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His anger and frustration over his situation drove him to dedicate himself to harsh cultivation every day. Still, at the end of our first year together, he had only reached Martial Disciple 4. Since each stage became more difficult and took longer, there was a risk that he wouldn’t be able to reach Martial Master by 20 and qi stagnation would set in.

The prince’s solution to this problem was straightforward. He was allowed a stipend of Qi Gathering Pills from the palace, and he planned to use them to push his cultivation forward as fast as possible. This wasn\'t a terrible idea, but when I saw the pills he was given, I had to convince him to find a different path.

“My prince,” I said, pleading with him, “you were given Mid-Purity pills. If you use those, it will cause severe damage to your foundation. We can find a better way. Let’s at least go out and purchase High-Purity pills.”

He seethed at my entreaty. “Do you have any money for pills? What do they cost? A gold each? Do you have that much money? I have none!”

Why hadn’t the palace given him better pills? Even Perfect Rank 1 pills would have cost them practically nothing, but they had given the prince pills that would ruin his foundation and he had no choice but to take them.

I wanted to step forward and offer my services as an alchemist, but I couldn’t. I was already risking too much simply by training the prince as I had. Being a skilled teacher was one thing, being a trained alchemist would be entirely different. The palace would have to take notice at that point.

“Let’s continue,” he grunted, taking his place in the center of the main hall.

After consuming the pill, qi quickly began to gather around the prince, allowing him to progress far faster than he had before. The pill would cause damage, but I could only hope that if he didn’t take more than one per stage of cultivation, the damage would be limited.

With the prince focused on cultivating, years passed, and I came to learn more about the prince and what drove him.

He had been essentially cast out of the imperial family because of his low affinities. This seemed a little strange until I found out that when a member of the imperial clan turned 16, they would undergo the family’s Disciple Trial. His low affinities were a direct result of his poor performance during this test. It was also because of this result that his family had severely limited the resources he received, cutting off his future.

Because of this, he was relegated to living in this shack. While other imperial scions had scores of servants, he had only me. His situation was better than mine had been in my early days, but the change in his life once his affinities were announced was more than most could bear.

I couldn’t help but feel that his situation resonated with my own.

He wasn’t only cast out because of his affinities, though. His blessing was considered equally weak since it only slightly boosted his physical strength. We had found that every time his cultivation advanced, the physical strength his blessing provided would also increase. However, even if this increased strength were substantial, the prince was convinced that it was not a blessing the imperial family would value.

What would they value, though? A pristine foundation? With my help, he could have achieved that, but he didn’t have the necessary resources. If he had been provided only a couple of gold a year, he could have had a perfect foundation as a Martial Disciple. Instead, he had one stuffed full of pill toxins.

When the prince was 19, he reached Peak Disciple, avoiding the risk of stagnation. He wanted to push further, entering the Martial Master realm immediately, but I saw that three years of hard work had taken a toll on him.

He needed a break.

I convinced him to take a trip into the city for a bit of relaxation. I was a little worried about our safety because he didn’t have any guards and I was only a Martial Master 1. If someone caused trouble, it would be difficult for us to defend ourselves. However, even though CaoHan had been dismissed by his family, he was still an imperial prince. There shouldn’t be many who would be willing to attack him in the city.

Going outside the city would still be extremely risky, but there shouldn’t be much he needed to fear within the imperial capital, so the two of us set out for a day in town.

The trip felt a lot like the last time I had been in the city. That time, the prince I was following was attacked and appeared to have been killed in a test of my adherence to a slave technique. I was hoping this trip would go a little better.

Our biggest problem was that Prince CaoHan had very little money to spend. The palace provided him with a small stipend, but it was not at the level someone of his stature was accustomed to. To maintain appearances, he still needed clothing that was suitable for a prince, but he was not willing to spend what money he did have on what he considered frivolities, so anything he bought needed to be maintained in top condition so that it would rarely need to be replaced.

A couple of lives ago, I had bought an extremely nice set of robes from the System with formations sewn into them to keep them clean and in good repair. I wished the palace had been of a mind to provide all their scions with such clothing, but in its absence, maintenance of the prince’s wardrobe fell to me.

One of our top priorities during this trip was to find the prince a new set of robes that was both cheap and fashionable. If the prince wanted people in the palace to give him any face, he needed to look like someone who deserved it. Our hope was that when presented as a Martial Master in well-tailored clothing, the palace might be willing to increase his stipend.

We were walking through the city, slowly moving from the upper-class areas to the middle-class areas, when the prince froze stock-still.

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He was staring at a girl buying food from a street vender. She couldn’t have been older than 15. To me, her appearance was ordinary. She wouldn’t have stood out when placed among any of the other women I had met in my travels.

She had long black hair and smooth skin, but that was common enough among girls of even modest means. She wore a simple tan hanfu which showed she was likely of the lower middle class. Overall, my appraisal of the girl was that she was ordinary.

“Beautiful,” whispered the prince. “I’ve never…”

“My prince?” I asked, worried about the sudden change in mood.

He continued to stare at the girl, mumbling to himself. “Would she? Of course, no one would deny me. Is it possible? Yes, I can accomplish anything I want…”

A gleam appeared in the prince’s eyes.

“At last, I have met my first wife,” he said with a tone of reverence.

He radiated confidence. There was no question in his mind. This was his wife.

He began to walk toward the girl, but before he was halfway there, a young man walked up to the girl and started talking to her.

The prince immediately became enraged.

He rushed forward and backhanded the boy, sending him sprawling to the ground.

“How dare you speak to my wife!”

Both the girl and boy were in shock and didn’t know how to respond.

“Come, wife. Return to the palace with me immediately.”

