Aimless Ascension

Gale blinked at the two women as they had been seated at the table for a while now without any word. With everything that happened, the atmosphere would've been terribly serious. However, Vale and Rong'er racing encircling the table rendered most of their anxiety away for the moment.

"So what should we talk about?" Gale asked, eventually. "Want to have a tour of the barely built mansion?

"Shouldn't the topic be about those injured men that disappeared after we entered the house?" Wang Li asked, knitting her brows.

"You ladies don't need to worry about that," Gale said. "It already had been taken care of."

"Where did you leave them?"

"It's a secret," Gale said with a smile.

Wang Li sighed. "Will this place be secure for us to live in?" she couldn't help but ask. "You know, Linlin didn't abandon this place without reason."

The human density was extremely low, as most of the areas around here were farmland. The closest was the Shens, and that too was almost four lis away. Nobody would notice if anything went amiss here. Wang Li had a reason to be worried.

"As long as you're near me and Vale, you're in the most secure place in this town," Gale said simply, addressing their fears. Not to mention, there would be a sneaky, ghostly person watching over them when he was busy with other things. They were the most secure here.

Gale hadn't told them anything about Twilight, even after employing her for about a week. Well, considering how uncomfortable it would be learning someone was sneaking behind you most of the time, it was something Gale decided to leave unsaid.

Besides, mortals' life was about dealing with uncertainty. He couldn't just shelter them from everything, so it's better for him to leave them space to grow.

"Now, should we talk about how you two will progress from now on?" Gale said. Getting nods from them, Gale continued, "Of course, Linlin will train her physical body and endurance. With the use of Pure crystals, she finally would be able to get a similar result to a normal person.

"At the beginning, we'll do three ten-minute cycling sessions with the influence of pure crystals every day. You might think ten-minute sessions are nothing, but to my calculation, Linlin would be left with nothing if she continued cycling under the influence of pure crystals for fifteen minutes.

"So we're going to divide the ten-minute session, one in the late morning after your usual training, then in the early afternoon and evening just before the end of the training. Remember, you have absolutely no job other than training during the day. As for the night, no heavy training, save for some simple meditations or readings.

"I want you to strictly abide by this. Is that understood?"

Xiaolin nodded heavily. She was still meek and lacked even a little courage to refute her Master.

Gale turned to Wang Li. "Granny asked me to let you come, not just to take care of Linlin," he said. "She wanted for you to pick up a thing or two as well. So, for the remainder of your stay, you and I are going to cook a lot of stuff, and I'll show you what I can do with Qi. As for the food, they would be mostly your duty as you have Life Qi. They will be most required for Linlin as she will be left completely drained after her training.

"We need to fatten her up so that she won't look like a malnourished zombie after I'm done with training her."

Wang Li nodded. "I'll try my best."

"Master, so we start tomorrow?"

"That's the plan, but for today, we'll party. We hadn't celebrated Madam Wang's perfect fusion yet. Linlin, you can go with Vale to invite the Shens if you like, we're going to cook something special for the dinner.

"I'm just going outside to see how things are developing."

***

Gale flew where he told Twilight to bring the injured practitioners from the Han Family. It wasn't really that far, just over the ridge where he had collected water to irrigate the field. Supposedly, there was a small cave there, and hardly anyone to live in peace.

It was probably carved by some practitioners, who knew how long ago he had to spend a night here.

That was where Gale told the ghostly assassin to bring all the wounded men.

Gale had a plan for them. Something that required utmost secrecy and professionalism. So expendable labourers and a professional assassin with autism. Gale got a fine deal there.

Besides, Shi Fan trusted Twilight with all his treasure. That said something about her honesty and professionalism.

Honestly, people like that were hard to find in this world. Well, it's not about the dual spirit and physical body nature, although that was extremely rare too. What Gale was talking about here was her honesty.

Most people in this world were busy accumulating strength, they don't even lift an eyebrow when they take things from others.

In this way, most practitioners weren't any better than thieves or robbers. Thankfully, they have those ever-glorious shitty excuses to back their acts even under scrutiny.

Gale flew directly through the small waterfall to enter the cavern behind it. He found the wounded captive easily, some of them were already woken up, but with Twilight muffling their mouths with clothes, none of them could utter a word.

Gale didn't wait to address the captive, but looked around. He wouldn't always have good luck finding her location if she tried to hide. The only reason Gale was able to find her before was that she let some of her intentions out.

However, Twilight wasn't the type of practitioner that made the same mistake easily. As long as she didn't come at him with some intent, Gale would probably never be able to find her.

Thankfully, she wasn't employed by the Han family, or he would have to be really alert all the time.

"Are you going to come on your own, or do I need to find you?"

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