An Ning dismissed Ling Yun to have a private talk with Mu Feixue. Mu Feixue was her senior by many years and what she was about to do wasn't proper but she couldn't help it. She had seen some things she felt was wrong and as her friend, she had to give her opinion.

  "So," she took a sip of tea. "How is your disciple doing? It's your first time teaching someone, is everything going well?"

  An Ning decided to make some small talk before subtly leading to the main subject.

  "Oh Ba- Yun'er is doing prettty good, too good if I say so. First, tell me how do you find the tea?"

  She was startled at the sudden change of topic. With her focus on the main issue, she hadn't put much thought on tea. She brought the cup close and took in the aromatic fragrance. The smell tickled her nerves as the rim of the cup reached her lips involuntarily.

  "It's quite good. Did you finally hire a spiritual chef?"

  An Ning was a little surprised. The one she drank was a spirit tea and quite a pleasant one at that. She knew about her friend's trust issues with having servants that were cultivators.

  "Never, you know me." Mu Feixue rolled her eyes at that stupid question before continuing. "Get this, it was made by Yun'er. See how talented my Yun'er is. He is such a good boy and he makes such delicious meals like this for me daily."

  An Ning's eyebrow twitched at the sight of her friend excitedly bragging about her disciple. She could see the excitement coming off her friend as Mu Feixue spoke one praise after another with a delighted smile on her face.

  I can't keep quiet anymore.

  "Don't you think you're being a little too close to that boy?"

  Her small voice instantly sucked all the life in the room. An Ning had witnessed her friend behaving strangely at the village when they found the boy. She believed it was due to the excitement of finding a successor so she didn't dwell on it much then. But after so many months had passed, her behaviour remained the same.

  The strange affectionate gleam in her eyes whenever her gaze fell on that boy. And that boy too was a little unusual. She had just before seen the two sitting too close to each other. They weren't touching or anything, but for a disciple to sit so close to his master and behave perfectly fine without a hint of nervousness, this definitely felt strange.

  Mu Feixue, who was just speaking animatedly become deathly still. The oppressive silence tried to press her spirit down but An Ning remained firm, her eyes fixed on Mu Feixue demanding an answer.

  "What do you mean by too close?"

  Her voice was cold, reminding her that she wasn't talking to her friend but a Senior Master alchemist. An Ning was little shocked; it had been years since took that tone with her.

  "I'm not trying make any accusations, it's for your own benifit. You are too secluded so you don't know much about teenage boys. Their minds haven't fully matured yet. If a beautiful woman like you acts too close to him, the boy will definitely get some strange ideas."

  An Ning definitely believed that her naive non-social friend was acting too defenseless in the presence of a horny teenage boy. Yes, the one she was suspicious of was the innocent Ling Yun; who in the world would guess that a respected female alchemist would seduce a no name junior generations below her.

  In her case, An Ning was also confident that she knew her friend's character and from Mu Feixue past romantic entanglements, her friend never showed any strange fetish. But An Ning didn't know that some feelings can twist a person into someone unrecognisable by his own family.

  The cold air disappeared as Mu Feixue finally registered what An Ning was trying to imply. "Oh." She could only say that word awkwardly.

  "You told be your previous master was a woman so you can't copy her style. He is a boy. You have to be strict and instill some discipline in him so he doesn't act so casually with his master. Teenage boys have a filthy imagination. Atleast put some distance so there are no troublesome feelings in the future."

  Mu Feixue gave out a sigh of relief. She was afraid her friend had caught onto the truth but An Ning was slightly off the mark. Ling Yun and her weren't professional actors, they must have shown some hints in their behaviour.

  She wasn't a fool, what they had was a taboo relationship which if got out would be condemned by many.

  "An Ning what you are thinking is not the case. The truth is ... Um... Yun'er sees me as a maternal figure."

  "Maternal what?!"

  To prevent such suspicions in the future, she decided to mislead her friend.

  "Yes, Yun'er himself told me in private. His mother had died when he was too young so he never knew of a mother's affection. Some time ago, he confessed to me that he sees his mother in me. I felt bad for him so I decided to give him the love he never received."

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  An Ning was left speechless, the story had taken such a sharp turn beyond her imagination. She could understand it but the boy was about to become seventeen. At this age he is still longing for a mother's love; many have already gotten married by now!

  That boy is definitely not right in the mind.

  "You really have picked quiet a peculiar disciple. Just keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't develop some weird fetishes."

  "Don't worry about it."

  And unknown to Ling Yun, his pure image had been maligned in An Ning's mind due to Mu Feixue's lies.

  ***

  The grasshopper was searching for food but suddenly felt danger behind him. It instantly jumped nearly dodging being swallowed and escaped quickly. Little Bai hissed in disappointment as it turned around to give further chase.

  Ling Yun was in the garden watching Little Bai playing. The other day An Ning had brought the beast taming amulet and the token along with a scroll on raising pet snakes. Strangely, she had given him a long look before giving the items and leaving. He didn't know what to make of it and decided to forget about it.

  It was written in the scroll that snakes like the sun so he had brought it in the open to bask in it. The black amulet hanging around his neck gave a nice contrast to its pure white skin.

