The Undying Immortal System

Chapter 232: Life 73, Age 35, Martial Grandmaster Peak

Once SuYin was ready, I consumed a Shadowed Soul Pill and followed her out of the hole. While it was unlikely that Young Master Wang or the others would try to attack her at this point, I stayed close by her side to ensure that nothing went awry.

The moment we made it back to the surface, the whole group seated under the pavilion stood to greet us. SuYin walked forward and gave a deep bow to the young man who I had previously identified as Young Master Wang.

“Senior Brother Wang, I have returned. My mission was a success.”

Most of those who had been waiting for SuYin’s return appeared happy at this statement, but the young man had a slight look of worry on his face. This was likely due to the fact that he had detailed information on how long it should have taken her to acquire a low six-star affinity based on how far down the hole she made it.

Originally, she would have broken through to low six-star only a few hours after I had arrived, but she had remained down for nearly an entire extra day. To Young Master Wang, this delay must have made it seem like SuYin hadn’t gone as deep as she should have, and this might be an indication of some form of weakness in her.

However, he didn’t voice his concerns. He just nodded his head, reached into his storage bag, and withdrew an affinity testing orb.

Understanding his meaning, SuYin automatically lifted her hand and placed it on the orb.

A small tree appeared in the orb. It started as a dirty brown color, but this didn’t last long. It quickly changed shades and colors. At peak seven-star, these shifting colors paused slightly, but after only a moment, the tree took on a dull amber hue.

Young Master Wang let out a sigh, and the tension that had built up in his shoulders was released.

However, when SuYin didn’t drop her hand, he furrowed his brow.

“Junior Sister–”

At that moment, the image in the orb changed once more. The dull amber image of a tree brightened slightly. This caused everyone to freeze, and only a moment later, before they could react, the tree brightened a second time. At this point, SuYin dropped her hand.

Upon seeing this, the jaw of the old man who had been talking with Young Master Wang dropped in astonishment.

“High six-star? How far down did you go?”

This snapped Wang out of his trance, and he looked back at the older man and gave him a stern look of reprimand.

The old man looked down, abashed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.”

The old man’s shock wasn’t hard to understand. To gather enough essence for a high six-star affinity in only a week without a formation, SuYin would have needed to delve far deeper than what normally would have been possible. If she were a fire cultivator, this might be explainable, but to all appearances, she only cultivated wood qi.

In truth, I was slightly disappointed. If we had stayed down there longer, SuYin could have pushed her affinity even higher, but that would have taken far too long. My Essence Gathering Formation had only been active for a day, and the amount of wood essence in the environment had already dropped precipitously. Without delving to unsafe depths, a high six-star affinity was the best SuYin could have achieved in a reasonable amount of time.

Young Master Wang focused his attention back on SuYin and gave her a comforting smile.

“This is… good. Very good. We need to head to the Verdant Forest Sect immediately. Your success in this trial must be reported to the elders as soon as possible.”

SuYin’s expression turned pensive and fearful. “Senior Brother Wang…”

“Junior Sister, trust me. Your talent is wasted here. You need the opportunities the Verdant Forest Sect can provide you with if you want to truly shine.”

She winced and shook her head slightly. “Yes, I understand. It’s just… I have two servants. They have accompanied me for many years. They… Can they come with me?”

A crease formed on the young master’s forehead. “Junior Sister, it’s not that I don’t want them to come with us, but the sect has rules. Only members of the sect are allowed within its walls. Even if they come with us, if they don’t have the qualifications to join the sect, they won’t be able to enter.”

This made SuYin chuckle slightly. “This shouldn’t be a problem. Please, just give them a chance. I am certain they have the qualifications to join.”

He nodded slowly, but his skepticism was plain for anyone to see. “Since you have asked this of me, I will give them an opportunity, but I must tell you this. The sect master and I discussed matters of the Verdant Fields Sect in great detail during your trial. From what he has told me, there is no one else capable of joining us.” ?

The edge of SuYin’s mouth quirked up in a slight smile. “As long as you give them a chance, I will be satisfied.”

