Ziwei Yuan

On the third day, Li Fan began to instruct Qin Jiu on Qi sword cultivation and taught him the Blood Record Sword Scripture and the Xuantian Five Forms.

He had a decent aptitude for swordsmanship, and indeed had some affinity with the Divine Sect's Cultivation Method, or rather, with the Divine Lord, which allowed him to condense blood essence on the tree branches and wield the Blood God Sword with considerable skill.

Although Qin Jiu only learned a basic sword technique in a day, and didn't learn many secret manuals or the key points of internal force, it was more than enough to deal with a few small fry from the martial arts world.

After all, the blood aura cultivated by this Blood Refining Technique was deduced by Li Fan with great effort. It is a genuine Blood God Child blood aura that can cause fatal damage to organic bodies and can also turn the opponent's essence blood into one's own. Each kill strengthens one's own blood aura. Qin Jiu's Blood Infant Primordial Spirit is extremely strong and there is no risk of going into demonic possession. With such an overpowered Cultivation Method combined with the Primordial Spirit cheat, this kid would have a hard time dying even if he wanted to.

Moreover, Qin Jiu seems to be of good character and not particularly extreme in temperament. In fact, he can be described as kind and honest. He only gets angry when provoked, so there's no need to worry too much. As long as we nag him a bit in the early stages and advise him to stay on the right path, his future will be limitless.

On the other hand, Yuepo's side only got out to play for a day before something happened.

Li Fan discovered that the sword child's clone was actually trapped in a grand formation within an Immortal Palace!

Who would be so reckless as to dare to ambush and steal his flying sword?!

Then Li Fan did some divination and understood the cause and effect, and was speechless for a moment.

Guess what? Yuepo actually went to North Mang Mountain to rob a tomb! A royal tomb!

Holy crap, this stupid rabbit has really been corrupted by Xuan Tian! It actually set its sights on the royal family's burial goods! How could it be so greedy, trying to achieve everything in one fell swoop!

Seriously, you're not just stealing things, you've gotten lost in the royal tomb and trapped by a formation! With such a terrible formation, how dare you even venture into the underground palace?! Are you kidding me?!

Li Fan was speechless, but he was about to enter the palace, and there were many old men from the Xuanmen sect lining up to spar with him. It wouldn't be convenient to run into the royal tomb to rescue someone when so many people were watching. So he could only let Yuepo play in the royal tomb for a few days and then go to pick her up when he had time.

Entering the Ziwei Yuan was, of course, very inconvenient. Not only did one have to change into specially prepared court robes from head to toe, but one also had to take off one's shoes and walk all the way from the palace gate.

Li Fan also noticed that the outer perimeter of the Ziwei Yuan was completely surrounded by Guardian General's Imperial Guards, and it was unclear whether they were protecting or guarding it.

After passing four or five guard posts of the Imperial Guard, the ceremonial guards around him were stopped one by one. In the end, even the Minister of the Court of State Ceremonial was not allowed to enter. Instead, eunuchs from the Ziwei Yuan Palace came out to greet him.

The eunuchs who came out of the palace to greet them were all martial artists, at least at the Divine Essence Body realm, and the leaders were all Martial God. Occasionally, when palace maids passed by, there would be hidden masters of Internal Martial Arts. It seems that although the imperial family line was cut off, the martial arts lineage of the palace has never been interrupted.

Moreover, it wasn't just these palace maids and eunuchs. The night before, while learning court etiquette from the Minister of the Court of State Ceremonies, Li Fan also overheard a lot of gossip. Ever since the Profound Maiden stormed into the Forbidden City and assassinated the King in the palace, the rebuilt Ziwei Yuan had sealed off spiritual energy and Daoist Dao Breath. It was entirely due to the system or ancient anti-gravity technology that they flew into the sky. As Li Fan walked along, he discovered many defensive systems disguised and hidden by the system skins around him, batches of machine guards dressed as statues and armor. In terms of physical attributes alone, they were all at the Nascent Soul Stage Immortal Tomb Guards that Li Fan had picked up.

Such tight defenses would indeed make it difficult for even ordinary Xuanmen deities to break in. If someone were to lie in ambush inside the palace, unable to use escape techniques and stripped of all equipment, one would have to fight their way out naked, surrounded by Martial God eunuchs and steel robots. There might even be clone maids dressed in SBSs hiding in the shadows, ready to snipe at you with some kind of railgun. You might really be doomed.

