Soaking Feet

Lin Xiao mimicked Senior Liao's usual manner, taking a sip of hot tea before saying to Yuan Qing who was standing at the door:

Fellow Daoist Yuan is back? Do you want to soak your feet with us?

Jiang Youfu next to him nodded at Yuan Qing and said:

Fellow Daoist, come and try it! It is very comfortable!

Yuan Qing's small head held big doubts.

Do cultivators still need such an inconvenient method like soaking feet to stimulate blood circulation and relax muscles and bones?

Clearly, just running spiritual energy through the body once could completely dissipate any ordinary physical fatigue.

However, unable to resist the enthusiastic invitations of Lin Xiao and Jiang Youfu, along with their expressions that truly looked incredibly comfortable, Yuan Qing found it hard to decline their great kindness and ultimately joined them to give it a try.

Jiang Youfu also got him a wooden tub equipped with a small massage array, and then filled it more than halfway with hot water.

When Yuan Qing was pulled by Jiang Youfu to half-lie down, his bare feet bobbing up and down casually in the bubbling water just like Lin Xiao and the others, he suddenly felt an unprecedented relaxation.

Although in reality, soaking feet indeed was not as effective as directly circulating spiritual energy.

Yet he felt that his mood suddenly became very, very peaceful and serene. The various sufferings he had endured in his sect previously seemed so insignificant at this moment.

In this moment, he felt a rare sense of leisure and comfort, just like the times he used to play with his Elder Sister before he joined the Tianxuan Sect.

After finishing a handful of snacks stuffed into his hands by Jiang Youfu, he leaned against the couch, felt the warmth on his feet, and unknowingly closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

Waiting until his soft snores sounded, Senior Liao finally drilled out from the soul-nourishing pendant on Lin Xiao's chest. Then, from his own soul body, he pulled out the foot-soaking tub he had only soaked halfway in earlier, hugged it, and ran into the inner room. Before leaving, he did not forget to grab a large handful of snacks from the snack basket.

After setting up an isolation array in the inner room, he happily continued to soak in it all by himself.

Early the next morning, Lin Xiao and the others set off.

Yesterday they had a bountiful harvest, so today they planned to keep up the good work, striving for a great harvest every day. This way, not only could they satisfy their sect's breeding farm, but they could also exchange them for many, many spirit stones.

And until they left the house, Yuan Qing, who had fallen asleep last night, still had not woken up.

Jiang Youfu even somewhat worriedly checked his breathing.

Then, under Lin Xiao's correction, he used his divine sense to check his heartbeat, breath, pulse, and so on.

After confirming that he was indeed just in a deep sleep rather than having soaked his feet to death, he finally felt at ease and followed Lin Xiao out the door.

Yuan Qing only felt that he had a very, very long dream.

In the dream, he returned to his childhood.

At that time, he was only six years old. At that time, he was still the apple of his parents' eyes.

Back then, both his parents were Foundation Establishment cultivators, and his father was a rare talent in the family with hope of breaking through to the Golden Core stage, a highly influential elder in the Yuan family.

Later, he was also tested to have good spirit root aptitude; he had dual Gold and Earth spirit roots.

At that time, he could be said to be the favored child under the spotlight of the entire Yuan family. Aside from Yuan Zhiyun, he was in the limelight, and everyone felt his future was bound to be extremely bright.

However, during a family mission, his parents set out together and no news ever came back. When the time for their return arrived, the only thing brought back was the news of their mutual demise.

In an instant, he went from a Yuan family youth with a promising future to an orphan with neither father nor mother.

The way the people around looked at him changed.

At that time, he did not know why this was happening; he just cried until his eyes were red and swollen, wearing mourning clothes to send off his parents' spirits.

The tiny figure in the dream stood with a straight back in the winter days, hugging his parents' cenotaph, crying until he grew tired and fell asleep, only to wake up and cry again.

The scene shifted, and Yuan Qing saw that his formerly bustling and wealthy home had nothing left except an empty house.

No one gave him food, so he went to find slop and leftovers to barely survive.

Until later, he was taken into the main family by the Yuan family's matriarch, who was Yuan Zhiyun's mother.

And then came the happiest years of his past seventeen years.

The end of the dream stopped at the scene of Yuan Zhiyun taking him to play in the snow, and the Yuan family matriarch ordering someone to add more clothes for him.

On the couch, Yuan Qing dazedly opened his eyes. Looking outside, the sky was bright, the warmth under his feet was slowly undulating, and nearby, a small palm-leaf fan had been set up at some point, automatically fanning him rhythmically.

For a moment, Yuan Qing did not even know where he was or what year it was.

After sitting in a daze for quite a while, he finally recovered his senses. He got up, silently pulled his feet out of the foot-soaking tub, used a spell to dry them, and then poured out the hot water from the tub, storing it in his storage bag.

Looking at the palm-leaf fan next to him that was still leisurely waving as if chasing away mosquitoes, Yuan Qing went over and took off the spirit stone providing power underneath it, placing it on the nearby table. The fan immediately stopped working.

He looked at this well-designed automatic fan with some curiosity in his eyes, then shook his head with a smile on his lips.

These two fellow Daoists are truly out of the ordinary, very interesting.

If only he could always have such peaceful days.

But for him right now, that was still unlikely.

He still had things he must do.

Gathering his thoughts, Yuan Qing quickly tidied up the room and left the cave dwelling.

Liu Chun had arrived in Banxiang City five days ago.

Because he registered as a Talisman Master, he was different from Lin Xiao and the others; he was uniformly arranged to stay in a place specifically provided for participating Talisman Masters, free of charge.

But this residence for Talisman Masters was not somewhere you could move into just because you registered for the Talisman Master Convention.

Those who could stay here were actually people who had passed the initial screening.

After all, the Talisman Master Convention was a grand event held once a century. The number of people wanting to participate was naturally innumerable, but among so many people, those with true strength were not particularly numerous.

They could not possibly provide free accommodation for all the applicants, or the Talisman Master Convention would suffer a massive loss.

Therefore, before the official convention began, several rounds of relatively low-difficulty mini-screenings were set up in batches to weed out those who just wanted to make up the numbers.

Liu Chun, who was determined and quite talented in this area, naturally passed without any pressure.

To ensure the normal operation of the once-in-a-century Talisman Master Convention, the residences prepared for the Talisman Masters were extremely safe. After all, their goal was to filter out truly powerful Talisman Masters and then take them in for their own use, so they naturally did not want anything to happen to these promising talents.

Because he had been paying attention to the Talisman Master Convention for decades, he knew a lot about its procedures and content, and he also knew that the Talisman Master Convention did not just test technique; there would also be many areas that relied on cultivation base.

So even though time was running out, he had been making the most of these days, holing up in his room to cultivate.