Heavy Sweetness Ash-Like Frost

3

Chapter 3: Grace Begins to Appear

Mao Ri Xing Guan had just let the burning hot sun in the middle of the sea, the bats who came out in full strength during twilight, suddenly covered the world.

I was lying face-up on the branch of a flowering crabapple tree, sitting in repose with my eyes closed. Underneath the tree was the lingering shadow of the moon and rippling, jade-green water. This pool of jade-green water stretched as far as the eye can see, called "Pond of Still Catapla", and can be considered the place with the best scenery in the Palace of the Parasol Tree Perch.

In the midst of sleeping lightly, I heard a faint tinkling of water. I followed the sound and looked down, but saw that there seemed to be a person in the jade-green water, who was then sprinkling water on his body and bathing,

Taking advantage of the moonlight, I watched, rapt with attention. Wah, it's the Phoenix.

The female immortals and the young immortal girls like to secretly discuss him. According to them, the Phoenix is the best looking male deity of the six worlds in the past eighteen thousand years. I had never examined him carefully before, so today, I attentively gazed at every part of him exposed above the water's surface, but I didn't see anything extraordinary. I was just about to use my magic to look and see if the other half immersed within the water had any special qualities, when I felt my body lighten as someone forced me to return to my true form and I fell into the pond water.

When I stood up from within the water, I saw that the Phoenix had already draped a green robe over himself and used a emerald hairpin to coil his hair, and was standing on the shore, looking downwards at me with his arms crossed.

"You aren't self-cultivating, what are you doing on the treetop?"

"Meditating." I wrung out the water in my clothes, and replied calmly.

"Have you memorized the Buddhist chants that I taught you this morning?" As usual, the Phoenix pinched the bun on my head, and as usual, I was not able to evade it, so I replied unwillingly: "I've memorized all of it."

"Recite it for me." The Phoenix stepped on a cloud and began to float in front of me, I also, not very skillfully, stepped on a cloud and followed behind him unsteadily, while stumbling through those forty-nine Buddhist chants. Just as we were about to arrive palace gates, I finally recited all of them. The towering Phoenix turned around, and I almost bumped into him. But he suddenly smiled, a dimple showing at the corner of his mouth: "You even memorized a short Buddhist chant this confusedly and roughly. Out of the forty-nine lines, you only got five lines right, though that is already very uneasy."

I forced a smile and looked at the tips of my toes.

"Go back and commit this and Wu Xiang Sutra to memory. Tomorrow, come here during mao to recite everything again."

I watched respectfully as he turned around and then raised my leg to stomp on the shadow that the moonlight cast behind him.

Since a little over a month ago, after eating those rosefinch eggs and losing over half of my lingli, I have been living at the Phoenix's Palace of Parasol Tree Perch, recovering from my wound. Most days, I chat with the young immortal girls and heard that even tough the Phoenix was only fifteen thousand years old, he already controls the five Heavenly armies, and was the Fire Deity with the strongest lingli in history.

My hopes were fueled, and I thickened my skin to go ask the Phoenix to give some of his lingli to me, but he refused.

The fox immortal had said that the biggest secret weapon to deal with men is not to use force, but to pretend weakness, to show your weakness and retreat in order to advance later.