"Mhm…you've grown taller." While still holding onto Xinzi, Dong Ling raised her eyes, trying to meet her monk's gaze. But if before she barely needed to lift her chin, she now had to bend her head back as far as her neck enabled her to. Alarmed by the change, the snakegirl furrowed her brows, wondering what had prompted such an absurd leap in height.
"Oh?" Xinzi, who had not noticed the difference, put one hand on his head and the other on Dong Ling's. The distance between the two made the monk's eyebrows arc up. Dong Ling was correct; it appeared that he'd taken an extra 14 cm, now standing at around 189 cm. The monk blamed this on his skeletal reconstruction and didn't give the change extra thoughts.
"Much taller, actually. What happened? Did you crawl into so many ladies' beds that you finally reached your final form: the overgrown lizard?" With her doe eyes oozing suspicion, Dong Ling seriously asked. Since the disciples' return to the White Immortal sect, she'd been locked up by her old man. The news that swept the state did not reach her, allowing her wild imagination to construct fictitious scenarios where Chun Xu and other "hussies" crowded Xinzi to make him renounce his monastic vows.
Or maybe, just maybe, it was time to consider that this professional trickster of an unfaithful monk didn't need any hussy's urging before sliding into their panties? No, it must have been the hussies.
"…" Xinzi's cheeks twitched, his composure reached a breaking point, and with a broad, fiendish grin, he sent the snakegirl flying towards her bed.
"Aah!" Dong Ling yelped in surprise, but right afterward, tried to pinch her lips—afraid that her old man would snap out of his trance to maul her monk into monastic meat stew. Xinzi moved faster, silencing the snakegirl with two fingers. Pinned under Xinzi's herculean frame, Dong Ling had neither the strength nor will to resist. Still, she cast her monk a defiant, playful gaze—eager to see what he'd do next.
For a moment, the two stayed locked in this pose, and the longer their gazes intertwined, the faster Dong Ling's heart beat.
"I'm going away for a while. At best, it will take a couple days. At worst, months or years. I can't tell for sure, so I wanted to spend some time with you—less you call me a faithless bastard," Xinzi said in a quiet, honest tone.
"Years? For what?" Dong Ling panicked. Granted that in the world at large, a session of secluded cultivation could take years or decades, that only applied to senior cultivators. What was a Qi Refinement…wait, Qi Refinement?
Dong Ling's spiritual sense spread out, and to her surprise, she couldn't sense any Spiritual Drop from Xinzi anymore. Instead, she felt that a boundless sea sucked her in, drowning her Spiritual Sense in its depths.
"You've broken through? Is that why you're leaving? You want to seek top-tier materials to build the best Spiritual Cave possible?" To break through to the middle-stage of Foundation Building, cultivators had to refine spiritual materials with vast qi reserves so they could build a Spiritual Cave on top of their Qi Pool. They could do it with the atmosphere's qi as well, but this process took decades for meager results.
"Not really. I have the best materials one could hope for right here with me. In fact, I'm here to share some of it with you. Care for a drink, beautiful?" Xinzi said, and with a finger snap, summoned the wine gourd he'd received from Qingxin. In her monk's statement, Dong Ling noticed that, while Xinzi didn't want to deceive her, he'd rather not discuss the ins and outs of this trip either. Worse, she could sense that the contagious confidence that usually coated her monk's every word wavered as he discussed the trip.
That being the case, Dong Ling wouldn't press him.
"I thought the Clear Heart monastery's rules forbade any use of mind-altering substances?"
"I got kicked out by the old man, so only my Liberation Temple's rules matter now. We don't have many."
"Ouch. Fine, but I have to warn you. I'm the polar opposite of my mom. My alcohol tolerance is horrible."
"That's not the type of thing you should say so candidly. Makes me want to take advantage of you." Xinzi said and leaned over. His nose brushed the snakegirl's face, and his lips stood dangerously close to hers.
