Shin Sumi was sure of it. Having made tea with her better Moonflower leaves herself, she knew the smell of the brew. And although it was faint, she could definitely smell something else in the teapot.

At least Elder Zhu hadn't lied about one thing, this flower was indeed rare, and maybe nobody in the sect apart from Shin Sumi could discern it's real smell.

Considering the strange warning from Lan Hui earlier, Shin Sumi had been thinking about Elder Zhu's intentions the whole time.

Him lying about what she was about to drink was already enough.

Thankfully Elder Zhu still hadn't poured the tea, waiting until the brewage was at the perfect temperature, as he had said earlier.

And because of the way he had praised his tea so much, she now had a reason to politely decline.

Shin Sumi got up to her feet in one swift motion. Elder Zhu was wearing a puzzled expression on his face but his eyes held a different gleam.

Joining her hands and bowing deeply, Shin Sumi said to him "Thank you for the robes Elder Zhu. Sumi will now take her leave. It really feels inappropriate for me to enjoy such a wonderful tea. I simply don't have anything to give you in return for a favor like this one, I hope you won't take it too much to heart."

Understanding in an instant what she meant by these words, Elder Zhu stood as well.

Inside he was very frustrated, but he knew he had spoken too much and she was right about the etiquette.

"I see. I hope I haven't put you in an uncomfortable position, I assure you it wasn't my intention. Maybe I should indeed call over Elder Tao to enjoy this rare brewage. It's effect will maybe even bolster his cultivation a bit."

Gnashing his teeth, Elder Zhu plastered a smile on his face as he watched Shin Sumi leave.

As soon as Shin Sumi left the garden and then the Affairs Pavilion, his fake smile disappeared.

"I don't need to rush this. She will still be here for quite a while before she reaches the Liquid Realm. I was too excited this time and it turned against me."

***

The lighted clouds were casting dark shadows under Shin Sumi's feet when she left the Affairs Pavilion.

She let out a long expiration as her rushed heart finally calmed down.

"What did Elder Zhu try to make me drink ? And why ?"

Her mind was spinning from the internal fear she had felt and all the questions she now had.

It was exactly as she had thought. Unless she had a sufficient cultivation base to bear it, her supposed talent was only a source of problems.

She didn't notice the footsteps behind her, only thinking about getting back to the safety of her courtyard.

"Sister Shin !"

In one leap, the person following her reached her side. Lan Hui was slightly out of breath.

"I came back to the Affairs Pavilion as soon as I could but I couldn't find you there. What did my master want ?"

Lan Hui looked calm like always, but his eyes conveyed a sincere anxiety.

"Just to give me new robes and... to share tea with me. But I refused."

Upon hearing her answer, Lan Hui let a silent breath of relief, but it didn't escape Shin Sumi's eyes.

Acting like nothing happened, Lan Hui simply replied and started to change the subject.

"Anyway, have you been to the Pill Building today ? I heard there was- Sister Shin ?"

Noticing she had stopped walking, Lan Hui turned his head backwards.

The old Shin Sumi would probably have kept it all to herself, but the new her wasn't like that. She was standing there with her arms crossed over her chest and a serious expression on her face.

She had to confront him.

"Brother Lan. What are you not telling me ? The warning from earlier, as well as your expression just now. What exactly is going on ?"

For once, the clever Lan Hui was at a loss. He couldn't find his words at all.

Pushing him a bit further, Shin Sumi asked again "What was it about ? Why do I have to be careful around your master. What was in the tea ?!"

Without paying attention, her tone had risen quite a bit. Lan Hui immediately made a gesture to silence her.

"Shhhhh !! Not here ! I will tell you everything back at your courtyard. I promise."

Despite not knowing him for long, Shin Sumi trusted him. He seemed to genuinely care about her, so she silently resumed walking.

When they finally arrived at her courtyard, Shin Sumi used her identification medallion to close the gate with a magical Shinsoo formation.

Ensuring that it was a safe place and no one from the outside would be able to hear them, Lan Hui relaxed a bit.

"I told you I would tell you everything, so here it goes. Please don't be mad at me Sister Shin, I don't know much but I swear I would never hurt you."

Shin Sumi silently sat on the stone bench, waiting for the red robed youth to start his explanation.

"My master took me in knowing fully well that I would never amount to much in the cultivation world. You see my talent was as low as it could be. The truth is I have no idea how I made it past the Foggy Maze. After that I spent a few months trying hard to cultivate, working in the fields for food and resources. I had made virtually no progress when Elder Zhu summoned me to the Affairs Pavilion and asked me to become his direct disciple."

