Chapter 604: Departure
“You’re a Daoist priest, you’re older than me, so you must know more spells than me.” The little girl walked along with her pouch slung over her shoulder, looking up at him seriously as she thought aloud. “But when I first met you, you weren’t as big as you are now. You must’ve started learning spells around the same time as me. How many spells did you know back then?”
“Best not to ask that either.”
“Was it more than me?”
“Let’s keep this moment of happiness going a little longer.”
“Hmm...” The little girl furrowed her brows. Instinctive curiosity urged her to keep asking, but her memories offered up past experiences that told her she should stop. Emotion and reason began wrestling in her head, and for a moment, neither side could win. Thus, her brows only knitted tighter and tighter.
Finally, she settled on a compromise, and she changed the subject.
“Then, Daoist priest, how long do you think it’ll take me to turn a stone as big as the mountain god into gold in one go?”
“If it were an ordinary genius, perhaps it would take several years. But based on your usual pace and talent for learning spells, maybe just half a year.”
“Half a year!” The little girl’s brows tightened again.
But this time, it wasn’t joy, nor disappointment. She didn’t find it either too long or too short; she simply muttered to herself, uh-oh.
She had worked too hard when learning other spells in the past, often sneaking out in the dead of night pretending to catch mice. In truth, she’d catch one here, one there, and spend the rest of the time secretly practicing spells behind the Daoist’s and the swallow’s backs. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have made such rapid progress with the others.
What should have been a good thing had now backed her into a corner.