Amid a screen of emerald bamboo stood a three-bay house facing a pond rippling with shimmering waves. Spring was warm, grass lush and soft; the sun set, the moon rose, and a fine breeze curled across the glazed surface of the water.
Chen Ping'an settled down at Fuyao Foothills, situated between Jise Peak and Tiaoyu Mountain. He recalled his nine Talisman Clones, and his mind and spirit had fully returned to their proper places. Chen Ping'an then began recuperating in seclusion, gradually nurturing his physique, reforging Night Roaming, mending his ritual robe, and personally compiling and revising those manuals of fist techniques and spiritual books. A High Sect had to look like a High Sect; it needed several "orthodox lineages and Dao veins" that could be passed down.
There was the breathing-and-mountain-climbing method taught by Old Man Yang of the apothecary, Gu You's Mountain Shaking Fist, the Swordplay Manual revised by Zheng Dafeng, and Cui Cheng's fist moves, which Chen Ping'an had gathered together with his disciple Pei Qian. At the same time, he sorted through Nun Bai of the Ning residence's fist techniques, the hidden stockpile of ultimate moves from the white-haired boy's "martial arsenal," countless Savage World fist paths recorded in the Summer Palace, Li Er's distinctive understanding and analysis of the Human Body as World from a martial cultivator's perspective, A Liang's Eighteen Stops of Sword Qi, the True Records of Pill Books gifted by Li Xisheng, Chen Ping'an's barely passable Thunder Formation, the secret Cloud Water Body never passed down by Yun Miao, Immortal of Nine True Immortal Hall, and the True Meaning of Thunder Law that Ascension Realm rogue cultivator Feng Xuetao had been intercepted for halfway to the Central Plains Confucian Temple, and so on. There were forty or fifty categorized booklets alone on