A figure emerged, standing still like a dark statue.
A bulky black robe concealed the person’s physique, making it impossible to tell whether it was a man or a woman.
Shen Yu frowned slightly, flicking her long sleeve.
She then walked over to a tea table and sat down on a chair.
What on earth was this? A middle-school edgy teenager? Had he read too many pulp novels!
Caught completely off guard, the youth revealed a clean-shaven, fair face brimming with utter bewilderment as he locked eyes directly with Shen Yu.
His pupils violently constricted. Realizing belatedly that he had been exposed, he instinctively covered his face, looking thoroughly like someone caught in the act.
Shen Yu gave a disdainful snort. So this little brat was the one who had been tailing her?
Ever since her grand wedding and all the way until today! He had practically stuck to her like a shadow.
Like a maggot in the dark, truly repulsive!
The youth looked anxiously at the frowning Shen Yu, feeling utterly horrified.
This. This was completely different from what he had imagined!
Shouldn’t Shen Yu be looking at him with anxiety, then standing respectfully to the side and awaiting his commands?
Why had the tables turned now?
He clearly, he clearly, he lowered his head to check the outfit he had meticulously prepared, there was obviously nothing wrong with it!
Clearly, he failed to realize that the so-called mysterious black-robed person in storybooks was either an expert of supreme personal strength or a heaven-defying child of destiny blessed with great fortune.
And he? He was just a freshly minted greenhorn!
Shen Yu made no grand movements, merely gazing at him coldly in silence.
The atmosphere remained deadpan and chillingly still.
Watching her unhurried and composed demeanor, the black-robed youth panicked.
Why wasn’t she saying anything yet?
If she didn’t speak, how was he supposed to start?
Yet Shen Yu seemed completely oblivious to his inner thoughts. She slightly lifted her left leg, resting it casually over her right knee, and smoothed down her brocade robe.
Then, she picked up a teacup, turning it over and over in her hands as she thoroughly ignored the youth.
Shen Yu inspected it with utter earnestness, as though the teacup in her hand were some priceless treasure. It made the youth feel as though his heart were being scratched by a cat’s claws.
Finally, losing his composure, he blurted out a hey!
“Aren’t you even going to ask who I am?”
Shen Yu said nothing, only raising the cup slightly. Refracted by the sunlight, the cup emitted a translucent emerald glow that actually looked rather pretty.
“Shen Yu!”
The youth said angrily, feeling extremely displeased by her act of ignoring him.
The hand playing with the teacup paused, the smile on her face freezing.
The faint glimmer gathering in her eyes also gradually dissipated, turning as deep and lightless as an abyss.
She turned her head to look at the youth.
Her lips parted slightly, opening and closing.
“Jiang. Jing. Huan!”
She pronounced it very slowly, as though speaking not a name, but some scorching love poem.
Enunciating every single syllable, the trailing end of her voice seemed to carry a tiny hook, lingering with a trace of slight puzzlement.
As Shen Yu enunciated each word, the youth’s pupils gradually widened, as if his eyeballs were about to pop right out of their sockets.
The shock in his eyes could simply no longer be concealed!
She! How did she know his name?
Little did he know that just moments ago, Shen Yu had utilized her innate divine ability once more.
Shen Yu’s divine ability resided in her eyes; the true ultimate forms of all things could be perceived by them.
Suffice it to say, given sufficient spiritual energy, she could pierce through antiquity and the present, foresee the future, and rewrite the destiny of the heavens.
Naturally, such a divine ability came with rules that had to be followed, namely, that it could inspect others, but not oneself.
Had it not been for mundane restrictions, she could have unraveled Jiang Jinghuan’s entire life story in mere minutes, even exploring aspects of his past and future reincarnations.
Why would she bother wasting time sitting here with him now?
“You, you, you!”
Jiang Jinghuan was terrified to the point of stammering. No matter how hard he racked his brain, he could not figure out how Shen Yu had learned his name.
After all, in his memories, aside from his father, there was not a second person who had ever called his name, or rather, who even knew his name.
Such a realization stirred a wave of panic within him. Yet no matter how he questioned her, Shen Yu maintained that same casual, nonchalant expression.