"How could I refuse ? It seemed like the best opportunity at the time. And it was ! For more than three years I've been working with him and he helped me a lot during my cultivation. Thanks to Elder Zhu I am now already starting to condense Shinsoo into a vortex ! It was all because of the pills. You've only been here a few days so I'm sure you didn't know that he used to be in the Pill Building before he joined the ranks of the Elders and was made Head of the Affairs Pavilion."

"But the pill he makes... They are simply too strange. I have made my research but I still have no idea what they are. The only thing I know is that sometimes they would help me improve my cultivation base greatly, and sometimes I would be sick for days."

Lan Hui almost shivered, reminiscing about what he had to endure. His face full of disgust, he looked directly into Shin Sumi's eyes.

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"I couldn't say anything because he is my master and after all Elder Zhu has always been my benefactor, but I've also noticed a pattern. Roughly a month before giving me a new pill to try, an Honorary Disciple or two disappear. I know it might sound crazy but... I think my master has found a way to refine a disciple's talent into a pill !"

Shin Sumi's eyes were now as wide as could be and her mouth had turned into an horrified "O" shape.

Stealing somebody's talent ?!!

How in the world could someone be monstrous enough to do this !

Shin Sumi had her doubts and guesses about the whole thing, but never in a million years could she have guessed what Lan Hui just told her.

"I never confronted him nor asked him anything... You see it's usual for a master to implant a soul magic on their disciple. Normally it would be to seek revenge in the case of someone killing their disciples, as it shows their last few moments of consciousness. But it also means that my life is his... With that soul imprint, a simple thought on his part can kill me and erase my soul."

Shin Sumi had no idea such magic existed, but she didn't know much about the cultivation world. Everything seemed unrealistic but plausible at the same time.

With a trembling voice she asked "And you thought Elder Zhu wanted to steal my talent ?"

"It has been a long time since he last fed me one of these pills" Lan Hui replied. "The last few were successes, so my guess is that he has perfected his pill recipe. Knowing about your talent, I was afraid he was going to try and steal it from you for himself."

"Why would an Elder of the sect want my talent ? I have not even awoken my Shinsoo passageways ! "

"Elder Zhu's talent was never the best, he started cultivation more than a sixty year cycle ago and has been stuck in the seventh level of the Liquid Realm for years. With only his own talent he has almost no chance of reaching the Core Development stage. But with your incredible talent, Sister Shin, nobody can say what my master could do if he refined it into a pill !"

Shin Sumi and Lan Hui talked for more than an hour. With his position as a law enforcer in the sect, Lan Hui had a good insight on the Honorary Disciples of the lower valley.

He provided Shin Sumi with a lot of information on certain people to avoid.

Each time she would ask something, he would answer immediately and even add further information. It was clear how earnest he was to talk to someone and soon Shin Sumi was convinced that he was not lying to her.

In fact she even wondered if he liked her.

Suddenly an almost inaudible low vibrating sound came from Lan Hui's bag of holding.

Lan Hui took out his identification medallion and quickly scanned it with divine sense.

Having reached the great circle of Shinsoo Gathering, he naturally knew how to use divine sense and soon he put away his command medallion.

"I have to go, my master requests my presence back at the Affairs Pavilion. I will see you soon Sister Shin, I wish you well."

Shin Sumi unlocked the gates and looked at the young man leave in a hurry. She had learned so much information that she needed time to fully process it.

One thing was clear though, she had to make progress on her cultivation quickly.

She still hadn't felt even the tiniest ambiant Shinsoo, but the new version of her definitely couldn't quit.

Remembering how easily she had been bullied a few days earlier by Chu Erlong, Shin Sumi decided to spend the whole afternoon cultivating.

"She made fun of me for being a low level disciple. Once I successfully cultivate, with the resources upgraded by the little nut, my cultivation should advance by leaps and bounds. Then when I go out with my green robes, we will see who will want to follow who."

Shin Sumi put away the wooden box containing her new robes in the dresser. She picked up a high grade spirit stone from her bag of holding and began her breathing exercises.

***

A few days later, Shin Sumi still had made no progress. No matter how hard she tried and how much she bathed in the Shinsoo enhanced waters of the pond, she still couldn't feel any Shinsoo around her.

She had now used all of her high grade spirit stones supply.

"I still have two more weeks to wait until I can go back to the Cultivation Resources Pavilion. Even with the best kind of materials, is it really impossible for a mortal without talent to cultivate ?"

She had spent a good amount of time thinking for the last few days, especially about the little nut.

Shin Sumi still had no idea what it was, if it was some kind of fruit or more like an animal.

She wanted to study the nut a little bit more but for some reason it was nowhere to be found. Her wrist was clear and the leaf pattern wasn't showing.

"If only I knew how to call it out..." she thought, but she couldn't find any way other than wait.

She prepared food with the spirit plants that she still had stacked under her bed.

