Qing Feng's expectant words lingered around the tea table.
Mo Fan didn't answer at once.
Instead, he turned his head and glanced at A-Song in the distance—eyes closed, seated cross-legged, absorbed in cultivation...
Then drew his gaze back and looked this Nascent Soul mighty figure straight in the eye.
Without the slightest hesitation, he simply cupped his fists in a most solemn salute, his voice low and forceful:
"Since the Sect Master has entrusted such a heavy responsibility to me, this disciple will spare no effort, and would not refuse even in the face of ten thousand deaths!"
He knew full well that, however lightly Qing Feng spoke of it now...
The power struggles and hidden currents surging beneath were, without question, a bottomless quagmire.
But so what?
He'd been meaning to protect that little sapling A-Song and see him grow anyway.
This was merely going with the flow—bringing that responsibility out into the open. There was no harm in accepting it.
Seeing Mo Fan answer so crisply and decisively, the trace of majesty in Qing Feng's eyes gradually receded, giving way to the ease of a weight lifted.
"Good."
Qing Feng nodded with a smile, his tone growing gradually warmer:
"I know you're a precociously clever child—with several more schemes rattling around in your head than a simple soul like A-Song. Naturally, you'd harbor plenty of doubts."
"But there's no need to rush to dig up the roots of things. All of it, you'll come to know in due course, when the time is right for you to know."
Qing Feng rose to his feet and patted Mo Fan on the shoulder, his words heavy with meaning.
"You need only remember one thing: many people are watching A-Song's future—not just you and me. The sky over this Azure Cloud Sect is far more complicated than what you can see."
"Once he's finished cycling today's coursework, take him down the mountain. There's no harm in staying a few extra days in the mortal world."
"That child A-Song has kept this string wound far too tight ever since he entered the Dao Asking Palace, and lately, he really has worn himself out. It's time to let him catch his breath."
With that, Qing Feng gave Mo Fan a look pregnant with meaning.
Then, his figure—as if weathering away into nothing—drifted off soundlessly, vanishing into the sea of clouds.
As the Sect Master departed, that invisible pressure dispersed along with him.
Mo Fan let out a long breath. He lowered his head—and then his gaze abruptly locked in place.
There, on the tea table where Qing Feng had just been sitting, at some unknown point, light had faintly shimmered...
And a thin, archaic manual had appeared out of thin air.
Mo Fan reached out and picked it up, flipped through a couple of pages at random, and his pupils constricted.
This was precisely the body-cultivation technique Qing Feng had casually mentioned earlier!
And this was no mass-produced, foundational good like the Body Forging Record.
Its contents were profound and obscure in the extreme—a top-tier body-cultivation inheritance that carried on from Foundation Establishment and pointed straight at the [ Golden Core ] realm.
A technique that pointed at the Great Dao like this—if it were kept in the Scripture Pavilion on the Main Peak, merely borrowing it to read would probably cost no less than ten thousand Sect Contribution Points.
"Whew..."
Mo Fan tucked this priceless treasure into his robes and heaved a deep sigh.
He knew that the weight of a gift often represented the weight of the danger that followed.
The more readily this technique was handed over...
The more it proved that the so-called "Mystic Realm Trial" a year from now was absolutely not as simple as Qing Feng had made it sound.
But for now, all he could do was quietly bear this weighty offering.
"Who told A-Song to be a one-in-a-million High-Grade Wood Spirit Root."
Mo Fan looked at the youth in the distance and shook his head helplessly.
If A-Song were allowed to cultivate smoothly, step by steady step, then with a foundation so perfectly matched to Azure Cloud Sect's core technique—
The future position of Azure Cloud Sect Master would be all but nailed down, falling once again to Qing Feng's lineage.
Faced with such a colossal cake of interests—no wonder the people of the Vice Sect Master's faction were burning with anxiety, driven to desperate, cornered-dog measures.
Several hours slipped quietly away in the tranquil sea of clouds.
Beneath the giant tree, A-Song finally reached the tail end of today's lesson.
He stilled his breath and concentrated his mind, his hands forming a mysterious seal over his dantian.
The dense cyan Wood-attribute spiritual energy all around, like a hundred rivers returning to the sea, was drawn into his body—every last wisp, steadily, without loss.
Mo Fan, meanwhile, sat off to the side, idly leafing through a book he'd picked up at random—containing some basic knowledge of the cultivation world.
Azure Cloud Sect's principal cultivation methods walked precisely the "unbroken, unending" path of the Wood attribute.
Its qi connected with the great earth—teeming with vitality, best of all for prolonging life and extending one's years.
In battles of technique between same-tier cultivators, this method recovered qi extremely quickly—making them famously excellent at wars of attrition.
But the Heavenly Dao had its constancy: where there was a benefit, there must be a drawback.
The greatest weakness of Wood-attribute techniques was a lack of explosive power.
Should one encounter a hot-tempered Fire Spirit Root cultivator, then owing to the innate suppression of the Five Elements' mutual generation and conquest (Fire conquers Wood)...
One would often fall into an extremely passive, disadvantaged position.
Among the Five Elements—Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth generating and conquering one another—this constituted the most fundamental logic of this Mystic Realm.
Of course, there were also aberrations that transcended the Five Elements.
Take Luo Yu's rare [ Sword Spirit Root ], for instance—it stood aloof, beyond the generation and conquest of the Five Elements, relying purely on a crystal-clear sword heart, walking the ultimate path of assault and slaughter.
Once the sword was drawn, it was "I alone, and none can stand against me."
And then there were those recorded in ancient tomes—the exceedingly rare [ Innate Body-Cultivation Sacred Physiques ].
They cultivated no Five Elements, borrowed nothing from heaven and earth, and relied purely on a physical body to achieve "shattering ten thousand techniques with a single force."
In ancient times, such body cultivators had once enjoyed a glorious era of crushing dominance over their age.
But as the environment of heaven and earth shifted in modern times, and cultivation techniques kept renewing and evolving—
This path, which devoured extreme amounts of resources and advanced at a crawl, gradually declined.
In the eyes of the mainstream cultivation world today, it had already become a low, unorthodox side path not worth mentioning.
"Whew—"
Just as Mo Fan's mind wandered boundlessly over all this cultivation knowledge, A-Song finally completed his last cycle of breathing and slowly opened his eyes.
He exhaled a long breath of turbid air, his brow and eyes brimming with an unconcealable smile.
His whole aura looked more nimble and profound than before—clearly, his cultivation had made another tremendous leap forward.
Mo Fan looked at him and couldn't help but privately size things up:
At this terrifying pace, in a few years at most, this kid will reach Luo Yu's realm and step into the Late Stage of Foundation Establishment.
This was the despair-inducing, transcendent quality of a High-Grade Spirit Root.
Bottlenecks that were as hard as climbing to heaven for others were, for them, merely a matter of time.
So long as they absorbed spiritual energy step by orderly step, they could reach the Great Dao of Golden Core without the slightest obstruction.
Of course, once past Golden Core, exactly whether one could break through the riddle of the womb and forge which grade of Nascent Soul—that was another layer of the path, one that came down to personal talent and fortune.
Just as Mo Fan's thoughts were gradually drifting away, A-Song's voice rang out from a distance.
"Let's go, Big Brother Qi! We're going home!"