The girl was frightened and could barely speak. “Who… who are you?”

“I am your husband. Follow me back home,” he said with a slight bow to her.

This exchange had only lasted a moment, but all I could do was stand there horrified at what was happening. Something had triggered in the prince’s brain that made him decide to kidnap a young girl. What should I do?

My ability gave me an instinctive response. In this situation, if I was cultivating the slave technique properly, I was supposed to walk up and support the prince. That meant breaking several bones in the boy’s body for daring to tarnish the prince’s woman.

No. That wasn’t going to happen.

Until this point, I had allowed that ability to guide me. I had shown more of my skills than I should have, but I never acted in a way that was contrary to the slave technique. Being able to zone out and rely on its guidance had been comforting.

The days of doing that were over.

If the ability wanted me to brutalize a child and help CaoHan kidnap a girl, I would no longer play by its rules.

I walked up to the prince’s side.

“My prince, would you please introduce me?”

“Steward Fang, this is my wife. You shall treat her with the respect she deserves.”

The poor girl was nearly crying at this point. She was shaking and afraid to move.

What was going on? What triggered in the prince’s mind to make him so certain this woman was his wife? It had to be the cultivation technique, but it shouldn’t have such an impact. Was it because of all the pill toxins?

My eyes widened when I realized something I had forgotten. The ability to resist a cultivation technique’s influence depended on one’s soul strength. It had been a long time since I concerned myself with this since I exercised my soul and increased it through alchemy, but the prince had done nothing that would have strengthened his soul.

Even with a perfect foundation, with zero soul strength, he might still fall under the technique’s influence, and his foundation was far from perfect.

What had it done to him?

“My prince, mistress,” I bowed to both of them, acknowledging the prince’s claim. “How did such a union come about?”

The prince smiled. “You saw it yourself. I glanced at my wife as she was shopping and knew that she must be mine. If I decide something must happen, then the world must bend to my will. The moment I decided to marry her, she became my wife.”

My mind raced to try and get a handle on the situation. How could I defuse it?

“Of course, prince. If your will is to marry her, then that is what will happen, but why don’t we return to the palace first to make preparations? Let this young woman return home and tell her parents the good news.”

The prince snorted. “It is my desire that she returns with me today. I will slay anyone that stands in my way.”

“Of course, my prince, of course,” I said, scrambling for a response.

The technique said that he ‘could not lose.’

“If it is your will, the young lady would be honored to follow us back, I’m sure. It is only a shame that the introduction of your bride will pale in comparison to the spectacle of when your brothers introduced their wives.”

I had no idea if there was any truth at all in my statement. I could only hope.

The prince’s nostrils flared. “They dare!”

“My prince, let’s return to the palace first. Allow the lady to return home and coordinate with her parents while we prepare her celebration.”

“Yes.” He nodded firmly. “We must display her beauty properly for all to see. Come. Let us return immediately.”

Without taking another glance at his ‘wife,’ the prince turned and began walking toward the palace at a swift pace.

I only had a moment to give the girl a brief look of apology before hurrying after him.

I didn’t know why everything went so wrong in the city, but I could only blame it on a combination of powerful mental effects from a corrupt foundation, a weak soul, and a teenage boy’s hormones.

No matter what the problem was, I had to ensure both CaoHan and that young lady were protected. I would rather end this timeline immediately than be a party to something like what almost just happened.

The only thing I could think of doing was to delay and try to keep his mind off the subject of taking a wife.

“Steward Fang,” the prince called out, “begin preparations for welcoming my wife in a grand manner.”

“Of course, my prince, but this isn’t something that should be rushed. If you show your dominance too quickly, your family might object.”

He snorted. “They wouldn’t dare.”

“Your brothers may not be as intelligent as you expect. They may attempt to stop you.”

He glowered at me. “Then I will strike them down!”

“Exactly, but you need to first raise your cultivation. You cannot be stopped, but that doesn’t mean you cannot be slowed. Please, accept my guidance on this. I will begin preparations, but we must wait until everything, including you, is ready.”

This finally calmed him. “Yes, I understand. I still need to gain strength. I am powerful for my age, but…” He trailed off in thought.

I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t, he only turned around and returned to the main hall to resume cultivating.

Once he had left, I hurried to prepare. Not to welcome a bride, but to train the poor boy.

His soul was too weak. It needed strengthening.

I had never even considered soul cultivation before, and I had no idea how to do it.

I quickly looked through my mental library. I had plundered many technique collections over the years, and I was certain there had to be at least one soul cultivation manual in it.

After a quick search, I managed to find three basic techniques. I didn’t know their quality, but they were all Rank 1. While none of them seemed like anything I would ever want to use personally, they were exactly what CaoHan needed.

I flipped through the manuals in my mental library and finally settled on one that seemed both easy to cultivate and had an effect that seemed like the best available option for balancing the prince’s mind.

The manual said that cultivating it would lead to a feeling of detachment from the world, making everything feel less important. It wasn’t a good effect, none of the ones I had were, but at least this one had a chance of stopping him from kidnapping that girl.

I took out several sheets of paper and quickly made a copy of the technique then went to deliver it.

“My prince, your qi cultivation has been proceeding admirably, but you need to go further. Soul cultivation is the key to mastering the power you have gained. Only by combining both can you become truly unstoppable.”

He looked at me, and I could feel he was about to object, so I preempted him.

“My prince, as you know, in your current condition, you require assistance to advance in qi cultivation. With soul cultivation, that will not be the case. If you practice this, you will gain power that truly belongs to you alone.”

I could see wheels turning in his head, trying to figure out what my goal was, but his cultivation technique won out. It didn’t matter what I planned. He would always be able to win through.

“Fine. Give it to me.”