  Ling Yun had refined the token with his blood. The beast taming amulet wasn't that special, its purpose was to set some rules and make sure the pet doesn't violate them. For example, never attacking humans. If Little Bai tried to hurt a mortal servant, the amulet would shock it causing immense pain.

  Ling Yun, the owner of the token can decide to shock little Bai whenever he wants. He wanted to test it once but seeing the cute white snake playing around, he decided against it.

  "Little Bai, I hope you never give me a reason to use it."

  He continued to read further. There was only some basic information about what to feed it and the general habits of the snakes. It was just a guide to raising a pet, not a fighting beast. Also the scroll didn't show the type of snake little Bai is. He wasn't expecting it as An Ning had told him she had failed to find its species.

  Ling Yun thought about the existence of beast tamers who have special techniques to control demonic beasts and use them in battle.

  Maybe I can use little Bai as a vanguard while using soul arts from the back.

  He looked at the snake hissing pitifully after failing to catch the grasshopper again.

  Let's just keep it as a pet.

  ***

  Ling Yun was sweating hard in the training chambers. There was a small fire dragon circling around him. The dragon stopped above him when he raised both of his hands in the air.

  The dragon started contracting inwards and transformed into a large ball of fire. The fireball tried to transform into another shape but it split into multiple pieces before extinguishing.

  Ling Yun sat down before breathing heavily. "Tchh, another failure." Little Bai immediately came rushing and started nuzzling his neck. The tension dissipated from his body and he started stroking her neck.

  After checking with the scroll, he had found out that little Bai was female. In the coming weeks, the snake had shown a lot of intelligence. When he was practicing, little Bai didn't try to disturb him and would just silently stay by his side. He would spend one hour in the afternoon letting little Bai play in the garden.

  Having gotten used to delicious eggs of fire hen, a rank 1 demonic beast and the sandwyrm essence, little Bai wasn't interested in eating humans or insects. Even in the garden she was just playing around with insects with no intentions of eating them.

  The scroll had stated that if you're going to raise it for fighting, you should let the demonic beast hunt for its own food otherwise it would get lazier and turn out useless in future. But Ling Yun didn't care, he kept her well fed earning little Bai's affection.

  Both master and pet have started to develop an understanding of each other. Ling Yun could see from her expression when little Bai got hungry while she could sense when he didn't want to be disturbed.

  Recently he had been failing to make further progress in the Heart of Fire art. He had mostly mastered the second stage but now he was stuck. The excercise he had been practicing was Dragon-Pheonix excercise.

  First he had to manipulate the flames in the image of a dragon then quickly transform it into a Pheonix. No matter how many times he tried, he just couldn't get it. Ling Yun even cut back the time dedicated to studying Savouring the Heavens manual for these exercises but nothing was working.

  Fortunately little Bai was here to cheer him up. The snake somehow knew whenever he was down and came to him. But it worked, stroking his smooth cheek lifted his spirits a bit.

  Maybe this is why people keep pets.

  He thought as he looked at little Bai hissing happily.

  "Since I don't have any ideas let's just ask master for guidance."

  "Why don't you just ask me? Don't you have faith in me?" Brahma suddenly jumped into the scene.

  Ling Yun rolled his eyes inwardly. "I thought you said you don't know anything about flame arts or alchemy."

  Her smirk widened as she replied, "But I know what is wrong with you. You've encountered a bottleneck."

  "What did you say?!" Ling Yun was so shocked at the bad news that he couldn't help but shout. Encountering a bottleneck is one of the worst things that can happen to a cultivator. Be it in cultivation, in understanding some technique or even practicing other arts like alchemy, they halt progress entirely forcing cultivators to take some desperate measures.

  Some bottlenecks just simply loosen with time while others can remain forever untill one uses some special techniques and precious items.

  Damn it, what do I do now?

  "You are sweating too much, my heaven defying genius." Seeing his troubled face, Brahma couldn't help but laugh. She knew he had gotten a bit carried away from her praise and now was an excellent time to poke fun at him.

  Hearing her laughter, Ling Yun could only curse the heavens for giving him masters such as Brahma and Mu Feixue.

  "Are you going to help me or should I ask master?" Ling Yun was started to get annoyed.

  "Let me catch my breath first." Brahma covered her mouth before letting out a chuckle once. "There is no problem with you. It's just that you have reached your limit."

  "Reached my limit?"

  "Take this for an example, no matter how hard a twelve year old boy trains, can he lift as much as a grown man?"

  "You are insulting my intelligence by treating me as a kid. I've gotten plenty knowledgeable about cultivation so you can tell me in plain words. Is it because I have reached the limit of my talent?"

  "No, the limit of your body. The thing is this Heart of Flame art can never be mastered by a Qi Refining cultivator. The level of control required is impossible."

  Just then it clicked in Ling Yun's mind as he finally understood what she was telling.

  "You mean divine sense?"

  "You really have learned a lot." Brahma spoke as a proud master which annoyed him even more.

  "You cannot understand the flow and essence of Qi without divine sense. The difference is heaven and earth. The later stages of Heart of Flame art require divine sense and cannot be mastered otherwise. You know what you have to do next."

  Ling Yun let out a sigh as he looked straight ahead.

  "I have to quickly become a Foundation Establishment cultivator."