Chapter Ninety-Nine Alice

Wei Si's phantom suddenly froze. She reached out a hand, pointed at herself, and asked, "You're still willing to teach my younger sister martial arts?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"In your eyes, didn't I almost devour your disciple's soul?"

"And what does that have to do with me? If she wasn't clever enough and got devoured by you, then so be it—dead is dead. All I want is to spread martial arts. Who exactly ends up learning it, I couldn't care less."

Looking at the earnest expression on Ling Mo's face, Wei Si could clearly sense that he was being completely truthful. She suddenly burst into laughter, her voice returning to that warm, big-sister-next-door tone: "Teacher Ling, you're still as amusing as ever! Alright, I'll now enter a state of slumber and won't wake up again for quite a long time. I hope my little sister Wei En can grow and thrive under your tutelage."

As she spoke, the single enormous eye on her face sank away, and her mirror-smooth face began to reveal blurred facial features. If the pale blue phantom had previously borne only an eighty percent resemblance to Wei Si, now it looked ninety-five percent alike! As her features gradually sharpened, the phantom slowly sank bit by bit into Wei En's body below. Just as she was about to disappear entirely, she suddenly turned her head, faced Catherine with a smile, and said: "Miss Catherine, you must be careful now. Who knows—maybe one day, the two of us will end up living together!"

Catherine stammered, not knowing how to respond. But Wei Si hadn't expected an answer anyway. She gave a final wave and vanished with a warm smile.

Catherine stared blankly at Wei En lying on the ground, then asked, "Master... does this mean I am not only a Fire Spirit Body, but the fire I now possess is Anthun's Fire?"

Ling Mo did not answer. Seeing his silence, Catherine understood her master's meaning all too well. Large tears welled up from her eyes and soon streamed down her face, yet she made no sound of weeping. She simply asked again, very calmly:

"Am I... completely unable to return to human society now?"

Ling Mo was silent for a moment, then answered a question with a question: "Eighteen years ago, I once entered the Thousand Blades City and stayed for a few days."

"Was Master already that powerful back then?"

"No. I was actually a bit stronger than I am now."

Hearing Ling Mo's answer, Catherine took a long breath, held back her tears, and forced a smile: "So that means... I should just train hard, right?"

"It's not as serious as you think," Ling Mo reassured her. "The only ones who could tell from the livestream that you were using Anthun's Fire are the elder-level figures of the sect Wei Si belongs to. Their sect has always had a habit of hiding every secret they can. Not many people will know."

Ling Mo's answer put Catherine somewhat at ease. After hesitating for a moment, she asked another question: "Master, was Lady Wei Si truly going to devour me?"

"What's this? Still holding onto a shred of hope for your beloved Arcane Saint?" Ling Mo laughed heartily. "All I know is that after planting the mark spider, she can slip into your body at any moment. But whether she would devour you completely or coexist peacefully with you was entirely up to her whim. Why don't you just let her in and find out?"

Catherine shook her head frantically.

Seeing her shake her head, Ling Mo continued: "Still, you don't need to worry too much. In the martial path, once one reaches the rank of Senior Martial Master, the soul and body have already undergone initial fusion. Even if an Arcane Saint invaded you, you could hold your own for a while. And if you break through to Grand Martial Master, your soul and body will fuse completely—no matter how powerful a soul might try to take over your body, it would be utterly impossible."

The martial path trains the soul too? Wasn't martial arts supposed to be mainly about strengthening the body?

Just as Catherine was about to ask, Wei En, who was lying on the ground, let out a pained groan and slowly woke up. She was dazed for a moment, then suddenly snapped her eyes open, scrambled to her feet in a single motion, and took up a defensive stance together with the chibi three-head-tall alchemy puppet beside her. Facing Catherine, she angrily shouted: "You bastard! We agreed on a truce, and yet you attacked me while I was watching the livestream replay! How despicable!"

Catherine opened her mouth wide and studied Wei En's expression carefully, finding that the girl did not seem to be putting on an act at all. She couldn't help asking: "You... don't remember?"

"Remember what?" Wei En fumed. "You promised to tell me what kind of person my master was! I had just seen him grow into a giant, and then you ambushed me and knocked me out cold!"

As she said this, she stomped the ground hard in frustration and muttered: "So careless. I blame my own carelessness... I actually trusted you, this silly senior sister, so easily. My head hurts—just how hard did you hit me?! Do you even know what you hit? This is the smartest brain on the entire continent! If any inspiration in this smartest of brains got knocked out of me, and the continent ends up not being saved because of it, it's all your fault!"

