"Your disciple presents tea to his master."
Qiu Wuji sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed, opened her eyes in a mix of exasperation and amusement, and looked at Chu Ge, who stood before her holding out a cup of tea like a fawning lackey.
So we really are each keeping our own ledger, huh. I call you Father God, you call me Master.
Any other ways to play this?
Amused inside, Qiu Wuji still wore a face of frost. "When has this Sect Master ever taken on such a lazy, shameless disciple? Get lost."
Chu Ge smiled apologetically. "You already taught me the entry-level method, so that makes you my master. You were even going to teach me a little spell..."
"I'm not teaching. Why should I?" Qiu Wuji said, face stiff. "Go ask around the Cloud Horizon Sect — is it so easy to take this Sect Master as a master?"
"Yes, yes, Master has high standards. To this day you haven't taken a single direct disciple, at most giving pointers to disciples here and there. So everything has to start somewhere, right...?"
Qiu Wuji's expression didn't change. "And the ceremony for accepting a master? Let this Sect Master see your sincerity."
Chu Ge said cautiously, "Actually, your disciple also has some stockings..."
"Drop dead!" Qiu Wuji's composure shattered entirely; she could no longer keep up the icy cross-legged pose and rose to give him a beating.
Chu Ge didn't back off but stepped forward, thrusting the teacup straight into her hands. "Master, calm your anger. A sip of tea is good for body and mind."
"Pfft." Qiu Wuji had only been joking with him in the first place. Half exasperated, half amused, she took the tea. "How could the tea in your world possibly be good for body and mind?"
"I never wrote any tea-roasting process into that world. You've never tried this, so try it. Though this tea is pretty lousy."
Qiu Wuji took a small sip and gave a slight nod. "It carries a certain mortal, vulgar air, but the craftsmanship has something to recommend it."
Chu Ge just watched her put on airs. You shovel down potatoes and beef without a word about mortal vulgarity, but one sip of tea and suddenly you're putting on airs. He didn't call her out on it; he just smiled and said, "Master has already drunk her disciple's tea, so how about teaching me a move or two..."
Qiu Wuji sipped her tea at leisure. "No."
Chu Ge: "?"
"It's your own setting," Qiu Wuji said with a cold snort. "Invisibility is a comparatively advanced art; you can't learn it yet. As for X-ray vision, that trashy little trick is good for nothing except satisfying your sleazy urges."
"How is it useless?" Chu Ge said, anxious. "That stuff is so convenient! I'd win every card game against anyone — huh..."
Qiu Wuji: "..."
Isn't that a fine way to make money? Doesn't seem to need any ID card either. Why didn't you say so earlier?
Chu Ge backed off awkwardly. "Well, I don't usually play cards, so it never crossed my mind... Besides, fleecing ordinary people out of their money isn't good either, and we don't even have casinos in this place to begin with..."
Qiu Wuji thought privately, Not necessarily none at all. Have you never heard of underground bare-knuckle fights?
But she didn't want to stir up trouble in the short term, so she let the subject drop and only said, "There are specialized arts that would let you use such shortcut tricks ahead of time, but as I see it, they aren't worth the wasted time of learning them on purpose. Once your cultivation reaches a certain level, a simple gathering of power in both eyes will serve for ordinary X-ray vision; it all depends on how finely you control your magic power. What you really ought to learn, I think, is survival technique."
She paused and turned a little more serious. "Chu Ge, from what I've felt in this world, it's a very safe and peaceful place for ordinary people, but there are still whirlpools in places people know nothing about. You may have belonged to the former before, but now you're qualified to touch the whirlpools, and the whirlpools will naturally pull at you. You can't look at things with your old experience anymore. If I'm not here, you need the strength to protect yourself."
Chu Ge's joking mood was entirely put away too, and he nodded solemnly. "Yeah."
"So what you should master first is movement technique." A faint smile appeared on Qiu Wuji's face, and her slender finger touched the center of Chu Ge's brow. "Which movement technique, you know."
The mental method and the incantation were reflected clearly in his mind. Passing on immortal teachings really was this plain and unadorned — and this dull.
Chu Ge of course knew what this was; he had written it himself as the standard loadout for the female lead's survival and her air of immortal grace.
Qiu Wuji's signature movement technique, one of the Cloud Horizon Sect's top-tier ultimate arts: Cloud and Water Without Trace.
When Qiu Wuji used it, her body merged with cloud and sunset glow, like autumn water, vast and indistinct, nowhere to be found, and it truly gave an enemy the sense of a thousand li of clear autumn, boundless and endless.
