Flint's brow furrowed as she set down her brush. "Couldn't it be a celestial dwelling belonging to one of the elders?"
"Oh, please!" Seedling flopped onto a cushion, her tail swishing with amusement. "Since when do elders build their dwellings underground? They always pick caves halfway up mountains and decorate them all fancy-like." She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "I've been to Sage West Wind's place - it's on some mountain peak... though I can't remember which one exactly."
Her eyes lit up again as she leaned forward. "But this place? It had all these intricate mechanisms just to hide the entrance! An underground palace with such elaborate concealment must be hiding something incredibly secret."
"And if it's meant to be secret," Flint pointed out gently, "perhaps it's not something we're supposed to know about?" She couldn't shake the feeling that any underground palace so carefully hidden would belong to someone powerful within the sect - someone whose bad side they definitely didn't want to be on.
"Please, please, let's go check it out!" Seedling pleaded with Flint, her fox tail swishing back and forth eagerly. Her purple eyes sparkled with mischief as she batted her eyelashes. "I'll even let you pet my tail," she added in a sing-song voice.
Flint rolled her eyes. "Oh? And if I don't go, you'll never let me pet it again?"
"Exactly!" Seedling declared triumphantly, clearly pleased with her bargaining strategy.
Flint weighed her options, though her concern about potential trouble still won out. "Then I suppose I'll have to live without tail-petting privileges."
"Ugh, Flint, you're so boring!" Seedling flopped backward dramatically, her white hair spreading across the cushion.
"Says the one who's never once helped record the daily herb growth logs," Flint pointed out, tapping her pen against the logbook meaningfully.
In response, Seedling transformed into her fox form and curled into a fluffy white ball. "No way. That's so tedious. They all look exactly the same anyway."
The sight of her friend literally turning into a ball of fluff to avoid responsibility made Flint's lips twitch with amusement, though she tried to maintain her stern expression. It was becoming increasingly difficult to focus on her work with such an entertaining distraction nearby.
The next morning, Seedling bounded off early to play, leaving Flint to her duties. Though Flint could have easily cut corners with the herb monitoring - a quick "all normal" would suffice as long as nothing went terribly wrong - this was her first real responsibility. She wanted to do it properly, with a clear conscience, which meant at least giving everything a proper look.
Today felt different from usual. Her attention was drawn to a peculiar herb emanating an eerie brownish-red glow. As she leaned in closer, the light suddenly surged toward her, diving straight through the crack in her mental barrier. Without that protection, pain exploded through her mind - ten times worse than when she'd absorbed the resentment force from that mad cultivator who'd tried to hunt her down.
She quickly realized what she was dealing with: resentment force, the lingering memories of hatred from the dead. But something was different this time. With her mental barrier compromised, the absorbed memories came through with crystal clarity, as vivid as her own past life recollections - though Flint knew these weren't her memories. Through the dizzying haze, she saw a scene eerily similar to her encounter with the madman: a Celestial Sword Sect disciple drawing a circle around her, while she lay there, bleeding from her legs, unable to move...
When she finally came back to herself, she found she'd fallen to her knees, gasping for air. One thought dominated her mind: Why would there be resentment force in the herb fields?!
Flint stared at the now-normal Spirit Sword Grass, its silver-green leaves swaying gently in the morning breeze. The herb was prized for its ability to enhance sword techniques when properly refined, but right now it looked completely ordinary - no trace remained of the disturbing brownish-red glow she'd witnessed moments ago.
She rubbed her temples, trying to ease the lingering headache. The rational part of her knew she should report this incident - even though this situation wasn’t recorded on the manual, resentment force meaned to a heinous act of absorbing souls, which was subject to arrest by the Immortal Alliance. But what would she say? "I saw resentment force around the Spirit Sword Grass, but it's fine now"?
Flint sighed, realizing that reporting this to the herb field supervisor wouldn't help much. She didn't even have Sage Mortius Crane's contact details in her jade tablet - the elder responsible for discipline and liaison with the Immortal Alliance. The name felt familiar, but she couldn't quite place where she'd heard it before.
