Fortunately, Xue Ranran was not the only hopeless case to stumble through the gates of Lingxi Palace. The palace had not taken on new disciples in some time, but under the sponsorship of the immortal physician Su Yishui, the mountain gate had opened once more. The ceremony drew a crowd, yet when the incense smoke cleared, only three apprentices had been accepted alongside Ranran. Both of the boys were older than her. The eldest, surnamed Takakura, came from a martial arts family. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick brows and an open, honest face. The second senior brother went by Bai Baishan. Slender where Takakura was solid, he carried himself with a quiet, bookish refinement. Beyond her two senior brothers, Ranran also gained a third senior sister: Qiu Xier. Like Ranran, she was an ailing seedling no other physician had been able to cure. Her family had run out of money and options, and had all but resigned themselves to waiting for the end, when the master found her at t...
Ranran's stomach growled. She dug into the pouch at her waist and fished out a few pumpkin seeds to quiet it. Yu Tong noticed and disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a fistful of peanuts. She watched Ranran pick them apart one by one. After they'd left Juefeng Village that day, the master had turned back to Jue Mountain, snapped a branch from the reincarnation tree, and dug out a section of its root. Back at West Mountain, he planted the branch in the garden and fed it spiritual water to coax it into taking root. If Ranran guessed right, the girl was a spirit-fruit grown from that tree. Unripe and uprooted too far from its source, she would have been starving for spiritual energy. So the master had brought the tree to her. When the soul was first drawn into the wood, the master had sacrificed the blood of his own wrist to seal the knot. That bound him to the fruit. When he met the girl in the village, he must have known her by her breath alone. There was also the ...