Even as the Master of the Earthly Realm spoke these words, there was not a single trace of vigilance on his face. Seeing that immortal tea was being kept warm on a small side table nearby, he reached out, poured a cup, and handed it to the Little Young Master.
The Little Young Master took a small sip of the immortal tea from the rim of the cup, then stuffed the tea cup right back into the Master of the Earthly Realm’s hand, turning his head away as he said: “What ability does this Young Master possess to trap the esteemed Master of the Earthly Realm?”
The Master of the Earthly Realm chuckled softly in a low voice: “If it is Chushi, you need only say the word.” Saying so, he lowered his head, drained the immortal tea in the cup in one gulp, and casually set the tea cup back onto the small side table.
The Little Young Master paused. Every time this man called him by his given name like this, for some unknown reason, a trace of panic would always rise in his heart. He couldn’t help pursing his lips slightly, unable to stop himself from glaring at the man: “Stop talking with slick-tongued banter; this punishment is something you cannot escape no matter what!”
The Master of the Earthly Realm chuckled softly in a low tone and responded: “I said so outside the Realm Gate earlier—this Master is completely at the Little Young Master’s disposal.”
Hearing this, the Little Young Master’s eyes turned bright and clear. Reaching out, he retrieved a small, dark-colored box from his storage bracelet, yet did not open it.
The Master of the Earthly Realm’s gaze rested on the small, dark-colored box, and he asked: “Crafted from dark jade—what item has Chushi placed inside the box?”
In the Heavenly Realm, there was the Heavenly Jade Pool; the water sources of the world originated from Heavenly Jade, passing through the rivers and streams of the Immortal Realm to enter the lakes and seas of the human realm. The Heavenly Jade Pool birthed Heavenly Jade, and the Heavenly Jade contained within it the purest immortal qi, which was of immense benefit to immortals.
In the Earthly Realm, there was also an immortal pool named the Dark Jade Pool. However, there was no water in the Dark Jade Pool; instead, it was filled with spiritual energy. The pure energy of the world originated from dark jade, entering all places in the human realm. The Dark Jade Pool birthed dark jade; dark jade contained the purest clear energy of Heaven and Earth and could block out turbid energy. If made into a vessel, it could keep whatever was held inside in its initial state—neither decaying nor spoiling, with the contained immortal qi never dispersing.
Heavenly jade was extraordinarily rare, and dark jade was the exact same. Since the Little Young Master used a dark jade box to hold it, whatever was held inside was bound to be no ordinary item.
Hearing this, the Little Young Master did not answer. Instead, he confirmed with the Master of the Earthly Realm once more: “You said I could dispose of you as I wish—you are not allowed to go back on your word!”
The Master of the Earthly Realm nodded with a smile: “I certainly will not regret it.”
Only after hearing this did the Little Young Master put his mind entirely at ease. He glanced at the Master of the Earthly Realm, then lowered his head slightly. With his fingertips containing seven-colored auspicious qi, he gently and slowly flipped open the box lid, using the seven-colored auspicious qi to envelop and remove the item inside the dark jade box.
Within these three realms, there were few items that the Master of the Earthly Realm was unaware of. Yet upon seeing clearly the item in the Little Young Master’s hand, the Master of the Earthly Realm was slightly startled. Leaning his body slightly forward, after confirming it again and again, he knitted his brows slightly, his face dimming as he opened his mouth: “Where did you get this item from?”
The Little Young Master’s full attention was placed entirely on the item in his hand, so he failed to notice the shift in emotion of the person before him. Hearing the question, he raised his brows, speaking with a touch of smug triumph: “Don’t you worry about where I got it from; your punishment today is to consume one and refine it.”
The Master of the Earthly Realm looked at him in silence, only opening his mouth slowly after a short while: “Chushi, this is the fruit of the Xuanchu Tree.”
The Little Young Master raised his head: “This Young Master naturally knows what this item is. Let me tell you—” The triumphant words that were originally going to spill out smoothly came to a screeching halt the moment his eyes met those of the person before him. Only now did our noble and precious Little Young Master belatedly realize: did the person before him seem to be angry?
The Master of the Earthly Realm looked at the young boy before him, speaking in a deep voice only after a long moment: “Chushi, you should know better than I do—there is no Xuanchu Fruit in this world.”
The Little Young Master felt a pang of guilt in his heart, yet still wanted to struggle and flutter a bit: “How can there not be? Since there is a Xuanchu Tree, then there can be Xuanchu Fruit, and what’s more, even a Xuanchu Flower wouldn’t be strange!”