The only person she could currently contact was Dawn Everleaf, an Adept Level disciple responsible for handling special situations with the herbs. But now everything appeared perfectly normal - there was nothing left to report or fix. After careful consideration, Flint decided to hold off on reporting it. Perhaps it was just some unusual circumstance, like a stray breeze carrying traces of resentment force.
She opened her logbook and carefully recorded the phenomenon. Next time, she resolved to keep her distance if she saw that brownish-red glow again. Otherwise, she'd likely end up absorbing all the resentment force herself.
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Her memory of her last encounter with resentment force had grown hazy. She remembered how it had coiled around that crazed cultivator who'd been absorbing mortal souls, but when the force had noticed her, it had rushed to flood her mind with the victims' final memories. Afterward, the resentment force had simply... vanished.
It's like they think I'm the one who deserves to be tormented by their pain, Flint thought wryly to herself.
By afternoon, Flint could usually finish inspecting all the herb fields on the mountain. She then focused on absorbing Genesis to improve her cultivation. Seedling had told her not to bother cooking if she wasn't back by five - which suited Flint fine, as she didn't need to eat anyway and preferred to spend the time on cultivation. Their barbecue grill remained outside; Seedling could cook for herself, and sometimes she just ate raw meat anyway.
"Flint!" A white fox Seedling burst in, interrupting Flint's meditation.
Flint checked the time - exactly five o'clock. "Hungry?"
"No! That's not important!" Seedling hadn't bothered changing back from her fox form - probably because it saved her the trouble of getting dressed. "I saw that three-tailed black greyhound going into the underground palace! But he wasn't a hound anymore - he turned into a human!"
"You can turn human too," Flint deadpanned.
Seedling was panting slightly from excitement. "No, listen! He changed because he was carrying this big sack, and there was someone inside it! Someone alive!"
"Maybe it was just an animal, like how you stash rabbits and pheasants to eat. Could have been a deer," Flint continued trying to find reasonable explanations, maintaining her characteristic calm and dry humor.
Seedling's voice grew more urgent. "No, no! And more importantly! I saw... I saw..."
Her voice suddenly dropped, tinged with uncertainty. "The sack was glowing with this brownish-red light..."
"You remember that mad cultivator we met? It was that same kind of light..."
Flint's eyes widened. "What?!"
She quickly recounted her experience with the resentment force from earlier that day. Seedling's purple eyes filled with confusion and shock.
Seedling apparently hadn't known the brownish-red light was called resentment force, though now she did. Perhaps because she'd never been tormented by the painful memories it carried - she didn't know those reddish-brown lights were actually the grudges of the dead.
"Do you know how to contact Sage Mortius Crane?" Flint asked.
Seedling shook her head. "Never paid attention to that."
Flint thought carefully. Sage Mortius Crane... who had told her that name? Someone with hound ears... Wait - hound? Flint felt the pieces clicking together. Her eyes lit up as she turned to Seedling. "I've got it!"
Seedling's fox ears perked up. "Got what?"
"That hound you saw must be Sage Mortius Crane's spirit beast. Sage Mortius Crane is in charge of discipline and coordinates with the Immortal Alliance on legal matters. So that underground palace must be the Celestial Sword Sect's prison, and the hound is helping him capture people who've committed soul absorption crimes." Flint concluded.
Looking at it that way, maybe there wasn't anything to worry about? Perhaps those traces of resentment force really had just been blown in by the wind, "accidentally" tormenting her in the process.
Should still try to fix that mental barrier though. Flint mused, though she had no idea how.
To her surprise, Seedling's eyes widened with excitement. "A prison! I've never been to one - let's go check it out!"
"My lady, what's so interesting about a prison?" Flint asked with resigned amusement.
"No, think about it - all the bad guys are locked up, so first it's safe, and second it's educational, teaching people not to break Immortal Alliance laws, and finally, I've never been to one, so it sounds fascinating!" Seedling rattled off her reasons.
"Don't you have prisons in Wind-Charm Fox territory?"
"Uh, not really. We usually just banish criminals from our lands," Seedling admitted.
"Oh, we don't have written laws - the noble council just votes on whether someone is guilty. All punishments are banishment, though sometimes victims' families take revenge and kill the banished criminals, which isn't considered a crime," Seedling added.
