"That fellow Daoist seemed to bear me some hostility!"
Li Qingyun was about to turn back into his room when, from the corner of his eye, he spotted a Young Daoist priest beneath a red maple tree to his left. His face was twisted with jealous fury as he stared coldly in Li Qingyun's direction.
"How boring..."
He gave a disdainful laugh, too lazy to pay any attention, and returned to his room to continue meditating.
"Hmph, he's just an idiot who knows nothing but sitting in his room meditating. What on earth does Senior Sister Lu see in him!"
Wang Baiying stood beneath the tree, muttering a few jealous curses. He stamped his foot, then turned and left.
Inside the room, Li Qingyun sat cross-legged in meditation, holding the Precious Furnace Qi Absorption Art as he studied it closely.
Combined with Lu Liqian's guidance, after reading through it again, there was no longer anything that felt obscure or incomprehensible.
He only needed to maintain the proper meditation posture, and the phantom image of the Dao would do the work for him, cultivating mana on his behalf.
Thus, he could kill two birds with one stone—meditate while reading scriptures and practicing techniques, for instance.
The light and shadows in the room shifted several times.
Li Qingyun looked outside and stopped cultivating.
He had reached the limit of today's meditation practice again. His meridians felt so swollen that they ached faintly!
Yet the results were remarkable. This body now quietly possessed the mana of five furnaces!
He rummaged through the cabinet for gold, silver, and jewels, selecting every gold ingot and all the finest pearls. After wrapping them up and tucking them into his robes, he walked out.
The afternoon sun painted the western sky over Maple Mountain in a brilliant wash of intermingled red and yellow. In high spirits, he stood quietly admiring it for a while, inwardly praising it as a fine painting of sunset over Maple Mountain.
"Beautiful, yes, but for some reason, it feels a little too red—like it has been dyed in blood..."
He shook his head, scattering the thought that had suddenly surfaced.
After confirming his direction, he set off toward the Scripture Repository.
The mountain breeze stirred, and his Qingyi robes fluttered, outlining the youth's form, like a spring tree and a jade pine.
Over a single night, he had unexpectedly grown a few inches taller. Though his complexion remained pale, his eyes had become increasingly bright and spirited. He no longer carried yesterday's sickly air.
"I'll first go to the Scripture Repository and learn a few spells. Yin Huan said the Scripture Repository sold things at outrageous prices, but they were also more reliable!"
Li Qingyun restrained the fluctuations of mana around him as he walked among maple trees and cultivated bamboo. His mood was as clear and bright as the azure sky above crimson Maple Mountain.
The valley was tranquil, and the scenery changed with every step. The back mountain was quite vast.
A disciple token hung at his waist. Whenever he reached those hazy, illusion-shrouded places, it gave off a soft glow, dissolving the invisible restrictions and allowing him to pass.
The entire Lingbao Temple, even Maple Mountain itself, lay beneath a great formation. His disciple token, belonging to someone with "shallow Dao affinity," only permitted him to travel through less important areas. If he wandered about carelessly, he would surely run into an "air wall" or become trapped in an illusion.
After winding through twists and turns, pavilions and towers flickered in and out of sight.
He occasionally encountered other Daoists along the way, both men and women. Quite a few had attained substantial cultivation. Li Qingyun kept a mild manner and impeccable courtesy, always nodding or offering a salute.
Some Daoists returned his greeting politely, with a trace of curiosity.
Others carried a more imposing aura and wore arrogant expressions. They merely snorted through their noses, not even sparing him a glance before walking away.
Li Qingyun did not take it to heart.
On the long Dao Path, there was no need to contest momentary lengths, strengths, or weaknesses. In the eyes of those accomplished Lingbao Temple disciples, he might presently be nothing at all.
But in the future, would those proud temple disciples not likewise become fleeting passersby on Li Qingyun's Path of Longevity?
After seven turns and eight bends, an exquisite Scripture Repository three and a half stories high finally entered Li Qingyun's sight.
