Walking over to the barrel, I studied it under the silver curtain of moonlight.

It was one of those wooden casks you expect to find in a cellar. The only difference was the size of the thing and that the planks it was made of were nearly three finger widths thick giving the barrel considerable heft.

Running my hand over the grain of the wood, I felt something metallic. It was one of the two bands of iron that held the planks together.

I vaguely remembered watching some program on wine-making where the process of making the oaken casks that the beverage was fermented in was shown. There was a part where iron hoops were heated to expand them, slipped over the cylindrically slatted planks and allowed to cool and contract, pressuring the planks together and sealing the gaps between them.

At least the metallurgy of this period was advanced enough to make strips of metal and weld the ends into rings. Which told me… nothing really. I was a chemistry major, not a blacksmith.

Shrugging and dismissing that line of thought, I picked up a wooden mug that was lying beside the cask and dipped it into the warm water.

I rinsed the dried blood off my face as well as I could and poured a few mugs of water over my head to wash off the worst of the sweat and dirt.

Discarding the mug, I vaulted over the edge of the barrel and into the water. The edge of the cask came up to my chest when it stood upon the ring of stones. I would never have managed to vault it in my old body but in this one, it was effortless.

Unlike Lin’s elegant entry, I made quite the splash when I entered the water and she had to turn away to protect her face.

The warm water felt heavenly, the heat seeping into my body, relaxing my muscles and washing away the built-up tension. I couldn’t help but sigh contentedly as I sank back against the wall of the barrel opposite Lin with my arms slung over the edge of the barrel and my eyes closed.

After soaking for some time, I opened my eyes and looked at Lin. She was quite flustered with blushing cheeks and a shifting gaze. I felt like teasing her. “So… what do you want me to do?” I asked something already known.

“Let’s have sex again.” She replied straightforwardly, seemingly relieved by my question.

I was taken aback before I realized that I kept forgetting her different values.

Despite her inexperience, bringing up intercourse was far from enough to make her bashful. It was as natural in her mind as having a meal or sleeping. Actually, simply taking a bath together with a man might be more embarrassing.

My lips curved upwards. I knew just what to do.

I let my feet slide forward on the base of the barrel until my toes touched the opposite edge.

Squatting down slightly and keeping my back pressed against the walls, I made a chair with my thighs.

“Come,” I invited her, “take a seat.”

Nervously, Lin moved to me through the water and straddled me with her front facing me.

“Not like that,” I said, “turn your back to me.”

Though she was confused about what I wanted to do, she complied and maneuvered herself until I could see the beautiful curves of her back.

“N-now what?” she asked.

Wordlessly, I pulled her down against me, so she was sitting on my thighs, her back flush against my chest.

Even under water, I could feel the soft elasticity of her rear against my thighs and the contours of her back against my skin. My dick showed its approval the only way it knew how, leaping up and pressing against her crotch which was exposed as her legs were prevented from closing by my thighs.

“W-what are you doing?” she asked.

Silencing her with a finger on her lips, I whispered in her ear. “Leave it all up to me. Close your eyes and that pretty mouth of yours and just enjoy the experience.”

She trembled in my arms as my breath tickled her sensitive ear. “O-ok.” she said before obediently closed her eyes and leant back against me.

Her stiff back, the rapid movement of her eyes under her lids and the way she bit her lower lip showed that she wasn’t relaxed yet.

I would remedy that.

But first, I raised her hips slightly and adjusted my cock so that it was sandwiched between my stomach and her butt. With the lubrication of the water and her clear arousal, it was in very real danger of accidentally sliding in.

She saw sex as a means to an end, a very mechanical act performed as a part of her cultivation. Even now, she wanted to fuck me, not because it felt good, or it meant something, but because it would allow her to understand how my powers worked.

I needed to change that mindset of hers.

Snaking an arm around her taut stomach under the water, I pulled her to me so her but squished against my cock harder and her back pressed up against me.

Her eyes flew open in surprise and she struggled to sit up but I wasn’t having any of that.

Covering her eyes with my free hand, I pressed her head back against me until the back of her head was touching my shoulder, exposing her neck and giving me a splendid view of her shapely buoyant breasts.

“Don’t move.” I admonished her and she settled down but I could still feel he stiffness in her body.

Letting go of her eyes and ensuring that she kept them shut, I slung her wet hair over shoulder so it wouldn’t get caught between her back and my chest before adjusting her arms and letting her grip the edges of the barrel.

“Don’t let go.” I warned in a low voice and she shuddered.

When I was done, I glanced over my handiwork and a thrill ran through me. She was a magnificent sight exposed to me so fully.

Her fair neck was exposed to me, as were her heaving breasts. My thighs between her legs spread her apart and she couldn’t close them if she wanted to. Her arms were raised to the sides and she was helpless to resist me.

Her trembling lashes and bitten lip. Everything about the situation triggered my desire for dominance.

The best thing about it was that she was letting me do this. Her arms weren’t shackled. Her eyes weren’t blindfolded. She wasn’t gagged.

All it took was a few whispered words.

This was true bondage.

True surrender.

True trust.

It was intoxicating.

One of my hands slid down her toned stomach to her crotch while the other traced her collarbone and wandered over to her full chest while she shuddered under my touch.

For this she would be rewarded.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 112

“What makes you think that I practice an advanced Cultivation technique?” I asked back.

She smiled knowingly. “No use denying it. Its effects speak for themselves. There is no way an ordinary Cultivation technique could help me Purify my Spirit in such a short amount of time… and so thoroughly.”

“And… what do you mean by Purify?”

