Lin Jin came back in a hurry with a pile of fruits in his arms. He looked at the girl sitting cross-legged on the ground and swallowed. "Here... This is all I found."
Ming Shu waved him over.
Lin Jin took a deep breath and then approached Ming Shu while holding the fruits.
Ming Shu took the fruits and started eating. She didn't do anything else to him. But for some reason Lin Jin stood next to her instead of taking the opportunity to run away.
Lin Jin couldn't help but ask finally, "Don't you have a three-spirit root? Why are you so powerful?"
"Three-spirit root is not a waste." Ming Shu curled her mouth in a perfect smile, her lips stained with juice as pink as a petal. "I didn't use magic to beat you, so what does it have to do with spirit root?"
Lin Jin thought about it. Before he was beaten, and it was indeed not a magic art, but a kind of... violent violence.
Thinking of Ming Shu's scary beating, Lin Jin couldn't help shaking off goosebumps all over his body. It was too horrible.
"Why did you pretend to be so weak?" Lin Jin sounded a bit whiny. If she didn't pretend to be so weak, how could he bully her?
He would never dare.
Ming Shu smiled meaningfully, and her voice was very light. "I was really weak."
Lin Jin didn't understand. "What?"
Ming Shu didn't answer him then. She concentrated on eating the fruits and finished them all. Probably the environment in the sect endowed these fruits with reiki; after eating all the fruits, Ming Shu was not hungry like before.
Ming Shu dusted off her clothes and got up to leave. She didn't looked at Lin Jin at all.
Lin Jin looked at his errand boys who were still lying on the ground and bleeding, and stopped Ming Shu. "Hey."
The girl turned back slightly. A breeze blew through the mountains, leaves rustling, and the mottled shadows fell on her skirt.
Lin Jin moved away his gaze immediately after he looked into Ming Shu's eyes. "You... you're just going to leave like this?"
Ming Shu raised her eyebrows. "Or what? Do I need to bury them?"
Lin Jin: "..." They're not dead, why do you need to bury them.
"Aren't you afraid that I'll report this to the deacon elder?"
"Oh." Ming Shu turned back and continued walking down the hill. Her soft and smiling voice was slowly blown over by the wind. "If you report once, I'll beat you once. So just have a try."
Lin Jin: "..."
Surely she was still that arrogant girl.
Lin Jin believed that she was only hiding her strength before. He didn't know why she did that, but he wouldn't dare to bully her in the future.
One terrible experience was enough.
...
The sect recruited new disciples every three years. All the candidates would accept the first test when they went up the mountain, to see if they had any spirit root.
Having a spirit root was the threshold to enter the external division. But this didn't mean they became outer sect disciples. They could only become outer sect disciples after they passed the cut-off scores in the second test, which served to test what kind of spirit root they had.
