Aimless Ascension

"Then what's stopping you?" Wang Yushen asked.

"Xiaolin," Gale answered. "I gave her time to consider. It's a decision of a lifetime, I cannot let her decide without considering all elements."

"True," the old woman agreed and turned to Xiaolin. "I reckon an entire night is enough time for you to decide, girl. Be prepared with an answer in the morning."

Xiaolin could only nod. This old woman could be scary sometimes. She barely gave her a night to think of, though a night was plenty of time to decide.

Still, Gale would've liked it if Xiaolin decided it on in her time, not pressured out of a time limit. He was after all new to this master-disciple business. He couldn't pose like an all-knowing sage about spirit arts and give her the wrong idea.

"If that's understood, go on then," Grandma Wang continued. "I have something to discuss with the boy."

Although Xiaolin would like to stay, she had a lot to think about. This proposal came as a surprise and hit her hard. So she abided by Grandma's word and left, leaving an uncertain Wang Li who didn't know whether she should depart or not.

Grandma Wang gave her granddaughter a glance and didn't say anything, so Wang Li remained there.

"Don't play with hope, young man," the old woman told him as she sat down.

"I'm fairly serious about this grandma," Gale said. He sat across from her. Only Wang Li remained standing, she didn't seem to be hasty in adopting a sitting position.

"It's good that you're serious," Grandma Wang said with a sigh. "I have been a failure to do anything about her constitution. Although I tried, my reach wasn't nearly enough to solve her issue. . . I want to know, how hopeful are you?"

"I don't know if Xiaolin had told you, but we did a little experiment where I introduced a spirit poison to her system and--"

"You did what?" Both the women, young and old, shouted in unison.

"She hadn't told you?" Gale was puzzled.

"Now I'm not so sure about consenting to your proposal so easily," Wang Yushen said briskly. "Tell me, boy, what did you do?"

Gale sighed and explained what they found out about Xiaolin's constitution. How spirit poison stopped affecting her as her body automatically emits it out.

"Fascinating," was the only word she said after hearing everything.

"As I mentioned earlier, her constitution wasn't faulty, but now I know she needs to be under some special environment to progress on that. Although I don't have a foolproof plan, I have a couple of ways where I'm rather optimistic."

"Well, it certainly doesn't keep me at ease hearing all this," the old woman said. " But you can go on. Are you going to proceed with traditions of binding with soul oaths after Xiaolin agrees, or do you folks have a different tradition?"

"Soul oaths?" Wang Li's brows perked upwards. Of course, she knew about soul oaths, but she wasn't certain if it was necessary to bind Linlin through some soul oaths so early.

"It's just about the same," Gale said. "When a master decides to take on someone as their direct disciple, the two of them come to terms with how their relationship would be. So they took turns to take soul oaths as they put them at ease. I'm down to follow this."

Wang Yushen nodded. She was satisfied with Gale's attitude as he was ready to follow the tradition, unlike many masters who took disciples for various purposes and tried to avoid taking soul oaths as much as possible.

Gale could understand why soul oaths could be something you'd like to avoid. It was a binding force that would be put on your soul forever unless the other party decides to set you free.

Betraying a soul oath could cause terrible demerits to one's soul oath to as much as crippling the practitioner. Low-level practitioners may even die from breaking soul oaths.

They discussed what ways Gale would like to adopt in training Xiaolin. Honestly, Gale wasn't good at teaching, nor he had the resources his Master used on him. Thankfully, Xiaolin was barely at the basics of spirit arts. It would take months for him to run out of stuff to teach her.

After that, he could just kick her out like his master did to join some sect.

"Now that got out of the way," Gale said. "We should talk about your granddaughter."

"She mentioned you can provide her with better quality fate locks?" Wang Yushen asked, a bit incredulous. Her old eyes weren't accommodated to hear this type of statement at all.

"Certainly," Gale said, turning towards Wang Li. "Although I have other options for her."

"The artificial fate-locks I can make are mostly of common grade, though uncommon grades tend to spout out every now and then," Gale said. "These fate-locks will mostly have one feature above the plant element. I can tweak the feature to the specific direction you want, though broad customization isn't possible. It could be like boosting the growth of some specific type of plant, or augmenting a specific flavour.

"The fate-lock will grow along with the user too, though it tends to lag behind compared with the natural fate-lock in the gold rank. If you go the artificial route, I can provide assistance in the fusion for free as well as in the extraction process."

Wang Li seemed to be ready to agree with this proposal. She had enough funds on her own to afford this.

However, her grandmother had other plans. "What are the other options?"

"I had a few of what you call original fate locks with me that would be far better in comparison to the artificial ones," Gale said.

Gale had about a hundred odd fate-locks inside his void-lock, most of them were spoils of wars that he didn't have time to sell. Among them, two-thirds were artificial cores, while the rest were all natural ones of various attributes.

"What kind of fate locks can you offer?

"According to Madam Wang's requirements, I have only a few options that would satisfy her needs. Mostly different kinds of healing types, but I have this Unique one with dual attributes of life and plant that could boost almost all organic elements."

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