Three months after Ken returned to the Phoenix Feather Sect, in Four Seasons Sect:
"Good to see you, Young Lady Vivienne."
"I was trying to sleep, and I'm only meeting you only because you've been pestering me for a few months now ever since the secret realm. What do you want, Felix?"
A beautiful lady with long platinum hair flowing like a river from the immortal realm sat lazily before a handsome man with long red hair and a triangle face. Felix was meeting Vivienne at her home after asking for it in the past three months.
"Why are you so hostile? We are both from the Ashford clan, we are both powerful, and we are well-matched in every way. Why not be with each other?"
Felix asked with a hint of anger. He felt like he had been sincere with the woman for a long time and she still did not reciprocate his feelings.
"I might have considered it before, but I don't know if a handicap can be the right man for me," Vivienne said with subtle contempt in her tone while glancing toward the stump where his right foot once was.
Felix's face instantly burned with shame when he heard the comment. Nothing enraged him lately more than being teased about his loss to a fourth-stage cultivator. His face turned red, but he still did not run away.
"You know very well that I will have my foot back in a few months," he almost spat his words in his anger.
His foot had already grown to the point of a visible heel, and he only needed a few more months under the effect of the seventh-grade pills he had been consuming. Luckily, his clan was rich enough to afford that expenditure on a promising youth.
"Right, so you know very well that's not the problem," Vivienne said with a mocking voice. She hinted that she did not want to date someone who lost to an opponent two stages beneath him.
While she also lost to the same cultivator, she was heavily handicapped by the bloody mist, and besides, Felix did not know about it. She'd take the secret with her to the grave if she could.
"Hmph, he only won because he somehow convinced the buffalos to help him. Let me share some interesting news with you, love. The sect now found a lead and checks a rumor saying he is a disciple at the Phoenix Feather Sect. Once he is captured, I will make sure he is given to me so I can kill him myself."
Vivienne looked at him in surprise, swearing at the idiot in her mind for telling her directly. She was forced to act now to help Ken.
"Then, if you can bring him to me alive, I will let you take me out for a meal."
"Really? No problem! But why does he need to be alive?" Felix jumped in his place when he heard her unexpected answer. He had been chasing her for over 10 years now, and it was the first time she agreed without the clan's interference.
"He ambushed me when I was restricted with another fight and managed to get away. Although he was forced to escape and could not do anything to me even with a sneak attack, I still want to pay him back," Vivienne said with pridefully, emphasizing that Ken was the one to run away.
"No problem, I will make sure to keep him alive and bring him to you. If you don't keep your promise to be mine afterward, the clan will intervene," Felix promised and threatened at the same time.
'Huh, they really see me as their property rather than an important figure,' The fairy thought. She has been reviewing her life in her mind in the past three months, rethinking her clan's and sect's attitudes to her.
She used what she knew about the other elite descendants as a reference point. Ken's words kept echoing in her mind ever since they parted.
'Are they really all using me as a war tool? Ah… how bothersome, now I need to get myself involved and save that shitty boy.'
Her thoughts tended to use much ruder vocabulary than her mouth, and she really hated bothersome tasks.
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27 years ago in the Four Seasons Sect:
"Supreme Elder Herbert is ascending!"
The news spread in the sect like fire, garnering excitement from everyone who heard it. It worked to motivate everyone to work harder in the hope they could turn into immortals themselves one day.
"Elder Herbert, please go ahead."
An old woman waved her hand and four outer disciples stepped forward with nervous expressions. They had never been so close to such important characters before, and now the room was packed with the peak existences of the sect. The outer disciples were the babysitters of the babies they were holding in their hands.
The outer disciples placed the babies on blankets on the floor in front of the white-haired man sitting on the floor and retreated after a bow.
"I will start the process. Please everyone, remain quiet and do not disturb my concentration."
