Spirit Stone

"Why did they start fighting?" On a nearby residential building, Red King was peeping with a telescope at the rooftop of No. 2 High's teaching building. Earlier, Red King had thought Chu Xiaoyao had spotted him and had gotten a bad fright. Fortunately the Professor had stayed calm, assessed the situation, and said Red King was only scaring himself. If Chu Xiaoyao had really discovered him, the one talking now would not be Red King, but Chu Xiaoyao. After taking two fast-acting heart-rescue pills, Red King felt the Professor made sense. Even if he had only been scaring himself, it was still a warning. Leaning out half his body before and watching Chu Xiaoyao through the telescope had been far too obvious. A parapet ran around the roof of the residential building. Red King used his ability to drill a hole, shoved the telescope in, and lay flat on the ground to watch, like a sniper. "She can fight that female ghost, so it seems Su Tingxue is a cultivator too. Have we cleared up her identity?" Nianshi opened his report. "We have. We staked out the area near her home for two days, disguised ourselves as scavengers, and went through their household trash for two days. We found that some of Su Tingxue's parcels were sent from Mount Longhu." "Following that lead, we found she is the youngest registered Celestial Master of Mount Longhu, qualified to represent Mount Longhu in descending the mountain to exorcise spirits. Her cultivation attainment is late Qi Refinement, and she is quite well known among the younger generation." "Late Qi Refinement at her age? Among immortal cultivators, that counts as talent. No wonder she could become a registered Celestial Master of Mount Longhu." Red King's comment was lukewarm. The Organization had always regarded Mount Kunlun and several other major powers as great enemies of its return to Huaxia, and had investigated the internal affairs of those powers very thoroughly. "The female ghost poked Su Tingxue on the forehead and Su Tingxue knelt? Is she that cowardly?" In the time it took Red King to turn his head, the fight was over. He hadn't even seen the process. "But how did they start fighting?" Red King still couldn't figure it out. A Celestial Master fighting a vengeful ghost was normal, but the vengeful ghost stopping after a single touch was clearly a problem. Not to mention that Zhou You and Natural Disaster had sat together watching the fight. "I have a guess," Lishi said in a muffled voice. "Let's hear it." "After Natural Disaster left the Organization, she met Zhou You, and they have been together ever since. Their relationship needs no further explanation." "Zhou You toys with Su Tingxue's feelings, and he also forced Su Tingxue to kneel. Those two are clearly very close as well." "Out of jealousy, Natural Disaster wanted to teach Su Tingxue a lesson, but she wasn't willing to fall out with Zhou You, so she sent the female ghost she keeps to make a move and give Su Tingxue a taste of what was coming." Red King thought it over and felt Lishi's analysis made a great deal of sense. He hadn't expected this big fellow, who looked rough and burly, to actually have quite a brain. "Seen this way, Zhou You's place in Natural Disaster's heart is even heavier than we originally imagined." Lishi did not claim the credit and knew when to advance and when to withdraw. "It wasn't entirely my doing. Nianshi put in work too. He was mainly responsible for gathering intelligence." Nianshi wore a modest smile. "Zhou You has a classmate named Wei Hang, president of the school newspaper club. The relationship between Zhou You and Su Tingxue was something he spread around." "After I hypnotized him, I got quite a bit of intelligence on Zhou You and Su Tingxue. The source is very reliable." Red King patted both of them on the shoulder. He hadn't expected that these two did more than rob tombs and translate ancient texts; they were quite capable at gathering intelligence as well. "Good analysis. Go write an analysis report on the relationship between Zhou You and Natural Disaster. I'll take it back for the Professor to see." "No need for me to say anything about the font and format. Follow official standards. It's a good habit the Professor picked up while studying in Huaxia, and he takes it very seriously." Speaking of the female ghost, Red King suddenly remembered the matter of Zhenyue Ghost King. The Professor had found traces of Zhenyue Ghost King among a pile of ancient scrolls. The scrolls recorded that Zhenyue Ghost King rose to fame during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, rose rapidly amid the chaos of war, and proclaimed himself king, only to be defeated later by White Rainbow Dao Lord, the Number One Under Heaven of that time. White Rainbow Dao Lord was, in the records, the last master of the Human Dao supreme treasure. "Speaking of which, where did Zhenyue Ghost King go? Was he finished off by Natural Disaster?" ... "So this is a spirit stone." Back in the classroom, Zhou You kept turning the spirit stone over in his hands. It was heavy, solid, and full of texture, and he could feel vigorous spiritual power within it. It would be of great benefit to cultivation. Nuomi circled the spirit stone. Even now she still thought it was spoils she had won by defeating Su Tingxue. Although Zhou You explained again and again that he had bought it from Su Tingxue in advance, Nuomi still didn't believe him. 