"What makes you think that I practice an advanced Cultivation technique?" I asked back.
She smiled knowingly. "No use denying it. Its effects speak for themselves. There is no way an ordinary Cultivation technique could help me Purify my Spirit in such a short amount of time… and so thoroughly."
"And… what do you mean by Purify?"
She frowned slightly and then turned back to tending the fire with a pout, "It's okay if you don't want to tell me. You don't have to play dumb like that." Then, almost inaudibly, she added, "So stingy." If not for my enhanced hearing, I wouldn't have picked that up. I was quite confused. It appeared that she was under some grave misconception. From her words, I could infer that my siphoning of her Cultivation hadn't been detrimental to her – rather, it seemed that she had benefitted substantially from it. Enough that she was willing to let me keep my secrets.
Calming down, I began to analyse her words and actions, trying to glean as much information from them as possible.
First of all, what did I know?
I had imbibed some form of energy from both her and her senior sister. The energy had helped me strengthen my body while weakening theirs. Going by the explanation I had managed to coax out of her when she was delirious after our first bout of sex, that was probably their Qi.
Instead of being furious that I had stolen her Qi, she had tried to protect me from her senior sister and then brought me over to her own courtyard which was at the edge of the residential area.
She had said that her senior sister had hidden the fact about my survival and instructed her to harvest me while the rest of the sect was busy with the initiation of the new recruits.
She was willing to accommodate my wishes to a great extent, drawing a bath for me, allowing me to keep my secrets without prying…
She had done all this because she was under the misconception that I was using a high-level cultivation technique and it had helped her 'Purify' her Spirit.
All of these fragmented observations whirled in my mind and a clearer picture began to emerge.
The sneaky behaviour, the out of the way courtyard – these two girls were marginalized in the sect.
If they revealed my existence, I would either be killed or taken away by a higher ranked Cultivator. They had very little to gain by revealing my existence and a lot to gain from my so-called high-grade Cultivation technique if Lin's amenability to my requests was any indication.
Knowing that they needed me was great news. It meant that I could pull my own weight. It meant that I had chips I could bring to the negotiation table. It wasn't just a simple-minded young girl's mercy keeping me alive.
As for ridiculous ideas like Lin falling in love with me, or becoming addicted to my godly prowess in bed? He-he.
Now, I needed to know what that chip exactly was.
"What do you mean by Purifying your Spirit?" I repeated.
Lin turned to me and studied my expression, trying to detect any signs that I was just messing with her. "Y-you really don't know?" she finally asked.
"Nope."
Suddenly, her eyes brightened. "Oh! I know. You came from outside the Coral Islands. The Cultivation terms must be different there, so, of course, you won't understand them. By Purify I mean…"
I stopped her there with a wry smile. This girl really had a rich imagination. If I played along, I might have obtained the information I wanted but it would introduce a falsehood in our interactions. A lie that would easily be exposed when her senior sister woke up. Relationships are built on the foundation of trust. Trust is built by the bricks of honesty. If I wanted to truly conquer these girls and have them be my backing in my bid to survive this dire situation I had found myself in, it wasn't my dick that would convince them, it was my mind.
"I really don't have any special cultivation technique. I don't even know a single thing about Cultivation aside from what you told me. I just have a special Spirit inborn. That let me survive being harvested by your senior sister once and that's what let me do whatever it is that I did during sex with the both of you."
Honest but not the whole truth.
"Special spirit?" her eyes widened in surprise.
"Yeah. I have two of these glowing balls of light in my inner vision. One in my heart and the other in my head. The one in my head controls the one in my heart so I am not as affected by your yin Qi. That was how I turned the tables on you."
"A dual Spirit!" she exclaimed. "That's so rare… it might not appear in the whole of the Coral Islands in a hundred years. But," she frowned, wrinkling her nose adorably in the process, "in the book where I read about it, it didn't say anything about one Spirit controlling the other."
I shrugged.
"You know," she said as she stopped tending the fire and walked up to the barrel, "Sex felt so amazing. I-it was like there were fireworks exploding in my head every time you touched me. Towards the end, it got so intense… my mind blanked." She touched the water in the barrel to test the temperature.
"When I woke up, I found you sitting beside me in meditation, glowing golden from all the Qi in you. Qi you had taken from me. Months of my painstaking cultivation gone. I-I nearly snapped your neck then." she said while averting her eyes.
I stiffened where I sat, a sheen of cold sweat covering my back and forehead. How many times had I teetered on the brink of death this night alone?
Finding the temperature of the water suitable, she lightly leapt into the barrel with nary a splash, submerging herself up to her shoulders.
Crossing her arms on the edge of the barrel and resting her chin on them, she looked at me. "Thankfully, I checked again and found that my Spirit had been Purified. Before we start Cultivation, our Spirits are homogenous – all the energy comes from one source: ourselves. But, in the process of cultivation, we absorb the Essence of myriad things, turn them into Qi and then integrate that Qi into our Spirits. The Essence of a yin lily is different from the yang Essence of a man, so, the Qi they produce in us is different, when they add to our Spirit, they make it heterogenous. One of the main parts of cultivation is to refine these heterogenous energies and 'Purify' our Spirit. In the process, quite a bit of the accumulated Qi is lost. Not to mention the great deal of time and effort it takes. But, one session of sex with you and my Spirit has reached 50% purity and the loss of Qi was almost of half of what I would have wasted if I had tried to do it on my own.
"Imagine how pleasantly surprised I was… and when I approached you, your yang aura set my Spirit on fire. That's why I pounced on you back then…" she said with a blush.
She leant back against the wall of the barrel while twiddling her thumbs on the surface of the water. "S-since you don't know how your Spirit works, why don't we continue from where we were interrupted by senior sister?" She said in a low voice as she looked down at her hands, not making eye-contact.
Warm water and a warmer girl? An invitation that was very hard to refuse.
So, of course I accepted. After all, she was right and I did need to find out how my meat rod had transferred classes to priest from warrior and started this 'Purification' business.
For science.