Murim's Weakest Princess-Chapter 51: Pot of Tea

The old bronze mirror was as round as a cookie. However, no matter how much Anji thought about eating it to absorb the yin energy hidden within it, she could not convince the yin energy coating the mirror to leave, much less enter her body as nutrients. The creative girl tried various methods of coaxing it, including attempting to snort it up. However, nothing worked.

Yan Ping spent the last twenty minutes observing her student. Anji was very innovative. She would give her that much credit. The child tried biting the mirror, slurping the energy around it, and even talking with the object in an attempt to negotiate. However, energy wasn’t a living creature in the most logical sense.

"Do you know what it takes for cultivators to finish their Initial Core?" Yan Ping finally broke her silence, offering Anji a clue.

Thinking for a while, the child replied what she could recall. The Initial Core was the foundational stage when practitioners learned to awaken their qi internally and sense it in the external environment. Much like this mirror, cultivators at the Initial Core stage would exude a grey aura. The colour was denser than the flimsy energy coating the bronze mirror, but that might be due to the quality of the energy involved.

It was a good answer. Yan Ping found nothing wrong with that answer. It was perfect from the textbook. However, it didn’t apply to Anji, who had her golden core sealed.

"Normally, life energy or qi is naturally attracted to people with cultivation affinity. The golden core is a cosy place for life energy to rest and become refined into something suitable for the cultivator. However, in your case, with a sealed core, there’s no attraction force for the yin energy to leave. Moreover, people like your third brother have a condition of only attracting certain types of energy due to his Yang body physique. How else would you be able to harness the trapped yin energy without the attraction of a core?" freёweɓnovel.com

Her teacher was giving her a huge hint. Unlike her older sister, Brother Yihao was constantly scolded for being lazy and unable to make much cultivation progress. However, after Uncle Bai took over her third brother’s training, he made astounding progress that surprised her parents. Those with special constitutions require different training methods. The icy waterfall that would have made Anji fall ill after soaking in it for an hour helped Yihao further strengthen his cultivation base. Why was that so?

Placing the bronze mirror on the table, Anji frowned. Suppose her older sister was like a strong magnet that attracted all types of qi easily, her third brother was like a sieve that could only accept specific energy types. Compared to them, Anji was like a brick wall, not receptive towards energy because her core had been tightly sealed. Despite her latent talent, she was no different from a non-cultivator. It was still too dangerous to use the energy in her core even after her father, shifu, and Sect Leader Bai helped to adjust the spell on her core’s seal.

Wait! If cultivators needed a core to cultivate, then what about spiritual herbs that did not have cores? How did they harness energy for evolution? That made little sense.

Although Anji remained as quiet as a mouse, Yan Ping smiled when she sensed a shift in her thought process. Anji was close to getting it. There were many methods of cultivating, as long as there was an affinity.

"Shifu, how do spiritual herbs gather qi? Without using my golden core, I’m probably unable to do the same kind of training Brother Yihao or Sister Ruiting do."

Chuckling at how Anji unknowingly compared herself to a mountain vegetable, Yan Ping let her student in on her secret.

"Why do you think I created the new valves and seals inside you? Like regular cultivator who can use their cores as a furnace, plants that can absorb energy have something similar in them."

Now that Anji thought about it, there was something odd about traditional cultivation practice. Like people, only some plants were capable of evolving into spiritual herbs. They were usually found in areas with dense energy, like at the back of her family’s mountain. However, that wasn’t always the case. How did plants gather qi inside them when they did not have cores?

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Ten minutes passed, and Anji still had no answer. Seeing how her student was stuck, Yan Ping started to brew tea.

"Here," she pushed an empty cup to Anji. "How much tea is in this cup now?"

Confused, Anji stared at the empty cup and wondered if her teacher was seriously testing her. Then, she remembered her shifu was actually a physically blind person.

’It’s empty now, shifu. Would you like me to pour some tea?"

Shaking her head, Yan Ping waited for the chrysanthemum tea to boil. Anji watched her shifu silently while mulling over the hint. Then, she watched as her shifu filled the empty cup slowly.

At first, everything seemed well. However, after the cup was half full, her shifu made no adjustments to the angle at which she poured her tea. Nervously, Anji wondered if she should let her teacher know that the cup would be full soon. However, she had faith that her teacher would stop pouring just before reaching the brim.

As the waterline grew closer to the rim of the cup, Anji could no longer remain silent. The tea was hot. If it overflowed, her shifu would be scalded!

"Shifu, stop! The cup is already very full. If you fill it any further, it will overflow!"

Even as the waterline was closing in quickly to the top, Yan Ping remained calm.

"But why? I still have so much tea to pour from this pot."

Nervously, Anji watched with dread as the hot tea reached the brim of the cup. Here, she expected it to overflow. However, Yan Ping stopped right then, as if she could see how much this cup could contain before an accident happened.

The steaming cup of chrysanthemum tea stood between teacher and student innocently while Anji stewed in confusion. Why did her teacher do such a thing? Drinking from such a full cup was difficult, much less moving it.

Breaking the silence, Yan Ping opened the teapot lid and held the porcelain cup. In one swift motion, she picked it from the table and poured its contents back into the teapot. This time, Anji made no fuss.

When all the liquid was back in the pot, Yan Ping properly poured two cups of tea and offered one to Anji.

"Energy is found everywhere," she said. "It doesn’t matter if there is more or less of it like this teapot. It’s always there."

Agreeing with the logic for now, Anji nodded along.

"You can pour the tea out anywhere. However, the tea will simply go to waste without a container to hold it, like a cup. At the same time, not every cup is the same. A bigger cup would hold more tea than a smaller cup if filled to the brim. However, it doesn’t always mean the bigger cup has more tea. Both our cups are the same size. Does it mean we both have the same amount of tea?"

Looking at their cups, Anji finally realised that her cup had less tea than her shifu. Was this also deliberate?

"A core is like this cup. How does the tea enter the cup? How much can enter it? How fast can it go without spilling? Don’t all these factors depend on how empty the cup is?"

Even though Anji understood what her teacher was trying to tell her, she was unable to link it to her practice. She wasn’t trying to stuff more things into a container that was already full. The problem was that her container had a lid on it. She had no idea how to fill it without removing her lid. Removing her container lid might result in qi deviation again. Yan Ping told her not to practise cultivation using her core until all her valves and seals were fully activated.

Wait! Wasn’t there another way to pour out a pot of tea without using cups? Technically, if Anji did not want to hold onto the tea, she could still drink it directly from the teapot. It wasn’t polite, but it was possible.

Grabbing the old bronze mirror again, Anji decided to forgo common sense and etiquette. She would ask her shifu for forgiveness later if this method did not work.