Chapter 121 – Choices in Life (III)

Chapter 121

Choices in Life (III)

Long Tao stared at the happily snoring face of this strange Master of his.

Every time he exhaled, the mustache would flutter like leaves in the wind, making for a rather comic appearance. Furthermore, it seemed he was dreaming, as his eyelids kept twitching and he’d occasionally groan while swatting away something with his hand.

It had all transpired rather quickly, even for him.

Just as he was about to go in and save the two of them and run away as far as possible, he saw his Master clutch something and lift his hand. Suddenly, the fiery inferno wasn’t upon them–rather, it was everywhere but them, and the people who attacked them… they were all gone.

It was an artifact, clearly, but artifacts like those shouldn’t exist in this realm.

Rather, it was the kind of artifact that used the Nirvanic Bead–an essence of those who’ve reached at least the Realm of Nirvana but could not go any further and wanted to leave something behind for their descendants.

They’d craft a defensive artifact using thousands of years of their own accumulated Qi, and artifacts like those were viewed as sect-defending treasures.

And yet, somehow, there was one like it in his Master’s possessions.

From day one, Long Tao knew that the man was rather… esoteric. From the moment he was handed the Heart-Stitching Art, it became clear that Elder Lu wasn’t an ordinary Elder, and certainly not an angry, bitter, or hedonistic one as the rumors implied.

Yet, just as when he thought he’d had the man figured out, the latter would do yet another extraordinary thing, an even more extraordinary one than all others before it. As though out of spite.

“Senior Brother,” the young Dai Xiu walked up cautiously. “Will the Master be okay?” If those two kids worshipped the man before, Long Tao imagined that the level of zealotry they felt had likely reached its peak. He couldn’t blame them, not really; he himself had felt that way as a young boy toward his first Master, too, the man he thought could move a mountain at will.

“He’ll be fine,” Long Tao replied. “He’s simply tired and is resting.”

“Haaah,” she exhaled, palm against her chest, as she sat down.

They’d found a relatively hidden spot, though it was unnecessary. While running, Long Tao had already erased all traces of them–short of an Emperor appearing to divine what transpired there, there wasn’t anyone who could follow them.

“Is Master alright?” Xi Zhao showed up as well, having gone out to ‘see if they were being followed’.

“He’s just resting,” Dai Xiu said. “Did anyone follow us?”

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“There’s no one,” the boy said. “Just some forest critters. Where is Light?”

“She’s asleep up there,” Dai Xiu pointed to the branch directly above the master’s, where a young girl was lazily hanging from, seemingly just an inch away from falling down… except she never did. “Poor thing’s probably terrified.”

Long Tao briefly glanced at the young girl with a strange look in his eyes; besides him, that ‘poor thing’ was probably the least worried one. Partly because she was only six, but partly because she likely saw attacks of that scale before.

“Where’s that new girl?” Xi Zhao asked. “Wan something?”

“Junior Sister Lan? She’s over there.” Dai Xiu pointed at a nearby tree where a young woman was leaning into the trunk, her expression distorted as though she were having a nightmare. “She passed out even before Master saved us.”

“Hm. She seems fairly weak,” Xi Zhao commented. “It doesn’t matter. One month with the Master, and she’ll be reborn.”

“Senior Brother, will you train her as you train us?” Dai Xiu asked him with a rather excited gaze–beneath the facade of an adorable little girl, there was a petty demon that wanted to drag everyone into her misery, it seemed.