seem to be the case. He contemplated the topic multiple times and made some deductions as well. However, nothing could explain why Zhou Xuchuan was acting as such.

In the end, he came to the conclusion that Zhou Xuchuan was indeed okay.

“You’re hiding it because of some personal circumstances, I assume?”

Zhou Xuchuan’s head bobbed up and down.

“If that’s the case, there must be a reason behind you bringing this spiritual medicine to me. Then I guess there’s no helping it.”

Liu Zhengmu enveloped Zhou Xuchuan in a reassuring hug.

“Master… thank you.”

Zhou Xuchuan hugged his master tightly, tears streaming down his face as he buried it in Liu Zhengmu’s chest.

Liu Zhengmu patted Zhou Xuchuan on the back and cracked a joke.

“You wet your clothes at night, but now you’re wetting my clothes during the day.”

“Master… that’s a bit… sob!”

Zhou Xuchuan suddenly freaked out, still crying.

Liu Zhengmu, who had thought hard to come up with the joke, felt awkward. I tried to be funny… did it not work?

***

Reaffirming the affection between master and disciple was good and all, but what was more important was the consumption of the spiritual medicine. Zhou Xuchuan explained the Water Spiritual Fruit to Liu Zhengmu so as to help him absorb the spiritual medicine more effectively.

Well, he didn’t have to explain much. All he knew was that the spiritual medicine mainly contained water qi and wood qi.

“Then I’ll have to ask you to stand guard.”

Liu Zhengmu consumed the Water Spiritual Fruit and started circulating his qi.

‘Incredible.’

The moment he closed his eyes and began to concentrate, he started feeling the energy from the medicine.

This was his first time eating a spiritual medicine. While Mount Hua, being a large sect, possessed its own stock of spiritual medicines, it didn’t have an abundance of them to the point where it could hand them out to anyone.

Only a select few of the younger generation were given spiritual medicines, and even then, they would only receive one in their lifetime.

Yes, just like that… whoa?

Liu Zhengmu was taken aback while circulating his qi. Thankfully, he was able to maintain his composure thanks to the Daoist cultivation technique allowing him to calm his emotions down.

‘What’s happening?’

Although he had never consumed a spiritual medicine before, he knew about the general method of absorbing one through his extensive reading. When consuming spiritual medicine, a cultivator had to channel the energy from the spiritual medicine to their dantian by circulating their qi and accumulating it just as they normally would.

In the case that the energy from the spiritual medicine was considerably large, the dantian and the meridians would not be able to endure and would break down if all the energy were to be transformed into internal qi at once. To prevent that, a cultivator would slowly shave away at the spiritual medicine to change its energy little by little into their own.

However, what happened in Liu Zhengmu’s body was totally different. In an instant, his qi started moving all by itself without him doing anything. It wasn’t that his qi was going berserk either. If that happened, his meridians and organs would have been torn apart by the torrent.

The qi from the Water Spiritual Fruit—in other words, the qi of water and wood attributes—disappeared deep into his body before he could do anything to it.

Cultivation deviation?

His heart and mind started shaking.

The first thing that came to his mind after that was…

He’s only nine…

…the face of his disciple.

He did not suspect that there was something wrong with the spiritual medicine, nor did he worry about his own life or cultivation. He was only worried about his disciple.

And at that moment.

Whoa!

The water and wood qi that he thought had disappeared seeped into the depths of his body.

That’s how it is!

His worries and questions disappeared. The fog that clouded his vision disappeared at once.

At the same time, he came to a realization. Not enlightenment in the Dao or martial arts, but about the weak constitution he had from a young age.

There was something wrong with my innate true qi!

Qi that one was born with. The source of life, and the great mother nature. This was called the innate true qi.

Innate true qi was different from ordinary internal qi in that it was the source of life. Consuming it was akin to consuming one’s life force. The power of the innate true qi was truly incredible, and using it allowed a cultivator to obtain great strength, but it would also kill them in a very short time.

Even if they did not use all of it, or were lucky enough to survive, the only fate that awaited them was becoming a cripple or experiencing rapid aging. Also, what was consumed would never be restored. Use once, and that was it. This would be true even if one consumed spiritual medicine.

For Liu Zhengmu, something was wrong with his innate true qi.

Xuchuan has saved my life!

Liu Zhengmu stood up.

He wanted to rush to his disciple and give him a big hug.

***

Zhou Xuchuan was standing guard when he was startled by Liu Zhengmu’s appearance; it hadn’t even been two hours since Liu Zhengmu had entered cultivation to consume the Water Spiritual Fruit.

