Luo Mu piloted the Flying Artifact. The whole way, Qu Yi did the talking while Luo Mu listened. From time to time, Luo Mu asked questions, and Qu Yi answered every one of them. This gave Luo Mu a decent understanding of Jinxiu Academy in a short time.
Jinxiu Academy had eight departments: the Five Elements Magic Department, which covered Metal Element Arts, Wood Element Arts, Water Element Arts, Fire Element Arts, and Earth Element Arts; the Artifact Refining Department, where Qu Yi studied; the Alchemy Department, which Luo Mu already knew a little about; and, last of all, the Talisman Making Department, the biggest money pit of them all.
As the name suggested, Wanfa Sect was surely a sect focused on magic. Jinxiu Academy was an academy under Wanfa Sect, so of course its flagship department was the Five Elements Magic Department.
Five Elements Magic had tremendous offensive and destructive power. It was also Wanfa Sect's main cultivation path, with countless techniques of every attribute. Most cultivators who enrolled at Jinxiu Academy chose the Arts Department.
The Artifact Refining, Alchemy, and Talisman Making Departments, by comparison, were less popular. Those who specialized in one of these three professions would normally be no match for Arts Department cultivators, since their offensive power was in a completely different league. Thus, cultivators who chose these professions generally weren't fond of fighting for supremacy. Their minds were set on spirit stones.
Cultivators in these three professions spent a lot of spirit stones in the early stages, but once they mastered their craft, the returns would multiply several times over.
Take Qu Yi, for example. He might be down on his luck now, unable to afford even the materials for Artifact Refining. But once he made it through the hardest early stages, his talent for Artifact Refining would see him through. After that, Qu Yi's prospects would brighten, and the great cultivation families would all be eager to recruit him.
By then, spirit stones would come rolling in.
The same went for Alchemy and Talisman Making. Once you got through the early stages, you became much more sought-after. In fact, these specialists were far more in demand than Arts Department cultivators. At Jinxiu Academy, students with talent in these three professions were valued far more highly than those in the Arts Department.
After all, Wanfa Sect needed talent in these three fields as well.
Still, making a name for yourself in any of these professions was no easy feat. Talent mattered, but so did hard work. You needed both.
As for formations, puppets, soul-binding, and other such fields, Jinxiu Academy had no involvement in them. Wanfa Sect had made its name through magic, and even opening departments for Artifact Refining, Alchemy, and Talisman Making had been a struggle. Finding instructors for these three fields was incredibly difficult.
Anyone qualified to be an instructor had to have achieved a great deal in their profession. Would someone like that be short on spirit stones? Who would drop everything to teach at an academy? Finding instructors was no easy task.
From what Qu Yi had told him, Luo Mu drew one conclusion: the less popular a profession was, the more lucrative it became once you reached a certain level.
Luo Mu had the Insect Control Technique, so he was sure to pursue the path of raising insects. Keeping spirit insects in large numbers was essential, but doing so would cost a terrifying amount of spirit stones. Where was Luo Mu supposed to get that kind of money? Without spirit stones, even if the Insect Control Technique was wondrous enough to make hatching and bonding with spirit insects effortless, what would they eat?
The spirit insects Luo Mu had now could forage for themselves, but they grew far too slowly. At this rate, who knew when they would become useful to him?
But spirit stones would change everything. With enough of them, Luo Mu could find all sorts of ways to raise spirit insects faster and buy plenty of spirit-stone-rich food to help them grow at twice the speed.
So earning a fortune in spirit stones had become Luo Mu's top priority!
Luo Mu had studied medicine since childhood and knew medicinal herbs well. He was also capable of making medicines himself, and he had considerable talent in this area. Besides learning his primary cultivation technique, he had another goal in coming to Jinxiu Academy: studying Alchemy.
Even a little progress in Alchemy would help ease Luo Mu's spirit-stone woes. He had obtained a copy of Basic Alchemy from Bai Shu earlier, but he couldn't fully understand it.
Though Luo Mu had an astonishing talent for medicine, Alchemy was not ordinary medicine. The two could not be compared. Without guidance, he couldn't overcome the many obstacles or resolve the questions he had about Alchemy. With an instructor's explanation, however, things would be different.
A master could show him the way, but the rest was up to him. Luo Mu believed that if someone could guide him through the door of Alchemy, he would surely achieve something in the field.
