Chapter 45: Master-Servant Relationship Must Be Clear

After hearing Mo Ying's weak retort, Feng Xue immediately realized he'd guessed right and nodded at once:

"True—I have quite a few textbooks on various painting techniques. If you're willing to cooperate with me in using spells, I can give them to you."

Feng Xue wasn't bluffing; to prepare for the crossing, he'd stored massive amounts of textual data on his memory card—from the Twenty-Four Histories to the Barefoot Doctor's Manual, from master calligraphy copies to simple methods of manufacturing explosives—everything he could think of had been copied, including the Four Books and Five Classics and all manner of military treatises. Even if you counted translations and commentaries, these bulky works weren't that large; a few hundred volumes together might not take up as much space as a single HD video.

From beginner tutorials to advanced schools, even simplified versions for toddlers and children—giving them to a spirit ghost who kept glitching in her drawings should still be fine.

"…" Seeing Feng Xue's confident expression, Mo Ying cautiously poked her head out from behind the rock, gazed at him for a moment, then sighed as if coming to a decision:

"Fine, whether I cooperate or not, I still have to obey you. Alright, I'll send you out first…"

"Not so fast!" Feng Xue stretched out his hand, stepped forward, planted one foot on the large rock, rested one hand on his knee, and adopted the swagger of a thug looking for trouble: "Come to think of it, you once told me to get lost…"

"Ah, that—why did you…" Mo Ying stammered, but Feng Xue gave her no chance to explain—he leaned forward again, wrapped his arm around the ghost's slender waist, prevented her from struggling, and flipped her light body onto his knee with a loud laugh:

"Ever since you kicked me out last time, I swore that once I learned the Spirit-Subjugation Spell, I'd give you a good spanking!"

"Waaahhh! Get out! Get out! Make me get out!"

Feng Xue expected to be ejected, but nothing happened for a long while—only then did he realize that without his permission, Mo Ying couldn't even sever the connection. A cruel smile spread across his face—

"Oh? Bold of you! One time wasn't enough, so you tried again?"

"Ah, it's my fault! I'm wrong! Don't hit me! Waaah! Why does being a ghost still hurt so much?!"

…

"Huh…" In the morning, Feng Xue woke from drowsiness, sensing the lingering Qi around him, and recalled last night's dream.

Now that he recalled it, it was hard to distinguish which parts were spiritual interaction and which were post-event dreams, but undeniably, the irritation stirred up by Liu Yunxi these past few days had finally eased slightly.

Though he hadn't gone all the way like when he bathed the two fox goddess sisters, with Mo Ying's timid nature pretending to be aloof and detached, forcing the boundary outright would be boring—it had to be incremental progress, step by step, to fully experience the entire interaction.

Compared to the technician he met in the wilderness, it was better to savor his own backyard bit by bit.

Feng Xue knew full well that striking now, right after Mo Ying's attitude softened, would stiffen their relationship again—but ghosts and humans were different; without bodily hormones to interfere, they easily swung into emotional extremes.

Though Feng Xue had temporarily reconciled with her through "bribes," such behavior would cause the spirit ghost to naturally treat their interactions as a transaction, which was highly detrimental to establishing master-servant dynamics.

Rather than letting the spirit ghost think he was easy to bargain with, making her demand terms every time she was asked for help, it was better to start with a harsh warning to make her understand who the master was—then, the benefits he gave would shift from "payment for service" to "reward for good performance." Though both were giving, the meaning was entirely different.

"Achoo!" Liu Yunxi, sensing Feng Xue's awakening, felt a sudden intuition and sneezed softly, but immediately adjusted her state and knocked on the door:

"Breakfast is ready."

"Oh, I'll be right there!" Feng Xue replied, reaching for the scroll beside his bed:

"Take care of the remaining Qi—don't waste it!"

"Mm…" A faint voice, like a mosquito's hum, echoed in Feng Xue's mind. He smiled inwardly but knew he needed to offer a sweetener to restore goodwill, so he pulled out his phone, found the document on toddler Chinese painting primer, set it to auto-page-turn, then spoke to the scroll:

"The textbooks I promised you—I've set it to auto-turn, one page every ten breaths. Watch it for now; if it's too fast or slow, tell me later!"

…

Leaving the bedroom, Feng Xue saw Liu Yunxi, dressed in a maid's uniform, already serving breakfast on the table. He enjoyed her increasingly excellent cooking while pulling out "Jie Yu" to study.

He had already unlocked all the basic terms, but many spells couldn't be completed with basics alone—modular spells were like seals; once stamped on paper, they left intricate, detailed patterns, yet placing them correctly still required Feng Xue's fine manual control.

If Feng Xue's lock on 【Spirit Attachment】 had developed "muscle memory" through hands-on learning to enhance his sense of precise Qi control, then "Jie Yu" was now taking that sense and truly applying it in practice, integrating and unifying all the properties of Qi through actual use.

After hastily eating breakfast, Feng Xue absentmindedly pulled from his sack a scrap of material shaped like an hourglass—palm-length, nearly two centimeters thick, but no wider than a willow leaf at its narrowest.

It was clearly the leftover piece between two bracelet positions when cutting jade. Feng Xue took a water-based pen and, following the material-planning instructions in "Jie Yu," divided it, extracting two roughly coin-sized raw jade blanks. The remaining shards and residue wouldn't be wasted—besides serving as ritual catalysts, they could, during Jade-Nourishing cultivation, absorb jade essence, replace flaws, and even, once the Jade-Nourishing technique reached a certain level, knead a pile of jade powder into a complete jade stone.

Normal Xuan cultivators wouldn't waste precious Qi on such trivial tasks, but Feng Xue's Qi was so abundant he'd never run out.

Thinking of this, Feng Xue glanced over at Liu Yunxi, who had already cleared the dishes, and waved her over:

"Yunxi, sort the materials in the sack by size and integrity! Don't worry about quality—use this standard!"

"Huh? Oh!" Still slightly uncomfortable being called by name, Liu Yunxi paused, then walked over, staring at the page in "Jie Yu" showing the scrap grading. Though confused, she nodded.

Paying off a debt—what's the difference how you do it?

About what the protagonist brought when he crossed over.

As mentioned before: spare clothes, camping gear, phone, charger, drone, hand-crank generator, solar power bank, gold, and generic mechanical watches.

As for what's on the phone? Obviously, fill it as much as possible.

Let's look at it differently: suppose you knew you were going to cross over and could bring a phone and generator—how much would you pack?

Anyone with sense would cram every practical modern book they could find into it. Forget storage limits—buy several high-capacity memory cards and fill them! A million-word novel is only a few MB. Not to mention hard drives measured in terabytes; a few hundred gigabytes of storage card is the size of a fingernail—how much wouldn't fit? Just label the cards with numbers: Card No. 3 holds this, Card No. 7 holds that—duplicate copies take up almost no extra space.

Not just data—just to avoid accidents, bring multiple phones. They don't take up much room anyway.

As for necessity…

If you cross into a Literary or Confucian world, the Four Books and Five Classics, Three Hundred Tang Poems, Li Weng's Rhymes, painting and calligraphy textbooks will all be useful.

If you cross into the Cultivation World, Daoist and Buddhist scriptures, the Hundred Schools of Thought might prove invaluable.

If you cross into a culinary world, standard recipes and the Flavor Wheel alone could get you started.

Even in a game world, these books might become skill books.

Worst case, if you can't learn them yourself, isn't it easy to raise a few children and teach them?

So be prepared—anyone who knows they're crossing over and still doesn't prepare is an idiot.





(End of Chapter)