"..." Being called silly made Catherine want to get angry, but deep down, she secretly felt a flicker of delight at being called 'senior sister.' This conflicted feeling made her silently scold herself for being so weak-willed. She was about to say something, to tell Wei En what had really just happened, when she heard Ling Mo clear his throat and speak:

"Alright, whatever conflicts the two of you have can be settled later. Wei En, eat this Foundation Building Pill first."

Wei En abruptly turned her head toward Ling Mo, about to say something, when she suddenly caught sight of the crimson pill in his hand. Her gaze sharpened, and she practically scrambled over, snatched the pill straight from Ling Mo's grasp, examined it from every angle, even brought it up to her nose to sniff it, and let out an endless stream of admiration:

"Incredible! Absolutely incredible! This pill is crafted with such divine skill! Leaf Spirit Grass, White Star Frost, Ghost-Head Withered Branch, Cold Crow Tree leaves, Earth Element Core... nearly thirty ingredients with completely different properties, all flawlessly fused together into a subtle transformation! This technique is miraculous! The last time I saw a pill of this caliber was when I went adventuring in the Molten City with my father! Master, I thought you were just a pure muscle-head, but I never expected you to know alchemy too?! Your skill is far beyond mine. Can you teach me this later?"

Ling Mo was somewhat taken aback: "Aren't you an alchemist? You know pill refinement as well?"

"I'm not a traditional alchemist—I'm a 'magic scholar,'" Wei En corrected him seriously, holding up the three-head-tall puppet for him to see. "We magic scholars devote ourselves to creating the most perfect alchemy puppets in the world. Any discipline that might be used in crafting a puppet, I've studied to some extent."

"Oh, this puppet is well made," Ling Mo said, examining it closely and nodding. "But I can't teach you pill refinement. I can only teach you martial arts."

"Why? Master, are you really that stingy?" Wei En grumbled. Then a thought struck her, and her expression changed drastically: "Wait—it's not that once I study martial arts, I have to give up all my other interests and hobbies, is it? If that's the case, I'd rather die than learn! I've already devoted my body and soul to the magic arts, dedicating my finite life to the infinite—"

"Stop!" Ling Mo made a time-out gesture, cutting her off. "Take this pill and enter the martial path. As long as you train from time to time, I won't interfere with anything else. Even if you have the means to run magic scholar experiments out here in the wilderness, I'll pretend I didn't see it."

"That lax?" Wei En was surprised, then quickly caught on: "Oh, right. I'm just a billboard anyway."

"That's true enough, but if you train earnestly in the martial path, I'll be very pleased," Ling Mo said thoughtfully. "From what I understand, both alchemy and pill refinement require extremely precious materials. Isn't there a saying—'sharpening the axe won't delay the woodcutting'? If your martial strength is great enough, you can venture into the core regions of the Eight Absolute Perils and hunt for materials you could only dream of before—like the vital blood of a crimson dragon, the tentacles of an Evil Eye Tyrant, the core of a mechanical lifeform, the head of a headless knight, and so on. After all, martial strength is fully integrated into your own body—the 'suppression' of the Perils has no effect on martial artists."

"Slurp..." At the list of all those precious materials, Wei En's mind began to wander with longing, and she unconsciously sucked back the drool that was about to drip from her lips. She was just sinking into blissful fantasies when Ling Mo suddenly said, out of nowhere: "Come to think of it, I've actually seen a puppet crafted by you magic scholars before. That puppet was truly exquisite—if you didn't look closely, you'd think she was a real human girl. She called herself 'Alice' and wanted to spar with me. Her strength was actually quite—"

Crack!

A crisp snapping sound rang out. Catherine looked at Wei En in shock, only to see that in a moment of excitement, the girl had actually snapped off the arm of the puppet in her hands! The alchemy puppet's face wore an appropriately pained expression, but Wei En paid it no mind at all. Her features twisted into a fearsome grimace, as if she had transformed from a delicate-faced girl into a vengeful ghost! Her expression hideously ferocious, she roared:

"Alice?!"

"The puppet is called Alice?!"

"It actually dares to be called Alice?!"

"It dares to call itself Alice?!"

"Where is that wench?! I'll tear her apart limb from limb with my own hands!"