Herbert pulled one baby toward him and placed the tip of his finger on the baby's forehead. He had already memorized the information about the baby's body structure before breaking through; all elders at the peak of the ninth stage did. The 24-hour interval before ascending was too precious to spend it on memorizing.
He channeled his Immortal Qi into the baby's body slowly, strengthening every bone and fiber, when suddenly an unsettling plucking sound was heard, and the baby's heart exploded when he tried to reinforce it.
"Don't worry, here's the next one. Whenever you're ready," The old woman placed the next baby in front of Herbert. The first and the second babies always died. The third one almost always died, while the fourth baby usually died.
Herbert nodded and began working again, changing a few things he learned from his previous attempt. He managed to complete the body-strengthening process successfully and even awaken the girl's dantian and meridians.
"Huh… she is dead, I did something wrong at the soul-strengthening process…" he heaved out a sigh and pushed away the baby's corpse gently.
"It's ok, Elder Herbert. Please try-"
"AAAHHHH!"
A baby's crying scream cut off the old woman, and everyone sent surprised stares at the baby that was pronounced dead a moment ago.
"She's alive? Quickly, check her stage!" One elder shouted at the old woman who was caught unguarded. She hurriedly placed her hand on the baby's chest and checked.
"She's at the peak of the third stage, it's a success!"
"I shall name her Vivienne," Herbert said with a smile. He was one of the only elders in the history of the sect to succeed at his second attempt, making him quite satisfied. For the occasion, he named the girl himself.
"Quick, take her to rest. If anything happens to her, even the heads of your whole family won't be enough to make up for it." The old woman called the girl's babysitter who trembled in his place from the direct threat. He quickly raised the girl in maximum cautiousness and walked away.
Herbert's ego took a blow when he killed the third baby at the Soul Strengthening stage, but everyone was satisfied with his second success. Enhancing two babies out of four was a rare achievement.
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The young Vivienne was raised with utmost care her whole life. During her infancy, there was always a fourth-stage disciple watching over her, making sure no accident could ever happen.
When she reached her young childhood, she was taken to the Ashford clan which hired the best tutors for the young girl. Her brain was enhanced, allowing her to learn everything quickly. She learned to read within months once she started, and by the age of five, she could do everything a normal 10-year-old could.
However, she faced endless expectations. She was next taught basic hand-to-hand combat, and later they tried to teach her how to fight using different weapons to find her preference and aptitude. Eventually, she always preferred fighting using only pure elements without a weapon.
Sometimes, she'd create weapons like knives, arrows, and whips with her techniques, but they never received a meaning in her mind, and she never gained an affinity with them.
'I'm tired of all this training and learning. I just want to sleep…' Vivienne muttered dejectedly as she was walking slowly to the next lesson.
"Say, who's statue is that, and what's the big stone next to it?" She asked her servant once about a famous site in their sect.
"It's the sect founder. The stone slab was written by him, and it'd said to contain a special kind of inheritance, but nobody ever got it."
"Hmm, is that so?" She took a closer look at the stone slab in interest.
When Vivienne was eight, she was ready to break through to the next stage, while the other boy with a cultivation body was still behind. She enjoyed preferential treatment thanks to it while the other boy was getting harsh treatment because of her. They soon came to dislike one another, mainly because of the boy's jealousy.
The sect encouraged them to make friends with each other, but when Vivienne turned 10, the two decided to never talk to each other again.
Thanks to the special treatment she enjoyed, she soon turned into quite the spoiled princess. During missions, she'd force her bodyguards to kill her targets in her stead whenever she thought the elders did not watch, and she never agreed to participate in the messy parts like skinning the beasts they hunted or even just cooking.
'The Sleepy Princess' was the nickname she received from her servants behind her back. The Ashford tried to pressure her into working harder, but they were not too strict as long as she remained above the other boy who served as a point of comparison, and she always did.
With this attitude, she grew up leisurely until she was sixteen, and a boy called Felix Ashford, hailed as the best natural genius of the Ashford clan in decades, set his eyes on her.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