Wen Jingshu had no idea that her small action had already disrupted Yun Xiange's Dao Heart.
Of course, even if she had known, she would have just laughed it off.
The gap between them was simply too vast; she had no time to spare on her.
A short while later, the group arrived at a Heaven-grade private room in Nanjiang Restaurant.
There was braised pork made from a hundred-year-old spirit pig, chicken soup stewed with a thousand-year-old spirit chicken, and braised fish made from a hundred-year-old spirit fish...
Even the rice was a hundred-year-old spirit rice.
This single meal alone was worth over a hundred top-grade spirit stones.
However, this was merely ordinary food to them.
There was no helping it; eating this kind of food every day, the talisman cultivator Wen Jingshu had long since gone from her initial wonder, satisfaction, and happiness to utter numbness.
After taking her seat, Wen Jingshu removed the veil from her face.
Expectedly yet unexpectedly, Gu Ji and his companions could only see a blur where Wen Jingshu's face was, unable to make out her actual appearance.
Gu Ji was momentarily taken aback before a look of understanding dawned on him.
As a direct descendant of the Gu family, the mere mention of his name, Gu Ji, was enough to awe others.
Wen Jingshu was different. Although her reputation could also awe others, it was far more of a temptation.
An Eighth-Grade Alchemist's younger sister! Forget about cultivators growing green with envy upon seeing her; even demon cultivators, devil cultivators, ghost cultivators, and even ordinary mortals would be tempted by her presence.
Pills! Who wouldn't want them?
Eighth-Grade Alchemists were extremely rare, and each one was accompanied by a group of Dao protectors, meaning their strength and status went without saying.
Even if someone truly had the ability and the extreme luck to capture an Eighth-Grade Alchemist...
With an alchemist's pride, they would likely choose suicide over becoming a pill slave!
But capturing the person the Eighth-Grade Alchemist valued most was a completely different story, and Wen Jingshu was Wen Shuyi's greatest weakness.
Given how much Wen Shuyi doted on Wen Jingshu, they fully believed that capturing Wen Jingshu was as good as capturing Wen Shuyi.
With just a slight threat to Wen Jingshu, that Eighth-Grade Alchemist would surely ache with worry and willingly refine pills for them.
Gu Ji having figured this out, couldn't help but feel a wave of emotion.
On the surface, they were all favored children of heaven in the eyes of the public, but even among these prodigies, there was a clear hierarchy.
Clearly, with Wen Shuyi as her backing, Wen Jingshu had leaped to become the elite among elites!
There was no need for excessive explanations between smart people. Gu Ji maintained a calm composure as he warmly hosted Wen Jingshu.
By the end of the meal, both host and guest had thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
Out of respect for Wen Jingshu, Gu Ji made some polite small talk with Ying Zhen.
Just these few words made Ying Zhen feel incredibly flattered.
A seventeen-year-old Foundation Establishment genius! Being able to share a table with him was practically a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
While Ying Zhen was excited, he was also deeply awed by Wen Jingshu's status.
Thinking back to what he had done to Wen Jingshu in the past, he felt like he had been carrying a lantern to a latrine—courting his own death.
After they finished their main course, the waiter served a pot of thousand-year-old clear tea.
Although this tea could not compare to Dao-Comprehension Tea, it was still considered top-tier among spiritual teas.
After Wen Jingshu rinsed her mouth with the tea, Gu Ji spoke:
“I am a few years older than you. If you don't mind, Second Young Lady Wen, may I address you as Junior Sister Wen?”
Since the direct descendant of the Gu family was actively extending an olive branch, Wen Jingshu naturally had no reason to refuse. She smiled and replied:
“Senior Brother Gu, you are too polite. We are of the same generation; you can just call me Shushu.”
“Good, good, good! In that case, don't call me Senior Brother Gu either. I am the thirteenth child in my family, so you can just call me Thirteenth Brother.”
“Thirteenth Brother.”
Hearing the young girl's soft yet slightly cool voice calling him brother, the smile on Gu Ji's face widened.
