After two weeks of travel to the academy, Tan San demonstrated his spirit. It wasn't an ordinary spiritual herb; its leaves had an unusual, slightly pointed shape, and faint silver radiance pulsed through its delicate veins, as if its internal life force was beating within.
Fu Huan tried to break one of the stalks, but to no avail – it was surprisingly elastic and strong. During a sparring match, when Tan San wrapped the dean in the vines, although they only restrained him for a brief moment, even with the release of the spiritual master's 48th-level power and his two purple rings, the vines tore with considerable effort from the dean.
"A very strong ability," the dean commented, carefully examining the remnants of the vines. "You can entangle targets from quite a distance and use these bindings for defense. An average spiritual master wouldn't stand a chance to break free, and the speed at which they spread is quite high. Even I needed a bit more time than I expected to destroy them, and in battle, every second counts."
Tan San was pleasantly surprised to hear such praise from the experienced soul master. He himself recognized the potential of his second skill.
A day passed.
On the training grounds, once again, Tan San and Fu Huan were sparring. Despite the age difference – the nine-year-old boy was skillfully applying pressure to the eleven-year-old Fu with his entangling vines – Fu, even without the same combat experience as Tan San, demonstrated impressive abilities. Her reaction speed was incredible, her cat-like grace allowing her to elegantly dodge any attempt by Tan San to capture her. Destroying the bindings would require a significant expenditure of her spiritual energy. After absorbing the Golden Bear's ring, her physical and mental abilities reached a certain balance, allowing her to both slow down her opponents' movements and accelerate her own. However, physical strengthening wasn't her primary goal.
"Homemade skill: Golden Coffin."
A three-meter radius around Tan San suddenly erupted into a perfectly golden cube, seeming to be woven from dense energy. When Tan San attempted to break it with the sharp vines of his second skill, he found no success – the vines simply slid off the smooth surface. And then came what would be etched in his memory for a long time. Inside the golden cube, rapid pulses of pure spiritual energy began to form into sharp blades, which immediately shot toward him from all directions. Instantly recognizing the danger, Tan San responded by creating a dense, closed cocoon of intertwined vines around himself. However, the golden blades quickly began to partially cut through his defense. One blade might not have been able to pierce his spiritual armor, but there were dozens, if not hundreds, attacking relentlessly from all sides. After twenty seconds, a slightly tired Fu Huan observed the battered Tan San, his clothes torn and covered in numerous shallow but unpleasant cuts. Xiao Wu, watching the outcome of the battle, stood frozen, her usually playful face displaying genuine shock. What had started as a match where Tan San's agility and experience gave him an advantage – though he couldn't fully capture her, he could potentially defeat her – ended with Fu Huan spending relatively little energy using her homemade skill and several applications of the spirit ring's first skill, while Tan San could barely stand.
Xiao Wu quickly ran over and began inspecting his injuries, but fortunately, she found nothing life-threatening.
"Don't use that skill again!" Xiao Wu exclaimed with slight panic.
"I had no choice," Fu Huan muttered, averting her gaze.
After a brief stay in the infirmary, Tan San quickly recovered, though the unpleasant sensations from the battle lingered.
"What was that?" Tan San asked in surprise, massaging his bruised shoulder.
"Homemade skill," Fu Huan answered calmly. "With it, I can create a coffin around my opponent, three cubic meters in volume, filled with blades of pure spiritual energy. The downside is that very skilled soul masters or masters above the sect level can easily avoid or break through it. Its power directly depends on my spiritual energy. Normally, I avoid using it unless absolutely necessary, but against you, I had no choice. You're too strong, and your vines are too persistent."
Tan San tried to process what he had heard. He also had some homemade techniques from his previous life: ways to enhance his vision and reaction speed, illusions weren't frightening to his eyes, as well as "Ice Fingers" and "Ice Fist" to strengthen physical contact, although the main attribute of the latter was immunity to poisons used in concealed weapons. But these skills were the result of many years of research and were passed down through generations in his previous sect. Here, though, an eleven-year-old girl had created something that, in a short time, had brought him to his knees. For a moment, he felt a slight sense of inadequacy, but it quickly turned into sincere admiration for her talent. Her understanding of spiritual energy was on an entirely different level, he thought.
Two weeks passed since then. Fu Huan had been actively developing her mental strength through special meditations. Recently, she had begun experiencing emotions not just on the level of understanding but on the level of sensation. She no longer needed to observe someone's facial expression or listen to their tone to understand their emotional state – she could feel it directly.