Of course, these things are completely useless to Li Fan now.

"Puppet loading complete"

"Puppet loading complete"

"Magic... Magic puppet loading complete..."

Li Fan, who was waiting to be summoned in the side hall, ignored the system notification without any expression.

Of course, Ziwei Yuan has firewalls and ECCM devices, and it's not connected to the external network. If it were Li Fan's old civilian system, it would probably have been taken offline and blocked, but now that he's upgraded, he can still swagger into the interior of the Ziwei Yuan base. All the defense systems that were trying to lock onto him along the way have been loaded with magic puppets.

Now, if Li Fan wanted, he could simply become invisible from the radar, shut down his weapons, change firing parameters, order a self-destruction, or directly steal the system's cadre privileges to seize control of this subnet of the Ziwei Yuan company system.

Sigh, being technologically suppressed is just so incredibly lonely.

To put it bluntly, if Li Fan wanted to, he could ascend the throne today...

Well, becoming the Celestial Emperor isn't that interesting. It's just replacing the puppet in the Ziwei Yuan. It's like sitting on a dragon throne in a museum and taking a picture. At best, he's just a store manager in a company.

Becoming the Tai Su Dao Ancestor better path.

So Li Fan just glanced around and checked the internal surveillance system of the Ziwei Yuan.

You know what, this Immortal Emperor is quite handsome, and he does resemble that fat Immortal Nascent Soul Stage a bit in his features. His cultivation is also decent, at the peak of the Nascent Soul Perfected Realm. Although he achieved it through the secret techniques of the four empresses and eight concubines, he still managed to cultivate it. However, he hasn't reached the Divine Transformation yet, so he lacks confidence.

Right now, this Celestial Emperor is in the Beichen Palace, playing the role of a ruthless stamping machine.

It's not that he was particularly diligent or caring towards the people; it's simply that, according to the established rules, that seal, the Imperial Seal of the State, could only be picked up and stamped by an Immortal Emperor. It's probably based on fingerprint recognition and genetic binding...

Li Fan, who had no regard for the law, naturally didn't focus on the Immortal Emperor, but rather on the eunuch sweeping the floor in the Empress's palace... in the flowerbed in the backyard, at the entrance of a nunnery.

Grand Chamberlain, Duke Nangong Wubu, the number one expert of Ziwei Yuan.

Although it wasn't convenient to directly lock onto and scan this person with Divine Sense, Li Fan felt that this person was similar to the eunuch in the Liqiu Palace, probably still a Martial God at the Transformation Stage. Even if he risked his life to attack, he would probably only manage to injure Enlightenment Stage, much like Luo Feng Patriarch. In short, without the intervention of the company, it was unlikely that the hidden forces within the Ziwei Yuan could kill a Dao Enlightenment stage cultivator.

Moreover, based on what Li Fan saw in Ziwei Yuan through the system's backdoor, he didn't see any axemen or wrestling teenagers, nor did he see any assassins from North Star Guard. The company's general manager was still fast asleep in the sun's orbit, and the robots couldn't possibly be activated. He really couldn't see any intentions or hostility from Ziwei Yuan towards the Grand Tutor.

Rather than saying that the celestial emperor's consorts and eunuchs were just NPCs in a stage play, Li Fan even suspected that none of them were natives at all, but were all clone actors from the company.

I feel that the Grand Tutor's misfortune did not originate from the Ziwei Yuan.

But speaking of which, I wonder what kind of strange Cultivation Method these eunuchs practice. Logically speaking, a Nascent Soul Realm should be able to grow their own nascent souls with the help of some elixirs. Could they be Bio-Human that the company forcibly created to fit the theme of the Immortal Palace Park...?

While lost in thought, Li Fan finally got to the front of the queue to visit... cough cough, pay respects to the Immortal Emperor.

Of course, he was not a minister, but a local envoy. He could not actually enter the Beichen Palace, nor could he use his Divine Sense to spy on it. He simply kowtowed outside the palace and then, through the curtain, communicated with the Immortal Emperor from afar through the eunuchs.

