Awakening the Divine Spark

The three girls caught up quickly and the youngest, the one who decisively suggested to go together, turned out to be the most talkative.

"I’m Ling Xiaotao!" She said, "These are my Sisters Shu Ying and Qin Yujian."

"’I’m Lee. This is Xiao Lian." Lee introduced, knowing there was no way his buddy could manage to say a word, much less a phrase.

"Lee? Is that your family name?" Ling Xiaotao asked.

"Uhmm ... yes." Lee didn’t like the current subject, "Just call me Lee. It’s fine."

"With how cute you look with no eyebrows and the short hair, I’ll call you little LeeLee!" The girl stated.

Lee literally felt his palm itch and had to force himself to resist the urge of putting her over his knee.

"If you do that, I’ll spank you!" He seriously said.

"What happened to your face?" She asked, ignoring his words, but the other two girls furrowed their brows in displeasure.

"An accident." Lee said without a further explanation. No one needed to know he was burnt into charcoal by tribulation lightning

He asked, "Did you just arrive to the river?"

"Yes, and you took our dreadtalons!" Ling Xiaotao said.

"How did you survive for so long with how pampered you are?" Lee asked with a laugh.

The girl wasn’t really arrogant, she simply behaved like she owned the world. But it was unforced and natural, and it seemed she came from an influential clan.

"My sisters took care of me!" She proudly stated, "Sister Qin is particularly strong! Sometimes she even goes against a pack of dreadtalons alone and doesn’t let us help!"

"Sigh ... I know how it is." Lee said, pretending to be slightly depressed, "Xiao Lian also takes care of me. In fact, he taught me all that I know about hunting."

The further they went, the wider Xiao Lian’s eyes became. Fortunately no one asked him anything and the lively conversation was between the two youngest of their group.

"Really? He doesn’t look very reliable." Ling Xiaotao said, throwing a skeptical glance his way.

"Think what you want." Lee shrugged, "But if it is as he said, we’ll find at least one Purple spirit root on that cliff."

It was a gamble, but he had a feeling they had to take the chance. If they didn’t find a root, he could think of another way to improve Xiao Lian’s reputation, for example, claiming someone had recently picked it clean. But if they did find something, Xiao Lian would get a nice reputation boost in the eyes of the girls.

Before anyone could reply, Lee said, "Let’s go, Lian! Otherwise they’ll try to steal our dreadtalons again!"

"Like we’ll let you!" Ling Xiaotao shouted, and darted away.

Lee guessed the girl might be competitive and didn’t miss. Her two friends helplessly looked at each other, and followed, but Lee grinned at Xiao Lian and ran after them.

The cliff they were eyeing was around fifty feet high and stretched almost a third of a mile along the riverbank. It was inhabited by a large family of black dreadtalons who were much more numerous compared to the ones living on the rock formations in the tundra.

Besides the numbers, the beasts were much more agile than the green ones and therefore more difficult to hunt. As the result, the five disciples spent the rest of the day cleaning up the cliff and there was no time when someone didn’t have anything to do.

At first it went slow because Xiao Lian wasn’t himself at all. Because of his shyness, he couldn’t figure out how to behave around Qin Yujian, and Lee’s advice to ignore her presence didn’t work.

Then Lee came up with another idea.

He said, "Try to blow up dreadtalons in the most brutal fashion you can. I’ll explain later why."

Xiao Lian’s attacks were already spectacular and brutal, but now, every time he killed anything, a large fountain of gore pointed out his location. He didn’t know the reason for Lee’s suggestion, but decided to go along with it since the guy had never been wrong before.

***

The sun was about to set and the five Nethermoon sect’s disciples gathered on the top of the cliff.

"You were right, little LeeLee!" Ling Xiaotao cheered already from the distance.

In her hand she held a couple of Purple spirit roots, and from the looks of it, all of them had found at least one.

"Xiao Lian is the one deserving the praise, not I." Lee said, "But last warning! If you ever call me that again I promise I’ll spank you! I don’t care who you are or where do you come from!"

"Why do you always make that move? Isn’t it impractical waste of elemental energy?" Qin Yujian asked Xiao Lian.

Even without seeing his red face, Lee could tell this was the best and the worst thing that could’ve happened to the guy. But he predicted this scenario when they met the three girls and was prepared.

"He’ll probably hate me for this, but he’s too shy so I’ll say it anyway." Lee said, grinning widely at Xiao Lian as if was about to play a prank.

Then he turned back to Qin Yujian, and innocently explained, "After watching your fight last year, Lian came to the conclusion that he couldn’t achieve the technical finesse that you have with the sword. But then he figured that it was possible to achieve even better results by directly overpowering the opponent with strength and speed. That was the revelation that allowed him to invent his new move."

"So you knew who I am?" Qin Yujian asked, carefully processing his words.

"Of course! Everybody knows." Lee said with a shrug, "Why would that matter? Brother Xiao has these strange values about women, but I don’t care who you are at all!"

Lee actually didn’t care, but he didn’t know she was asking about her origins. In fact, Qin family was no less famous than Xiao, and probably Lee was one of the few ignorant people in the Nethermoon sect who had no clue what her background meant.

Unfortunately Lee forgot there was a child in the group. While Qin Yujian and Shu Ying more or less guessed what he was talking about, the youngest, Ling Xiaotao, blew up from anger.

She kicked Lee on the butt so hard, he flew off the cliff’s edge before realizing what happened. All he heard on the way down was her angry shout.

"You baddie! Stupid little LeeLee! I’ll show you what happens when you talk down on Sister Qin!"

The loud splash indicated Lee fell in the water and Xiao Lian could sigh in relief. Ling Xiaotao’s reaction caught everyone, not only Lee, off guard. For a brief moment she panicked after realizing what she had done, but since Lee was most likely fine, she began to loudly laugh.

It was hard to stay angry at a child, no matter how pampered she was. Her two friends awkwardly smiled, ready to apologize on her behalf, when the loud cursing from below made everyone blush in even deeper shade than Xiao Lian previously had.

"Auuu! ... bitch! ... motherfucker! ... fuck, it hurts!"

Lee, of course, didn’t have the exquisite vocabulary Freeda had, but even the primitive curse words were too offensive for the young ladies.

The youngest immediately forgot the tinge of guilt she earlier had, and rushed along the edge of the cliff, to get down at the right side of it. Lee was probably getting out of the water and to get to him she had to run almost a mile.

Nevertheless, Ling Xiaotao had never ran so fast in her life. She was so mad, she didn’t care if the guy died after she taught him a lesson. And Lee was about to learn what it meant to truly make someone from the Ling family angry.