After using the Heavenly Dominion Sword twice in a row to unleash power far beyond his limits, Qin Chuan’s entire body weakened instantly. His cheeks sank, his vitality dried up, his spiritual energy was completely depleted, and he fell from the air.
Since Qin Chuan had handled the crisis on his own, Shen Qingyuan didn’t intervene further. More importantly, these two strikes hadn’t damaged his foundation, so she had no reason to interfere.
“This little Secret Realm is too low-grade, it’s about to collapse. But Chuan’er is still in the middle of his trial—it can’t collapse yet.” Shen Qingyuan made a move to temporarily stabilize the Secret Realm. If it wanted to collapse, it would have to wait until her Chuan’er was done. Under her control, the Secret Realm was stabilized for the time being.
Since she had nothing else to do now, she decided to stay in the Secret Realm to protect Qin Chuan and keep the realm steady so he could focus on his trial.
With a thud, the sound of Qin Chuan landing came, snapping Jin Pang out of his daze. The mouthful of blood he had been about to spit out was swallowed back down, and he scrambled over to Qin Chuan’s side.
“Junior Brother Qin, you okay? You look all weak and pale. You didn’t run into some seductive fox spirit in a dream, did you? I swear I saw you smirking just now. Don’t tell me you offered yourself up to a vixen to save me?” Jin Pang couldn’t shut his mouth even while checking on Qin Chuan, reaching out to poke at his sunken cheeks.
He even tried to grope Qin Chuan further, but the weakened Qin Chuan raised a hand to stop him. “Don’t touch me. You’re not in much better shape than I am. Let’s get moving. I’ve got no strength left to fight. If a wolf pack catches up, we’ll both become food.”
“Oh, right, right—let’s go!” Jin Pang was in slightly better shape and could still move. He stuffed the corpses of the two Pseudo-Nascent Soul Realm wolf demons into his storage ring, slung Qin Chuan onto his back, and dashed away at full speed.
As he ran, his mouth didn’t rest. “Junior Brother Qin, you look really drained. Want a pill from Senior Brother to recharge? I’ve got a special recipe—guaranteed to make you feel like a dragon in the bedroom, fearless even against fox spirits.”
Qin Chuan, who was in the middle of swallowing a recovery pill, paused. As a young man full of vitality, how could he tolerate being doubted like that? He firmly rejected him, “Thanks for the offer, Senior Brother Jin, but I’m perfectly capable. I don’t need those kinds of pills.”
“Fine, fine, just trying to help since you look like you’re about to keel over. Here, take this Vitality Pill. It’ll help restore your blood and energy.” Jin Pang handed him a pill.
“I won’t be polite then. I’ll pay you spirit stones.” Qin Chuan didn’t hesitate. In his current condition, he desperately needed to replenish his vitality.
“Aiyah, don’t worry about it. That pill’s worthless—I can whip those up anytime. Consider it a gift,” Jin Pang said casually.
As Qin Chuan refined the Vitality Pill, he sighed at how wealthy alchemy cultivators were. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any talent for it himself.
Then he recalled Jin Pang’s earlier joke about the fox spirit. He had indeed just been entangled with one. His Master was even more of a fox than a real one—so seductive it made his heart itch. Follow the newest chapters on NovelPing.
He thought, “Master was willing to do something that intimate with me. Could it mean she…”
“No, no, no! Master must’ve done that to save me. Sigh, one of life’s biggest illusions—thinking she likes me. Better focus on healing first.”
Qin Chuan immediately dismissed the thoughts and focused entirely on his recovery.
Later, when he thought back on this moment, he would wish he could slap his past self. If he’d just had a little more confidence and confessed to Shen Qingyuan back then, his status would’ve risen long ago.
During the journey, Qin Chuan focused on refining pills to recover his spiritual energy and vitality, while Jin Pang, nearly at his limit, decided to conserve strength and stop talking. The two fell silent.
As for the so-called fox spirit, Shen Qingyuan quietly followed behind them. The more she looked at Jin Pang, the more annoyed she became. She made up her mind to find a chance to remind Qin Chuan not to listen to his friend’s nonsense or be easily seduced by any fox spirit. Proper cultivation was the right path.
After running for fifteen minutes, Jin Pang truly couldn’t go on. He happened to find a long-abandoned cave and carried Qin Chuan inside. Clutching his chest, he said, “We’re alive…”
Qin Chuan tossed the Heavenly Origin Pill Jin Pang had given him earlier back. “Senior Brother Jin, here’s your Heavenly Origin Pill. I already refined another one on your back. You rest first—I’ll set up a few arrays.”
“Alright.” Jin Pang didn’t argue. He swallowed a Heavenly Origin Pill and sat cross-legged to begin refining it.
Qin Chuan first set up a warning array outside—anyone who approached would trigger it. Then he layered it with a defensive array.
Qin Chuan’s cautious side was fully activated. After half an hour, all the arrays were in place. Even a Core Formation Realm cultivator would suffer trying to break through. Only then did he clap the dust off his hands and return to the cave.
As he sat down, another thought struck him—each time he set up a stronger array, it took too much time. If he’d had assistance from arrays earlier, he might not have beaten the Pseudo-Nascent Soul Realm wolves, but he definitely could’ve escaped.
“I’ll research this when I get back. Maybe I can create prefabricated arrays? If people can make ready-made meals, why can’t I make ready-made arrays? Sounds reasonable. Very reasonable.”
“But the most important thing now is healing. Then I’ll deal with Xie An and Gu Xiran. Everything else can wait.” After muttering to himself, Qin Chuan took out more pills to restore his vitality and began refining.
Watching Qin Chuan stacking arrays upon arrays, Shen Qingyuan’s expression softened as memories surfaced. “Chuan’er really is cautious.”
She remembered his first time out for training. Worried for him, she had followed secretly. When Qin Chuan was tricked into joining a group of cultivators, she didn’t stop it. She wanted him to suffer a little and learn a lesson.
But the outcome surprised her. Qin Chuan had been acting the whole time. The so-called teammates who tried to scam him ended up getting played and killed by him.
After the killings, even though his hands trembled, he calmly looted the corpses. That’s when she realized her disciple had been pretending to be innocent all along.
She had seen Qin Chuan kill without hesitation, ambush others for their belongings, and still turn around to save strangers. She had seen him plot step by step, seize resources with caution, cultivate tirelessly…
Watching him over time, Shen Qingyuan became increasingly curious about this disciple she had raised—and wanted to understand him more.
From then on, every time Qin Chuan went out to train, she secretly followed. At some point, she started developing desires she shouldn’t have. Though she always suppressed them, she had to work hard to hide them when she faced Qin Chuan directly.
She kept telling herself, “Chuan’er is just my disciple,” and convinced herself of it—for now.
As for those two incidents that shouldn’t have happened… she justified them by saying it was to save Qin Chuan. Besides, it was just a soul fragment, not her real body, so it didn’t really count…
She and Qin Chuan were still master and disciple. A pure and innocent master-disciple pair…