She frowned slightly and then turned back to tending the fire with a pout, “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me. You don’t have to play dumb like that.” Then, almost inaudibly, she added, “So stingy.” If not for my enhanced hearing, I wouldn’t have picked that up. I was quite confused. It appeared that she was under some grave misconception. From her words, I could infer that my siphoning of her Cultivation hadn’t been detrimental to her – rather, it seemed that she had benefitted substantially from it. Enough that she was willing to let me keep my secrets.

Calming down, I began to analyse her words and actions, trying to glean as much information from them as possible.

First of all, what did I know?

I had imbibed some form of energy from both her and her senior sister. The energy had helped me strengthen my body while weakening theirs. Going by the explanation I had managed to coax out of her when she was delirious after our first bout of sex, that was probably their Qi.

Instead of being furious that I had stolen her Qi, she had tried to protect me from her senior sister and then brought me over to her own courtyard which was at the edge of the residential area.

She had said that her senior sister had hidden the fact about my survival and instructed her to harvest me while the rest of the sect was busy with the initiation of the new recruits.

She was willing to accommodate my wishes to a great extent, drawing a bath for me, allowing me to keep my secrets without prying…

She had done all this because she was under the misconception that I was using a high-level cultivation technique and it had helped her ‘Purify’ her Spirit.

All of these fragmented observations whirled in my mind and a clearer picture began to emerge.

The sneaky behaviour, the out of the way courtyard – these two girls were marginalized in the sect.

If they revealed my existence, I would either be killed or taken away by a higher ranked Cultivator. They had very little to gain by revealing my existence and a lot to gain from my so-called high-grade Cultivation technique if Lin’s amenability to my requests was any indication.

Knowing that they needed me was great news. It meant that I could pull my own weight. It meant that I had chips I could bring to the negotiation table. It wasn’t just a simple-minded young girl’s mercy keeping me alive.

As for ridiculous ideas like Lin falling in love with me, or becoming addicted to my godly prowess in bed? He-he.

Now, I needed to know what that chip exactly was.

“What do you mean by Purifying your Spirit?” I repeated.

Lin turned to me and studied my expression, trying to detect any signs that I was just messing with her. “Y-you really don’t know?” she finally asked.

“Nope.”

Suddenly, her eyes brightened. “Oh! I know. You came from outside the Coral Islands. The Cultivation terms must be different there, so, of course, you won’t understand them. By Purify I mean…”

I stopped her there with a wry smile. This girl really had a rich imagination. If I played along, I might have obtained the information I wanted but it would introduce a falsehood in our interactions. A lie that would easily be exposed when her senior sister woke up. Relationships are built on the foundation of trust. Trust is built by the bricks of honesty. If I wanted to truly conquer these girls and have them be my backing in my bid to survive this dire situation I had found myself in, it wasn’t my dick that would convince them, it was my mind.

“I really don’t have any special cultivation technique. I don’t even know a single thing about Cultivation aside from what you told me. I just have a special Spirit inborn. That let me survive being harvested by your senior sister once and that’s what let me do whatever it is that I did during sex with the both of you.”

Honest but not the whole truth.

“Special spirit?” her eyes widened in surprise.

“Yeah. I have two of these glowing balls of light in my inner vision. One in my heart and the other in my head. The one in my head controls the one in my heart so I am not as affected by your yin Qi. That was how I turned the tables on you.”

“A dual Spirit!” she exclaimed. “That’s so rare… it might not appear in the whole of the Coral Islands in a hundred years. But,” she frowned, wrinkling her nose adorably in the process, “in the book where I read about it, it didn’t say anything about one Spirit controlling the other.”

I shrugged.

“You know,” she said as she stopped tending the fire and walked up to the barrel, “Sex felt so amazing. I-it was like there were fireworks exploding in my head every time you touched me. Towards the end, it got so intense… my mind blanked.” She touched the water in the barrel to test the temperature.

“When I woke up, I found you sitting beside me in meditation, glowing golden from all the Qi in you. Qi you had taken from me. Months of my painstaking cultivation gone. I-I nearly snapped your neck then.” she said while averting her eyes.

I stiffened where I sat, a sheen of cold sweat covering my back and forehead. How many times had I teetered on the brink of death this night alone?

Finding the temperature of the water suitable, she lightly leapt into the barrel with nary a splash, submerging herself up to her shoulders.

Crossing her arms on the edge of the barrel and resting her chin on them, she looked at me. “Thankfully, I checked again and found that my Spirit had been Purified. Before we start Cultivation, our Spirits are homogenous – all the energy comes from one source: ourselves. But, in the process of cultivation, we absorb the Essence of myriad things, turn them into Qi and then integrate that Qi into our Spirits. The Essence of a yin lily is different from the yang Essence of a man, so, the Qi they produce in us is different, when they add to our Spirit, they make it heterogenous. One of the main parts of cultivation is to refine these heterogenous energies and ‘Purify’ our Spirit. In the process, quite a bit of the accumulated Qi is lost. Not to mention the great deal of time and effort it takes. But, one session of sex with you and my Spirit has reached 50% purity and the loss of Qi was almost of half of what I would have wasted if I had tried to do it on my own.

“Imagine how pleasantly surprised I was… and when I approached you, your yang aura set my Spirit on fire. That’s why I pounced on you back then…” she said with a blush.

She leant back against the wall of the barrel while twiddling her thumbs on the surface of the water. “S-since you don’t know how your Spirit works, why don’t we continue from where we were interrupted by senior sister?” She said in a low voice as she looked down at her hands, not making eye-contact.

Warm water and a warmer girl? An invitation that was very hard to refuse.

So, of course I accepted. After all, she was right and I did need to find out how my meat rod had transferred classes to priest from warrior and started this ‘Purification’ business.

For science.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 109