With an unhappy expression, the Master of the Earthly Realm suddenly reached out, placing the item in the Little Young Master’s hand back into the dark jade box. Only after ensuring the box lid was tightly sealed did he say in a deep voice: “Do not waste your auspicious qi for nothing.”
The Little Young Master was taken aback, only then sensing that something was slightly off with the emotion of the person before him. Pausing, he offered an explanation with slight hesitation: “I only used a tiny, tiny bit…” It was just that before he even finished speaking, he himself lost his confidence first.
The Master of the Earthly Realm let out a soft sigh, reaching out to pull the person over to sit beside him. Suppressing the flare of anger in his heart, he said in a low voice: “The only two Xuanchu Trees in this world—one has grown in the Heavenly Realm for tens of millions of years, and one has stood in the Earthly Realm for tens of millions of years. Yet you and I both know that the two are actually two bodies of a single tree, originally being one and the same tree. The Xuanchu Tree takes one hundred thousand years to bloom, one hundred thousand years to bear fruit, and one hundred thousand years to mature, yielding twin fruits from a single tree. I was merely away for three hundred years; as I recall, three hundred years ago, wasn’t the Xuanchu Tree barely sprouting a single flower bud?”
Three hundred years might sound somewhat long, but for the Xuanchu Tree, it wasn’t even enough to produce a single blooming flower, let alone bearing fruit and maturing.
The Little Young Master lowered his head and listened silently, yet the fingertips holding the dark jade box unconsciously exerted force, squeezing so hard that his fingertips turned pale.
Seeing this, the Master of the Earthly Realm stopped talking, reaching out to move the dark jade box away from his hand. His long fingers with thin calluses slowly rubbed open the Little Young Master’s curled knuckles, sighing softly: “Speak—how long did it take you, using the seven-colored auspicious qi to force the growth of the Xuanchu Tree?”
The Little Young Master’s fingertips trembled slightly as his fingers were held and rubbed by the Master of the Earthly Realm. Suddenly feeling a bit of an itch in his throat, he couldn’t help clearing his throat before suppressing his voice to an extremely low volume: “Eight or nine days, maybe—not even ten days.”
A Xuanchu Tree that required three hundred thousand years to bloom, bear fruit, and mature had taken barely ten-odd days to bear fruit and mature in the Little Young Master’s hands. Aside from the seven-colored auspicious qi left to its child by Heaven and Earth, nothing else could accomplish this. This point naturally couldn’t be hidden, so the Little Young Master answered candidly. Yet after thinking about it, he hastily added again: “I grew it for a long time; it was only in the final eight or nine days that I used a tiny bit of auspicious qi.”
The Little Young Master growing the Xuanchu Tree was naturally not a matter of a day or two. This Xuanchu Tree of his was grown from a seed he had pestered the Master of the Heavenly Realm to give him; it was said that this single seed was left behind from the very beginning when Heaven and Earth created the world. One of those seeds took root upon falling to the ground and subsequently split into two, becoming that single-body twin-stemmed Xuanchu Tree in the Heavenly and Earthly Realms today, while the remaining other seed had been kept by the Master of the Heavenly Realm all along. Since it was originally an item of Heaven and Earth, and the Little Young Master was the Child of Heaven and Earth, the Master of the Heavenly Realm naturally gave it to him when he asked for it.
After obtaining the seed, the Little Young Master shut his doors to ponder over it for over a month, yet was completely at a loss. Having tried many methods, none could make the seed sprout. Later, under an extremely accidental circumstance, he happened to sweep a tiny bit of seven-colored auspicious qi over the seed. He hadn’t paid attention at first, yet afterward, the tip of a sprout actually popped out from the Xuanchu Tree seed! Afterward, the Little Young Master tried tapping a tiny bit more auspicious qi onto the Xuanchu Tree seed, only to see the tiny sprout shoot up higher in a mere instant. Only then did the Little Young Master learn that auspicious qi could force the growth of the Xuanchu Tree.
When the Master of the Heavenly Realm gave the Xuanchu Tree to the Little Young Master, he merely thought he was taking it to play with, never suspecting that the Little Young Master wanted to plant it. It didn’t matter when the seed hadn’t sprouted before, but now that it had sprouted, continuing to grow it in Yunxiang Palace made it hard to guarantee that the Master of the Heavenly Realm wouldn’t notice something amiss. Therefore, the Little Young Master quietly transplanted the Xuanchu Tree sapling into the Immortal Plant Garden, thinking that the numerous immortal plants in the Immortal Plant Garden could conceal the aura of the Xuanchu Tree.
The Master of the Heavenly Realm indeed hadn’t noticed, yet it was inadvertently discovered by Chang Kuan, the former manager immortal official of the Immortal Plant Garden. Although Chang Kuan couldn’t tell that the sapling was the Xuanchu Tree, he knew it was definitely no ordinary item, immediately giving rise to greed and wanting to steal the Xuanchu Tree sapling away.