Even the answers Li Fan was to ask the Immortal Emperor were already prepared in advance with the Minister of the Court of State Ceremonies, because there were three Grand Historians outside the palace recording the events: 'The Emperor met Marquis So-and-so today and asked him such-and-such, and the Marquis replied with something like "dots and dots".'

To put it bluntly, it was just a pilgrimage ceremony at the Immortal Palace, representing the Emperor's respect for the envoy from Lizhou. Everyone was just doing their job, putting on a show for the media to take pictures. But in this way, Li Fan could be considered to have 'made his mark on history'.

After a question-and-answer session with the messenger eunuch, the eunuch arrived shortly with the prepared imperial edict, official robes, and seal to bestow rewards. He began to read aloud, "By order of Heaven, by decree of the Celestial Emperor."

Li Fan perked up and listened.

He was granted additional titles. Feng Qingniu, the abbot of Ink Bamboo Mountain, was appointed General of the Vanguard, ranked among the highest ministers, and was granted the title of Duke of Louyang, concurrently serving as the governor of Li Prefecture Governor government and the authority to command the Yellow Axe.

Li Fan was also taken aback when he heard this. Good heavens, the Immortal Palace is quite generous. Of course, the title of Duke is irrelevant. They skipped the Four Generals and gave him the seal of the General of the Vanguard. It must have been presented by the Grand Tutor.

At this point, the Grand Tutor probably didn't want to cause trouble or rebel Li Country, so he simply gave away all the rewards he could at once.

Currently, the Grand Tutor is in charge of the Three Dukes, while the positions of Grand General and Chariot and Cavalry General are not filled. The Guardian General Chariots and Cavalry is held nominally by an old man from a powerful family. The General of the Guards is the eldest son of the Grand Tutor, and the General of the Vanguard is second only to the Guardian General. The Immortal Emperor sits facing south, and the General of the Vanguard is the Southern General who is in charge of the Southern Kingdom. This means that everything south of the Three Enclosures is under the jurisdiction of the General of the Vanguard.

This power was given to the abbot, along with a fake Yellow Axe, granting him the power of life and death. Essentially, the Immortal Palace tacitly approved of Ink Bamboo Mountain's independent attack in the south.

It seems the abbot is quite shrewd; he chose this moment to arrange for him to pay tribute and request an official position from the Grand Tutor, directly receiving the highest honor bestowed by the Immortal Palace.

Then came a list of rewards and titles bestowed upon the heads of powerful families under the General of the South's Mansion and the Governor's jurisdiction, all involving promotions and titles. Li Fan heard his own name mentioned; Qingyue, the Guan Nei Hou, was promoted to...

Marquis of Yudu Pavilion...

Huh? Marquis of Yudu Pavilion? Isn't it Marquis of Mo Pavilion?

Li Fan frowned slightly.

The eunuch abruptly stopped speaking, and the three historians who had been scribbling down their notes also stopped writing. In an instant, all the eunuchs and palace maids lurking inside and outside the palace focused their Divine Sense on Li Fan.

Seeing how tense everyone was, Li Fan knew that breaching etiquette before the emperor was quite serious, so he quickly relaxed his expression. The eunuch delivering the decree continued reading as if he had just taken a breath, and the imperial historian continued writing, making it seem as if nothing had happened.

But it probably wasn't the word "Yu" or "Mo" that was written or pronounced incorrectly. After all, he changed from Tinghou to Dutinghou. Moreover, Li Fan recalled it quickly and figured out in his mind what was going on.

Good heavens, Yu Du is located south of Yu Mountain, on the coast of the South China Sea, which is the main base of the Nangong Family.

Hey! Grand Tutor, you're quite the rascal! The Abbot made one move, and immediately created some trouble for Ink Bamboo Mountain. Impressive, impressive, a true master...

This is a classic example of using one tiger to devour another.

The conflict between Ink Bamboo Mountain and the Nangong Family is public knowledge. Although a no-war agreement was signed temporarily, the former general still governs the Southern Country, and Hengshan has to pay homage to him. Giving the seal directly to Ink Bamboo Mountain is clearly an attempt to instigate a complete break with Hengshan.

Although Ink Bamboo Mountain's focus is on the Ten-thousand-mountains, and Hengshan is also biding its time, now that even Lianyu has been granted the title of Li Fan, those brainless fools like Nangong will certainly not tolerate it. Moreover, the powerful families and clans under Hengshan's command will likely waver. Should they pledge allegiance to Hengshan or to the former general? At least one or two families who are not doing well will develop disloyalty, right? Won't this conflict gradually escalate?

