5. The Old Man in White

The old man wasn’t annoyed and smiled. “You are unable to kill me! What you see is my illusional image. Stop wasting your time and energy.”

Seeing Ye Lan on alert, the old man introduced himself with his hands clasped respectfully before his chest, “My name is Bai Yi (literally means white clothes), also known as old guy in white.”

“Bai Yi? Hum, I couldn’t care less!” Ye Lan took another needle and threatened him, “Who the hell are you on earth? What are you here for?”

“I am here to help you!”

“Help me?” Ye Lan chuckled, her eyes as cunning as those of a fox, “You and I are not related in any sense, why do you want to help me?”

“Don’t you want to revenge? There are hundreds of thousands of spirit cultivators in the Ye family, even though you have a good command of martial arts and have great talent, but you are no match for spirit cultivators as a mortal.”

The old man hesitated and sneered at Ye Lan, “I wonder how you are gonna revenge.”

Ye Lan being was speechless. The old man started giggling again. He stroked his beard and said, “Without my help, it is barely possible for you to cultivate your spiritual power. But if you become my disciple, I will teach you something about that.”

Ye Lan scoffed, “I can cultivate on my own.”

“That seems barely possible…”

“Why?”

“As far as I know, you cannot cultivate your spirit right now. Am I right?”

To her surprise, following the original owner’s memory, she, as the fourth daughter of the Ye family, seems to have been deprived of the spiritual power when she was born, and was thus bullied and despised as a loser.

Nevertheless, how did the old man know all this?

But she wouldn’t believe that she was the only one in the entire Ye family who was unable to cultivate spirit power.

“I can be a spirit cultivator!” Ye Lan pretended to be confident and gnashed her teeth, “You are only using this as an excuse to make me your disciple, It’s not gonna t happen!”

The old man held his forehead and sighed, “What a stubborn little girl! Hey, hey… It’s for your own good!”

His white beard on each side turned upright because of his anger.

“Never mind, you can always come to me when you don’t know how to cultivate your spirit!”

The old man groaned out of dissatisfaction and got back to the ring.

Seeing the old man gone, Ye Lan got out her needle and thread and continued her stitching, but her eyes were fixed on the burning candle, and her mind went blank for a long time.

She was confused. She knew nothing about this Fengtian Continent, just like a new born child to this world.

Even though the original owner left her some memories, but most of the memories are about family feud, and had little help for her further knowledge about the continent.

She didn’t even know what spiritual power was and how to cultivate it and where to start.

*

Ye Lan put the tile back to where it was and got down from the pillar. The little sparrow taking a nap on the pomegranate tree nearby

felt there was a breeze and suddenly opened its eyes, but soon went back to sleep when it realized there wasn’t anyone passing by.

When she was back on the firm land, Ye Lan bypassed the grove and took a shortcut back to the peach blossom residence.

“Isn’t it all about cultivating spiritual power? How hard could that be?”

Ye Lan closed the window and the door, sit cross-legged on the bed, her lips slightly curved, “I was a super agent nicknamed Many-faced Actor. It won’t be a problem for me.”

She started to grasp what she just learned in secret about the way to cultivate her spiritual power and chanted the spell in her heart with her hands crossed before her chest.

A puff of golden breath suddenly appeared. I could be seen clearlyunderneath her skin, rising from the bottom of her caudal vertebra, following her veins and blood vessels which were like giant golden tree trunks and finally reached her fingertips through her arms.

Suddenly, a streak of golden breath came out from her fingertip and floated in the air and later formed a light ball.

Looking at the golden ball before her eyes, Ye Lan was curious, “Is this spiritual power?”

“Too early to be happy! This is just an illusion.”

After a few seconds, the golden ball disappeared and the color of golden veins on her back also faded, no matter how hard Ye Lan tried to read the spell, the spiritual power just wouldn’t come out again.

“What happened?”

Ye Lan was astonished. Why would the spiritual power all gone no matter how hard she tried to accumulate it?

“I told you it wouldn’t work on your own! Come on, be my disciple, and I will tell you the secrets!”

“Old man, are you tricking me?”

The ring produced a humming sound and the old man appeared again, “If I want to stop you, will I let you know that?”

After thinking for a while, Ye Lan thought: Maybe it’s because I wasn’t training hard enough! I should work even harder!

“Stubborn girl!” the old man groaned, with his beard upright, “You’re hopeless!”

He then went back into the ring full of anger as he failed once again to be her master.

“You know where to find me when you come around!”

“Why won’t you just give it up? Why do you have to be my master?”

The old man said with a helpless tone, “I don’t want to bother you, but I’m the only one who can teach you throughout the Fengtian Continent… There’s nothing I can do about that!”

After several days’ training, the old man’s words occurred to Ye Lan when she noticed she couldn’t transport any of the golden breath out of herself anymore.

Ye Lan hesitated about becoming the old man’s disciple. She didn’t want to take the risk as she was determined to revenge for her family but the old man’s identity was still unknown and he looked really suspicious.

But how could she take revenge if she can’t be a spiritual cultivator?

After giving this a second thought, Ye Lan summoned the old man.

“You figured it out, little girl?” The old man burst into laughter, pointing at the tea on the table and said, “Missy, you’d better serve the tea to your master now!”

Ye Lan threw a cold look at the tea cup, reached out for it and handed it the old man, “Here!”

“Hey, who would serve the tea like that? You should hold the cup with both hands… kneel down on both legs, raise it up to the height of your forehead, and say ‘My respectful master, please accept your disciple’s kowtow’.”

The old man was bossing her around and being picky on purpose, “You are a grown-up already, but you still need me to teach you about manners?”

“Cut the crap, do you want to drink it or not!”

“I do, I do, don’t get worked up so easily!” It was the first time for the old man to see such a ungrateful disciple, but since the little girl was hard to find, he was nevertheless happy to have her as his disciple and drank the tea at once.

“(Coughing)… this, this is hot water!”

“I thought you said you are an illusion?” Ye Lan didn’t care about him at all, “What’s the matter with hot water? You won’t feel the heat anyway.”

The old man was furious now. What an annoying disciple!

“Stop nagging, old geezer, let me ask you, how come I can’t cultivate spirit power on my own?”

“Your body is different from ordinary people, that’s why you can’t cultivate in a normal way.”

“My body? What do you mean?”

The old man had a secret smile and lowered his voice.

“Because…you have the holy spiritual body!”

“Holy spiritual body?”

“For ordinary people who want to be spirit cultivators, as their bodies are mortal, their skills are pretty rough; for people who’s got great talent, they can end up summoning the storm and the rain, but for a holy spiritual body that can rarely be found even for 10 thousand years, as long as the person keep harnessing his or her power in a steady way, this person will eventually be able to reach the peak of perfection and have the ability to reverse the course of events!”

“Nevertheless, a normal way to cultivate this body’s spirit is not gonna work. It has to be a special and mysterious way. Once the holy spiritual body is well-tuned, the spiritual power will come out like no one’s match.”

The old man stroked his beard and swung to the front of Ye Lan, “As far as I know, nobody in this so-called Ye family has the luck to own the holy spiritual body.”

“Get to your point!”

“So I’m sure you are not a member of the Ye family.” The old man thought for a while and continued, “The mother who knew your identity had died. You should work harder on your cultivation so that you may know who you are when the timing is right.