Mount Hua Sect at Its Height

Mount Hua had long been known as "the most perilous mountain under heaven." After leaving the training grounds, they followed a winding stone path for more than ten miles, until a small courtyard appeared before them.

The courtyard had been built against the mountain, taking nature as its refuge and blending in Daoist culture. It was secluded yet elegant, tucked away and graceful, with buildings arranged in a pleasing disorder.

Stepping into the courtyard, they immediately saw two middle-aged men locked in a fierce battle over a chessboard. Wisps of steam rising from the tea beside them added a touch of immortal grace.

The two players were none other than Li Mu's master, Zhou Qingyun, and his martial uncle, Yu Qingfeng. Both were something of an oddity in the Mount Hua Sect. They had none of the sharp edge of people from the martial world; instead, they seemed like two Daoist priests who had seen through the mortal world.

Just as Li Mu hesitated over whether to approach, Liu Bufan, who had come with him, strode over with the guileless air of a simpleton. He gave the man in blue on the left a deep bow and said, "Master, I've brought Junior Brother Li."

Aside from marveling at the straightforwardness of martial-world folk, Li Mu could only follow suit. "This disciple, Li Bumu, pays his respects to Master and Martial Uncle!"

After a brief "Mm," the two men continued their game, as though nothing around them had anything to do with them.

Seeing this, Liu Bufan led Li Mu back a few steps and whispered, "Junior Brother Li, let's go rest in the back for a while!

"I don't know what's gotten into them, but lately Master and Martial Uncle Yu have become obsessed with chess. They won't stop until they finish a game, and they've even started neglecting affairs within the sect."

Li Mu was slightly taken aback. He really hadn't known. Though they shared a master, there were still degrees of closeness. Compared with Senior Brother Liu, whom their master had raised from childhood, the other disciples were clearly a step further away.

There was nothing to envy. Liu Bufan had earned that treatment at the cost of his parents' lives.

Accidents were hard to avoid in the martial world, especially for a vanguard like the Mount Hua Sect, which took the fight to the Demonic Cult. The casualty rate among its disciples was particularly high.

Liu Bufan's parents had died on a mission. As the orphan of sect members, he was naturally given special treatment. As long as a disciple had decent aptitude, the sect would give him priority in his training.

Generally speaking, these disciples were often the most loyal to the sect.

"Oh! Is this because of the infighting within the sect?"

Unlike the simplehearted Liu Bufan, Li Mu had lived two lives and thought of more possibilities. It was perfectly normal that, among so many people in the Mount Hua Sect, some would want no part in the infighting.

The two great camps, Sword and Qi, had long since formed. Whether they wanted to or not, they would be dragged in. They couldn't avoid it or change it, so all they could do was find a way to escape it.

Liu Bufan replied with a face full of anger, "It's all those bastards from the Qi Sect. They have no heroism at all. They lost a challenge match and refused to accept it. They even..."

After learning the whole story, Li Mu felt no urge to share Liu Bufan's outrage. All he felt was helplessness.

The Mount Hua Sect had its origins in Quanzhen. Though it had evolved over several centuries, the Daoist inner arts had retained their steady, balanced nature—and their slow pace of cultivation.

Against that backdrop, Sword Sect disciples, who placed greater emphasis on swordsmanship, naturally crushed the Qi Sect in the early stages. The Qi Sect disciples only turned things around once they reached their thirties or forties.

They were simply young and hot-blooded, unable to take the provocation. If they had been even a little more rational, the Qi Sect disciples would never have accepted a challenge match they were bound to lose.

In Li Mu's view, it wasn't necessarily that the Qi Sect disciples had lost a martial arts match and gone running to their elders.

Young people cared about their pride. Unless they had no other choice, they wouldn't usually broadcast their own shameful history, much less tell their elders about it.

And since it had been a brawl, accidents were inevitable. Especially when neither side had mastered their skills, the chances of something going wrong were even higher.

One moment of carelessness, and someone was injured. There was no way to hide it. To lessen their own blame, they were bound to embellish the story and shift responsibility onto the other side.

As it happened, the higher-ups of the Sword and Qi Factions were locked in fierce conflict. They seized on the excuse and took action without investigating what had really happened.

The sect was already rife with contradictions. If things kept escalating like this, sooner or later they would brew disaster.

The world never lacked clever people. If Li Mu could see the problem, then the sect's higher-ups, who had spent decades in the martial world, could certainly see it too.

Perhaps they were too confident, or perhaps their eyes had been clouded by self-interest. Either way, everyone tacitly chose to play dumb.

After all, no one could have imagined that the Sword and Qi Factions would end up fighting a battle that nearly annihilated both sides over these piled-up grievances.

For all that they belonged to the martial world, they couldn't truly live like carefree hermits. The game ended much sooner than Li Mu had expected.

After seeing Martial Uncle Yu off, Zhou Qingyun finally turned his attention to Li Mu. He clasped one hand behind his back, stroked his beard with the other, and studied Li Mu from head to toe.

"Your qi is full and steady. It looks like you've truly been working hard lately."

Though he did his best to hide it, the expression between his brows still betrayed his delight.

The Mount Hua Sect had many disciples and hardly lacked for a second-rate expert. But there were few who had reached the second-rate realm at Li Mu's age.

Talented people always drew attention. At any other time, that might have been fine, but now Li Mu was determined not to stand out.

There was no helping it, though. He had only broken through recently and couldn't fully rein in his qi. There was no way to fool Zhou Qingyun's eyes.

"It was all thanks to Master's excellent guidance. This disciple was only lucky—"

Before Li Mu could finish, Zhou Qingyun cut him off. "Don't give me that nonsense. If your breakthrough were all thanks to my guidance, why were you the one who broke through and not someone else?"

As he spoke, he glanced at Liu Bufan. The disappointment in that look was impossible to miss.

That was about all he could do. No one wanted to run into a martial bottleneck, but it was impossible to avoid them altogether.

Once someone hit one, they could either use rare treasures to help break through or slowly grind away at it over time, hoping to "build up enough to erupt all at once."

Generally speaking, the better one's aptitude, the easier it was to break through. If not for the Jade Disc's help, Li Mu would probably have spent several years stuck at the peak of the third-rate realm.

Perhaps realizing he had let his feelings show, Zhou Qingyun waved a hand. "All right. Since you've already broken through, you should have a place in this sect tournament.

"In the Sword Sect, you only need to watch out for Wang Buding and Cheng Buyou. On the Qi Sect's side, watch out for Yue Buqun, Ning Buzhou, and Zhang Bucheng. The rest are nothing to worry about."

At the Mount Hua Sect's height, it had more than a thousand disciples, so these few promising talents were far from the only ones. To ensure the sect's continued growth and pass on its legacy, the Mount Hua Sect opened its gates for new disciples every three years.

Even among disciples of the same generation, the earliest and latest entrants might have started more than ten or twenty years apart. Forcing them all to compete against one another would clearly be pointless. So the sect tournament was usually held only among disciples who had joined in the same intake.

A single leaf could reveal the coming of autumn. The fact that so many promising talents had joined alongside Li Mu was enough to show how prosperous the Mount Hua Sect had been at its height.