Great Bamboo Peak.
Shou Jing Hall.
Time flew like an arrow, and the white colt flashed past a crack.
For Tian Buyi and his wife, the past six months had felt like a dream.
No.
A nightmare!
Tian Buyi held the lid of his teacup in his hand, his knuckles turning pale.
The tea had gone cold, but he hadn't noticed.
"Buyi."
"Are you still thinking about Seventh?"
Su Ru's gentle voice sounded beside him.
She was holding a Daoist robe she was mending.
"How could I not?"
Tian Buyi set his teacup down on the table with a thump, his brows furrowing into a deep frown.
He rose to his feet and paced back and forth across the hall with his hands behind his back, his short, stout figure looking restless.
"Junior Sister, you know this too."
"Four months!"
Just four months!"
"That boy broke through to the Fourth Layer of Jade Purity!"
Tian Buyi held up four fingers as thick as carrots and gestured emphatically in the air.
As he spoke,
the muscles in his chubby face twitched involuntarily.
Back then,
even Ancestor Qingye, hailed as the greatest genius Qingyun Sect had seen in a thousand years, hadn't been this terrifying, had he?
Originally,
this should have been cause for celebration!
Great Bamboo Peak was finally going to rise!
And he, Tian Buyi, could finally mock that old Cang Song to his heart's content!
But, as it happened,
that was exactly where the problem lay.
"Two months."
"Seventh broke through two months ago."
"That brat hasn't come to ask me for a magic treasure, nor has he said anything about going down the mountain."
"He just holes up in the Scripture Depository all day, poring over those..."
"Those introductory spell guides meant only for newly initiated disciples!"
"And those mortal martial arts manuals!"
Tian Buyi stopped pacing.
He looked toward the Scripture Depository on the back mountain, his tone turning somewhat odd.
"Seventh is a thoughtful child, and he knows his own mind."
"Maybe... he thinks his foundation isn't stable?"
At that,
Su Ru could only smile helplessly and set down her needlework.
"An unstable foundation?"
"Four months to reach the Fourth Layer of Jade Purity!"
"The spiritual energy in him is denser than that of Daren and the others combined. How much more stable could he get?"
"I think he's read so much nonsense he's gone soft in the head!"
Tian Buyi let out a cold snort, as if he'd heard a joke.
"No!"
The more Tian Buyi thought about it, the more something seemed wrong.
His right eyelid began twitching even harder.
It was as if something beyond his control was about to happen.
"I have to go take a look."
"What if that brat ran into trouble while cultivating and is just stubbornly bearing it?"
Tian Buyi was about to head outside.
Suddenly,
a vast surge of spiritual energy erupted without warning from the direction of the back mountain!
Boom!
The doors and windows of Shou Jing Hall rattled under the shockwave.
The night sky above the once-peaceful Great Bamboo Peak instantly churned with wind and clouds.
The spiritual energy all around seemed to be drawn by some force, rushing wildly toward the Scripture Depository!
It swirled through the air, forming a small, funnel-shaped vortex!
"That disturbance..."
Su Ru sprang to her feet, her beautiful eyes wide.
Tian Buyi's expression changed drastically. His already small eyes were now as round as bells.
He knew that aura all too well.
Though it hadn't fully stabilized yet, the spiritual pressure radiating from it and the ease with which it connected to heaven and earth—
that was definitely beyond what someone in the Fourth Layer, the Object Moving Realm, could manage!
"Fifth Layer of the Yuqing Realm?"
"How is that possible?"
"Wasn't that brat reading useless books?"
"Can reading books really make him break through?"
Tian Buyi cried out, his voice cracking.
Before his words had even faded,
his short, stout figure had already turned into a streak of red light, shooting toward the Scripture Depository.
Su Ru didn't dare delay either, and vanished from Shou Jing Hall right behind him.
The Scripture Depository.
The windows stood wide open as gale-force winds swept bamboo leaves into the room.
The ancient books on the shelves rustled loudly in the wind, as if they were cheering the moment on.
