Chapter 9

Shin Long kept gently rubbing his hand through her hair comfortingly for a few moments, until Ning'er got herself back under control and her sobbing, receded into sniffles before clearing up.

Though her eyes were still puffy and red.

"Honestly treating this is pretty simple, I've no idea why your family doesn't know about it," Shin Long commented, pulling his hand from her head once she calmed down, and oddly, Ning'er felt a sense of loss and disappointment due to him no longer patting her head, "I learned the redirection and balancing techniques from a book a year ago, and taking a medicine made from golden thread grass and heavenly bell grass should warm up your meridans and fix help them heal in about a month."

Ning'er noted then, that he was chewing on his lip thoughtfully. Then he sighed, "If you add a touch of zoysia grass to the completed medicine it should enhance the effect as well." he added, almost reluctantly.

Odd, zoysia grass was a very common weed. Why would he be reluctant to talk about it?

"Techniques?" she asked, deciding to put the matter of the zoysia grass out of mind. He was already being kind enough helping her, if he had some idea that needed zoysia grass and he was reluctant to let it slip, then she'd keep silent on the subject. It was the very least she could do.

"Mmm," Shin Long nodded, and held up two fingers. Moments later, a small golden flame like aura encircled the tips of both fingers. "It's simple enough. A male who has more abundant yang qi than females massages the bruises, drawing out the over abundant yin qi, that is the redirection technique. On the other hand, the male can massage the bruises and inject their yang qi into the females body to balance out the yin qi, this method hurts a bit, but it supposedly increases the soul force of the receiver if they can manage to integrate it."

Ning'ers eyes widened. That sounded amazing. If the way he emphasised the amount of yin qi she should have because of how she'd cultivated, then balancing it with yang qi would surely give her quite a boost to her cultivation. At least, she thought so, if she understood what he was saying right.

Then he flicked her on the nose. "Ah!" the orange haired beauty yelped, rubbing her nose. "What was that for?" she asked in annoyance.

He pointed at her with his index finger, "Most importantly though, you have to promise not to cultivate under the moon light from now on, okay?" Shin Long told her, staring into her eyes seriously, "You can still cultivate at night, but try and do it inside."

Ning'er looked down bashfully, the way he looked at her made her stomach tingle pleasantly. "Mhm." she nodded simply in reply.

"Right," Shin Long nodded himself, then held his hand out, "Let me take a look at your cultivation technique."

"Eh?" Ning'er blinked. That was so very bold, and something nobody in their right mind from a noble family would do, just letting someone see their family cultivation techniques because they asked.

..But, what would Shin Long need to trick her out of her cultivation technique for? Clearly whatever he was doing was far superior to her own.

"Okay." she nodded, holding her hand up and calling out the scroll for her cultivation technique from her spatial ring, then handing it over to him. As she passed it to him, her fingers brushed against his, and remembering his gentle, but strong touch atop her head made her face flush.

Shin Long didn't seem to notice, pulling open the scroll and looking her families cultivation technique over, "Huh..I see. Winged Lightning cultivation is it?" he hummed, eyes scanning the scroll before sighing and shaking his head, "This technique is lousy. The meridan pulsing technique here to simulate lightning through them is an interesting touch and would definitely increase cultivation speed. But it's too aggressive and would burn out the meridans, no wonder you got arctic disease so easily, using this would definitely make you more susceptible to qi based illnesses."

"Eh?" Ning'er blinked. He'd only been looking at it a few seconds but he'd already found a flaw in one of the vaunted cultivation techniques of her family that had been around for hundreds of years?

He slapped the back of his hand to the scroll, "And this: 'Connecting the heart and eye.' Needs to be replaced with 'Connecting the heart and mind." Shin noted, before continuing, "And this bit too as well to: 'When the will and spirit merge, the heart and mind will connect."

Ning'er stared at him in shock as he continued talking, pointing out bits of the technique her family had practically worshipped for hundreds of years, and telling her to replace them and that what he said would be much safer and much more effective.

Insane. How could he have such knowledge when it came to cultivation techniques? What was his main cultivation technique like!? No wonder he was so accomplished already in cultivating if he could dissect one of her families vaunted techniques as if it were a child's idea.

Before she even realised what she was doing, Ning'er pulled a blank scroll and silver writing pen from her spatial ring, "Hold on Shin Long!" she blurted, "Can you say all that again and let me copy it down?"

Shin Long sighed and rolled his eyes, "Couldn't you have said that before I went off on a tangent?" he griped, though there was no admonishment in it, a small unabashed grin on his face, "You're lucky your cute you know.

Ning'er squeaked.

