Apricot Village

Li Fan had originally planned to send Qiong Ying to Penglai as a spy.

For one thing, the road from the Central Plains to Ink Bamboo Mountain was in chaos. Qiong Ying's temperament and cultivation were so unpredictable that Li Fan, a professor and academician on the level of a doctoral advisor, couldn't possibly escort her every step of the way and watch over her from kindergarten through her cultivation.

Fortunately, Li Fan had calculated that Zhou Chengxue of Penglai would soon be leaving the mountain to gain experience and prepare for Divine Transformation. He would probably pass through this area and come to exterminate the wild Ghost King for some merit. Li Fan knew Old Zhou—he was an honest man, someone Li Fan could trust. Penglai also had the best teachers in the Daoist world, so Li Fan had planned to send Qiong Ying there as a boarder and ask Old Zhou to raise her for a while, letting her mooch a meal from Penglai. Once she formed her Nascent Soul, Li Fan would snatch her back and take her as his personal disciple.

For another thing, Penglai had been keeping its gates closed and barring ships for years. Only elders and Dao-transmitted disciples were free to come and go, and Li Fan had no idea what Xiantong was up to these days. By all rights, fifty years had passed. If Li Fan had been so inclined, he could have comprehended the Dao three or four times over by now. There was no reason the current world's strongest, Xiantong, should have been in seclusion all this time without so much as a peep. Li Fan didn't even know if he'd died inside Penglai Mountain. The silence was downright creepy.

But before his plan to send Qiong Ying undercover at