The Gu family did not lack girls, but unfortunately, they were born too high. They had been pampered like the apples of everyone's eyes since childhood, making them all spoiled and overbearing, not cute at all.
Normally, when they saw him, forget about calling him brother—it was already a miracle if they didn't squeeze some spirit stones out of him.
As expected, other people's younger sisters were always better!
Gu Ji said, “Little Sister Shushu, I came in a hurry today and didn't prepare a proper greeting gift for you. How about this? I'll make the decision to give you this drop of Ziyao Spirit Bamboo Extract!”
Even before Gu Ji spoke, the Gu family elders had already sensed that something was amiss.
But they hadn't expected it to be this bad.
That was Ziyao Spirit Bamboo Extract!
One of the main goals of their trip was this very Ziyao Spirit Bamboo Extract!
Yet in the blink of an eye, this young master had just given it away?!
What made them even more desperate was that they wanted to stop him, but they didn't dare to.
After all, the other party's background was simply too immense.
They even slightly doubted whether Wen Jingshu would even look twice at this Ziyao Spirit Bamboo Extract.
Well...
A natural treasure of this caliber should catch her eye... right?
Having frantically absorbed knowledge over the past few years, Wen Jingshu knew the moment she heard of the Ziyao Spirit Bamboo Extract that it was a rare treasure hard to come by in a thousand years.
Crucially, this item was extremely compatible with her spiritual roots!
Ziyao Spirit Bamboo mostly grew near lightning territories; it was born from lightning and died from lightning. There was no need to elaborate on how dense the lightning element within it was.
Moreover, spiritual plants nurtured by heaven and earth naturally belonged to the wood element.
It could be said that this Ziyao Spirit Bamboo was simply the dream plant of any cultivator with lightning and wood spiritual roots!
As for its effects, first, it could increase the purity of one's spiritual roots, and second, it could temper the body.
Wen Jingshu's lightning and wood spiritual roots were already at full capacity, but who would complain about having too many things that benefited their spiritual roots?
Wen Jingshu even wanted to see if she could temper her heavenly lightning spiritual root into a mutated variant, and her mutated wood spiritual root into a Heavenly Wood Immortal Root!
As for body tempering, it sounded simple, but looking into it deeply, it was a highly profound field of study.
It belonged to the path of body cultivation, used to strengthen a cultivator's physical body.
There were countless natural treasures in the world that could be used for body tempering, but each type of tempering material strengthened a different aspect.
For example, due to its own attributes, a supreme-grade spirit stone tempered purity. After tempering the body with supreme-grade spirit stones, the greatest feeling was lightness and overall clarity throughout the body. For a cultivator, the greatest benefit was that it facilitated subsequent cultivation.
However, for Wen Jingshu's immaculate body, body tempering with supreme-grade spirit stones was rather useless.
On the other hand, tempering with Ziyao Spirit Bamboo targeted resilience. Although Wen Shuyi had also prepared many pills that could temper resilience for her, Ziyao Spirit Bamboo Extract was so perfectly compatible with her own spiritual roots...
It was indeed hard to come by, making it well worth trading the Body-Tempering Pill in her hands for.
Besides, this Body-Tempering Pill was originally a low-grade pill that Wen Shuyi had refined by mistake, which she had given to Wen Jingshu specifically to trade for treasures.
Any pill her younger sister consumed had to be of the highest grade!
Having made up her mind, Wen Jingshu did not stand on ceremony:
“Thank you, Thirteenth Brother. I like this greeting gift very much.”
“I was just wondering where you obtained this Ziyao Spirit Bamboo Extract, Thirteenth Brother? I've heard that wherever Ziyao Spirit Bamboo grows, there are lightning territories. I'm quite interested in those areas.”
Gu Ji said with a broad smile:
“To tell you the truth, this Ziyao Spirit Bamboo Extract was purchased by my family elders from someone else. My trip this time is merely to pick it up.”
He didn't know?
More likely, he just didn't want to say!