Chapter 4
From previous descriptions, I now have a disciple I'm calling junior. Luckily the kid knows how to take care of himself, or he would have been more trouble. Though I did take care of Qiu Yu, and therefore I know how to feed and change the diapers or teaching him how to walk, but it is troublesome nonetheless.
It is the first day, and the protagonist wants to help, and comes to my side when I am making a meal for us. I decided to go to Qiu Yu's to borrow salt then and asks Zhu Jue to watch the fire. I didn't think I went out for long, but when returning, I can see half the house burning up.
I imagine you can understand my shock then. Luckily I have a body that is elementally ice, so I could rush in and take Zhu Jue out, and then put out the fire to save what little of my house was left. Since the hill my house is on is only home to Qiu Yu and my master who is never here, it is understandable the fire is not discovered. Zhu Jue is covered in ash and dust, not saying a word standing behind me. I don't even want to scold him after seeing how pitiful he looked, so I go on to check the damages. Luckily, as a person who adheres to the good habits of people cultivating, that is, to put all the valuables in my own pocket s.p.a.ce, it does not appear that I lost much. It's just that part of my clothes were burnt when I went inside to save him. As the bathtub is also busted, I could only go to the river bank and wash myself up before changing clothes. You see, as the male deuteragonist, image is important.
So I turn around, asking Zhu Jue, "do you want to shower?"
Zhu Jue looks up at me, before lowering his head again, "I'm sorry…"
"Just don't do it next time." My house is not resistant to flames, after all.
"… Yes… I'm sorry…"
"You don't have to keep apologising."
In the end he follows me to the river bank obediently, and tries to give me a back rub when we're all showering. I couldn't convince him otherwise so I agreed. In the end, Zhu Jue managed to slip and fall into the river with his head hitting the rock underwater, and drank a bunch of water as well. The river does not taste good, while the unpolluted water is clean and cool, there's still fish and kale and stuff in it so it does smell. When I turn to look at him I could see Zhu Jue struggling in the water. While the water is only knee-deep he couldn't manage to get up. I realise that it might be a post-trauma disorder he got given he was soaked until he blew up before, so I drag him by the arm and lifted him up. The moment he's fished up he wraps around my arms like an octopus. I'm not used to touching people like that, but I couldn't be so cruel and push his hand away either. So, I pat him on the brain, "don't be afraid."
Since he isn't speaking, I keep patting him on the brain. About a dozen minutes later, Zhu Jue finally speaks, "I thought I would die that time."
"Mm. You didn't."
"It's so scary to slowly suffocate to death in water."
"Mm. I fished you up. Heavy." Then I princess-carried you back.
I could feel him tearing up at my chest. It is actually a bit disgusting with how sticky it is, but the kid is sad, so I should continue holding him. I'll just wash it up later.
Zhu Jue stops crying after a while, sniffling before separating from me. I finally get the time to wash all the tears and snot on my chest. I understand how it is, but snot plus tears which are smeared all over someone is really disgusting. If Zhu Jue did not
So the rest of this half a day left is spent making some stuff randomly and eating and kind of fixing the place up, checking what is needed and recording it. Zhu Jue, ashamed as he is, helps out by running here and there for me. The day pa.s.ses after we tire ourselves to death. At night, I realise this was the first day ever where I spent the whole day doing busywork without cultivating at all. Even I thought it was lazy so I decided to meditate my way through the night. Though when I'm sitting in the proper posture in the bedsheet on the ground, Zhu Jue comes along holding his pillow, asking, "are you not sleeping?"
"I've basically skipped out of the whole day, so I'll have to work hard to make up for it."
He visibly lowers his head, "I'm sorry… It's all me."
"No worries." I knew taking care of kids were troublesome, like Qiu Yu. She might be cute and low-maintenance now, she used to be a troublemaker too.
"Will you not like me? Making so much trouble for you?"
"No."
"Really?" The puppy perks his ears up.
"Mm."
The moment I regain consciousness the second day morning after I'm finished training, I discover Zhu Jue's head on my legs having a great snoring session. Who knows how long he has been sleeping, but clearly Zhu Jue is non-hostile, so I didn't feel anything subconsciously and kept immersing in my training instead. Since I know I'll probably have to accompany Zhu Jue for his demon boss conquering session, and so my combat power will be decisive to my survival, it's better for me to work hard. It doesn't feel real though, that this bear of a troublemaker kid will turn into a super awesome hero later, just looking at Zhu Jue right now. Though he is our protagonist, and this is the one thing that won't change.
I shake him awake, and wait for him to clean and tidy himself up with sleepy eyes. Now I start the first step of helping him trample over the world – teaching him cultivation.
