“What are you doing?” Azalea asked. The first thing she saw when she walked into Grandpa Vremya’s room was the old man painting on a long scroll of paper. “Drawing rivers?” Her brow furrowed as she stepped behind Grandpa Vremya. Although she could already see the painting in detail from far away thanks to her immense cultivation base, it still helped to get closer. “Mountains? That’s new.”
Grandpa Vremya ignored Azalea and continued painting, swinging his brush freely. Alongside the mountains, a sentence written in a domineering font appeared: When the emperor farts, no one dares sniff it in. Azalea was dumbfounded by the sentence. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?” she asked, her expression darkening. Mentioning the emperor and farts in the same sentence, wasn’t that just asking for trouble? “Did my dad contact you or something?” What other emperor did Grandpa Vremya know?
“To raise a truly domineering nascent soul, you can’t just be the best in one area,” Grandpa Vremya said. “You have to be the best in all of them.” He put down the brush and waved his hand in front of the painting, instantly drying all the ink. “Imagine you’re an immortal, and a child challenges you to a game of chess. You lose. The only thing you can do to wipe away your shame is kill the child and all the witnesses. How embarrassing would that be? Can you truly be called domineering even if you’re undefeated in combat? You’ll still be the immortal who lost to a child.”
“So, you think someone’s going to challenge you in the realm of painting and calligraphy?” Azalea asked, glancing at the scroll. “And if you suffer a loss, your nascent soul will lose its overbearing nature? You know, it’s impossible not to fail. What matters is being able to pick yourself up after failing.”
Grandpa Vremya snorted. “That’s something failures say to comfort themselves. If you truly want to reach the peak of power, you can never fail at anything. Your momentum must surge from the moment you’re in your mother’s womb. If anything stops your growth, then it’s over. Even if you pick yourself up and do everything else perfectly, all you’ll ever amount to is an immortal.”
Azalea shrugged. “Aren’t all cultivators seeking immortality anyway? You make it sound like becoming an immortal is a bad thing.”
Grandpa Vremya shook his head. “What is immortality without power? There are immortal jellyfish floating around space. When they grow old, they revert to their infant form, growing anew. As long as they aren’t killed, their lives will never end: a form of immortality. Is that what you wish to be? A jellyfish floating aimlessly without thinking?”
“Well, no,” Azalea said. “I just don’t want to die. And how do you know about these jellyfish? How come I’ve never heard of them? Seriously, did we receive the same education or not while growing up in the sect?”
“I’ve been studying; undefeated in all things includes trivia,” Grandpa Vremya said. “Even if you become an immortal, death is just waiting around the corner. There are lots of immortal beings out there, but a lot are killed anyway. Overcoming the limits of longevity is just the beginning.”
“I suppose you know about all of this through studying as well,” Azalea said before taking a seat on the couch in Grandpa Vremya’s room. With a wave of her hand, a stack of papers appeared. She hadn’t come to Grandpa Vremya’s room to debate with him. “What are your thoughts on Emily’s negotiation? Are you satisfied?”
Grandpa Vremya thought back to Emily’s performance. Although business and cultivation were entirely different things, it seemed like they were still run on the same principles. The domineering party gained the advantage. “She did a good job.” Although Grandpa Vremya was too lazy to calculate all the benefits, he could tell Emily did a superb job through her opponent’s defeated expression.
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“I just thought of something,” Azalea said, her eyes lighting up. “Wouldn’t that negotiation have been a good chance for you to show a domineering side? If you had done the negotiations instead of Emily, your nascent soul would’ve gotten plenty of experience, right? Why didn’t you negotiate for your own benefits?”
“I could’ve,” Grandpa Vremya said. “And I’m sure I would’ve done an even better job than Emily if I did.” He stroked his beard. “However, what kind of message would that send? The president of the federation sent a mortal to do business with me. If I were to personally handle a mortal, wouldn’t that mean the president is above me, that I am only qualified to deal with his subordinate? If someone thinks I have no one capable under me, they’ll look down on me, and that is unacceptable.”
“There are a lot of rules in that head of yours, aren’t there?” Azalea asked before shaking her head. “Alright, head honcho, what are your next orders for this subordinate of yours?”
Grandpa Vremya glared at Azalea. “You’re not my subordinate.”
“Well, you certainly treat me like one,” Azalea said and rolled her eyes. “Don’t I do everything for you? I pay your bills; I schedule your tasks; I teach your classes; I manage your finances; heck, I even speak for you when you’re too lazy to. If I’m not your subordinate, then what am I?”
Grandpa Vremya stroked his beard, and his eyes got a faraway look in them. After a moment, his gaze became clear. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asked in return. “You’re my lifelong companion.”
Azalea’s eyes widened, and her mouth fell open. Then, her face flushed a deep shade of red. “How the hell is that obvious?” she asked, trying to hide her face with her hands. “Lifelong companion? Since when did I ever agree to that!?”
“You don’t want to be?”
“Since when did I say that!?” Azalea shot to her feet. Finally, after all these years, she had finally been acknowledged! Her efforts weren’t pointless! Who was the one that said picking yourself up after failing was something failures said to comfort themselves? Whoever it was, they could choke on a lemon and die because she had succeeded in the end! She wasn’t a failure!
Grandpa Vremya nodded. “It’s a good thing you agree then,” he said. “Our karmic ties are so deeply intertwined that if you were to leave me, I’d never be able to pay you back for all the things you did for me.”
The rush of joy Azalea had felt was instantly reduced by half. “Do you really have to make it sound like our relationship came about because of a karmic transaction?”
“If you hadn’t persistently clung to me for our whole lives, would we be in a position like this?” Grandpa Vremya asked. “Back then, before we had even reached the foundation-establishment stage, you were free to go because I had no more chores to handle, but you continued visiting me while I was cultivating in prison.”
“Are you trying to blame me for being a nice person?” Azalea asked, her eyes widening. “It was true that the promise I made to you was over once your chores were done, but who was the one that asked me for help to guide you to the wine-brewing competition? It was you. Don’t pretend like it was me one-sidedly throwing myself at you.”
Grandpa Vremya glared at Azalea, and Azalea glared back. Neither of them moved. Sparks seemed to float in the air between the two. The faint smell of romance—
The door to the room opened, and Rachel walked in. “The elders told me you rented a place in the capital,” the ex-sect leader said. She glanced around the room before taking a seat on the couch. “Let me stay here for a bit. I suffered from internal injuries after destroying a big-ass robot that tried to capture me during a mission.”
Azalea took a step back and looked away, her face completely red.
“Were you two in the middle of something?” Rachel asked. Her gaze shifted back and forth between Grandpa Vremya and Azalea. In the end, she realized she didn’t care. “I severed my ability to read the room a long time ago; consideration for other people’s feelings isn’t really necessary when you can beat the crap out of them instead.”
Grandpa Vremya exhaled. This was why he was training in different subjects. If his nascent soul only knew how to beat people, he’d end up like Rachel.