'Sect Master, you don't have to save face for that damn rice-thrower.' The reason was simple. The sect master's little treasury only had fifty yuan. How could he possibly afford something that looked this expensive? But saying that would wound the sect master's pride too much, so she didn't say it aloud. Nuomi was rather pleased with her own high emotional intelligence. Chu Xiaoyao glanced at the spirit stone, utterly uninterested. "Don't you want to look?" Zhou You held the spirit stone out to Chu Xiaoyao. He had thought she would take it and examine it at the first opportunity. "Just a spirit stone. This seat has looked at them until this seat is sick of them." Chu Xiaoyao made it clear that as the Carefree Empress, what hadn't she seen? A mere spirit stone was something she had long since played with and discarded. "This seat has a bed carved from an entire supreme-grade spirit stone. This seat sleeps on it every day. Even a corner knocked off that bed is worth more than the spirit stone in your hand." "A bed carved from spirit stone—doesn't it hurt to lie on?" Zhou You was puzzled. "...Look at you. You never grasp the point. No wonder your reading-comprehension scores in Chinese never go up." Zhou You had no way to refute her. In every other subject Chu Xiaoyao scored lower than Zhou You; Chinese was the sole exception. Every Chinese exam, Chu Xiaoyao ranked first in the grade. If she wasn't first, it had to be because her essay had gone off topic. After thinking it over seriously, Zhou You reached a reasonable conclusion. "I understand. The Empress is a body cultivator. Her body is harder than a spirit stone, so lying on it is fine." "Go, go, go. Play with your spirit stone." Chu Xiaoyao shoved Zhou You away, ruining his fantasy of the Empress. Zhou You had no choice but to study the spirit stone himself. Su Tingxue had already taught him how to absorb a spirit stone. Wrap it in one's own spiritual power, and one could gradually absorb the spiritual qi stored inside. From Nuomi's point of view, Zhou You gripped the spirit stone, and a mass of blue spiritual power welled out of his body, like azure seawater, full of spirituality. The azure spiritual power wrapped the spirit stone. The stone unraveled strand by strand, and threads of stored spiritual power were drawn out, entered Zhou You's body, circulated through one greater heavenly cycle, became part of his body, and strengthened his spiritual power. "It works!" Zhou You could clearly feel how the spirit stone helped his cultivation. If his previous cultivation speed had been running, then this was riding a high-speed train. The difference was night and day. It didn't only help his cultivation attainment. The speed of his skin refining improved just as clearly. Zhou You reckoned that if he had spirit stones helping him the whole time, he could enter Big Stone Lake within a week. But one spirit stone could not sustain cultivation for long. By evening, a little less than half of the spiritual power contained in the stone had already been consumed. At this rate of consumption, it would be used up tomorrow or the day after. "Maybe I should take a bounty and earn some spirit stones?" While browsing the Chang'an City Forum, Zhou You had seen quite a few bounties. At the time he hadn't known about spirit jade and spirit stones, so he hadn't paid the bounties any mind. Chu Xiaoyao had sharp ears and could hear even Zhou You's mutterings to himself. "Then take this seat with you this time. This seat will go with you." The last two times, Zhou You had gone out with Su Tingxue. Look how weak Su Tingxue was—she couldn't even handle Nuomi, yet she still took Zhou You ghost-catching. How dangerous. Going with Chu Xiaoyao was safest. Zhou You thought it over. Although Chu Xiaoyao had lost her cultivation attainment, she was an empress after all, with extraordinary experience. Bringing her along shouldn't be a problem. "Count me in too." Nuomi volunteered. If she were going alone she certainly wouldn't dare, but if the sect master and the Grand Elder were both going, what was there to be afraid of? Zhou You relayed Nuomi's meaning to Chu Xiaoyao, and was refused. "If all of our Carefree Sect goes out, what kind of situation is that? You stay and watch the territory." "We have territory?" Nuomi was astonished. She had always thought they had no fixed place to live. Chu Xiaoyao pointed at the two desk signs on the desks, which read Grand Elder of the Carefree Sect and Sect Master of the Carefree Sect. "These two desks are the territory of our Carefree Sect."