It was fortunate that in the end, the temple maiden didn’t ask An Fei why she had gone outside during the nightly rain after having received many warnings. Instead, Xu Lingxin had turned over on the other side of the bed and was deeply asleep, turning an effective blind eye towards the young girl’s suspicious actions.
Of course, the price was that nearly all of the blankets were occupied by the brash and overconfident sleeping posture of the elegant temple maiden.
As she lay on the soft and comfortable bedsheets, An Fei couldn’t help but shiver frequently during the night. The cold and bitter wind was prohibited from entering the room by the sturdy windows, but the condensation formed on the other side was sufficient to torment an adolescent child’s body for several hours.
In the end, the Xu Lingxin awoke to the bitter countenance of a young mortal girl, and the alarming news that the winter rain had yet to abate. The combination of the brilliant rays of sun piercing through the opened curtains and the terrifying knocks of raindrops prompted the temple maiden to cower in defeat, and heave a sigh after another as though a broken machine.
“Little Sister, we truly… truly can’t leave this place today, is that right?”
Certainly, she wasn’t averse to a full-day’s worth of time lounging in a luxury pagoda on the scale of the Plum’s Grove.
Sleeping atop of a comfortable bed with proper bedding and warm cotton blankets, all the while admiring a glamorous arrangement of delicate ornaments constructed from the finest of precious materials – who would reject such an experience?
The only problem was that she could merely watch lifeless and tasteless decorations, but couldn’t sate her pitiful stomach…
“Little Sister, about breakfast, ah…”
She was a miserable cultivator, a cultivator who had expended the majority if not all of their wealth on acquiring spiritual treasures and medicines, and had no funds remaining to purchase ordinary food!
There were several liang of medicinal ginseng stored in her pouch, but she was more than likely to suffer and perish an agonizing death if she consumed spiritual medicines solely for the purpose of alleviating hunger…
“Breakfast?” An Fei rubbed at the bags in her eyes, and stared at her blurred reflection through the copper mirror.
“What about breakfast?”
“This… since we can’t leave the pagoda to acquire breakfast as its raining, and the food here is extremely… expensive, for Elder Sister’s sake, ah…”
A soft rumble escaped her stomach, and Xu Lingxin’s cheeks bloomed scarlet in shame. The temple maiden avidly stared towards the young girl’s back, and hope was visible in her gaze.
“That… the food was indeed expensive. However, Elder Sister shouldn’t have a problem with the price?”
A simple meal of porridge was fifty silver coins when purchased directly from the Plum Grove’s restaurant, and additional vegetables and meat dishes required many more times the previous amount for a single serving.
Alas, An Fei could enjoy the majority of the services free of charge after sacrificing her identity’s reputation, but Xu Lingxin had to surrender the full payment.
A few measly gold coins could barely scratch at the mountain of wealth contained within Wei Xuan’s grey satchel, but to the penniless Xu Lingxin, even affording morning congee was bound to be difficult.
“Elder Sister… doesn’t have the funds, ah…”
“Trading away those spiritual pills should be enough to secure breakfast, no?” An Fei lashed back with a small smile.
“Since the Plum’s Grove is primarily accessed by cultivators, there shouldn’t be a problem exchanging a few spiritual pills for golden coins.”
“Spiritual pills are vital to cultivators! You can’t just have me cut at my flesh to pay for breakfast, ah!?”
Xu Lingxin protested with all of her might, but was defeated by the persistent and silent gaze. With a resigned sigh, she dressed herself and trudged out of the door and into the ground lobby of the pagoda…
An Fei only caught sight of her a few hours later, and the latter seemed to appear utterly haggard and dispirited. Immediately after entering the room, Xu Lingxin threw herself onto the bed, and began to wail loudly.
“Just because they weren’t crafted by the prestigious masters of Bei Tang and instead looted from the battlefields, he slashed the price by three times! Thirty Spiritual Concentration pills, and that could barely afford a pot of tasteless congee…”
The young girl twitched her lips shook her head, muttering a few indecipherable lines under her breath. An Fei returned her gaze to the stack of papers placed onto the desk, and her hand rested on a sleek writing brush.
It was noon, and the rain had yet to cease. Mortals and cultivators watched in dismay as the skies unleashed their uncontrollable torrent, flooding the streets with a dense pool of curses. To those who had either experienced a taste of the pains brought by being pelted by those raindrops or researched into them, the extended rainfall was utterly terrible news.
During the spell of winter rain, it was guaranteed to rain each night with an increasing intensity after each successive rainfall. Night markets and the general population were already suffering due to having to hole themselves in the night and wasting precious time, but if such miserable pains were to extend into the daytime, then…
They didn’t dare think of the consequences, An Fei included. She stared upon the clean sheet of paper and the writing brush decorated with numerous inscriptions, all the while expelling the worries in her heart.
“Is this really going to work outside of the Sanctuary?”
The young girl took a deep breath, and grasped the brush with her right hand. After applying a generous helping of violet ink, she brought the tip of the brush to the surface of the paper, and began to weave a set of interconnected strokes onto the page…
In a matter of a few seconds, she had composed an elegant diagram, consisting of a single word – wind. In essence, it was nothing more than the character ‘feng’ drawn onto a piece of paper with violet ink.
There was no elaborate process of drawing an intricate network of abstruse symbols or inscriptions. Nor was there any ritual or consecration of the materials used, and was just an ordinary piece of paper, a brush, and some ink.
“Er… if Father’s words back then were correct, then…”
The young girl stilled her breath, and willed the golden kernel at her chest to awake from its slumber. Golden streams of light weaving through her body and gathering at her fingertips, An Fei stabbed at the paper talisman placed atop of the table with her index finger –
Whoosh!
“Little Sister? What’s going on!?”
The moment her fingertip came into contact with the rudimentary talisman, a single golden thread of light wormed its way into the damp character drawn by violet ink. An Fei witnessed the violet character shiver and change colors into a vivid golden shade, and before she could react, a gust had erupted and thrown her body across the room to collide against the soft bed sheets.
“Ack, far too surprising, far too surprising…”
The young girl yelped as she was helped up by Xu Lingxin, and received an concerned eyeful from the latter. An Fei massaged at her slightly sore neck with both hands, and grimaced as she noticed the commotion that had erupted in her room.
A gust of wind had emerged from nothing with the talisman at the epicenter, and had expanded in every direction. Since she had infused spiritual essence from the Sanctum, she was thrown off balance and tossed onto the bed, but now the room was in disarray and many of the spiritual artefacts posing as decorations had disintegrated into an unrecognizable powder…
“Little Sister, what exactly did you do?” the temple maiden frowned as she noticed the eradicated decorations, and walked towards the drawing table.
“A talisman? Little Sister, you know how to draw talismans?”
When did a mortal girl become so capable to congeal spiritual qi to draw talismans? And of such exceptional quality?
Certainly, in her long experience as a cultivator, she had witnessed several secular priests and monks infuse their raw vitality to form a few feeble talismans, but those could only be used to impress fellow mortals or the aristocratic families of the secular world. For an ordinary young girl to accomplish a feat many cultivators struggled with…
In response, An Fei numbly extracted a smooth jade stone from her pocket, and displayed the object to the perplexed temple maiden. The stone had been obtained by the heavenly dragon at the last minute, and now Xu Lingxin felt her horizons expand further.
“A spirit stone? Little Sister, to be capable of drawing talismans of such quality from a single spirit stone, how fascinating…”