But it wasn't a technique with a very high threshold either. It was a wondrous art Qiu Wuji had obtained when she was still lowly, and improved all along as her cultivation broke through — which meant low-level disciples could learn part of the basics too. Nor was Chu Ge getting special treatment: the basic movement technique sat on the first floor of the Scripture Repository, and many disciples learned it. It was well on its way to becoming one of the Cloud Horizon Sect's signature techniques.
Hence "you know."
Honestly, Chu Ge didn't much want this movement technique... because all that cloud-and-water business inevitably felt a little girly.
In practice it wasn't, of course. The Cloud Horizon Sect's male disciples who learned it still rode the wind with flair; whether it looked girly depended only on a person's aura. In any case, Chu Ge hadn't given it to the male lead — he'd had the male lead come upon a grand, vigorous movement technique through a fortuitous encounter instead.
And now here he was, and he still had to learn this one. Boo hoo...
But there was no denying it really was one of the top movement techniques he had ever written, and distinct all the way from low to high level. Nothing could be more suitable.
"For now I'll pass on only the basics. If I passed on the advanced parts you couldn't learn them anyway, and it would just waste your spirit." Qiu Wuji withdrew her finger and mused briefly. "Though your spirit... is very..."
"Huh?" Chu Ge said in surprise. "What is it? Am I exceptionally gifted?"
"A little, but isn't that only natural?" Qiu Wuji said calmly. "Your spirit and sea of consciousness are indeed stronger than an ordinary person's, but you must be a special-ability user, so that's exactly as expected... Actually, I'd assumed our Father God's sea of consciousness would be vast as an abyss or an ocean. In reality it's just a stinking drainage ditch."
Chu Ge: "..."
Qiu Wuji didn't say it out loud: a ditch was already terrifying. A normal person's wouldn't even count as the little saucer you dip hot pot in.
Your mental power really is strange. Yet it never shows itself at all in daily life — you're just like an ordinary person... A pity everyone's systems were different, and she had no way even to define such a thing; she also worried that her split soul's control of divine sense wasn't subtle enough, and that probing carelessly might harm Chu Ge, so she tasted only briefly and withdrew.
She mused for a moment, then said, "A Qi Refining cultivator normally couldn't possibly train his divine soul, but your situation is different — it's somewhat like my current state, so you should be able to nurture your soul ahead of time. I'll pass on the art of soul-forging; it includes a method for condensing spirit and stabilizing the soul.
In daily life you nurture and forge your soul, and if you ever meet some art trying to influence your mind or soul, you can stabilize your soul and hold fast to resist it... Gu girl's mind reading, for instance, would be useless against you."
Chu Ge was delighted. "That's useful. I figure a lot of their powers work off exactly that."
"Oh?" Qiu Wuji eyed him sidelong. "How many powers have you seen? Why do you think so?"
"Uh, I read it... in books. All kinds of special abilities — they can't all be about fighting, right?"
"This Sect Master thinks it's just the opposite. Powers like immense strength or a lightened body are far more common — so common they aren't even counted as powers, just a good constitution and natural talent. Next comes simple manipulation of the five elements, like controlling electric energy; that's surely much more common than playing with shadows. I once searched your world's info on superpowers, and all it gave me was one Pili Beibei, that kids' show about the electric boy..."
Chu Ge's face went wooden.
Fine, you've got evidence and reasoning, all right.
"So don't imagine your world's powers are all that mysterious, but don't treat them lightly either. After all, that shadow business — even I can't do it, and it really is interesting." Qiu Wuji smiled. "All right. Last of all, I'll pass on the most basic—"
Chu Ge: "Uh?"
"—techniques for fighting people."
"That too?"
Qiu Wuji looked at him with disdain. "The kind Yueying honed in those life-and-death arenas. Even if she used no power at all and only traded punches and kicks with you, she'd take your head off in a single move. How many people in this world are like Yueying? Wherever there's fighting, there's combat technique. Don't imagine powers have nothing to do with it."
Chu Ge: "..."
Then Qiu Wuji laughed again. "But fortunately, this Sect Master's main cultivation is the sword dao. In other words, combat skill is my real original trade — everything else is just side work... Lord Father God, was this in your plan?"
Chu Ge said earnestly, "Father God planned nothing at all... But you, Master, have thought it all through."
Qiu Wuji's face was expressionless.
Chu Ge tried asking, "So how do I learn this fighting? Will you guide me hand in hand?"
Qiu Wuji answered calmly: "I've thought it over. Honing combat skill takes years of accumulated effort, plus a great deal of practical sparring. You have to write to make money, so it doesn't suit you. We should change the approach..."
"That's true... Any good ideas?"
"How about this: I'll teach you the Golden Bell Shield. So long as you can take a beating, that's enough — and it'll make things easier for me when I hit you in the future."