"Ah, I am done. I am done. Teacher, you are far too strong. Even if you do not use Spirit Power, the current me still cannot challenge you at all."
Clara Vale flopped backward onto the training ground. Wu Ling had exhausted her completely.
"Fine, fine. Since you have trained so diligently, I will spend the rest of today playing with you." Wu Ling smiled and walked over, then held out a hand to Clara.
Clara puffed her cheeks slightly and argued, "Teacher, really. I am less than two months from turning twelve. I am not a child anymore. Could you stop treating me like one every time?"
Her mouth argued, but her body was very honest. She took Wu Ling's hand and easily stood with his help.
"Tell me, where do you want to go today?" Wu Ling asked, habitually pinching Clara's cheek.
Clara thought for a moment and was just about to answer when a violent door push interrupted her.
"Big Brother Wu Ling, look! I used the Magecraft array you taught me to make this soulcraft device myself. Come help me see how it is!"
Along with the voice, a boy with heterochromatic eyes and snow-white hair walked in holding a soulcraft device. Behind him followed a girl with wine-red hair and blue eyes.
They were the grandson and granddaughter of Mingde Hall's master, Russell Sterling: Damian Sterling and Reverie Sterling.
After Wu Ling arrived, the two of them had heard the name Wu Ling from their grandfather almost every day. Once Damian learned through various channels that Wu Ling was seventeen, his competitive spirit burned even brighter.
After all, Damian was recognized as the Sun Moon Empire's number one genius. He had just turned fourteen, but his Spirit Power had already reached Spirit Meister level, and he had become the youngest fourth-grade soulcraft engineer in history. In the past, he had been the one his grandfather praised constantly. Now that name had been replaced by someone he had never even heard of. How could he not be curious? How could he not want to compete?
So he brought his sister to find Wu Ling and demanded a fair one-on-one duel.
When Wu Ling saw Damian, he immediately understood that an old plot had begun: the protagonist enters a faction, attracts hostility from the faction's original genius, then shows off and slaps faces.
Unfortunately, Wu Ling was not the kind of conventional protagonist who pretended to be weak so he could later strike back. To put it another way, Wu Ling's laziness had flared up, and he intended to solve everything at once.
Then, after Wu Ling became slightly serious, he crushed Damian's pride as a Spirit Master and his pride as a soulcraft engineer into powder, pressed that powder into molecules, chopped it into atoms, sliced it into quarks, and threw it onto the ground.
However, Wu Ling miscalculated one thing: Damian's persistence and the size of the gap between them.
There was a saying. When the gap between two people was small, it became anger and jealousy. When the gap grew larger, it became despair. But when the gap became absurdly large, it transformed into admiration.
In one month, Damian challenged Wu Ling three times. Each time ended in a complete defeat. Those three defeats happened to carry Damian through anger, despair, and admiration.
Of course, without Russell secretly pushing things along, Damian's state after the second defeat probably would not have allowed a third challenge at all.
It was precisely that third challenge that made Damian admire Wu Ling.
"Even if I cannot reach Wu Ling's level at seventeen, I will be satisfied if I can reach half of it."
With that mindset, Damian successfully joined Wu Ling's exclusive small class with Russell's help. Reverie had also become curious about Wu Ling, so she joined the class too.
As for these two people, who had let Wu Ling obtain the complete data for all eighth-grade soulcraft devices and part of the ninth-grade data, Wu Ling taught them with real effort. Whether they later taught what they learned to Russell had nothing to do with him. Some things were better left unsaid.
In terms of relationship, the three of them could be considered master and disciples in practice, but not in name. Put simply, teaching them was part of a transaction. He was not teaching them from the same position he used with Clara.
Watching Wu Ling speak with increasing enthusiasm while the two listened more and more seriously, Clara felt a small trace of dissatisfaction. After all, she had clearly come first.
But she also understood Wu Ling's personality, so she did not say anything. Instead, she stood beside him and listened to his lecture as well.
Wu Ling spoke for more than twenty minutes. Just as his mouth began to feel dry, Clara silently placed a cup of tea in front of him.
Wu Ling took the teacup out of habit and thought while drinking, "Did I forget something?"
After he finished the tea, a tender little hand took away the empty cup. Wu Ling followed that hand with his eyes and finally remembered.
Facing Damian's follow-up questions, Wu Ling dismissed him with a few sentences. When Damian left, his head was full of soulcraft devices and cultivation. Reverie, as a girl, noticed something much more keenly.
Before leaving, she took a deep look at Wu Ling, pressed her lips together almost imperceptibly, then looked at Clara.
"I will not give up."
Only after silently encouraging herself did Reverie leave.
Once the two were gone, Wu Ling said to Clara, "Sorry, sorry. I accidentally got carried away. So, where did you want to go earlier?"
Clara was also a girl, and she had likewise sensed Reverie's improper interest in Wu Ling. The words "it is fine" stopped at her lips. Then she remembered a scene from a novel she had casually picked up during a rest day a few days ago. Swallowing her embarrassment, she said, "Mmm. After training, I even had to pour tea for a certain irresponsible teacher. Now I am so tired that I have no strength to go anywhere."
Wu Ling blinked. That did not sound like something Clara would normally say. When he tilted his head slightly and saw her flushed cheeks, he understood.
"All right, then. What does this irresponsible teacher need to do before you forgive me?"
"Carry... carry me back." Even Clara herself almost did not know what she was saying.
Faced with Clara's rare "willfulness," Wu Ling pinched her soft cheek again. Only after Clara puffed her cheeks and pushed his hand away did he crouch down and say, "Then come on. And to make up for my mistake, I will handle dinner tonight too."
"Yes! Teacher is the best!"
Clara, whom Wu Ling had raised into a little foodie, forgot even her embarrassment the moment she heard Wu Ling would make dinner. She jumped directly onto his back. Only after climbing on did she belatedly remember to feel shy.
"Good. Hold tight. We are going."