As SuYin and Young Master Wang began heading to her house, I raced ahead of them so that I would be there when they arrived.

After entering, I expelled the remaining energy from the Shadowed Soul Pill from my body, becoming visible once more. Then, I found Bao and gave him a quick explanation of the situation.

I placed a hand on Bao’s shoulder. “I understand your concerns, and we need to talk about them, but don’t worry. I’ll make sure you and your family are taken care of no matter if you decide to join us or not. This will need to be a long discussion, though, and we don’t have time for it at the moment. Right now, we just need to prepare ourselves for Young Master Wang’s inspection. We can handle everything else after he leaves.”

After quickly telling him what he needed to do, I sent Bao outside to make a show of tending to the growing herbs. Meanwhile, I moved to an open patch of ground next to the house, took out a wooden staff, and started practicing a few simple martial movements.

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Moments later, a shout from SuYin echoes across the farm.

“Bao, Fang, attend me!”

Bao stood from where he was bent over a plant and clumsily made his way to the front of the house. At the same time, I leaned my staff against a post and followed after him with a graceful, measured gait.

As we arrived, we both gave SuYin a deep bow. This caused her to be somewhat flustered, but she quickly recovered before it became too obvious.

“Bao, Fang, Senior Brother Wang has invited me to join the Verdant Forest Sect. I plan to take the two of you along with me, but the sect requires that you both pass a simple test first.”

I bowed my head. “Of course, Mistress.”

SuYin’s cheek twitched slightly at this, and she turned to Young Master Wang to let him take over.

He reached into a storage bag and pulled his affinity testing orb back out.

“Your cultivation levels are impressive, but that isn’t enough for the Verdant Forest Sect. A person with low affinities can forcibly advance their cultivation base while destroying their future. As I do not have any way to check for this, we must use more roundabout methods. To start, show me your affinities.”

Bao stepped forward first, placed his palm on the orb, and displayed his mid seven-star affinity. This seemed to surprise the young man, but he didn’t comment on it. He simply turned to me. Noticeably, he didn’t inject his qi to display Bao’s other affinities. Either he didn’t care, or he didn’t know how to do so.

After placing my palm on the orb, I constricted my acupoints and blocked the signals for everything but my wood affinity. As my qi entered the orb, a brown tree instantly appeared, and it quickly changed colors, eventually settling on the ruddy amber hue that denoted a mid six-star affinity.

Ever since talking with SuYin, I had been considering what level of affinity to display. Showing Young Master Wang, and by extension, the Verdant Forest Sect, a seven-star affinity would have allowed me to fly under the radar, but it also would have ended up with me being assigned various menial tasks. We were headed to a powerful sect focused on herbalism, and I wanted to be in a position to learn from them. Thus, I decided to show an affinity a bit higher than what one would expect from a servant in the Wastes.

Seeing my affinity, the young master appeared shocked at first, but that quickly morphed into a look of sheer excitement. “Fang… Disciple Fang… you are a servant? Do you help SuYin with the herbs? Are you a skilled herbalist?”

I shook my head. “No, master. While I would like to learn more, right now, I only know the basics. I am here to serve as Mistress SuYin’s bodyguard.”

This caused the look on Young Master Wang’s face to fall slightly in disappointment. He clearly didn’t place too much value on my martial skills.

Looking to the side, the young man waved to one of the Peak Grandmasters who had been standing watch behind him.

“Zhao, test him.”

The man named Zhao nodded to the young master and then gestured for me to step off to the open area by the side of the house. I followed his lead, and as I did, a faint smirk appeared on my face.

Zhao was an earth cultivator with a very solid foundation. If I had fought him on top of Mount Jiang where there was little around but dirt and stone, I might have been at a bit of a disadvantage. Luckily, he was challenging me to a fight in a place filled with life. Still, I had never fought a proper duel against a skilled opponent while using wood qi, so I needed to be careful.

After reaching the designated sparring area, our duel didn’t begin. We just stood there, looking at each other.

