Another day passed. After the morning meeting, Saya had someone summon Li Fusheng to her study.
Sara originally wanted to come along, but a maid informed her that the Queen had only asked for Li Fusheng.
The elegant Sara pouted, clearly looking displeased.
"Alright, you go practice on your own first. I'll go see what Aunt Saya wants, and I'll take you out to play when I get back," Li Fusheng said, pinching Sara's pouting cheek.
The maid looked straight ahead, pretending not to see anything at all.
After comforting Sara, Li Fusheng followed the maid to the Queen's study, knocked on the door, and went inside.
After he sat down, Saya stared at him for a long time. Leaving Li Fusheng thoroughly baffled, Saya finally parted her lips and said, "Fusheng, are you teaching Sara to cultivate?"
Hearing this, Li Fusheng was startled. He muttered inwardly, "Didn't we already talk about this? Sara even passed out for a whole day because of it."
Even so, he still nodded in affirmation.
"Sigh!" Saya sighed.
After careful consideration, Saya had decided to clear the air with Li Fusheng regarding Loulan's situation.
Through these days of interacting with him, she had also discovered that Li Fusheng was mature enough, unlike Sara, who was protected so well that she remained naive.
Some things probably wouldn't be blurted out everywhere by him.
Giving him a heads-up beforehand could also prevent Li Fusheng from doing anything in the future that might easily invite disaster.
"The reason Loulan is able to exist stems from the fact that the Dragon Vein is sealed beneath Loulan. Back then, our ancestors were entrusted with the heavy responsibility of guarding the Dragon Vein's seal, and that is how it has been passed down from generation to generation..."
After listening to Saya's account, Li Fusheng was deeply shaken.
At first, he had thought Loulan was merely an obscure, minor country in the Shinobi World, but now he realized things were not that simple.
Moreover, the reason he had been able to sense such dense Spiritual Energy here must be because of the so-called Dragon Vein.
Dragon Veins existed in his original world as well; it was precisely because the main Dragon Veins were severed that the Spiritual Energy in the world gradually vanished.
Judging by the Spiritual Energy, the Dragon Vein here was not some other thing sharing the same name—it was one and the same.
As for why the Dragon Vein was sealed, Li Fusheng could not think of an answer for the moment.
"So the purpose of Loulan's existence nowadays is to guard the Dragon Vein's seal on behalf of the major nations. They will never allow the Queen's bloodline, which has access to the Dragon Vein, to possess uncontrollable power. I didn't tell Sara before precisely so she could have a happier life before reaching adulthood, but I never expected... Yet since things have already happened, it's too late to say anything now. I..."
To keep Sara from learning the cruel truth in advance, Saya had kept Loulan's situation hidden, but by a twist of fate, it had ended up giving Sara the opportunity to cultivate.
She was not clear on what exactly Sara was cultivating, but she figured it was either Ninjutsu or the abilities of the samurai from the Land of Iron.
Regardless of what it was, it was something the major nations would never permit.
Now that Sara had already begun cultivating and likely had Chakra inside her body, it was too late to say anything else.
Therefore, she decided not to stop it, but simply to have Sara and Li Fusheng try their best not to display their strength in front of outsiders.
As long as other people didn't know, it was as if they hadn't cultivated at all.
Right now, she could only engage in such self-deception.
Before she could finish speaking, however, she was interrupted by Li Fusheng.
"Aunt Saya, I wasn't clear about Loulan's situation before, but what I want to ask is: regarding this current state of affairs, have you never thought about changing it?"
To put it bluntly, the Loulan of today was merely a tool in the eyes of the major nations. Every generation of Queens was born solely to continue the bloodline and keep guarding the Dragon Vein.
If they were in a place with slightly better conditions, that would be one thing—at least food and lodging would be provided without having to worry about making a living.
But what was Loulan's situation? Their food and drink could barely sustain life, and the environment was utterly harsh. Capitalists would shed tears looking at how the major nations operated here.
This went far beyond treating Loulan merely like beasts of burden.
"How easy is it to talk about changing things? Loulan has always been restricted from possessing any armed forces to resist. To put it bluntly, any of the major nations could casually dispatch a few Jonin and it would be enough to annihilate Loulan," Saya said with sorrow and indignation.
If given the choice, who would willingly be a beast of burden generation after generation?
From Saya's words, Li Fusheng sensed the desire to resist, but she was simply plagued by a lack of power and capability to do so.
This made him click his tongue in thought.
First things first: the Queen's bloodline had been guarding the Dragon Vein's seal for so many years, so they more or less possessed Spiritual Energy within their bodies. If they just brainstormed a little on how to convert that Spiritual Energy into strength, they wouldn't be completely devoid of any power to fight back, right?
On second thought, perhaps he was just taking things for granted.
He had a family Cultivation Manual, which was why he recognized Spiritual Energy. But the Queen's bloodline knew nothing of Spiritual Energy; in their understanding, the Dragon Vein's energy was merely a special, unusable form of Chakra energy.
Furthermore, since it was sealed Chakra energy, it would never even cross their minds to use the Dragon Vein's energy to grow stronger and resist the manipulation of the major nations.
The very first step of cultivation was sensing Qi; if you couldn't even sense Spiritual Energy, you could forget about cultivating.
As for the Spiritual Energy inside Saya and Sara's bodies, Li Fusheng had already discovered it earlier when checking Sara's health, and it was somewhat different from the Spiritual Energy he absorbed and refined himself.
The Spiritual Energy in their bodies had already completely fused with their physical flesh.
To be more precise, perhaps it was because the Queen's bloodline had been in an environment rich in Spiritual Energy for a long time, causing their bodies to develop a greater affinity for it.
The Spiritual Energy had improved their physical fitness, but lacking any understanding of Spiritual Energy itself, they simply assumed that their bloodline's bodies were naturally better than ordinary people's.
For instance, living in the exact same desert, the Queen's bloodline naturally had better skin than commoners. But aside from that, there was nothing particularly special about it.
Their narrow horizon and limited understanding had restricted their potential for growth.
Thinking of this, Li Fusheng knew he couldn't blame them for not daring to secretly grow stronger and then shock the entire Shinobi World.
Therefore, changing the subject, he said, "Aunt Saya, my cultivation system is rather different from the conventional one in the Shinobi World. Even when one possesses energy inside the body, ordinary ninja cannot perceive it at all, so there's no need to worry too much about being found out. Moreover, the growth rate in my system far exceeds that of Ninjutsu cultivation when placed in a suitable environment. Just give me two and a half years, and I am confident that even if our exposure happens, no ninja will dare to come and stir up trouble in Loulan."
Saya did not understand much about cultivation, nor did she know of any other cultivation methods besides Ninjutsu and samurai training.
However, seeing how certain Li Fusheng sounded, she found it hard to dampen his confidence. Or perhaps Saya herself secretly hoped that a possibility to break their doomed fate might appear.
Thus, Saya did not say anything further, merely admonishing him once again to try his best not to let outsiders know about Sara's cultivation.
Leaving the study, Li Fusheng felt a headache coming on as he recalled what Saya had said.
He had originally thought he could quietly stay low until he was invincible, and that he would only need to step in later when the Dance King used the Moon projection. But now it seemed things might not go as smoothly as he had imagined.
He needed to rapidly increase his strength to cope with any dangers that might arise at any moment.