Occasionally, she swept a faint glance over him.
Anxiety welled up inside Jiang Jinghuan’s heart.
His tone involuntarily took on a sharp edge.
“Shen Yu! I know what you want. I can help you.”
The youth’s cultivation was ultimately far too shallow; compared to Shen Yu’s composure, he lost the upper hand the moment he spoke. He weakened in momentum by three parts, ensuring he would hold no advantage in the subsequent negotiation.
“But you have to tell me how you knew my name!”
His name?
Was it that important to him?
A flash of contemplation crossed Shen Yu’s eyes, though it lasted only a moment.
At any rate, it didn’t matter to her.
Even so, she still set down the cup, the crisp sound of contact with the table ringing out.
It caused one’s heart to tremble for no reason.
Jiang Jinghuan involuntarily stiffened his body, looking somewhat unnatural.
“I know you are very powerful, but we can cooperate.”
The hostility that had previously tainted his voice gradually grew weak, becoming increasingly lacking in conviction.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Shen Yu’s curled fingers rhythmically tapped against the tabletop.
Her gaze carried a playful amusement, laced with a hint of mockery, looking at him as if he were a fool.
The Great Xia realm possessed capable and extraordinary individuals; she had naturally felt this deeply on the day of her grand wedding.
Yet if all extraordinary individuals were fools like this!
Hah!
The disdain in Shen Yu’s eyes almost solidified, and the coldness within them resembled frozen ice.
“Little kid, go tell your elders to come talk to me.”
With that, she stood up, preparing to leave.
A hint of listless boredom accompanied her movements.
She had thought it might be some major fish!
A complete waste of time.
She never expected it to be just a snot-nosed little brat who was still wet behind the ears.
As Shen Yu thought this, a biting coldness flashed in her eyes. Suddenly, she felt a heavy weight on her left leg. Looking down, she saw that it was an earth-style spell.
A bizarrely shaped pile of dirt had buried her legs.
Shen Yu suddenly found it somewhat amusing.
It was partly nostalgia for such a scene, and partly helplessness at the sight.
Her amusement was misinterpreted by Jiang Jinghuan as praise, causing him to instantly lift his head proudly and declare:
“How is that! Can you talk to me now?”
Hearing that smug tone, Shen Yu knew he had completely misunderstood her intentions.
Putting aside everything else, what was there to be proud of about a pile of dirt as ugly as this?
Yet she did not voice it out loud.
She merely twitched her brow.
The pile of dirt on her left leg crumbled away like mud that could not support a wall, scattering in every direction.
It fell into pieces all over the ground.
Not even a speck of dust remained on her brocade robe.
Yet Shen Yu still felt that it had been dirtied and defiled.
She frowned, her face displaying displeasure.
Her gaze carried a trace of lingering grievance, and her patience had worn quite thin.
“What on earth are you trying to do?”
Things having reached this point, Jiang Jinghuan no longer intended to conceal his objective. Although it differed somewhat from his original plan, the immortal arts he had witnessed just moments ago had clearly restored his immense self-confidence.
“I want to become an immortal!”
Become an immortal?!
Hah! A greenhorn wanting to become an immortal too? He must be out of his mind!
It was not that Shen Yu looked down on him, but even in the peak eras of immortal cultivation, not everyone dared claim they wanted to become an immortal.
It was simply too difficult. Even though nearly a hundred people achieved the Dao and became immortals every year, that still could not change the fact of its sheer difficulty.
The requirements for becoming an immortal were exceptionally harsh.
Natural talent served merely as a stepping stone.
Beyond talent came hard work, fortuitous encounters, karmic luck, and the most crucial element of all: merit!
Merit was your future ladder to immortality!
The more profound your merit, the sturdier the condensation of your immortal ladder, and the greater your hope of achieving immortality.
The ladder to immortality possessed ninety thousand steps. One had to walk it on foot through lightning tribulations, seas of fire, and the illusions of the three lives.
A lightning strike every nine steps, a thousand-tier sea of fire, thirty-one thousand illusions.
Fierce winds and torrential rain, the judgment of cause and effect.
One hundred people becoming immortals, was that many?