Our fight had, in fact, started the instant Zhao had looked at me. At that moment, he had already begun sending earth qi into the ground in preparation for an attack.

At the same time, I began sending wood qi into the ground and attacking his energy with the expansive network of roots present in our surroundings.

By the time we were standing across from each other in the sparring area, we were already fighting each other at full force. However, to any outsiders, it would have looked like nothing at all was happening.

As we fought, Zhao created stone spikes beneath his feet and gently guided them through the earth to attack me. In response, I sent one volley of roots to crush these spikes and another to counterattack my opponent.

Zhao was a skilled warrior, and my lack of practice with wood qi and my inexperience with this form of combat hampered my efforts. In the end, I could only fight him to a draw. If I had picked up my staff and attacked him directly, things might have been different, but he didn’t move to attack me, so I didn’t move to attack him.

After five minutes of this tense back-and-forth, Zhao held up a hand to stop me and then turned to Young Master Wang.

“He passed.”

This caused the young master to raise an eyebrow in surprise. He no doubt understood the type of combat we had engaged in, but from where he was standing, unless he had five-star affinities in both earth and wood, there would have been no way for him to understand the true scope of our battle.

In truth, I was left somewhat shocked by Zhao’s proficiency with earth qi. While I was able to sense and counter his attacks directly, Zhao, not having a high wood affinity, had been relying on an earth-sensing technique to detect my attacks through movement in the surrounding soil. The precision with which he had been able to detect my roots showcased just how much time he had spent training his combat abilities.

After our duel, Young Master Wang then proceeded to test Bao’s herbalism skills. This was somewhat more straightforward. Wang just took out several herbs, and Bao gave him what information he could about them.

As an alchemist, I was more than familiar with all the herbs he was shown, and I would have been able to list their medicinal properties without any difficulty, but I had no understanding of how to grow them or how to enhance their effects. I wasn’t in any place to judge Bao’s results, but he must have done well because, after this assessment, Young Master Wang looked at Bao with far more respect than he had shown me after my duel with Zhao.

After a few parting words, Young Master Wang left SuYin, Bao, and me to get everything sorted and prepare for the journey ahead. Once he was gone, I set up a small anti-eavesdropping formation in SuYin’s house, and we sat down to discuss the situation in more detail.

Whether it was a lingering effect of the cultivation technique he had practiced in the Twin Mountains Sect, or whether it was just part of his natural personality, Bao had always been somewhat more emotional than most of the people I was used to dealing with. This could be seen most recently in his reaction to SuYin’s ‘abduction.’ I didn’t look down on him for this, but it did make me a bit worried about telling him too much sensitive information.

Therefore, after a bit of thought, I omitted any talk of memory orbs or time loops from our discussion. It didn’t seem like he was in line to get a lordship any time soon, so he didn’t need to be worried about being blocked from reentering the Wastes after he left. Instead, our discussion revolved around ensuring that he had the ability to return home whenever necessary.

As I would need to make frequent trips to Mount Jiang to look in on my burgeoning clan, taking him back with me wouldn’t be a problem. We just needed to ensure he had contingencies in place in the event of an emergency.

Once an outline of a plan was in place, Bao agreed to join us on our trip to the Verdant Forest Sect.

To reach the Verdant Forest Sect, our group exited the Wastes via its northern border. This trip lasted several days, and my biggest concern during this time was for my horse.

Even though I was rather certain that no one had any recollection of seeing me in the sect before, no one had questioned my position as SuYin’s guard, at least not openly. However, if they learned that I had a Rank 3 wind horse with me, they might start asking a few more questions. So, I had kept the beast tucked away in my storage space ever since exiting the hole.

I didn’t want to keep him drugged for days on end, but when he was awake, he was essentially trapped in a dark void with no way to escape. Without knowledge of beast taming, the best solution I could come up with was to feed him a few pills that calmed him down without putting him entirely to sleep, but that wasn’t a long-term solution.

Thankfully, our journey came to an end before I had to consider taking any more drastic measures.

After nearly a week of travel, we arrived in Green Leaf City, the gateway to Verdant Forest Sect.