Flint scratched her head. What kind of society is that? She couldn't quite picture it.
"Hmph, if you won't come see it with me, I'll go by myself. It's safe anyway since it's a prison." Seedling curled herself into a white furry ball, as she often did when upset or sleeping. Watching her, Flint suddenly wondered if Spark slept in wolf form rather than human form. She'd seen him sleep that way when they were fleeing from pursuit of the Abyssal Pavilion.
Why am I suddenly thinking about Spark? Her jade tablet vibrated with another of his routine greetings, and she took it out to reply.
"Hmph, so friends are less important than boyfriends now," commented the ball of fur that was Seedling.
"You're important, you're more important. Just call me if you see anything unusual - I've seen prisons before." Flint hadn't actually seen one, but she needed some excuse. "Besides, I still have to help with your work."
"Those herbs are all boring anyway," Seedling muttered.
The next morning, Seedling bounded off on her adventure while Flint continued the herb monitoring duties. Everything seemed normal until she spotted several Spirit Sword Grass plants in the distance tinged with that brownish-red glow. After carefully confirming what she saw, she took out her jade tablet to contact Dawn Everleaf, who said she'd arrive within the hour.
Putting away her tablet, Flint sat down at a safe distance to observe the Spirit Sword Grass emanating the brownish-red light. Now she found herself hoping the resentment force wouldn't blow away - that would make things very difficult to explain.
Wonder how Seedling's prison tour is going. While daydreaming, Flint focused on channeling Genesis to her throat - this way of thinking had become almost second nature to her now.
Dawn Everleaf arrived and immediately found Flint lost in thought. Flint pointed to the glowing area, which she'd kept at a safe distance.
"I can't go closer," Flint explained. "For certain reasons, this resentment force affects me. You should take a look."
Dawn Everleaf frowned, neither accepting nor rejecting Flint's explanation. However, she herself wasn't particularly familiar with handling resentment force. After some observation, she noticed it wasn't affecting the plants' growth, leaving her at a loss for what to do. But soul absorption was a serious crime under Immortal Alliance law - she should notify someone who could liaise with their enforcement division.
She took out her jade tablet to contact the relevant person. Returning to Flint, she said, "This resentment force isn't affecting plant growth. I'm not sure how to remove it. I've called someone from the disciplinary division."
Flint nodded, noting Dawn's rather cold tone. Did everyone become so detached after reaching Adept Level? Trying to be friendly, she offered, "I think this might be because of the nearby prison. There's a prison here holding people who absorbed souls, so maybe their resentment force somehow affected the herb fields..."
Dawn suddenly cut her off, surprise and impatience in her voice: "Who told you the Celestial Sword Sect has a prison?"
"Huh?" Flint was dumbfounded.
Dawn continued, "People who violate Immortal Alliance laws are taken directly to Immortal Alliance prisons. Depending on the severity of other infractions, punishment might be mandatory labor, fines, or expulsion from the sect."
Then where did Seedling go?! Flint was reluctant to admit her conclusion might be wrong - it had seemed so logical. "Um, well, that prison, maybe at the mountain base... there's this underground palace where Sage Mortius Crane's bloodbound beast, Nightbane I think, keeps disciples who've absorbed souls..."
Dawn Everleaf maintained her dismissive attitude, finding Flint's thinking childishly naive. "Why would Sage Mortius Crane build his own prison when there are Immortal Alliance facilities? Have you been inside? What's in there?"
Flint's hands trembled slightly. "Really?" She tried to review her logic but found it crumbling. Something felt off - why would Sage Mortius Crane build his own prison? Come to think of it, was it even built by Sage Mortius Crane at all?
Dawn Everleaf's main reason for dismissing Flint was that Flint would likely be the primary suspect when the disciplinary Inner Sect disciple arrived. Flint's words couldn't be trusted. Though Dawn had never encountered someone who absorbed souls, Flint's suspicious behavior in avoiding the resentment force suggested something wasn't right.
As Flint's thoughts raced, her jade tablet suddenly vibrated. It was a message from Seedling that made her pupils contract in fear:
"Flint, help me!"