Cultivation Nerd (xianxia)

Chapter 357 - Trust The Instinct

Song Song had been cultivating since early that morning, locked away in isolated indoor cultivation for the past thirty-six hours. Time slipped by unnoticed as her breathing settled into a steady rhythm, spiritual energy cycling through her body again and again. The outside world faded into irrelevance, leaving only silence, focus, and the slow accumulation of Qi.With Liu Feng devastated by his disciple’s injuries and her failed breakthrough to Core Formation, there wasn’t much to do. She could have gone to tease him a bit and talk trash, but she’d taken his feelings into account.

Sure, she wasn’t particularly good at dealing with emotional nonsense, like the kind Liu Feng was clearly going through. But she wasn’t cruel enough to deliberately make things worse.

Still, she was worried about him. No matter how calm and undisturbed he always looked on the surface, they had spent enough time together for her to recognize the subtle signs of distress.

Flying out through her bedroom window, Song Song caught a clear view of her white mansion, its pristine walls standing in quiet contrast to the sea of overgrown knee-high grass that had crept unchecked across the grounds, soft and unruly beneath the morning wind.

With Liu Feng around and the two of them living under the same roof for a while, she had never once seen him do yard work. Yet the thought of overgrown grass had never crossed her mind either, until now.

“Maybe I should move back with them,” Song Song muttered under her breath.

Sure, Liu Feng and his fiancée would probably get married soon, and it might look like she was intruding. But Song Song couldn’t care less about social norms.

With nothing better to do after waking up, she levitated away from the grassy ground and headed toward Liu Feng’s house, following the familiar trace of his Qi.

Halfway there, she lost interest in flying and dropped back down, landing lightly on the stone path.

She stretched as she walked along the stony road outside her estate, taking in the greenery. No one dared build near her house or along the path leading from it to Liu Feng’s home or her place of work.

If they did, she would kill them.

Though she had started to buy into some of Liu Feng’s ideas about life being precious, other people’s lives were still never precious enough to ruin her morning view.

It took a while before she reached Liu Feng’s house, a modest setup protected by a spring array, consisting of one stone structure and one wooden one.

Why he kept a spring array active during spring was beyond her.

Activating her Sky Grade Technique at least the portion that erased her presence, Song Song slipped into concealment as easily as breathing. She passed through the barriers without resistance and walked straight into Liu Feng’s home.

She climbed the stairs and gently opened the door to his bedroom, carefully dulling his senses remotely to ensure she wouldn’t wake him.

He was still asleep, even though dawn had already broken and the sun hovered above the horizon.

Liu Feng usually followed a strict rhythm in his daily routine. When that rhythm was disrupted, even slightly, it told her everything she needed to know. He didn’t make mistakes like this without reason.

Wu Yan was still alive. But still unconscious.

As she stared at his sleeping face, Song Song wondered if acting like this was a little creepy. Liu Feng would definitely comment on it if he found out, especially since she’d been spying on him quite a bit lately.

It was his fault, really. Who told him to leave his arrays at minimum security around her? She’d long since learned everything she needed to know to bypass the defenses around his house.

As for why she was spying on him, it wasn’t anything silly, like suspecting he might betray her trust, at least not in a way that would harm her. She knew Liu Feng, in some ways better than he knew himself. Beneath that logical exterior was a reckless fool.

Song Song walked closer to the bed and looked down at him. For a fleeting moment, she was tempted to tease him, maybe stretch his cheeks like a chipmunk while he slept.

Sadly, there were more serious matters at hand.

So she decided she would spy on him for a bit longer. That, and she didn’t really have anything else to do at the moment.

Sure, there was a war going on. She could probably organize things better, optimize deployments, and save more lives if she put her mind to it. But she didn’t care about random disciples she’d never met. Why waste effort just to save some worms? She had far more interesting things to occupy her time.

She’d never truly understood Liu Feng in that regard. She understood perfectly why he would risk his life for hers and why she would do the same for him. Their bond was built on something unshakable.

But she couldn’t understand how he extended even a fraction of that care to disciples dying on the front lines, people he’d never met and never spoken to.

