When Immortal Ascension Fails Time Travel to Try Again

Story 2 - Golden Fingers, Jade Boxes, and Other Treasures (1)

With a sword in my hand, I practiced long used positions, retraining my nine-year-old body to fight. As I moved, my appearance perfectly matched the description for a beautiful child immortal... at least, I assumed it did. Living in a rural farm area, I lacked any kind of silvered mirror like I used in my past-past life. And I currently couldn’t form a water mirror since that was a mid-level spell for Qi Condensation practitioners. It wasn’t worth the strain on my body.

Once I finished the familiar set of moves, a duck waddled past me as though I posed no threat. I glared at the stupid duck then sighed. Ever since I managed to collect this shitty sword from Immortal Flower Thief, I’d been practicing to gather more Sword Qi.

I’d been using the sword as my main weapon for a thousand years, so building up a reservoir of Sword Qi was fairly easy. If I had decided to go down the path of a Sword Cultivator, it would be a breeze to advance at first, but I would only ever do that if my current path failed. Sword Cultivators often needed to have epiphanies to advance significantly and I wouldn't reach immortality that way since I already knew too much.

There was also the issue that my body still had a mortal’s strength; meaning that, while my mind was excellent, my physical form —once again — limited my advancement. I could still kick the ass of anyone under the 8th layer of Qi Condensation with just these mere skills though. Probably.

And all of this practice was, of course, to facilitate leaving this stupid village for the immortal world. Because, after I let Little Spring get hurt, I realized that I couldn’t rely on my divine sense anymore. Once someone noticed that it didn’t match my level, I could get my ass handed to me by some dick nugget with a high enough cultivation —though I’d never make it easy for them.

As I readied myself to do another round of practice, the signs of Qi deviation spread through the yard, breaking my concentration.

Little Spring? But he hadn’t even reached the first layer. He was also in the middle of chores so how the fuck could he be deviating right now?

I ran around the corner to see my little martial brother on the ground, curled in on himself as he groaned in pain.

Had he tried to advance to the first layer while working? This shit for brains!

I knelt next to him and pushed my energy through his body to steady his cultivation. But I wasn’t strong enough and it easily started to go wild.

“Big sister Lin?” He said, voice straining with pain.

“Hush, idiot.”

The only thing I could do was pick apart the small amount of cultivation he’d already begun, making it so he’d have to start from scratch. The only good news was that, since he hadn’t had much cultivation to begin with —and since I took the time to actually unravel it instead of straight-up destroying it— this Qi deviation did no damage to him. He did, however, pass out from agony.

Since I was there, I took time to really look at the traces of what he’d cultivated before. Something didn’t add up.

I knew from my past life that our master had taught him this cultivation technique. She’d even mentioned how incredible it was that he could use it to cultivate so unbelievably fast...

Ah, was that it? Unbelievably fast?! Bloodsword never cultivated this technique in the past, did he? He only convinced us all that he had. That ignoramus fuck donkey.

Then what technique did he cultivate?

I groaned. Raising a main character was harder than I thought. Wait.... am I... am I raising this kid?

That would be negative. Nope. Not me. At most, I was guiding him to the right path, like a good older sister should.

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***

I managed to convince one of my cousins, who had been running around doing chores, to help me drag the little dumbass to our shared room and place him on the bed. Then I waited until he woke up. I may have helped him along by poking his cheek which had started to fill out now that he was eating regularly.

“So, you want to explain what happened there?”

His face, which had previously looked deathly pale, flushed a little.

“I was practicing while working, even though you told me not to.”

I nodded sagely. “And?”

“And a cat attacked me out of nowhere. I was startled and I messed up.”

“That would do it. Listen, there is a reason we cultivate when we are completely alone, or when someone we trust watches our back.”

“But I’ve seen you cultivate out in the open before!”

I glared. “There is a difference between cycling your cultivation method to refill your well and actual cultivation to gain a layer. The first one can be interrupted at any time, but the second one, well, you just experienced that possibility didn’t you?”

I glared harder. He looked away.

“When you’re breaking through to another small level or trying to break through to another realm, you better believe that you need to be undisturbed. If your concentration breaks at that point, Qi deviation just might kill you or make it impossible for you to ever increase your realm again.”

He swallowed. “I just want to get stronger.”

“We all do. But cultivation takes time. It is a step-by-step process that will take as long as it takes. There are some things you can do to speed it up, and, once we get to a place where I can gather those things, I’ll help you, but I need you to not be a little idiot and use your brain.”

He touched his lower abdomen, over where his cultivation spiral had been and blinked rapidly as if trying not to cry. I handed him a handkerchief and pet his head a bit.

“It’s okay to cry if you need to. Don’t let any asshole tell you otherwise.”

He handed me my handkerchief back. “I’m fine. It’s just... I spent so many days and it’s gone.”

I nodded. “You will grow stronger. But, when you’re this new to something, you shouldn’t rush. Learn properly, or else you’ll only end up a half-taught dumbass and then what are you going to do when you’re a Nascent Soul cultivator with your own disciples?”

I mean, Bloodsword never took in a disciple, but this child was my family's Little Spring. Who knew what his future held?

But, now that I was thinking of his future, I needed to learn something about his past. Since he didn’t know anything about his real past yet, and I frankly didn’t care enough about him in my last life to find out, I could only see what he had on him that could give me any clues.

“You remember how I asked to see the items you brought with you several days ago just before Immortal Flower Thief attacked us?”

