Chapter 46: Sect Master Token

Leaving Taoyuan, coming to Yang Liu Bay halfway, thinking of the past a few months ago, he couldn't help but sigh.

Lu Zian, Ping Gu, Xishan Jushi, one was about to establish Foundation, one was at the fifth stage of Qi Refinement, one was at the eighth stage of Qi Refinement, all of them worked hard for decades on the road of cultivation, but failed at the last moment and became a handful of yellow earth. Is this their fate?

What about his own fate?

The Quze acupoint on the Hand Jueyin Meridian suddenly jumped violently, which made Liu Xiaolou both surprised and anxious.

Surprised that the five spirit stones consumed when refining the array plate were not in vain after all, and the spiritual power contained in them also transformed some true qi, which was a great help to impacting the Quze acupoint. The Quze acupoint was about to be opened.

Anxious that he had to find a stable place to impact the acupoint barrier, so as not to be disturbed by others.

The nearest place was of course the residence where Ping Gu lived before she died. Liu Xiaolou hurried over, climbed over the wall and entered. The courtyard had been desolate for several months and was long overgrown with weeds.

He casually found a room to enter, immediately held the spirit stone, transformed true qi, sat cross-legged and impacted the Quze acupoint barrier.

After many days, at a certain moment, the Quze acupoint barrier could no longer withstand the repeated impacts of true qi and was rushed through by the true qi torrent, merging into the acupoint pool of the Quze acupoint.

Three of the nine major acupoints of the Hand Jueyin Meridian had been broken, taking half a year in total. Calculating it, this cultivation speed was still quite fast, mainly because he had made a few small fortunes in a row this year, and the Three Mystical Sect was enjoyed by himself alone.

Of course, his achievement could not be compared with those disciples of major sects. People didn't worry about spiritual power at all, sitting by the spiritual spring to cultivate, and their cultivation in the Qi Refinement stage rose steadily, which was not something he could envy.

However, among rogue cultivators, eighteen... ah, now nineteen, nineteen-year-old third stage of Qi Refinement, should be considered a rising star. When Wei Hongqing was nineteen, he had just entered the third stage of Qi Refinement, and his progress was half a year faster than his!

Liu Xiaolou was in a good mood, got up and took a small walk in the courtyard, thinking that he came in a hurry that day, and when he searched the courtyard, he mainly looked for people and didn't put his energy into wealth. At this moment, looking again, maybe he could pick up a leak.

After rummaging through boxes and cabinets, he really found a small wooden box in the dark compartment of the bed head, in which there were a few small silver ingots, about twenty taels, which was a small fortune.

Apart from silver ingots, there was a thick stack of letters, all written by Lu Zian to Ping Gu, thirteen in total, with a time span of more than three years.

In the first few letters, Lu Zian's pen was full of ridicule, and the content mainly focused on the lower three paths, which showed that his mentality of knowing Ping Gu and being with Ping Gu was mainly to satisfy desire, taking into account curiosity.

In the middle few letters, the words gradually returned to normal, in which there were contents of coming forward to help Ping Gu solve a few troubles, and from time to time there were words of boasting, Ping Gu's reply letters were not in the box, but he figured they must be full of gratitude, making Lu Zian have a sense of achievement.

Lu Zian also gradually told Ping Gu about the big things he encountered in his letters, especially in the last few letters, telling Ping Gu that Tianmu Mountain was about to select inner sect disciples, and

In the penultimate letter that followed, Lu Zian was very uneasy; he said that his cultivation was among the top tier in the outer sect and he was originally the most promising, but in the last month, several small incidents had occurred, causing his impression in the hearts of the sect elders to plummet. The sect generally favored another female disciple named Lu Yanshi, and he suspected that several of these incidents were likely the work of this Lu Yanshi.

In the final letter, Lu Zian cursed Lu Yanshi, saying she was unscrupulous and a black-hearted woman; he even used a poisonous spider called a Black Widow to describe Lu Yanshi, saying she lived up to her name and must have been this poisonous creature in her past life!

Besides this, he also said that Widow Lu was promiscuous and used her beauty to please others; such-and-such sect elder and such-and-such disciple were the backers she had slept her way to, and she even kept ruffians and pretty boys outside, driving them to run errands before her curtains and so on.

At the end of the letter, he said he was going to take Ping Gu on a journey of a thousand miles to start a new life, and told Ping Gu not to worry; he knew of an ancient immortal's cave dwelling in the land of Ba and Shu, and he knew the approximate location, so he planned to take Ping Gu to explore it, from then on following the Great Dao of cultivation, living together as a pair, and rising to success.

After reading it, Liu Xiaolou was filled with emotion; he truly had not expected that the case of the stolen Foundation Establishment Pill at Tianmu Mountain would have such a cause.

After thinking for a while, he put the letters back into the wooden box and kept them safe, preparing to find an opportunity to hand them to Wei Hongqing so that Wei Hongqing could see them for himself.

From his own perspective, Lu Zian described many people and events at Tianmu Mountain in the letters. Wei Hongqing now relied on the Lu family of Tianmu Mountain, and he didn't know if he had become an outer sect disciple of Tianmu Mountain as he wished; learning more about the inside story of Tianmu Mountain should be beneficial to him.

On the kitchen beam of the residence, there were still a few pieces of cured meat hanging, and Liu Xiaolou took them without ceremony to fill his stomach.

While eating, he thought of the gift Star Dejun had given him. After witnessing a secret, his curiosity was piqued, and he could no longer hold back; finally, he did not fulfill his promise and unsealed the wooden box.

There were only two items in the wooden box. The first was a Daoist book made of mulberry paper, which was quite thick. The book was titled "Thousand Extremes Formula," and it summarized eighteen categories of materials used in refining array plates. Each category of material described several main specific materials in detail, and used them as examples to introduce which materials were the same and could be substituted for each other.

This Daoist book was clearly not a copy, at least not one copied in the last few months; it looked like it had been around for years.

Underneath the "Thousand Extremes Formula" was a wooden tablet carved from purple sandalwood. The front was engraved with the three characters "Ziji Sect Order," and the back was engraved with the sect rules of the founding patriarch, Shen Wulu:

If one does not contemplate the scriptures and methods, but relies on external tools, how can one attain the Dao? A person is the Dao; keep to the One and do not waver. To only covet tools and objects is like a person living at home who has never gone out, unable to see the Dao!

These words were likely meant to admonish later disciples that they cannot rely solely on artifact refining to cultivate the Dao; the scriptures and methods are also very important.

A secret manual of the Ziji Sect and a sect token—what did this mean?

Recalling his months of interaction with Star Dejun, and thinking of the bits and pieces of guidance Star Dejun gave him while refining array plates, Liu Xiaolou roughly understood: was he planning to pass the mantle of the Ziji Sect to him?

He took out his own Three Mystical Sect Master token and placed it together with the Ziji Sect Master token. Both tokens were very similar and of great age. Turning them over and rubbing them, he couldn't help but smile bitterly for a moment.

Given his life-saving favor to Star Dejun, Liu Xiaolou felt that Star Dejun's action was not unreasonable, but he was the Sect Master of the Three Mystical Sect; to go and become the Sect Master of the Ziji Sect as well—what kind of situation was this?

He suddenly remembered: Star Dejun was even willing to give him the position of Sect Master, so why was he unwilling to let him stay at Star De Temple?

Liu Xiaolou suddenly realized: Star Dejun was leaving, and he was running away!

Why run away?

Naturally, it was to elope!