Chapter 10

Suddenly a Senior

“Do you know who he is?” Lya asked her Junior Brother through voice transmission.

“No,” he replied in the same way. “Maybe he’s one of those hermits?”

“Hermits? This is the Nameless Forest, not some random mountain!”

“...” both were confused and hesitated. However, as soon as the sweet scent of something boiling reached their nostrils, they felt agitated--it wasn’t just that it spoke to their hunger, but the just the scent alone caused the stagnant Qi in their bodies to churn. “Let’s, let’s just ask him?” her Junior Brother proposed, clearly tempted.

She rolled her eyes silently but followed him as he left the mud hut. The immediate surroundings were rather... simple. There were four mud huts scattered in a semi-circle, surrounded by tall, bushy trees, and, far more importantly, there were so many strange-looking animals gathered around that both Lya and Song froze in place.

Especially after they started recognizing a few--just a few, though. However, even those few caused terror to cruise through their veins. They were the sort spoke of in the legends, or in the children’s folk tales as warnings not to stray from the righteous path. And yet, there they were, casually sitting in front of him, lazily sprawled on the ground, yawning.

The animals, however, merely paid a cursory glance toward them before ignoring them completely, focusing on the man who was currently boiling something in an old-looking pot. He also seemed to have realized they’d left the hut and turned to face them with a smile.

“Come, sit. Have this,” he handed the two of them a cup each; there was colorful liquid within that smelled quite sweet. “It’s very tasty and good for your body.”

The two took it, eyeing each other stealthily, wondering whether there was some poison therein. They quickly dismissed the theory, however; if the man wanted to harm them in any way, he wouldn’t have saved them to begin with.

As such, with cautious steps, they walked up to the boiling pot and sat on the opposite side where there were no animals, taking a sip of the liquid.

Lya felt her body burn for a moment--it was as though the drop of liquid ignited what little Qi she managed to recover in her body, causing it to bore through her meridians like fire. Though it hurt--quite a bit, in fact--her clogged meridians were immediately cleansed and even refreshed. Furthermore, she realized that she’d broken through of all things. She’d been stuck at the Third Stage of the Foundation Realm for almost two months now, and yet, she’d breezed through the bottleneck so easily it felt like cheating.

Her Junior Brother, too, seemed to have experienced something wondrous as his lips spread out into a wide smile, his eyes growing teary. Lya inspected him and quickly realized why--his dantian... was fixed. Something that should have taken years of constant nourishment and care was fixed, just like that.

The way the two looked at the strange man changed completely--he was a hermit, indeed, and a hermit capable of living inside the Nameless Forest, no less. They immediately straightened up their postures and lowered their heads ever so slightly, a well-mannered pose when deferring to someone.

“Hm, it’s almost ready,” the man said, looking up from the pot and at them, smiling still. “Are you two okay?”

“--y-yes, Senior,” Lya spoke out. “Thank you for saving us, Senior. It is a grace we are not worthy of.”

“Nonsense,” the man said with a chuckle. “No life is worth less or more than any other. Ah, it’s ready,” he added, stirring the pot one last time before taking it off the flames. Lya and Song noticed the animals become a bit irate before calming down, eyes glued to the pot.

The man first poured a bit into two bowls and set them aside before making rounds and feeding the animals closest to him. When he was done, he came back to the flames, washed the pot with perfectly clear water, and started chopping up vegetables once again, tossing them into the boiling pot of water one by one.

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“Here,” he handed them the two bowls he’d set aside. “Don’t worry about them,” he added. “They may look scary, but they’re rather nice.”

Lye and Song had dissenting thoughts about that claim, but they stayed their lips. Instead, they blew gently at the boiling stew in the bowls before slowly sipping it.

It happened again, just like with the strange juice--the stew seemed to be brimming with medicinal energy, as well as the purest Qi Lye had ever seen or experienced in her life. It was as though someone had taken a rake through a clogged stream and removed all the weeds and muck.

Her meridians felt almost reborn, even widening--something that ought to have been impossible. It was well known, in the cultivation world, that the time to widen one’s meridians was at one specific point--when breaking through from Qi Condensation to Foundation Establishment. Using excess energy generated by condensing Qi into a functioning dantian, rather than expelling it from one’s body, it was used to expand and nourish the meridians.