Ye Xuan sat cross-legged amid a pile of scattered books.
Introduction to Five Elements Sorcery, General Theory of Mortal Martial Arts, Introduction to Qimen Dunjia, 300 Examples of Spiritual Energy Micro-Control...
"Whew~"
A moment later,
Ye Xuan slowly opened his eyes.
In that instant,
two glimmers of green light seemed to flash deep within his dark pupils.
They were like freshly unsheathed swords, so sharp no one would dare look directly at them.
The Tai Chi Vital Energy within him surged like a mighty river, rushing wildly through his meridians.
His meridians, already broad and resilient, had grown even more indestructible after being repeatedly washed by its flow.
The Fifth Layer!
He had reached it as naturally as water flowing downhill!
There had been no resistance, not the slightest strain.
Ye Xuan lowered his head and looked at his palm.
Long and fair, with no sign of calluses.
A thought stirred in his mind.
He didn't even form a hand seal; all it took was a single thought.
"Whoosh!"
A fist-sized scarlet fireball appeared out of thin air, hovering three inches above his palm.
Then,
instead of shooting straight out like an ordinary Fireball Technique,
the fireball compressed and spun furiously above his palm.
The orange-red flames gradually turned a blinding bluish white under the extreme compression.
"Zzzzz~"
The air sizzled under the scorching heat, making a grating sound.
Ye Xuan flipped his wrist.
The terrifying bluish-white fireball went out in an instant, vanishing without a trace as if it had never appeared.
He could conjure and dismiss it at will.
He controlled it with effortless ease.
"So this is the power of a solid foundation..."
Ye Xuan murmured, a satisfied smile lifting the corners of his lips.
For the past two months, Old Tian had thought he was slacking off.
Little did he know,
Ye Xuan had been reinforcing the foundation of the towering structure called cultivation by another hundred meters!
Ordinary Qingyun Sect disciples could hardly wait to learn sword flight once they reached the Fourth Layer. They wanted to master powerful techniques like the Divine Sword Thunder Control True Art.
As for the Fireball Technique?
That was an entry-level spell for lighting fires and cooking.
But Ye Xuan saw things differently.
He possessed not only an Innate Dao Body, but also God-tier Comprehension.
With his God-tier Comprehension, he could optimize these basic skills and cultivate them to an even higher level.
Take the most basic Fireball Technique, for example!
In Ye Xuan's hands, it was far more than just a basic spell!
"Bang!"
Just then,
the heavy wooden door of the Scripture Depository was shoved open from outside.
No, it was blasted open by a palm strike.
Tian Buyi's unmistakable short, stout figure charged inside.
"Seventh!"
Tian Buyi hadn't even steadied himself.
His sharp gaze had already swept over Ye Xuan three times.
It was as if he were looking at some monster just unearthed from the ground.
Su Ru hurried in after him, unable to hide the shock on her face either.
"Master, Mistress."
"It's the middle of the night. You two still haven't gone to bed?"
Ye Xuan patted the robe he wore, though there wasn't a speck of dust on it, and greeted them with a smile and a cupped-hands salute.
Tian Buyi ignored his cheeky grin.
He strode up to Ye Xuan and, without a word, grabbed his wrist with one chubby hand.
A mild, pure stream of spiritual energy probed into Ye Xuan's body.
One second.
Two seconds.
Tian Buyi's chubby face twitched once, then again.
At last,
he let go as if he'd been shocked and stared at Ye Xuan as though he were a monster.
"You really... reached the Fifth Layer?"
Tian Buyi's voice was hoarse.
He had cultivated for hundreds of years. What kind of genius had he not seen?
But he had never seen such an oddball, someone who treated cultivation as casually as drinking water!
Six months!
From an ordinary mortal child to the Fifth Layer of the Yuqing Realm!
If word got out,
the Sect Leader Senior Brother on Heaven-Piercing Peak would be so shocked that even the ancestral tablets in the Ancestral Hall would fall over!
Before you continue