However, knowing that he couldn’t guard by the side of the Xuanchu Tree at all times, the Little Young Master had set layers upon layers of array barriers around the Xuanchu Tree; the moment Chang Kuan approached the vicinity of the Xuanchu Tree, the Little Young Master already knew. Had he departed immediately, it would have been fine, but Chang Kuan didn’t depart; instead, he wanted to break the barriers to steal the Xuanchu Tree sapling. As such, the Little Young Master was naturally displeased, catching Chang Kuan in two or three moves. Afterward, he went to investigate Chang Kuan’s usual actions carefully, never expecting to uncover quite a lot. Thus came the subsequent incident where Chang Kuan, the manager immortal official of the Winter Plant Garden, was dismissed, leaving the Immortal Plant Garden short-handed.
Afterward, pretending to be an ordinary immortal official, the Little Young Master occupied an immortal official slot in the Immortal Plant Garden. Borrowing the cover of the immortal plants in the Immortal Plant Garden, he channeled a tiny bit of seven-colored auspicious qi to the Xuanchu Tree sapling every day, surprisingly never attracting the Master of the Heavenly Realm’s attention all along.
If one truly calculated it, the seven-colored auspicious qi the Little Young Master channeled to the Xuanchu Tree during the earlier days wasn’t much—according to the Little Young Master’s words, it was merely a bit leaking from his fingertips. However, the auspicious qi expended on the day he forced the fruits to mature was more than a hundred times that of the previous days; after all, when he obtained the two Xuanchu Tree fruits, he had genuinely felt a trace of exhaustion.
However, the Little Young Master naturally wouldn’t confess this point unprompted. Therefore, when the Master of the Earthly Realm went on to ask him if he was tired, the Little Young Master shook his head with absolute righteous indignation: “I was not. I planted the Xuanchu Tree in the Immortal Plant Garden; with the spiritual energy in the Immortal Plant Garden nourishing it, channeling just a tiny bit of auspicious qi daily was enough for its growth.” As he spoke, he extended his pinky finger to measure out a tiny segment the size of a fingernail before the Master of the Earthly Realm.
The Master of the Earthly Realm naturally didn’t believe it. However, having not returned to the Immortal Realm to take care of the Little Young Master for three hundred years, he was the one in the wrong first; at this point, it wasn’t good to be overly strict, so in the end, he could only close his eyes and accept the Little Young Master’s nonsense.
“Chushi, this time I shall not dwell on it with you, but let this be no precedent.”
Hearing this, the Little Young Master knew he had passed this hurdle, unable to stop his lips from curving into a bright smile as he nodded: “Naturally, let this be no precedent!”
The Master of the Earthly Realm let out a soft sigh, wanting to say something more, but dropping it altogether upon bumping into the Little Young Master’s smiling face, turning instead to ask: “What do you need this Xuanchu Fruit for?”
Hearing this, the Little Young Master hastily reached out to retrieve the dark jade box anew, carefully opening the box lid. Enveloping seven-colored auspicious qi in his hand, he delivered one of the Xuanchu Fruits to the Master of the Earthly Realm’s lips, saying: “Go on, consume and refine it.”
The Master of the Earthly Realm’s gaze swept lightly past his fingertips, yet saying no more, he directly opened his mouth to consume the Xuanchu Fruit, subsequently circulating the divine power within his body to refine it.
While the Master of the Earthly Realm was refining it, the Little Young Master watched fixedly off to the side. The moment the Master of the Earthly Realm opened his eyes, he bumped right into a pair of pale gold pupils, unable to help bursting into laughter: “Why is the Little Young Master staring like this? Could it be you’re afraid this Master will cheat?”
Seeing that he had finished refining it, the Little Young Master hastily reached out to clasp the Master of the Earthly Realm’s pulse gate to examine it. Only after confirming that the Xuanchu Fruit had indeed been refined did he say: “The fruit is rare and precious; this Young Master must naturally protect the Realm Master.”
The Master of the Earthly Realm couldn’t help chuckling: “Mm, then many thanks to the Little Young Master.”
The Little Young Master nodded solemnly: “No need to be polite; the Realm Master need only protect this Young Master in return.” Saying so, he retrieved the other Xuanchu Fruit and swallowed it himself.
His movement was quite fast; by the time the Master of the Earthly Realm wanted to stop him, it was already too late. Seeing that the Little Young Master had already begun refining it, he had no choice but to wait quietly off to the side to carefully protect him, his brows tightly knitted and a deep anger surging in his heart.