As such, there were grades to how the Foundation was constructed, and the people with higher grades would have more excess energy to expand the meridians. And yet, here she was, drinking stew that had that magical effect.

In fact, per her quick calculations, she surmised that her meridians expanded just enough to nearly double the speed at which she was able to draw Qi out and conjure an art. Shocked, she set the bowl down and glanced at Song who had similar expression--that of abject awe... and a little bit of horror.

It was no wonder that the animals seemed so bewitched with the stew; if they could drink it daily, nourish and expand their meridians at the same time... wouldn’t they double chances of eventually ascending to the Avatar Realm?

“Right. What should I call you guys?” the man asked and the two replied hurriedly, ensuring to follow the proper etiquette.

“This one’s name is Lye, Senior.”

“This one’s name is Song, Senior.”

“How did you end up here, if you don’t mind me asking?” the man probed, stirring the stew in the pot without looking up.

“We, uh, we were chased down by a rival sect,” Lye replied. As a Senior between the two, she took it upon her shoulders to shield her Junior Brother. “Rather than being captured and toyed with by them, we decided it was best to enter the forest and die with dignity instead.” it was quite a rough summary of what they went through, but Lye was certain that the man in front of her hardly cared--perhaps he was asking because he was curious, perhaps he was testing them, but he needn’t the details of their petty, child-like squabbles.

“I am glad I found you when I did,” he said. “How is the stew, by the way?”

“D-divine, Senior.”

“Eh?”

“I mean, very good, Senior,” Lye chastised herself, remembering the tales of hermits that her Master would occasionally divulge. The hermits severed the bond with the world of cultivation and normalized the awe-inspiring parts of themselves into a human nature. This meant, in simpler terms, that they cast themselves into an illusion of living an ordinary life, where they were weak and meek. Her Master warned that, waking the hermit from this lie was akin to sentencing yourself to death.

**

Leo was a bit... confused.

The two youngsters in front of him weren’t at all what he expected them to be. First of all, they were quite polite and not rude at all. They weren’t haughty or demanding, but rather humble and deferential. Secondly, they seemed to be under the impression that Leo was... special. Perhaps it was him living in the woods alone, or maybe it was his impeccable appearance, or his skills at making stews and fruit juices.

Whichever it was, it seemed to have given the two youths an impression Leo was a strong, secluded cultivator like those in the stories. Though he wanted to correct them, he feared they would turn on him and kill him on the spot for daring to lie to them. As such, he stayed silent and ignorant of the implications. The most he could hope for was to convince them to keep this encounter silent, and to then move on with his life as though nothing had happened.

No, wait, don’t I have quite a conundrum to solve? One that starts tomorrow?! He suddenly recalled the fact that the Foundation Establishment boar would be coming tomorrow to attack him. Though he didn’t know the exact realm of the kids in front of him, they must be at least strong enough to deal with an animal like that. However, simply asking them to take care of the boar for him might unveil the fact that he was just a lying scum who couldn’t defeat a pigeon, so he had to go at the heart of the issue in a roundabout way.

“Recuperate here for as long as you’d like,” he said as he finished the second batch of stew.

“Thank you, Senior,” the young girl replied. She seemed to be in charge between the two despite looking younger, but who knew what the hierarchy inside the cultivation world was like? She was perhaps the stronger one between the two and naturally became a leader that way.

“If you want to clean yourselves,” Leo said. “There’s a pond just a bit down that way. Don’t stray too far otherwise, you may get lost.”

“Thank you, Senior.” though Leo suddenly aged a few decades internally after being called ‘Senior’ so many times, he merely smiled and let it go, walking around and feeding the second batch of stew to the animals.

A few of the critters grew curious about two newcomers--mostly the young lizard that Leo had seen scurrying about here and there, and the pair of small, palm-sized monkeys, children of his good friend. The two kids seemed quite nervous being approached, but steeled their nerves and endured in silence, not moving an inch.

I hope the two of them and the animals will be enough... aah, why is the world so unfair toward me?