After visiting the tiger, Aotian and Rihai returned to their cave to cultivate in peace.
Well, until a call came from their door.
"Disciple Long, Disciple Liu." The voice was calm and firm, and recognizable to both of them.
Of course, even more so to Aotian—after all, it was his avatar outside.
The two stepped out of the cave and came face-to-face with Elder Zhao, standing there calmly with his hands behind his back.
"Disciple Long/Liu respectfully greets the elder." The two clasped their fists and bowed slightly in unison.
"Good." Elder Zhao nodded, and they rose.
He examined them for a moment before tapping his pouch, taking out a jade slip, and making it float toward Rihai.
"Normally, one must pass through the sect's artifact, the Crystal Library, to receive a technique more compatible with their own cultivation. However, disciples also have the right to privacy if they so choose. This is a fire-attribute technique from the sect. I hope it can help you on your path," he explained as Rihai caught the jade slip in the air.
"Thank you, elder, for your understanding!" She bowed sincerely and also gave Aotian a grateful look, to which he only responded with a smile.
"Well, besides that, I came to bring the weapons you selected, which every outer disciple is entitled to. Just a reminder: all disciples must pay a contribution point fee until the equipment and techniques provided by the sect at entry are fully paid off. You two don't need to do this, but I thought it best to mention it so you're not confused if another disciple brings it up," Elder Zhao explained gently, while the two took the swords they had chosen.
Rihai's sword was well-crafted, with a red hue, while Aotian's had a blue tint. This was due to the materials and affinities assigned to each weapon—Rihai's leaning toward fire element, and Aotian's unconcernedly selected for water.
He already had a fire-element sword, gifted to him by Bao Wuji when he fought the tiger, and that was enough.
As for the warning, Aotian casually nodded at Elder Zhao's words—just playing the role in front of Rihai, not really interested… though they were his own words, since Zhao was his avatar.
But Rihai didn't intend to follow what was said. She looked at the elder with determination.
"Elder, please permit this disciple to be stubborn. Let Aotian and me pay for the equipment with contribution points, just like the other disciples," she said firmly, clasping her fists.
Aotian, who was calm, couldn't help but have his eye twitch as he massaged his forehead.
'Did Rihai get bitten by Cang Song? Or is it some kind of airborne illness? Woman… WHY THE HELL ARE YOU BEING SO CAUTIOUS?!'
He massaged his head more forcefully, needing to control Elder Zhao to look at him, waiting for his response, just to buy time and decide.
'Ugh… Rihai must be acting cautiously in this new environment, thinking of possible illusory enemies who, if they discover my high status in the sect, could cause problems for me. Haah… she's just worried about us, and I would be too if I were in her place. Anyway, I'm basically the sect's owner, and whether I lose contribution points or not, it doesn't make a real difference to me. It's better to just accept it and put her mind at ease.' He decided, realizing that it really didn't matter.
Rihai, seeing Elder Zhao looking at Aotian with slight confusion, knew he was waiting for his response. That didn't surprise her, considering the status she had deduced Aotian held.
Even the fact that the elder had come to deliver the technique personally, rather than sending someone to call them to him, didn't impress her—given Aotian's likely background.
Then, under Rihai's gaze and his avatar's, Aotian nodded helplessly.
It wasn't that he was careless about hiding his identity—he was actually quite cautious, to the point of assigning distinct personalities to his avatars from the very beginning. But after reuniting with them and having the extremely powerful ancestor Bao Wuji around, his sense of caution had decreased. He no longer felt the need to be so careful with every step, like in the past.
'Well, thinking about it, Rihai being cautious might be a good thing. It reminds me to stay cautious. Even though I'm in the desert and the chances of things going wrong aren't that high, this is still a cultivation world, where crap can hit the fan at any moment. I'll support her decision from now on, and I'll try to be more cautious,' he thought, resolutely, adjusting his mindset.
Of course, he didn't intend to be cowardly like Cang Song—just more prudent in his actions.
'Err… well, I said I'd try, no promises.' He added mentally, a bit embarrassed. Aotian knew himself and knew he wasn't someone who always stuck to his own decisions—often doing the exact opposite. But he would try.
"Very well, if that is your decision, I will inform the other elders," Elder Zhao said, nodding at their answer, and a green flying sword shot out from his storage pouch and hovered briefly before settling beneath his feet.
Calmly, he stepped onto it, hands behind his back.
Aotian and Rihai clasped their fists and bowed again, thanking the elder for his care, before he simply nodded and departed at high speed.
Rihai and Aotian looked at each other and returned inside, chatting as they went.
…
In another corner of the Bamboo Sword Sect, the new headquarters of the Heritage Pavilion of the Infinite Dao Sect had been established.
Unlike the Beast Pavilion, which was located inside a cave, most of the other pavilions — including the Heritage Pavilion — were open-air buildings.