"Oh, so that's your game plan, huh? Turn into a colorful bird, sneak into the lady's room, get her drunk, then give her your pecker? And here I was feeling bad for making you renounce your vows, when from the start, it's because of you that I've been going rogue. A'Xin, A'xin, you dastardly whoremonger." Though Dong Ling's heart drummed in her chest, she refused to lose momentum.
Her lips pushed towards Xinzi's, but the monk's index rose between the two, preventing Dong Ling from kissing him.
"The Golden Lotus be praised; you've figured me out. Now I've no other choice but to play the harmless monk card, still carry out the plan, and blame the aftermath on the liquor."
"And I will pretend that I fell for your tricks." Xinzi and Dong Ling exchanged a knowing smile, the monk pulled his index aside, letting his lips drop on the snakegirl's for a soft, tender kiss. For a second, lips met and parted. Then they locked onto one another. Tongues joined the dance, coiling as the embrace turned moist and steamy.
Xinzi pulled back, waved the gourd at Dong Ling's face, then opened the lid. At first, aware of Xinzi's appreciation of tea ceremony and lack of wine experience, Dong Ling expected him to pour the liquor into cups. However, the monk drank straight from the bottle. But instead of chugging it all down, he held the liquor in his mouth and pinched Dong Ling's chin—motioning for her to open her mouth.
Intrigued, the snakegirl followed her preacher's directions. Xinzi's lips fell on hers again. The wine flowed down Dong Ling's throat, and if before, she'd focus on Xinzi alone, when the burning-hot liquor slid down, the snakegirl's eyes stretched to the limit.
Dong Ling's alcohol tolerance was indeed not up to her mother's standards, but that didn't mean that when compared to the average person, she fell that much short. However, a single mouthful of that wine set her body ablaze. From head to toe, her skin flushed, her world grew blurry, and her mind drifted across shifting scenery.
The extremes of sweetness and sorrow intertwined in this wine, making Dong Ling smile even as her eyes grew moist.
"What…did you brew that thing with?" She couldn't help but ask. By the time the wine had spread through Dong Ling's body, boundless waves of Spiritual Qi flooded her dantian. Better, her skin glowed with a scarlet luster that refined her flesh and heightened her Blood Energy!
"It's a gift with a long history behind it. For your sake, I will spare you the details." Xinzi couldn't tell Dong Ling that two of the strongest beast immortals in the history of the Endless Sea died so this wine could come into being. The knowledge would just ruin her mood.
Cultivation benefits aside, Dong Ling could feel the quality of her Holy Beast bloodline rise at a meteoric speed—almost as if in this wine lay a distant ancestor that demanded she returned to her roots.
She wasn't entirely incorrect. Dragons ranked high among lustful beasts and spread their seed to so many species that they produced various hybrids. The Amethyst Holy King, Dong Ling's distant ancestor, was yet another bastard son of the Immortal Dragon King—for that reason, he'd rather die than surrender to Hengye Wuxin, leading to the collapse of his Nightmare Ridge and Zi clan.
So, while the Kun Blood in the wine prevented a flawless stimulation of Dong Ling's bloodline, the Dragon part still played a role, bringing her closer to an atavism. At the same time, Spiritual Drops upon Spiritual Drops formed in the snakegirl's dantian—making her cultivation base increase at an alarming speed.
"In my absence, use the Spiritual Qi to reach your Spiritual Drop cap. Then store the rest. When I return, I will help you restructure your dantian so you can cultivate even more drops. Ten-thousand is our goal. More, and without transcendental means, you will struggle to condense it all into a Qi Pool. In the meantime…" Xinzi said, and tapped Dong Ling's forehead. The mnemonics of the Nine Paths of Yin and Yang—reserved only for the contest winners—filled her brain.
Needless to say, Xinzi didn't care for the White Immortal sect's rules. And if his initiates could receive the mnemonics, Dong Ling wouldn't be an exception.
"If Chun Xu can comprehend her own method, you can as well. I will give you the tools to have a fair competition and look forward to your growth.." Bringing the wine to his lips, Xinzi gulped down a mouthful of his own, and as Dong Ling recovered from the overwhelming liquor, her monk kissed her forehead, then left for his final stop.