To her, that was like trying to care for walking, talking chunks of meat, things that didn’t care about you and would abandon you the moment it became convenient.

She knew she was being unfair. The way Liu Feng saw it, his care for those people was like how some people cared for pets and believed, perhaps foolishly, that affection would eventually be returned, even if the other side never truly understood what love was.

In the end, she was just bored. She had nothing to do until Liu Feng woke up, so she could tail him properly.

Then, without warning, Liu Feng’s eyes opened.

His gaze drifted lazily around the room, passing straight over where she stood. For a heartbeat, she thought he’d found a way to see through her Sky Grade Technique but he didn’t pause, didn’t react, simply looked past her as if nothing were there.

She smiled.

Liu Feng was usually busy. He hadn’t had the time or perhaps the motivation to develop a method to pierce her stealth. He probably didn’t think it was urgent, considering the only person capable of using that technique was her.

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Though that came with a far more troubling implication.

Either he wasn’t worried about her spying on him at all…

Or he already had a way to block it, should he ever choose to.

Song Song followed him quietly, her footsteps soundless against the floorboards as Liu Feng pushed himself upright from the bed. He stretched, the motion rolling through his shoulders, released a slow, sleepy yawn, and made his way toward the bathroom. Once inside, pieces of clothing slipped from him and fell carelessly to the floor until nothing remained.

In the pale morning light, his naked body came fully into view. Scars crossed his skin like a map, some thin and pale, others deep and jagged, each etched there by a battle he had survived. One in particular always stole her breath: the brutal mark running across the place where his arm had once been severed, the wound he had taken while shielding her during her Foundation Establishment breakthrough. Even now, that single scar looked so deep it felt as though his arm might fall off at any moment.

Her thoughts drifted back to the first time Liu Feng had saved her life, sprawled in a pool of blood, his arm cut off… dying. While Song Sia and the rest of her family had been waiting eagerly for her death.

Even now, she could never forget that look… that feeling. It had been the first time she had truly worried about someone, at least the first time in a long while, since she’d been forced to worry about her own mother’s ailing body failing again and again. But that woman had been vindictive to the end, cursing her, saying she’d never wanted her, that a monster like her should never have been born.

But Liu Feng was different.

Goosebumps rippled across her skin, a chill sliding down the nape of her spine as memories of her Foundation Establishment breakthrough resurfaced.

Liu Feng showered, unaware of Song Song’s watchful presence, then went through his daily routine and sat down to eat the breakfast his fiancée had prepared.

Song Song didn’t think the girl was worthy of him, but she was someone Liu Feng had chosen, and she respected that. If it were up to her, she would have kidnapped someone with an exceptional bloodline and forced her to marry Liu Feng, turning her into nothing more than a womb to bear his children until a truly talented heir was born.

Either way, she didn’t care much about how he handled his personal life.

She eyed the delicious breakfast and briefly considered joining them, but decided against it. It would ruin the moment, and more importantly, the fewer people thought about her, the easier it was for her technique to erase her presence entirely. Liu Feng would have no chance of sensing her that way.

Her Sky Grade Technique possessed near-unmatched stealth, but Liu Feng was always a clever bastard and he had been the one to give her that technique in the first place. She’d seen him pull off far stranger things and had no intention of testing his ingenuity now.

After the meal, Liu Feng didn’t fly off immediately. Instead, he walked down the path leading away from his house, heading toward the inner sect’s central hub where the Alchemy Pagoda, Array Base, and various other facilities stood.

Disciples parted and bowed as he passed once they recognized him as an inner elder. Liu Feng smiled and returned their respect with a brief nod.

Song Song followed along and noticed a girl walking beside her, unaware, holding a sugar stick that was slowly melting. Song Song plucked it straight from the girl’s hand and bit into it.

“Huh?” The girl stared at her empty hand, confused, then glanced around.

Song Song was already gone, and the girl quickly forgot the moment entirely. As if her subconscious was rejecting the idea that there was someone so close.

As she continued tailing Liu Feng, Song Song’s thoughts drifted. He’d been far more secretive lately.

Why was he sneaking around so much?

