I put a hand in my pocket and felt for the largest seed I could find. I threw it in the air and snatched it out of midair.

I felt strangely calm. I stared down at the old man and walked towards him. Tied and unable to move, he could only glare back at me and fling Qi at me.

Vincent the Cultivator

Lv7

MP : 9857/13000

Regen : 17MP/min

I hadn’t spent much mana today. With Control at level nine, manipulating these plants cost very little. Most of my mana went to making seeds and plants.

I was hit by a blast of Qi. It forced me back half a step. My vines came up from behind me and supported me. I continued walking forward. Flames flooded out from his body, enveloping me and my vines. The flames felt hot, but it was more like the light of the summer sun than torrid flames. The pebbles did not feel the same. They melted under the heat.

I put an additional five thousand mana into the seed in my hand, more than all the mana I had spent during the fight. I used Prolong on the seed. It was the seed of an Explosive Bulb.

Four out of five Prolong slots left!

The old man looked at me with fear. Ha! I bet he didn’t think the fight would turn out like this. From the books I had read, even a third stage cultivator would normally be able to act arrogantly in the city. The mass majority of people were far less powerful than third stage cultivators. This guy was far above them.

I continued forward and forced his mouth open. I gave him a cold look and shoved the seed into his mouth. I reached down further and pushed it down his throat. He threw up, but ended up swallowing the seed anyway. I forced him to swallow another seed, which turned into vines inside his stomach. They pierced the wall of his stomach and tied the seed to his body, permanently locking it in place.

My skin began to tingle. A wave swept across me. It wasn’t a physical feeling, it was more like an emotion. Turned my head to the side and stop moving. My eyes ended on Hui Ming, who was struggling to stand. She stood, she looked at me with unsettling eyes.

I’d imagine this is how it feels to meet a god. A feeling of reverence welled up within me. I didn’t know what this reverence was directed at.

Before I could make any more stupid speculations, Hui Ming started speaking. “Master Jin, please spare Elder Zhu.”

Master Jin? When did she start calling me that?

And sparing the elder? I was prepared to kill him if I couldn’t capture him. But now that he walked into my trap and I seized him, I didn’t plan to kill him. With that seed in his stomach, I could kill him whenever I wanted.

“I swear on my truesoul. I’ll serve you for the rest of my life.” she said. Her words resonated within me, and I finally understood what was happening.

I’ve read about this earlier. This was a truesoul vow, assisted by the Will Of The World. It wasn’t that she would die if she broke her promise, it was that keeping that promise had become one of her fundamental desires.

We all have fundamental desires that serve as serve as our puppet masters. We want to eat, drink, and sleep. But we also want to avoid pain, stay warm, and have sex. Be loyal, make friends, and play trashy mobile games. We wouldn’t move without these desires. Without anything to motivate us, we stop moving like a puppet with its strings cut.

A new desire, one of serving me, had been added her arsenal of other desires.

Swearing on the truesoul was a such a rare event because it was impossible without the assistance of The Will Of The World.

Sometimes, the Will Of The World would descend on the most mundane of promises. It had once happened on a promise to make beef noodle soup.

Other times, it made indelible marks on the world. The country I was in, the Raisin Country, was once a tiny country on the brink of collapse. A peasant swore on their truesoul that they would make Raisin great again. He became king in two years and turned the country around in twenty.

While Hui Ming didn’t make a promise like that great king, this was still a very beneficial for me. I’d been thinking about getting assistants and guards to keep up appearances as an alchemist. But seeing that I hadn’t gotten to that stage yet, I had pushed that matter aside.

Loyal subordinates are hard to come by. No, impossible to come by. Especially since this world has a history of backstabber servants becoming lords. An emperor of ten nations would pay a fortune for truly loyal subordinates.

I also came to understand why she did this. She wanted me to spare her sect elder, but I hadn’t been planning to kill him.

To be fair, I wasn’t without ambition, it was just that my ambition was passive. I didn’t like to go out and directly conquer, it wasn’t my style. Why should a spider leave its den? I liked to let the insects scurry to me instead.

But I don’t sit around idly either, I’m more complicated than a spider. When a chance comes by, I can snatch it. I had planned to use the old man as a link into the Crimson Fire Sect. Having a sect elder I could blackmail was an advantage I wasn’t willing to pass up.

I felt bad about Hui Ming dedicating her life to me for nothing. I felt like I’d cheated her out of something.

The force that froze me vanished. I looked at Hui Ming’s broken form. She was sprawled on the ground in excruciating pain. She twisted her neck and looked up at me, “I’m sorry, Master Jin”.

After her truesoul vow, her loyalty towards me grew many times stronger than her loyalty to her sect. I sighed and touched my mask. I walked to Hui Ming and put a couple ginsengs in her mouth. Unlike with Chen Wei, I didn’t modify them. These ginsengs gave her all the benefits they gave me.

I heard noises of a group of cultivators dashing through the air. Seconds later, five blue robed men showed up. “What’s going on here?” One of them demanded when they saw the destruction. Even more cultivators were coming from every direction, attracted by the sound of our fight.

His eyes darted between the trapped elder, the Hui Ming, and my masked self, trying to figure out what was going on. Chen Wei was still hidden by the Protect. I used wither on all my plants except the Protect on Chen Wei. “Try to attack me and I’ll let that seed in your belly sprout,” I whispered to the elder. The vines on his body withered away.

I grabbed the Protect and opened it. “Hi,” I put Hui Ming in, “It might get a little cramped!” I said cheerily and closed it again. Another seed turned into a handle and melded with the shell. I wrapped my hand around the handle and took off.

The people who had just arrived didn’t chase after me. I kept running and I jumped over the sect gate. Nobody guarded the walls so I was able to get through undetected. I blended in with the rest of sect members, except for the giant walnut I dragged behind me. I threw it over the fence of my garden. I opened the gate and walked through normally.

The two sides of the Protecc popped open. Hui Ming lay curled at the bottom of the shell, unconscious. Chen Wei looked around warily before shuddering twice, hopefully from relief. “Thank you, Jin.”

I sat on one of the chairs next to the picnic table. Ripped pages were still scattered on the tiled earth. My arms hung limp. “I’m never doing that again, you got that?”