That said, clearly protagonists everywhere will never reach any height just following their master's teaching. They won't even be qualified as a protagonist if they don't find ancestral inheritance/acquire through hards.h.i.+ps/meet some immortals somewhere and gain their favour and get/accidentally wander through an immortal's home and acquire a cheat cultivation guidebook. As his master this is kind of heartbreaking really. The disciple you spent so much effort teaching comes out with another set of stuff. Zhu Jue will also acquire such a cultivation guidebook, an inheritance from his mother who is never seen anywhere else. This is what I know. In terms of the plot, that kid who is murdered who gave Zhu Jue his body is also part of what contributed to that cultivation guidebook. The guidebook can be said to even be a spell of resurrection. Even if someone's cultivation base was bad, they will become heavenly cultivation base under the nurturing of this guidebook, how envious. As deuteragonist though, my own cultivation base is certainly not bad either, so I'm not that jealous. In any case, even if my cultivation base was good, I worked hard to get where I am today. The moment I think about how quickly the protagonist will get stronger, I don't know how many more chapters I can teach him for.
… But it doesn't help for me to be jealous, envious or hateful of him, since he's the protagonist, he has Beijing citizens.h.i.+p protagonist halo.
While my thoughts are souring, I do teach Zhu Jue seriously. He is the kind of protagonist that is diligent as well, and he won't promise one thing and do something else. He's serious in learning too… even though from my observation his cultivated power is from a completely different system to mine. It means while he did listen he is still training with his own cultivation system, and so I'm even more inexplicably bitter. I know his system is better than mine though, so I don't stop him. Instead I give him a reminder every now and then if he is close to overloading his cultivation. Zhu Jue is also obedient, and likes coming and asking me questions. I can answer most of them, but there are of course some slightly more peculiar questions, then I can only tell him that I don't know and then go to the Books Depository to look up information or asking (someone else's) master, and try to give him an explanation. Of course, there are problems which I can't find the answer to no matter what. These questions will often bug me for quite a while, since I'm only a cultivator at Ronghe rank.
He stays three months here, successfully reaching Kaiguang rank. This is a terrifying speed nonetheless. While I know he has (been given) a golden finger, it is another thing to actually experience it. My cultivation base is not bad myself, but I spent three whole years on Zhuji. A tragedy when compared to three months to him. Besides cultivation, the bear of a kid has also learned to clean——I mean, by my standards of cleaning——and rudimentary skills with toolcrafting. This isn't some skill from me, but he ‘accidentally' met with the most ‘mysterious' adept toolcrafter Uncle Feihuang in Icy Mountain Sect in the back mountains. From what I know, he has been travelling in circles about the back mountain trails just to wait for the protagonist, and complaining about it to me every day in secret. Since I was annoyed with him I sent Zhu Jue to the back mountains with various excuses, and he finally managed to meet this mysterious adept toolcrafter who often steals food from my kitchen, whose eyes cannot let go once he sees a pretty girl, who doesn't wash his underpants for a whole month.
By the way, his character setting said he should have been one who is n.o.bler-than-thou, uninterested in woman, clean freak. He's almost an exact replica of my dad's… uhh, something got mixed up here… Anyway, the image of a master like that. But like I said, this dumb uncle is like most people – besides his name, he is nothing like his character settings describe him as.
What makes me somewhat relieved is that, despite his ma.s.sive amount of golden fingers, there is one thing that Zhu Jue can never do but I can, which is that Zhu Jue, up until now, still is unable to distinguish between salt and MSG.
So after my kitchen burned down again, I had to put up a notice on my kitchen door.
"Entry forbidden for Zhu Jue and Feihuang."
What a tragedy, I know.
Author's notes: Settings about cultivation ranks in the text,
Zhuji, Kaiguang, Ronghe, Xindong, Jindan, Yuanying, Chuqiao, Fenshen, Heti, Dongxu, Dacheng, Dujie
↑ From Baidu
Don't diss how there's no MSG in the past. This isn't ancient China. This isn't even Earth.→_→[Yes author is making up excuses]
Don't mind the details for a dissing novel→_→[Yes author is avoiding responsibility]
TL's notes: Ah, now that I have a list, I can give a note every time a rank is mentioned! So anyway, for the text, our protagonist, Xuanyuan Mufeng is at rank 3. It took him three years+ to reach rank 1. Protagonist Zhu Jue has reached rank 2 in only three months. I'll note the ranks with a () next to it like Ronghe (3) when it's mentioned again.
By the way, I'm not giving special TL's notes to the ranks anymore. If you're really interested in what the words mean you can probably find it somewhere. Yeah, I'm lazy like that… No, seriously. These words are made up by Taoism. Half of them are empty buzzwords to us Chinese and the other half gibberish. So you get why I don't like translating cultivation novels, and am only willing to translate ones like this, simple(ish) and short.