He froze then slowly nodded. “They’re over there.”

He pointed to the bag he originally brought with him, which had all his clothes and worldly possessions. I carried it over to him, and he started digging through it, taking out small item after small item and setting them on the blankets in front of him. There were several, obviously mundane items, but there were also three suspicious treasures.

One looked like a white jade hairpin. I was actually familiar with this one since Bloodsword’s first wife wore it all the time. She would often flaunt it in front of her sister wives to make them jealous. I seriously didn’t know how she wasn’t secretly murdered by everyone in that horrible shithole he called his harem. I mean, it was in our sect so the buildings and immortal caves looked nice but every one of his wives were fake princesses or criminal bitches. And all of them feigned as if they were brainless best friends in front of him while they —still brainlessly— worked on undermining each other in the background.

I picked up the hairpin and sent a strand of divine sense in to examine it. Yep, definitely the same one. It even had the same, oddly warm feel to it.

I took out a knife, scratched the back of my forearm, and dropped a bit of crimson onto the jade surface. It quickly absorbed my blood. Then I pushed my spiritual energy into it causing the stick to enlarge, morph and sharpen into a pure white blade.

Little Spring’s eyes bulged. He pointed at the sword in shock.

“This is a sky rank spiritual sword. It’s much better than my current weapon. When we start our journey to the sect, I’ll have to borrow it, but I promise to return it either when I find a new one, or when we enter the sect.”

“That...” He hesitated.

“I know this means a lot to you. I’m only using it because, right now, I am the strongest, and I need a good blade to keep us safe.”

His face turned bright red. I wasn’t quite sure what that was about, but he ended up nodding in the end.

The next item I examined was a sandalwood fan. As I suspected, it was a flying tool, like the one I looted, er, acquired from that dumb death-seeking thief. I put it away after explaining that neither of us could use it at this point as its level was too high.

Finally, I reached out to touch a very small stone bowl. It resembled the bowl part of a mortar and pestle, one that had been used to grind medicinal ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine. When I inserted a strand of divine sense, I couldn’t see anything.

That gave me pause. This usually meant that this bowl was so high leveled that I couldn’t pierce through what it hid. And, usually, that meant that this item was grade-A-treasure.

If this was grade-A-treasure, then that meant that it had some kind of a bloodline lock on it. Probably. It also meant that I couldn’t use my own blood to activate it, and, if I tried, the possibility of a backlash or straight-up death was high.

I took out a clean needle from the storage bag and held Little Spring’s arm.

His eyes grew wide.

“Don’t struggle. This is a good thing.”

While grinning evilly, I quickly poked the back of his arm. I didn’t want his little hands to get an infection, since I wasn’t about to use one of our few healing pills to cure a tiny stab wound. Then I pressed his bowl against his arm, right below the cut and let his blood drip into it.

And I waited. Nothing happened.

Just as I was about to jerk the item away from him, the world moved. When it steadied again, we found ourselves inside a minuscule world. The sky looked blue and bright, but there was no sun so the diffuse lighting caused everything to appear slightly flat. The ground stretched a distance of over three miles in diameter. A large crystal clear pond took up almost a third of the whole place.

In the exact center of the land, a cute building stood taking up the amount of space a one-car garage from my past-past life would have.

“As I expected,” I said.

Little Spring gave me a skeptical look, but I just ethereally waved him towards the building.

I anticipated it being locked somehow but, unexpectedly, he was able to enter it. Cautiously, I followed after him. This place had to be trapped in some way, right?

A pair of black eyes peered at me like I was crazy. I ignored my stupid martial brother and took in the interior of this small first room. It just had a very simple desk, on which rested a candle, a masculine necklace with a soul gem pendant, and two jade slips.

“What are these?” He asked.

“Two choices,” a man’s voice replied. It echoed with superficial authority and omniscience. “One is power, and the other is weakness. Which would you choose?”

A vein ticked in my forehead. Looked like this place had an asshat in it!

With a wave of my hand, I sent the necklace flying over to me.

“You’re not the owner of this place! Get out!"

I sent a vicious strand of divine sense into the necklace.

“What are you doing? Stop it!”

I laughed. “A trapped and weakened Nascent Soul attempting to hoodwink the owner of this place so you can steal his body and possessions?”

“Hey, little owner, little owner. I’m not like she says. She’s the one trying to hoodwink you. She obviously has the soul of a pre-immortal and is trying to steal your space!”

I rolled my eyes at his stupidity. I had no interest in this space, after all, the second rule in the Transmigrated into a Novel Club is that you don’t go against the main character if you want to live. This includes stealing his possessions because that’s a one-way ticket to the next life.

Of course, the first rule of Transmigrated into a Novel club was obvious.

“Let’s take a look at these manuals and see which one suits you best.”

The Nascent Soul scoffed. “You can’t! This space only allows for one person to read one of them. The other jade will disappear after the first one is finished.”

“Then I’ll just have to read and memorize them both at the same time. That way I can teach them to him at leisure and even correct any errors in their logic.”

“You can’t possibly!”

“Watch me!” I slammed the necklace down on the desk and centered my mind. Once I was perfectly calm, I split my mind into two and simultaneously sent a strand of divine sense into each jade slip. Then I memorized both scripts, all the way up to Immortal Ascension stage. Two complete inheritances.

The world began to dim.

“Quickly, take her to the spiritual lake!”

And that was when I blacked out.