At first, he was worried that something may have gone wrong, but he was relieved to hear his master’s laughter.

Liu Zhengmu hugged Zhou Xuchuan and rejoiced for a long time before managing to tell him about what had occurred within his body.

“To be precise, the problem didn’t seem to be with the innate true qi itself, but the vessel that contained it.”

“The vessel, Master?”

Liu Zhengmu nodded at Zhou Xuchuan’s question.

“Yes. Although it was minute, it seems my innate true qi had been leaking from somewhere.”

Zhou Xuchuan didn’t know much about the innate true qi. In fact, no one knew the details about it, whether in the past, present, or even in the future. Nothing was clarified about it.

It was simply a concept that had been passed down since time immemorial. No one even knew where the innate true qi was located. It simply seeped out of somewhere when a cultivator focused their mind with the intent of using it.

The problem was that even those who used the innate true qi only had a vague sense and understanding of its usage, and did not comprehend the principles behind it, whether they were some backstreet thugs or experts.

It turned out that, in the case of Liu Zhengmu, his innate true qi was slowly dissipating because the vessel that contained it was leaking.

That amount was a tiny speck, or maybe even less than that. However, it still had drastic effects on his body. The source of life was being consumed, so it was natural that it had bad effects on the body. It would instead be strange if nothing was wrong.

Even after cultivating and attaining higher realms, that had nothing to do with the innate true qi.

I see, now I get what must’ve happened. The vitality of the wood qi must have healed the vessel of the innate true qi.

Zhou Xuchuan understood what happened through what little explanation Liu Zhengmu gave him. Although Liu Zhengmu was trying unsuccessfully to explain what happened, Zhou Xuchuan already knew more than enough to supplement his explanations.

In the first place, if Liu Zhengmu knew about it, there was no way Zhou Xuchuan wouldn’t, when he had reached the Harmony Realm before.

Wood is life. Although it’s not the genuine innate true qi, the vitality of the Water Spiritual Fruit can be a substitute. That’s how he supplemented his body.

Now, with the leak sealed, there was nothing else to worry about. The Water Spiritual Fruit seemed to have not only stopped the leakage but also replenished the lost innate true qi.

Wood qi, in other words, vitality, could recover innate true qi!

This discovery shattered the long-held belief that it could never be recovered.

But that was only possible because it was Master.

Liu Zhengmu had never used his innate true qi before. If he had, he would’ve died regardless of consuming the Water Spiritual Fruit. There was a problem with the vessel that contained it, which led to a minute amount that he couldn’t even feel leaking out.

However, even that little amount required a very precious spiritual medicine like the Water Spiritual Fruit to recover.

The energy from the Water Spiritual Fruit was only used to fix the flaws in his innate true qi, and he was unable to transform any of it into his internal qi. Liu Zhengmu had only become healthy, and had not managed to turn any of the energy contained in the spiritual medicine into his own power.

In the end, a cultivator’s innate true qi would not be consumed unless in dire situations. Liu Zhengmu warned Zhou Xuchuan about this.

It was just that Liu Zhengmu was just a very special case.

Forget it. That’s not what’s important here, is it?

The important thing here was that the future had changed. Now, Zhou Xuchuan wouldn’t need to worry about his master when he turned fourteen.

Liu Zhengmu would not die.

Decades ago, he had to part with his master for a reason he couldn’t understand. He lost his only loved one, his only family. There were still many things that he had yet to learn.

“And you can take this.”

A Water Spiritual Fruit was placed into Zhou Xuchuan’s hand.

“Master!”

Zhou Xuchuan had obtained two Water Spiritual Fruits in the underwater cave. One of them was consumed, and now the remaining one was being offered to him.

“Do not tell me to keep it just in case. I know my body better than you do. Your master is okay.”

“Then you can use it to increase your cultiv—”

“That’s even more of a reason for you to use it.”

Liu Zhengmu seemed to have no intentions to yield on this matter.

Zhou Xuchuan tried to persuade him, but he gave up after seeing Liu Zhengmu’s stern expression. Liu Zhengmu was very gentle and kind, but he was very firm when he had made a decision. Zhou Xuchuan knew this very well.

Yes, it’s okay now. Let’s not push it any further.

The master accepted his disciple’s nonsensical words without asking further questions, instead saying that he believed in him.

Zhou Xuchuan\'s prior actions were disrespectful enough to his master. Only someone like Liu Zhengmu would not get back at him for such matters.

“Yes, Master.”

“Good.”

Only then did a smile return to Liu Zhengmu’s lips.