The need for the Beast Pavilion to be a cave came from the fact that it would serve as a dwelling and cultivation area for the many different beasts that would eventually be raised there. It was, essentially, a massive public cave-mansion for beasts.
The headquarters of the Heritage Pavilion, however, was different. It was a large four-story building made of white jade with golden details, built on the surface. The structure was beautiful, but nothing about it would identify it as the Heritage Pavilion if not for the wooden plaque above the door clearly labeled as such.
Aotian had just received the land and constructions, which he had pre-selected for convenience, and hadn't had time to make any alterations. This wasn't even a building originally intended to be a Heritage Pavilion — it was a facility built for another purpose by the Bamboo Sword Sect, which Aotian had repurposed.
Inside, in the main hall, Xuan Zhen, the inner elder of the Formation Pavilion, was finishing some formations. Meanwhile, seated off to the side were the four elders of the Heritage Pavilion — two inner and two outer — holding jade slips and meditating over their contents with their eyes closed.
Xuan Zhen completed the final steps of the formation and prepared to activate it.
He retrieved a pre-made formation disc from his storage pouch and held it in his hands, when a beam of energy shot out from his forehead, carrying his intentions wrapped in spiritual energy, which immediately merged with the disc.
Within the beam was a detailed description of how the formation should function, how the energy should connect, possible commands, and more.
The disc in his hand then vibrated, absorbing spiritual energy from the air, and fired another beam, connecting to the core of the inactive formation Xuan Zhen had assembled.
The formation's core also vibrated, absorbing energy, and then, invisible to the naked eye, fired a beam straight into the underground — without causing any damage — due to the fact that spiritual energy can exist between the real and unreal, passing through physical barriers.
What the core was doing was connecting to its energy source, which was not the ambient spiritual energy, but the raw spiritual energy directly from the spiritual vein running beneath the mountain.
Using raw energy directly made the formation stronger and well-fed, but this required authorization from the Bamboo Sword Sect, as the veins were covered by formations preventing external access without permission.
Unfortunately for them, Aotian was too lazy to ask, and he had already noticed that the formation heritage of that sect was not Core-Tier, nor even very strong among the Founder-Tier — at least not compared to the synthesized Refiner-Tier heritage combined with Xuan Zhen's Position Bonus.
[Name: Xuan Zhen (Meaning: Profound Formation)
Position: Elder of the Formation Pavilion
Cultivation: 1st Level Golden Core (1 Major Realm Above the Host)
Position Ability: Formation Derivation
Position Bonus: Formation Master (Formation quality increased by 3x)]
Silently, the formation invaded the spiritual vein and connected to it, feeding off its immense and nearly inexhaustible raw energy.
At that moment, Wen Tai, the inner elder of the Heritage Pavilion, opened his eyes and calmly stood up before walking over to Xuan Zhen.
Xuan Zhen simply handed the disc to him.
"The formation is only second-tier. Just throw trash in there to help organize it — keep the good stuff with you," he explained calmly, symbolically, and without much thought, simply turned and left.
Wen Tai said nothing and only looked at the disc in his hands.
He then tapped his storage pouch and released thousands of jade slips from it.
The other elders of the Heritage Pavilion also stood up and tossed several other jade slips onto the pile, then went to a corner, returned with more pouches, and dumped their contents too.
Seeing that everything was there, he held the formation disc and activated it, causing the pavilion walls to tremble slightly. Various golden symbols and runes appeared throughout the pavilion, connecting to the formation's core.
Spiritual energy began to surround the jade slips. Soon, they were lifted into the air, started separating and grouping, flying to different parts of the pavilion walls and floating there, organizing into grids.
Then, orbs of energy surrounded them and enclosed them inside, creating a white mist that made it impossible to see the contents within the orb, though a small description in words appeared in front of each energy sphere.
'Spiritual energy truly is wonderful. I wonder what the geniuses of my world could do if they had access to it… but it's a shame — I'm not a genius in any way, so I won't expect any great inventions from myself. I'll just live life my own way,' he thought ironically, then brushed the thought aside without concern.
What Aotian was admiring in spiritual energy was the simple fact that it was slightly alive and worked purely on intention. And the contents of the jade slips were also pure intention wrapped in spiritual energy.
What he did was create formations that could read the intentions within the jade slips and classify them: whether they related to Core-Tier, Formation-Tier, Refiner-Tier, or any other Tier. Then they were stored inside the energy orbs for protection, with a visible description to facilitate access.
Of course, there were flaws — such as someone inserting a rice recipe with the intention of labeling it as a Core-Tier technique. The formation would misclassify it as such. It wasn't a real AI cataloging the contents, just a keyword reader — something much simpler.
Even so, it greatly helped with the cataloging process.
And in addition to that, there was still the reviewer.
The Position Ability of the outer elder of the Heritage Pavilion.