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Over an hour later, while making her way back to her dorm, Ning'ers face was burning with heat that lit her cheeks up red. She felt better than she had in a long time, much of the pain she'd been experiencing had left her body after the treatment Shin Long had given her, and there was a spring in her step that coincided with the thrumming warmth rushing through her veins that replaced the freezing cold she'd gotten so used to.

Despite that though, she couldn't stop the racing of her heart, nor how embarrassed she felt when her mind kept jumping back to Shin Long, and how handsome he was. The feel of his strong, yet gentle and warm hands massaging her feet and side, and the feel of his powerful, dependable qi suffusing her soul realm, rushing through her meridans and bringing a sense of safety to Ning'ers heart and soul.

She wasn't even really thinking on the ground breaking cultivation technique he'd given or, nor that from just that brief massage with his qi, her soul force had increased by a whopping twelve points bringing her soul force up to 91!

No, the orange haired girl kept replaying one certain moment in her mind. When she took her top off to let him massage her side, leaving her in nothing but her lacy pink bra.

"Damn," Shin Long whistled, eyes unashamedly feasting on the cleavage of her large, round breasts barely held in by her bra, and the way they rose and jiggled with each breath she took, "I knew you were gorgeous, but I had no idea you were this stacked as well. These are nearly as big as our teachers. Seriously, Ye Zuyin has nothing on you, by time you're fully grown you'll probably be the most sought after woman on this entire planet."

Usually, Ning'er hated the way people ogled her rapidly maturing body. But while it embarrassed her the way Shin Long had eyed her like a wolf eyeing a juicy piece of meat, she'd also felt elated and pride had suffused her being.

Her face was burning red, but there was no wiping the beaming smile from her face.

'Ah, Shin Long.' Ning'er sighed internally. She couldn't wait to see him again. They'd be meeting up again tomorrow night to continue her treatment, but she'd get to see him tomorrow morning in class as well. It made her so excited!

But for now, she better go to the item store and get the ingredients she needed to make the medicine. She already had a few pounds of zoysia grass stored inside her spacial ring that Shin Long had given her.

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Just over an hour later, Shin Long stood in his dorm room and relished in the massive aura of crimson red that surged like flames around his body, emerald bolts of lightning sparking outwards.

"Oooh!" he cheered, pumping his fists, relishing in the power suffusing his entire body as the power of his new demon spirit, the Spotted Tiger integrated with his soul force. He was so, so close to breaking into the silver rank!

After parting ways with Ning'er after she chose to have him inject her with his yang qi, he immediately set for the plunder store and sold all the materials from the thirty four Fanged Pandas he had killed. Bringing his total amount of money up to six thousand four hundred and sixty four demon spirit coins.

Of course, he then spent five thousand of it on the materials needed to turn his Spotted Tiger demon crystal into a demon spirit. It brought him back down to one thousand, four hundred and sixty four demon spirit coins, but it was worth it! The process went amazingly, and he managed to create a Spotted Tiger demon spirit with an excellent growth rate, which had a whopping soul force rating a bit above the average four star bronze rank.

And with his two subjugated demon spirits, and with his soul force being so much higher than the Spotted Tigers, it was almost too easy to subjugate it and force it to bow its head in submission to him.

"Ah, I kinda want to ditch class tomorrow." Shin Long whined to himself. He'd already got the demon spirits of all three types of demon beasts kept in the training are aof the Holy Orchid Institute.

But, there was a place not far outside the city, at the rocky terrain where herds of another type of bronze rank demon beasts lived. Rock Eater's, they had pretty hard bodies so his blade wouldn't be able to hurt them, and they didn't have abilities that were all that good. But they did have one specific ability that appealed to him. They could increase their soul force by eating rocks, the more spiritually enhanced rock or ore they ate, the more they increased their power.

With the new abilities provided to him by the demon spirits he'd gained today, especially the Fanged Panda and Spotted Tiger, it would be child's play to beat them down. And their materials were worth a ton of money.

"Well, there's still one thing I need to do tonight regardless." Shin Long shook his head and put it out of mind for now. He walked over to his desk and pulled out a pen and a blank scroll, and began inscribing a message.

A simple and to the point message. A tip as it were. That he was going to send to the Alchemy Guild. That zoysia grass enhanced the effects of all other herbs Including those of soul pills. And thus, the prices of Zoysia grass would sore.

Especially because he'd been harvesting every area in and around Glory City that the weed grew in. And he'd just freshly harvested another batch yesterday. It would take months for it to grow back.

Thus, he held a monopoly. And would rake in the cash.

He'd planned on holding out from doing it for a while. But if Nie Li had figured out his plan. He wanted to stay ahead of whatever little plan he'd try and come up with himself. He wasn't going to let anybody, no matter who they were, undermine all the hard work he'd put in over the past few years to make his plans viable. He needed them to go through if he wanted to get his revenge on the Sacred Family any time soon.