Bestowing Secret Arts Upon Disciples

Thousand Wood Temple.

After the annual post–Spring Festival worship ceremony concluded before the gaze of tens of thousands of disciples within the temple, each court began, as usual, selecting Outer Disciples with good Spiritual Roots and comprehension.

The Outer Sect, meanwhile, was holding ancestor-worship ceremonies for its newly inducted disciples.

On the Ascension Platform, over a thousand disciples who had received permission to leave were completing their final procedures. These disciples came from both the Outer Sect and Inner Sect, and a great many of them would never return after walking out of the sect gate.

This was Thousand Wood Temple's tradition. For disciples who failed to return within the stipulated time, Thousand Wood Temple would send people to register them afterward and enter their names into the records. They would not be dragged back, for they had already given up cultivation.

However, neither would they sever their ties with Thousand Wood Temple. Instead, they would become its secular disciples and occasionally help the temple with whatever lay within their power. If their descendants wished to enter Thousand Wood Temple, they could be sent to the temple as well.

On a mountain peak west of the Thousand Wood Mountain range, near the riverway around the Daoist temple's outer perimeter, stood a thatched hut amid dense water mist. Around it, Spirit Wood trees and Spirit Grass formed a Spirit Gathering Array. At the edge of the array lay a bamboo forest rich in spiritual energy. Shen Xiaozhu stood by a small stream south of the bamboo forest, facing a newly raised grave.

It was the grave of Mu Yun, her only Disciple. When Mu Yun had entered the realm and merged with the Huai Tree Soul, his spirit veins had overflowed, and his consciousness had been instantly contaminated. In the end,