…

Song Song followed him for hours as he went to the library and buried himself in reading, enduring what had to be the most mind-numbing session she had ever witnessed. It made her wonder if he was insane to tolerate this level of boredom without flinching.

By midday, Liu Feng finally exited the library with his usual nonchalant expression. However, the feeling he gave off was closer to someone who had just finished forcing himself through endless tedium. At least this time he didn’t waste time wandering around. He flew straight toward a small, unremarkable shack tucked away in the inner sect, one she had never bothered to visit before.

From within emerged Cai Hu, the sect’s best array conjurer and Liu Feng’s part-time teacher.

Before either of them could exchange a word, privacy arrays snapped into place. Cai Hu, in particular, laid down an exceptionally high-level formation. Even Song Song couldn’t see through it; their figures blurred, sound vanished, and the space around them felt sealed off from the world.

Song Song narrowed her eyes, attempting to read their lips, but failed. Approaching wasn’t an option. Even if her technique dulled her presence, she was still physically there, and those arrays would almost certainly register an intrusion. The two of them might not perceive her directly, but they would know someone had entered the formation.

She watched as Liu Feng gestured briefly and handed Cai Hu a book. She couldn’t even catch a glimpse of the title before his teacher tucked it away into a storage ring.

What unsettled her most wasn’t the secrecy itself, but the implication.

She was afraid he was planning something she wouldn’t like. Something that involved him putting himself in danger.

There was only one situation in which Liu Feng would willingly do that: if it involved her father and if he was planning behind her back.

Why?

Liu Feng was smart. Closing her eyes, she tried to follow his train of thought.

Did he suspect that she and her father might already be mentally linked, even if she herself hadn’t sensed it? It was possible. Her father could receive warnings through methods she didn’t fully understand, so perhaps Liu Feng was planning around that.

Or maybe he was deliberately dodging whatever surveillance her father had placed on her.

That… made sense.

There was also the possibility that he was doing something reckless, like planning to sacrifice himself for her sake, burning everything down just to keep her safe.

No. Liu Feng was too intelligent for that. Even if her father was an Immortal, she refused to believe Liu Feng couldn’t devise at least one plan that didn’t put him at such a catastrophic disadvantage.

He was her confidant, after all. The smartest person she had ever known.

Afterward, Liu Feng made his way to his secret laboratory to check on Wu Yan. She was still gravely injured, suspended in a strange liquid inside a large glass cylinder, her body floating naked with only her head above the surface. He didn’t stay long. He rested a hand against the glass, whispered something softly, and then turned away.

Wu Yan was still unconscious. Whatever he said, she was unlikely to have heard it.

The hallway leading out of the lab was unusually quiet as he walked away, each step heavier than the last. His jaw tightened, fingers curling slowly into a fist at his side as a cold, steady resolve settled into his eyes.

By the time he reached the outer door, his gaze had hardened like forged steel. Something in him had shifted, as if a decision had crystallized the moment he looked at her. He exhaled once, then pushed the door open and stepped outside, returning toward the library and sealing the hidden entrance behind him.

Song Song recalled a conversation from not so long ago, when Liu Feng had casually asked whether she would take care of… what was his fiancée’s name again? She remembered Speedy, and his strangely pronounced name… whatever. Either way, he had asked her to look after his pets and his wife if things went awry. At the time, she’d taken it as a joke, idle chatter at best. Her answer had been honest: aside from Wu Yan, whom she found interesting, she didn’t particularly care what happened to the others after he died.

Even with Wu Yan, there was less affection than curiosity. She found the girl intriguing, but she had no patience for teaching others and would abandon her the moment keeping her around became inconvenient.

Song Song didn’t usually remember conversations like that. They tended to blur together and fade. But this one sat at the forefront of her mind for reasons she couldn’t quite name.

No. She shook her head, forcing the thought away. In the end, she chose to believe in Liu Feng. He hadn’t led them wrong before.

Still, something twisted in her gut, a familiar sensation, like the aftermath of a terrible mistake she hadn’t yet realized she’d made.

But even so, Song Song trusted Liu Feng more than she trusted her instincts.