Hearing Mu Yuhan’s words, Mu Li shook her head and answered crisply, “No.”
Her attitude in admitting fault was good, her expression calm, showing no sign of being affected by the annulment.
Mu Yuhan was satisfied, his face softening. “Mm. Focus on cultivation. Love and marriage are trivial matters—don’t let them delay your training.”
Mu Yucheng had sat there half the day without learning anything useful. He didn’t want to stay and listen to Mu Yuhan lecture his daughter, so he slapped his thigh and stood up. “You two have things to talk about. I’ll be going.” Without waiting for a response, he strode out.
Mu Li frowned slightly at his departing back. Her second uncle’s cultivation wasn’t high, yet he carried himself arrogantly, showing little respect for Mu Yuhan, the family head. Was there some story behind this?
Mu Yuhan didn’t care about his brother’s attitude. Worried it might affect Mu Li, he spoke gently: “Don’t mind your second uncle. He thinks his talent is poor, so he avoids effort and always looks for shortcuts.”
“Now he sees the Xuanyuan clan as powerful and fears missing his chance to curry favor. If Xuanyuan hadn’t rejected his daughter Mu Tong, I suspect he’d have bundled her up and delivered her himself.”
Mu Tong was Mu Yucheng’s daughter—the pink-clad girl who had stopped Mu Li a few days ago.
“Just focus on cultivation. Strength is the foundation of survival in this world. Once you form your core and advance to Nascent Soul, perhaps the Xuanyuan clan will be the ones trying to curry favor with us.”
As if worried he’d put too much pressure on her, Mu Yuhan quickly added: “Of course, cultivation can’t be rushed. Let things progress naturally. Even if you advance slowly, a solid foundation will make future breakthroughs steadier.”
Mu Li thought of her modern parents—well-off but always busy, rarely caring about her except to ask about exam results. Praise if she did well, scolding if she did poorly.
This father before her truly cherished his daughter. Mu Li couldn’t help but feel moved. She nodded. “Mm, I understand. Don’t worry.”
Back at her residence, Mu Li didn’t rush into alchemy. She first completed her daily cultivation, then turned to other tasks. She counted her purchased herbs and her dwindling supply of spirit stones, calculating how many pills she needed to refine to break even.
“Ah, I forgot to ask the shopkeeper about the prices of higher-grade pills.” She smacked her forehead, annoyed at her oversight.
“Forget it. I’ll ask once I’ve refined some higher-grade ones. Anyway, I can’t leave the estate this month, and the Mu family won’t let me go hungry. No need to rush money-making.”
Mu Yuhan was right—strength was the foundation. If she reached higher levels, even fleeing for her life would be easier.
She thought idly, then realized she had plenty to keep busy. “Alright—cultivation in the morning, reading in the library in the afternoon, alchemy at night!”
She followed her plan diligently, and life felt quite fulfilling. But after a few days, she ran into a small problem. Her residence had been robbed. Strangely, the thief only stole her freshly refined low-grade pills, ignoring other valuables.
The first time she noticed a missing pill, Mu Li doubted her near-perfect memory. She always bottled pills once she had enough for a full container, leaving the extras scattered on the table until she could fill another. That day, she had only a few left—so when one disappeared, it was obvious.
Maybe it had rolled into a corner? She gave herself that excuse. But when three pills vanished the next day, and five the day after, she could no longer deny it. She resolved to catch the thief.
Since she hadn’t told anyone in the Mu family about her alchemy, she couldn’t alert them about the theft either.
On the fourth day, she deliberately left pills on the table, pretended to go to the library, and hid in a spot where she could watch her door. She waited half the day, but no one entered. When she returned, half the pills were gone.
“This thief is getting greedy!” Mu Li fumed. “But this is strange… could it be a high-level cultivator? Impossible—these pills are only useful for Qi-Training stage.”
Her alchemy was improving daily, but she could still only refine pills for the Qi-Training stage. She wanted to try Foundation-Building pills, but the Mu family’s library had few recipes, and she lacked the necessary herbs.
Unwilling to give up, she tried a new method on the fifth day. She pretended to leave, but actually hid inside her room, suppressing her aura. Her patience was nearly exhausted when the thief finally appeared.
The thief was tiny—barely the size of Mu Li’s palm—a little mouse. Its fur was gray all over except for a patch of pure white on its belly. Round ears, chubby cheeks, and shiny black eyes stared at her pitifully. It was rather cute.
Mu Li turned it over twice, muttering, “Looks like a hamster. But it’s eaten so many pills without exploding. Could it be a spirit beast?”
In the cultivation world, many spirit beasts awakened intelligence. Some were contracted as pets, others trained into powerful allies for battle. Many climbed ranks just like cultivators, eventually becoming beings even great cultivators couldn’t defeat.
Unfortunately, Mu Li didn’t know how to identify spirit beasts. She’d only skimmed a couple of books about rare ones—none mentioned mice.
The little mouse lay in her palm. After a long pause, seeing she hadn’t acted, it cautiously spat out a pill.
Mu Li shivered. Eat it, then spit it back out—how disgusting.
Soon, the mouse spat out a second pill, then a third. The fourth time, however, it produced not a pill but a spirit herb—one far too large to have fit in its mouth.
Mu Li was astonished. She poked its chubby cheek in wonder. The mouse, unwilling to stop, kept spitting out more—pills, herbs, spirit stones, and all sorts of strange odds and ends.