The last recipe she hadn't tried from the newcomer's manual was some kind of soup using the bamboo-like spiritual plant.

In the fields the plant was called Green Arrow Stalk but her version of it was a bit more yellow and almost translucent.

She was cutting the stalk open when a dozen of small pea sized seeds fell out from her hands.

Her spiritual plant was full of seeds !

Not even a second had passed when Shin Sumi's wrist flashed and the leaf pattern appeared.

The little nut appeared instantly, gobbling up the dark seeds.

Using her reflexes without even thinking, Shin Sumi managed to snatch the nut in her palm. With the other hand she carefully cupped the seeds.

The nut was biting her, not too hard but in an imploring manner, as if it really desired to eat all the black peas.

Shin Sumi put all the seeds in the bag of holding before finally releasing the nut on the table.

The nut rolled around for a bit, but there was no seed to be seen anymore so it simply stayed unmoving.

"Now little nut, be patient. Time for some experimenting."

A strange smile was on Shin Sumi's lips as she was recalling all the tests she had thought about for the past few days.

Now that she had an inkling on how to summon out the nut, the first thing she did was experiment with how to control it.

The first step was obviously understanding how and were the nut went when it touched the leaf pattern on her skin.

Unfortunately, Shin Sumi's knowledge of cultivation and the Immortal world was too shallow.

The only thing she learned was that the nut could only disappear when it was on contact with the leaf pattern.

Wrapping her forearm under a tight piece of her robes, she now was sure that the nut couldn't vanish like it would normally.

It was really hard to do, mostly because the nut was sentient and although quite low, had a certain level of intelligence.

As soon as it understood that she wanted to keep it away from the leaf symbol, it furiously tried to roll against her skin, wriggling and biting.

***

It took fully two hours for the nut to finally calm down, and Shin Sumi's arms were covered by tiny circular biting marks by then.

Shin Sumi then took out a few black seeds from her bag of holding.

As soon as they were out in the open, the nut started rolling uncontrollably again, doing its best to reach the seeds.

Whenever Shin Sumi would put away the seeds, the nut would move for a bit in incomprehension and then settle still on the table.

As if it was a magnet for valuable resources.

Shin Sumi went out in her courtyard to pick a few pea sized rocks. They were very similar in aspect to the seeds, which is why she was doing this experiment.

Laying down a handful of seeds mixed with rocks on the table, it didn't take long for Shin Sumi to observe the behavior of the nut.

Looking really close at the scene, she saw the nut rush to the pile. In only a few breaths of time, only the rocks remained behind.

Shin Sumi previously thought that despite it's appearances, the nut was some kind of a small animal. But now that she had observed it up close, it became apparent that the grey sentient ball didn't have a mouth, nor any orifices.

Whenever it was eating, the seeds would simply disappear upon touching its surface.

Waiting for a few minutes, Shin Sumi fed the nut a few more seeds at regular intervals.

Following a whole five hours, the nut had eaten almost all the seeds.

The only thing that Shin Sumi could then do was to wait to see results.

Because she had been asleep the last time, she didn't know how long she had to wait for the nut to spit out the seeds.

After patiently waiting at the table for almost an hour, Shin Sumi soon became tired of simply waiting in front of a dead nut and decided to bathe.

Another idea of hers was to take the nut into the water. She had never done so before and it would be interesting to see if the waters would be enhanced !

Holding the nut while she disrobed, Shin Sumi jumped into the pond once again. In the Dark Sky Starry Sect she had explored so far, her private pond and its two carps was definitely her favorite place.

The nut didn't seem reluctant to be submerged and in fact was as still as before. It only flared back to life for a second when Shin Sumi quickly took out and then put away another seed.

It only lasted for the briefest of moments but the nut still had time to leave a few bite marks on her delicate white skin.

Being held underwater for that long reinforced the fact that the nut wasn't some kind of animal and had Shin Sumi thinking.

"Maybe it's just a sentient vegetable.. After all it came from that tree stump in the forest, with all of the wisps..." she recalled.

Shin Sumi hadn't been in the pond for long before a tickling sensation started spreading throughout her body. She didn't have time to react before the sensation receded in no time.

It was very strange but when she looked down at her body, distorted by the undulating spring water, she quickly understood.

"The bite marks on my arms have all vanished ! Did the water heal me ?"

The courtyard she had been gifted with definitely wasn't a normal place. Even without the high grade spirit stones refining the atmosphere, the place had a dense Shinsoo concentration.

It was entirely possible that the healing effects were due to the pond only, Shin Sumi wouldn't have known since she never hurt herself after she arrived in the sect.

But another wild guess slowly formed into her mind. Lifting her hand that was still holding the nut, she looked at it with a complicated expression.