Story 8 - Tribulation Trepidations (2 ?)
[Due to the author’s poor health, this part hasn’t been content edited, so so areas may change later.]
After a good twenty minutes of lecturing how to do the stance while hinting at the deeper aning behind it, I ended my lecture. “Rember, this stance doesn’t work for all sword cultivators. But even if it doesn’t, learning sothing new is better than not knowing it.”
A couple of the kids vibrated with energy and imdiately left to practice.
Little Spring scowled. “Isn’t this just what you’ve always taught ?”
Brat. “You’re fortunate enough to listen to my advice every day. These kids rarely get to talk to . My ti is precious, you know.”
He pouted. “I know.” Then Mad Tongue gestured at him to continue their sparring session. I waved him off.
He bowed and ran over to the teen.
When I glanced back at Salamander, his hand touched his bare chin. That was the sa expression he had on his face when he was pondering the sword.
That new stance could help him further his path if he discovered its secrets.
Of course, there was always a risk. Knowing his Dao wasn’t perfect could cripple him if he let it.
But I’d rather see him work through his issues early, while he was still young and malleable, than wait until he was old and set in his ways.
“I think that I’ll have to try this stance out and see it working for myself.”
The scientific thod. I approved! “You should record how your techniques feel and how much damage they do before practicing it, then once again a week after using it. You might surprise yourself.”
“And if it doesn’t work out for the better, I can always go back.”
I nodded. That was the nice thing about sword cultivation. A new stance or position didn’t usually fuck with soone’s Dao. At least, not in the sa way it could for Dantian practitioners. Changing the looping pathways inner Qi traveled down could seriously fuck a person up.
Then again, that was just how this universe worked. Considering that most Xianxia I read in my past life didn’t have many details about shit like this, it was hard to tell.
The dumbass author may have thrown every type of cultivation into this world but — and I grudgingly gave him this credit — he also put in effort to make it work.
At least, I assud he did.
Since I’d never read the original, he could have just tossed everything together like a big Xianxia salad and let the universe figure itself out.
I stepped up beside my teacher and grinned.
“So, Sword Master Salamander, when are you going to lend your little pagoda?”
“When you finally call down your tribulation. Don’t think that I don’t know that you’ve been holding it back for at least a year now.”
“I still have a lot of things to prepare for it.”
“Isn’t that the sa thing you always say to everyone who asks about when you’ll be going through your tribulation?”
The fuck? Was this an intervention or a personal attack?
“With the inclusion of this pagoda, what other preparations do you even need to make?”
She was the sa woman I suspected of orchestrating the spirit rabbit incident.
I an, who takes the pet her husband gives his master/wife — a living creature at that — kills it, cooks it, then blas it on her husband’s martial sister?
Seriously, what the fuck was wrong with her?
Well, after a few classes, it was already too late… because she had agreed to continue to teach Little Spring for free.
I landed my flying sword at the entrance to her new open-air kitchen.
Little Spring tugged at my sleeve. “Could you please not get into an argunt with Master Chef Garlic today?”
I eyed the brat. “I don’t start the argunts with her, but I damn well end them.”
Besides, it wasn’t entirely my fault.
Back when I’d realized who the teacher was, I’d been on edge from seeing Verdant Bamboo.
The last thing I wanted to see was a creepy weirdo flirting with my almost ten-year-old martial brother like my past-life’s master. Because of this, I stayed to watch several of their teaching sessions.
I’d gotten on the irritable chef’s nerves a number of tis only to—
“You’re banned from the kitchen for a reason, you know,” the brat said.
This was so fucking embarrassing.
While I was watching her help Little Spring with knife techniques to cut different types of ats, I saw her helping him adjust his stance. She’d gone behind him and grabbed his hand.
From my angle it looked like she was being inappropriate when she hadn’t been.
I... may have started a fight with her that ruined a good section of her building, leading to it now being an open-air kitchen.
I cleared my throat and murmured, “That was my mistake. I thought she was a pervert.”
“A what?”
“Soone who touches chi—” He looked so innocent that I couldn’t say it. “Ah… soone who deserves to have their asses murdered.”
“Ah.”
“Rember, if anyone with a disgusting expression touches you sowhere you don’t want, murder them. Or call for an adult.”
His eyes hardened, and he nodded seriously.
Frankly, getting kicked out of the kitchen wasn’t the worst thing that happened because of that incident. The worst thing that happened was—
“Apprentice Chef Little Spring. I thought I asked you not to bring your little girlfriend here.”
The bitch always said shit like this, because she thought I was the protagonist’s goddamn romantic interest.
! The anti-relationship, cultivation addict, old monster.
Little Spring looked exhausted. “Master Chef Garlic, Fairy Lin is my Older Martial Sister. I don’t think she appreciates your teasing.”
Damn straight, I didn’t. I grabbed the jade sheath of my sword hairpin like I was about to throw down.
“Who is teasing?” Garlic threw her white hair over her shoulder and put her hand on her hip. Then she looked at with glittering brown eyes.
Fuck. Maybe she was rely goading into fighting her again. “I’m not falling for your instigation this ti. I already made you several cooking spiritual tools to pay you back for the damages I did to your kitchen.”
She grinned. “Well, your tools are surprisingly worth it. If you’d just let buy more off you, I wouldn’t have to resort to these tactics.”
Yeah… instead of being a creepy fucker like Verdant Bamboo, she was a cooking-obsessed psychopath.
After getting to know her more in this life, I realized that, between her and Effervescent Sea Pearl, Bloodsword had a type — older, super attractive, and batshit crazy.
Or maybe it was that damn harem author who had a type.
Whatever.
ntally, I threw up my middle finger at the chef. “I’m leaving. I’ll be back here in four hours to pick him up.”
“Apprentice Chef Little Spring, you should really consider moving in with the other apprentices here.”
“Thank you for the offer but, I like staying with my older sister in our courtyard.”
“But you’d get to be around other boys your age, which would be a far better influence than hanging around your strange girlfr—martial sister.”
I closed my eyes and reminded myself that I could not punch this bitch because I could not afford the ti and tal to make more spiritual tools for her.
I’d punch her after I transcend my tribulation and could actually take on a golden core practitioner. Of course, there were also things I’d done to secretly get back at her... like steal all of her chicken-type spiritual beasts and return them the next day.
I an, I would have kept them, but they were pecking at the spiritual herbs in the space.
“Master Chef Garlic, my sister is the best teacher for everything aside from cooking.”
I glared at the psychopathic chef. “I have other things I have to do, so I’ll leave now.”
Little Spring waved goodbye while Fairy Garlic just smirked at before starting a lecture on the next immortal chef technique the kid was going to learn.
She wasn’t my favorite person, but she was — fucking unfortunately — a fantastic teacher. And she at least didn’t bug about my tribulation.
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