Another two months passed, and then an incident occurred. Xiao Wu started attracting the persistent attention of a new student, a member of an aristocratic family with a natural spiritual power of level 5, which was considered quite impressive. He was blindly infatuated with Xiao Wu, but after several rejections and a couple of skirmishes with Tan San, which ended with painful bruises for him, his older brother became involved. After tracking Xiao Wu, he suddenly abducted her. About two hours later, Tan San noticed Xiao Wu was missing from her usual spots. Her playful teasing had also stopped. After searching the entire dormitory and not finding her, he began to worry and sought Fu Huan. If she wasn't with him, she was likely with Fu, he thought. Finding Fu Huan alone only heightened his anxiety. While he respected Fu Huan's knowledge and viewed her as a mentor, he saw Xiao Wu as a younger sister.
Fu Huan quickly focused. She couldn't sense Xiao Wu's spiritual energy within the academy or its surroundings. However, she decided to apply what she had been practicing before: telepathy over a distance – a skill based on memorizing the unique energy signature of the target. After several attempts, she finally managed to establish a connection, though with some interference. This skill allowed her to mentally contact Xiao Wu if she was within ten kilometers. Though it sounded incredible, Fu could easily memorize the energy composition when the target was still alive and capable of thought.
"Xiao Wu, where are you? Tan San is worried."
Xiao Wu's mouth was tightly bound, but forgetting about it, she tried to mumble something incoherently. Realizing her mistake, she understood that Fu Huan wasn't nearby, and the voice was directly in her head.
"I've been kidnapped," she desperately relayed through the mental channel to Fu Huan.
"Do you know where they took you?"
"It's on the outskirts of Nuodin, a small family of spirits. Both sons awakened their spirits, and their father is a Soul Master. Please, save me!"
"Don't worry, we'll be there soon."
"Wait, just you? They'll catch you too. You should notify the teachers."
"Of course, it's not just us, silly. Do you really think we'd go against an aristocratic family, even a small one, without a plan? Just wait, we'll be there soon."
Explaining what had happened to Tan San, he became furious, his fists clenching until they were white. But he quickly realized that facing the kidnappers alone would be reckless. What idiots, do they really think they can hold Xiao Wu by force?
Tan San was boiling with anger, but then he began to devise a rescue plan. When he came to his senses, Fu Huan had already disappeared. She quickly stormed into the dean's office, ushering out the teachers who had been there.
"This is an emergency. Xiao Wu has been kidnapped!"
The dean stared at her usual impassive face for a long time, knowing that she wouldn't interrupt a meeting without a serious reason.
"How many hours have passed since the kidnapping?"
"About three, maybe four."
"Where is she?"
"Do you really trust me without asking how I got this information?"
"There's no need, Fu Huan. I know you. I have no reason to doubt your words."
Having long-standing connections with the Spirit Hall, the dean immediately sent a secret message to his contacts, simultaneously dispatching a couple of agents for covert surveillance and possible arrest of the kidnappers.
Two hours later, the dean and several agents from the Spirit Hall raided the kidnappers' house with an arrest and search warrant.
The family head resisted, but against the combined strength of the experienced dean and agents from the Spirit Hall, finding Xiao Wu was not difficult, and suppressing the resistance of all the clan members was easy. The father and both sons were taken into custody.
After bidding the agents farewell, Tan San opened his arms to welcome Xiao Wu, but she suddenly jumped onto Fu Huan with unexpected force, knocking her to the ground.
"Ouch, you're crushing me," Fu Huan said with a slight smile, feeling Xiao Wu's warmth.
"Thank you," Xiao Wu whispered, her voice trembling.
Just one word, but her tense body made it clear that she had experienced a lot of fear during the few hours of her kidnapping.
Over time, the telepathic channel between the three of them remained constantly open. Without words, they could understand each other's intentions and emotions. However, if Fu Huan could establish a connection with one person over a significant distance, trying to connect with multiple people at once resulted in noticeable delays and unclear transmission of thoughts, making this skill impractical for combat. Nevertheless, for simple communication with someone in the academy without leaving her room, Fu Huan had no trouble. To use telepathy, she only needed to know the energy signature of the target and establish a mental "link" with them.
Days passed like this. Fu Huan actively trained her two new skills, "Golden Coffin" and telepathy, spending nights in deep meditation, perfecting her control over her spiritual energy. Tan San and Xiao Wu didn't waste time either, diligently working to raise their spiritual ranks.
And then the day came. Fu
Huan reached the 30th rank at the age of eleven years and four months.
To be continued.