Henry Carter looked up, a little at a loss, his hand clenched into a fist inside his sleeve.

“Come here.” Mr. Ethan Clark sized him up, then, perhaps realizing he was being too stern, let his eyelids droop slightly, collecting himself into a kindly, benevolent-looking weasel. His voice softened a little. “Come over here.”

As he spoke, Ethan Clark raised a hand and placed it on top of Henry Carter’s head. His palm was faintly warm, and the scent of grass and wood from his sleeve gradually reached Henry Carter.

But it didn’t do much to comfort him; Henry Carter was still flustered.

He recalled the way his master had critiqued Samuel Foster with words like “frivolous and flighty,” and anxiously wondered, “What will Master say about me?”

In his haste, Henry Carter quickly reviewed his own life from beginning to end, planning to pick out his own faults and lay them bare, so he could be mentally prepared before his master spoke.

Henry Carter counted silently in his heart: “Will he say I’m narrow-minded? Or not benevolent enough? Not friendly enough?”

But in the end, Mr. Ethan Clark didn’t point out his shortcomings and admonitions to his face as he had with Samuel Foster. His sect leader master even hesitated a little, as if searching with difficulty for the right words.

It wasn’t until Henry Carter had waited so long that his hands and feet were cold that he finally heard Ethan Clark speak, almost word by word, with great care: “You… you know yourself best. I won’t say anything more. I’ll just give you the word ‘freedom’ as your admonition.”

This admonition was so simple it felt perfunctory, vague and boundless, hard to grasp at first. Henry Carter couldn’t help but frown; all his mental preparations fell flat, and the breath he’d been holding in his chest didn’t relax, but instead was suspended even higher.

Henry Carter blurted out, “Master, what does ‘freedom’ mean?”

After asking, he felt a bit regretful, not wanting to come across as clueless as Samuel Foster.

Henry Carter tried to compose himself, and with a bit of probing and uncertainty, forced himself to hazard a guess: “Does it mean I should clear my mind and focus on cultivation?”

Ethan Clark paused, gave no explanation, and finally just nodded vaguely: “For now… let’s say it does.”

For now? So it won’t in the future?

And what does “let’s say it does” even mean?

Hearing this answer, Henry Carter was even more confused. He even sensitively caught a hint of uncertainty about the future in Mr. Ethan Clark’s words. But seeing that his master didn’t want to say more, he could only swallow his questions with premature tact, and bowed respectfully: “Yes, thank you for your guidance, Master.”

Mr. Ethan Clark sighed silently. He looked like a not-so-robust middle-aged man, but in truth he was old and shrewd, and could see through some things—this Henry Carter was impeccable in manners, even addressed the young Daoist boys who served him as brothers, but it was clear this wasn’t because he thought those around him were especially worthy of respect, but because he refused to let his “elegance” be marred in front of “outsiders.”

As the saying goes, “Ritual is the thinnest form of loyalty and trust, and the beginning of chaos.”【Note】 No matter how gifted or intelligent this child was, his nature was far from the Dao. Besides, Henry Carter was heavy-hearted and not very likable… but he was proud, so he probably didn’t care about being liked.

Mr. Ethan Clark let go of Henry Carter, a little worried he might go astray in the future.

He flipped over the three-legged, battered wooden table and called Samuel Foster and Henry Carter to come over.

The underside of the table was riddled with worm-eaten holes of all sizes, scattered everywhere, and between the holes, the surface was densely carved with tiny characters.

Ethan Clark said, “This is the first thing I must pass on to you as your master—the rules of our Fuyou Sect. You two must memorize them word for word, and from today, copy them out from memory once a day, for forty-nine days.”

Faced with these rules, Henry Carter finally showed a fitting look of astonishment—he always felt that something as sacred as sect rules shouldn’t be carved on the underside of a broken wooden table.

…And a three-legged table at that.

Equally astonished was Samuel Foster beside him.

The little beggar craned his neck and exclaimed in shock, “Whoa, what is all this? Master, it knows me, but I sure don’t know it!”

Henry Carter: “……”

A master who might be a weasel in disguise, a nonsensical admonition, a set of sect rules carved under a rotten wooden table, a sissy senior brother, and an illiterate beggar junior… With such an unusual start to his cultivation journey, could anything good possibly come of it?

Henry Carter felt his prospects were bleak.

But that night, when he returned, Henry Carter’s mood brightened, because he found out he actually had a study of his own, and inside, not only were there shelves of books he’d always dreamed of, but also paper and brushes prepared for him by Alice Foster.