The Grand Tutor's strategy of "you can't catch a wolf without risking your cub" was quite clever. Although Li Fan knew that the general's seal was just an empty title, he couldn't resist the fact that people all over the world were willing to risk their lives for this empty title.

In short, refusing would be a serious diplomatic incident, so Li Fan bowed in thanks and accepted the reward, seal, and title on behalf of Ink Bamboo Mountain.

When he left the palace, the eunuch leading the way actually took him to the inner treasury to select treasures bestowed by the Immortal Palace. It seems that Zhang Rang has successfully infiltrated the palace this time. Although Li Fan did not see anyone contacting the Dachangqiu in the surveillance footage, and he did not know what tricks the Xinling Gong was planning to deal with the Grand Tutor, he did not want to get too involved in this turmoil. He planned to select the treasures and prepare to leave.

That said, the treasures collected by the Immortal Palace over the years, though scattered multiple times due to internal strife, are still a first-rate treasury, probably only comparable to the treasury of Yuntai Peak. The place is filled with a dazzling array of treasures, many of which even Li Fan couldn't identify.

Li Fan couldn't really ask about each item in detail and make a selection, especially with many eunuchs around him. So he focused on selecting rare and precious materials that were scarce in the south.

Fortunately, he had been doing resource gathering tasks frequently over the years, and he had long since memorized what Spirit Stones and herbs were available near Ink Bamboo Mountain. So, if he encountered something he didn't recognize, he could simply select it if he saw that the spiritual energy density was off the charts.

While selecting items from the treasure vault, Li Fan suddenly noticed a secret passage near one of the vaults, disguised with optical sensors. The passage was surrounded by a large number of corporate defense systems, including iris recognition locks. He figured it most likely contained valuable items, so he used a magic puppet to disarm the guards and deliberately walked over to ask.

"But what treasures are stored in this storeroom?"

"Hehe, my Immortal Palace encompasses the entire world and possesses wealth from all corners of the earth. Whatever you desire, Marquis, please take it. This place is..."

The serving eunuch flipped through the inventory records and was also puzzled.

"Huh? There doesn't seem to be a storeroom here. Perhaps it's been too long and the records have been missed. Lord Yu, please wait a moment, I'll send someone to find the key right away..."

"The door wasn't locked."

Li Fan flicked his sleeve and pushed open the storeroom door. He and the eunuch glanced into the storeroom together. Although he was used to seeing this kind of scene, the sheer scale of it still made him feel a little down.

The storeroom contained a large number of skinned and dismembered mummies, some male and some female, probably palace eunuchs who were made into various human artifacts like folding chairs, pipa, zither, leather armor, clothing, and swords, treated like toys. They were weapons, furniture, and decorations, and were played with in various ways.

They were also lined up in rows and columns in the clothes racks and cabinets, neatly arranged in crystal cabinets of various sizes. They stretched as far as the eye could see, filling the entire large warehouse behind that door to the brim. A rough estimate suggested they were at least two brigades, if not a division.

Such a grand scene was quite a shock to the eunuchs who served in the palace. He covered his mouth on the spot, turned his head away, and almost vomited.

Li Fan, taking advantage of the moment he turned his head, darted into the storeroom, grabbed something, wrapped it in his shadow, flew back, and stuck to Li Fan's feet before following the eunuch out.

"Lord Yu..."

"Ah, I didn't see anything. Let's go pick out some Heavenly Treasure."

The eunuch nodded hurriedly, trembling as he closed the door, and quickly led Li Fan away from the forbidden inner palace.

Li Fan sneered, touching the thing in the shadow that he had spotted at a glance and recognized instantly.

This is a mask; judging from the makeup and costume, it's designed to resemble the kind of mask used in traditional Chinese opera.

The outside was a layer of human skin, while the lining felt softer than a young girl's skin, as light as a breeze. Li Fan could tell with a flick of his fingers that it was made of the finest silk woven from the finest Wanyu Fairy Silk, probably so that it could be worn on the face and played with often.

As for the outer layer of human skin, well, it was made from the face of the god.

The Immortal Palace is truly wealthy beyond measure, possessing everything imaginable.