Yet every single day, fully ten thousand people stepped onto the ladder to immortality!
Becoming an immortal, how could it be an easy feat?
A prosperous era was merely the prosperous era of heaven’s favorites.
Shen Yu’s expression was unfathomable, her gaze shifting between deep shadows and bright clarity.
In the end, she merely glanced at him.
Then, she walked right up to him.
Her forceful punch moved like the wind, too fast for him to react, or rather, completely impossible to perceive in time.
Jiang Jinghuan was sent flying like a kite with a snapped string.
It looked heavy; it looked painful. Yet peculiarly, he did not fly far, at least from the surface, he merely stumbled back a few steps.
Only Jiang Jinghuan knew just how far he had actually flown back just then.
A master of space mastery!
Did people like that really exist?
They truly did exist!
Only today did he genuinely experience the power of legendary immortal cultivators.
Those things that only appeared in clan registries and library archives.
An immortal cultivator possessing peerless talent.
Jiang Jinghuan’s eyes burned with fiery intensity.
He had been meticulously nurtured by his clan members since childhood. He did not understand what spiritual roots, spiritual veins, or dao bodies were, but he knew that he had to become an immortal cultivator. Everyone kept telling him that he was the hope of the Jiang family.
An immortal cultivator, this was no myth, nor was it some wishful daydream of the ancestors!
This truly existed!
“Thud!”
Jiang Jinghuan abruptly dropped to his knees.
In truth, he hadn’t understood at first why the ancestor had told him to keep following Shen Yu, this pitiful substitute who had replaced Shen Lan.
He remembered the ancestor saying:
“She is your fortuitous encounter! Seize her, grasp hold of her! The Jiang family depends entirely on you.”
The expectations of the ancestor, the expectations of his clan members, the expectations of his father.
He had to grasp hold of her.
Literally grasp hold.
Shen Yu wore a dark look on her face as she stared at Jiang Jinghuan, who was trembling all over while hugging her leg, looking as though he wanted to take a couple of bites out of her.
Are you mutating or something?!
Get away from me!
She moved her leg, hm, completely motionless! Honestly, it was much sturdier than his third-rate spell.
“You…”
“I beg you to take me as your disciple!”
Before Shen Yu could finish, Jiang Jinghuan blurted out with an impassioned voice.
Having her words interrupted, she instantly lost the thread of what she wanted to say.
Yet Jiang Jinghuan remained oblivious, still babbling away there.
“I beg you, take me as your disciple! I can do many things for you.”
“Such as?”
“I can be a beast of burden for you.”
Shen Yu raised a brow, then lowered her eyelids and spoke in a casual, nonchalant tone.
“I have the Grand Princess.”
Jiang Jinghuan knitted his brows.
“I can give you lots and lots of money.”
“I have the Grand Princess.”
“I can give you power and status to reach high officials and nobles.”
“I have the Grand Princess.”
“I can help you teach the Shen family a lesson.”
“I have the Grand Princess.”
“I can help you find Shen Lan.”
“I have the Grand Princess.”
Jiang Jinghuan grew anxious. Why was she completely impervious to reason and bribes!
If he could, he really wanted to hogtie Shen Yu right now and drag her back to the Jiang family ancestral grounds.
Yet thinking back to the move Shen Yu had just displayed, he figured that if he really hauled Shen Yu back bound up like that, his family’s ancestral grounds would probably acquire a few hundred extra gravestones by the very next day.
He shrank his neck back. Grand princess, grand princess, all she knows is the grand princess!
She was a woman herself; why on earth kept harping on about the grand princess like that!
With that thought, a sudden flash of inspiration struck Jiang Jinghuan’s little brain.
Noticing that Jiang Jinghuan had suddenly fallen silent, Shen Yu was in no particular hurry.
She wanted to see what other tricks Jiang Jinghuan could pull out of his sleeve.
Thinking this, Shen Yu subconsciously wanted to walk over to the chair and sit down, but her leg was welded into Jiang Jinghuan’s embrace and couldn’t budge an inch.
Lowering her head, she happened to meet Jiang Jinghuan’s pair of brightly sparkling eyes.
Then she heard:
“I can help you pursue the Grand Princess!”