Cultivation Retirement Plan (BL)

14. Motives and Motivations

Slowly, Nan Wuyue mentally reached into his dantian until he touched his core. After a moment of silent struggle, he pinched a single thread of qi from its depths and pulled it slowly out of his abdomen. The wisp of energy was dark and smoky, a shadowy existence impossible to detect by physical senses alone. Nan Wuyue quickly pulled out a dagger and sliced his finger, smearing the blood along the edge of the blade. As if attracted by the liquid, the thread of qi attached itself to the crimson streak, then sank slowly within the metal to turn it a dull, blackish-gray.

He tensed after that, listening for any signs of movement beyond the bedroom. But it seemed that Mo Yixuan had settled into his meditation for the night. Strange too, how his master had started picking up such quiet habits. Yet with last night's declaration of attack, he could only assume the man had been biding his time to strike.

Whatever the case, this dagger would give him an extra element of self defense. It was now imbibed with a ghostly tendril of his true qi within its depths—a potent weapon whose treasured qi could injure its user too, if not for the fact that Nan Wuyue's original core was in a time and place removed from here. He had discovered he could access shades of his future self (or was it his future past?) through sending out mental feelers in the blankness of his mind. It was a side effect of his reincarnation, he suspected, bending the rules of time to access a portion of himself that would exist in the future.

Why or how it worked, he hadn't had time to find out. And as the last thread of qi vanished into the weapon, Nan Wuyue felt a wave of exhaustion sweep through his body. It happened every time he reached for his former self or his old powers, but the backlash was only temporary. As he settled down to quell the rising waves of chaotic qi in his dantian, he began to formulate a plan of attack.

Meanwhile, Mo Yixuan was having a restless night. Unlike the previous sessions, he couldn't calm his mind enough to settle into a meditative trance. Part of the blame lay in the fact that he had to ambush Nan Wuyue tomorrow with no experience, but the rest came from his own reluctance.

Once upon a time, he too had dreamed of success and glory in the firm that had hired him as an aspiring architect. He had a passion and fondness for design ever since he was a child, but that love had stifled within the confines of the company, then died with the ashes of Shangguan Yin's betrayal. Nan Wuyue's declaration sounded less like a young disciple trying to prove himself to his master than someone determined to beat him back. Even though the current Mo Yixuan had nothing to do with the boy's grievances, it rankled him to be lumped in the same category as the original host of this body.

Instead of a sympathizer, he was pushed into playing villain instead! The fact left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. He had already gone through one lifetime with others thinking the worst of him and now had to relive it again.

The only solution was to finish this quickly. But to do that meant he'd have to pressure his disciple to improve faster, which translated to hitting him harder. Yet if the alternative was leaving Nan Wuyue to an uncertain fate...

Mo Yixuan had grown up as an only child, far removed from cousins or other family members. He hardly knew how to care for a sibling, much less a disciple who relied on his master for everything. The only time he'd tried was with Shangguan Yin, and that had turned into a disaster.

It's only repaying a debt, he reminded himself. With that simple thought, his doubts disappeared, buried beneath a comforting layer of technicalities.

That's right. I'm just cleaning up unfinished business.

None of this will matter once I've given what I owe him.