The Scripture Repository was not as bustling as Li Qingyun had imagined. On the contrary, it was exceedingly deserted, with few people entering or leaving.
Thinking of Lingbao Temple's style, he found this understandable.
"Lingbao Temple is merely one of the many Daoist temples that the Lingbao Sect has established throughout the mortal world. How many disciples in this entire temple have truly achieved something in cultivation? Besides, Yin Huan said that for disciples like us, the Scripture Repository is ruinously expensive. It's only natural that it should be so deserted..."
As he thought this, he quickened his pace toward the entrance.
Two Young Daoist priests with swords strapped to their backs guarded the entrance to the Scripture Repository.
A faint gleam flashed through Li Qingyun's eyes as he noticed the tokens hanging from their waists, engraved with the words "Patrol Quarters."
Only official disciples of Lingbao Temple wore more formal tokens, often engraved with titles such as Patrol Quarters, Records Keeper, Storehouse Keeper, or Guest Welcomer.
The token at Li Qingyun's waist was the lowest-grade identification token.
In the eyes of those official disciples, Li Qingyun, He Xiao, and the many others who had paid to enter the temple were merely idle dependents and scattered guests being taken in by the temple.
Lingbao Temple valued "wealth." It needed disciples like Li Qingyun, who had come to gild themselves and idle away their days. Each side simply took what it needed.
"Junior Brother, stop. You're a new face. You haven't been to the Scripture Repository before, have you?"
One of the guarding disciples at the entrance lifted his chin slightly and stopped Li Qingyun with an appraising, condescending gaze.
"Let me explain. This temple does not lightly pass down its methods. To enter the Scripture Repository, you must pay ten taels of gold. Furthermore, every copy of a cultivation method you transcribe requires an additional fifty taels of gold or five spirit stones! Also, those who are not official temple disciples may only read on the first floor..."
As he listened to the string of numbers spilling from the other man's mouth, Li Qingyun's eyelids could not help twitching sharply several times.
"What a fine 'methods are not lightly passed down,' but isn't this far too expensive? So the money I worked so hard to smuggle into the temple is only enough to learn two spells?"
Even though he had been mentally prepared and had come carrying a fortune, hearing those shocking prices for real still left him clicking his tongue in disbelief.
Fifty taels of gold was an enormous sum in a mortal town. An ordinary person could toil for an entire lifetime without earning that much!
Yet in Lingbao Temple, it was merely the price of one low-level spell.
"So long as I don't become an official disciple, I'm just a leek being raised by Lingbao Temple."
Sighing was one thing, but Li Qingyun still handed over ten taels of gold and entered the Scripture Repository.
The first floor of the Scripture Repository held only five or six rows of bookshelves. It was simple and clear, but somewhat shabby as well.
A faint scent of ink hung in the air. Most of the books placed on this floor were copied editions.
There were only a handful of people reading scriptures and seeking techniques on the first floor—just one or two Daoists wearing official tokens at their waists.
The mana fluctuations around them were obvious. They were clearly elite disciples who had achieved success in Qi Refinement.
Li Qingyun had learned from Yin Huan that official temple disciples could browse the Daoist books and cultivation manuals on the first floor of the Scripture Repository for free. The second floor and above required merit and contribution points.
Those two official disciples on the first floor presumably could not bear to spend their contribution points either, so they were freeloading here.
"My current priority is a cultivation method for concealing the aura of my cultivation. Only after that comes the key formulas for the later stages of the Precious Furnace Qi Absorption Art..."
Li Qingyun calmed himself, approached one row of bookshelves, and began searching through the books.
He did not immediately head for the spell formulas.
Since entering the building had already cost ten taels of gold, he wanted to freeload on as much as possible.
He walked to the bookshelf filled with introductory Daoist books and scriptures, choosing several volumes, including the Treatise on Yin-Yang Qi, the Compendium of Daoist Magic, and Lingbao Dao Lord's Solutions.
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