Besides, Luo Mu was different from ordinary cultivators. The power in his dantian wasn't ordinary spirit power, but Poison Spirit Power. To him, the Five Elements Arts Department was as useless as a chicken rib. He didn't have a Five Elements constitution, so cultivating Five Elements Magic wouldn't get him anywhere.
So Luo Mu wouldn't choose the Five Elements Arts Department. As for a cultivation technique, he would put some effort into finding one later. Jinxiu Academy was so large; he didn't believe he couldn't find a technique suited to him.
Perhaps a technique other students considered useless would be a top-tier treasure to Luo Mu, something he could only hope to find and never seek out.
After hearing all this from Qu Yi, Luo Mu had learned almost everything he needed to know about Jinxiu Academy. He had also quietly made his decision.
Once he arrived at Jinxiu Academy, Luo Mu would enroll in the less popular Alchemy Department. He could trade the pills he refined for spirit stones and use them to raise spirit insects. As for the poisons he concocted, he could use them to improve his own cultivation.
For Luo Mu, it was the best of both worlds.
Along the way, Luo Mu had learned a great deal about Jinxiu Academy. He had also asked about the powers in Jinxiu City, especially the Bai Family.
Qu Yi had been studying at Jinxiu Academy for a year and knew Jinxiu City fairly well, so Luo Mu had asked him about it.
Qu Yi didn't disappoint. He knew something about the relative strength of the various powers in Jinxiu City, and he also knew quite a bit about the Bai Family, which Luo Mu had asked about.
Jinxiu City had five great powers, all household names to its residents. The Bai Family was one of them.
Besides the Bai Family, the great cultivation families of Jinxiu City were the Li Family, the Lu Family, the Hai Family, and the Yang Family. These five great cultivation families had divided the enormous city among themselves, leaving no part untouched.
Jinxiu City was divided into four districts: east, west, south, and north. The Bai Family dominated the eastern district, the Li Family controlled the west, the Lu Family controlled the south, and the Hai Family controlled the north. The Yang Family, meanwhile, controlled all of Jinxiu City!
The current Yang Family patriarch was also the city lord of Jinxiu City. It was said that he had reached the terrifying Foundation Establishment Realm, though no one knew precisely how far he had advanced within it. Plenty of guesses circulated.
The Yang Family was Wanfa Sect's designated authority in Jinxiu City. The other four families, though powerful, did not dare challenge the Yang Family. That would mean opposing all of Wanfa Sect, and one wrong move could wipe out the entire family. None of the four dared challenge the Yang Family's authority in Jinxiu City.
Every year, the four great families also paid tribute to the Yang Family. These precious offerings were meant for Wanfa Sect. Whether the Yang Family handed over the full amount each year was something no one knew.
The Yang Family was based in central Jinxiu City, not far from Jinxiu Academy. For generations, the Yang Family had served Wanfa Sect, chiefly by protecting Jinxiu Academy from threats by any power and ensuring the academy continued to thrive in Jinxiu City.
After all, Jinxiu Academy was one of the academies that provided Wanfa Sect with "fresh blood." It could not be allowed to suffer any mishap. In the eyes of Wanfa Sect's higher-ups, Jinxiu Academy was far more important than the Yang Family.
The four great families, on the other hand, existed to support the Yang Family. Otherwise, Wanfa Sect would have wiped out these four powers long ago. They would never have been allowed to grow so powerful.
In Jinxiu City, the Yang Family and Jinxiu Academy were both untouchable. But aside from those two powers, the descendants of the four great families could walk around the city with their noses in the air. No one dared provoke them.
They were especially domineering in the districts controlled by their own families.
Plenty of cultivators had once thought highly of their own strength and offended the four great families. Within a few days, those cultivators had become the families' vengeful ghosts. The families would then heap all kinds of charges on them, branding them unforgivable criminals who deserved to die. Though many cultivators knew the truth, no one dared speak up for fear of the four families' might. This showed just how tyrannical the four families were in Jinxiu City.
But that was nothing unusual. The cultivation world had always been a dog-eat-dog place. If you had the strength, you had every right to act arrogant and domineering. If you didn't like it, you could always challenge them. Who would come out on top would depend on each side's ability.
Still, the four great families had been entrenched in Jinxiu City for years, and no cultivator or power had ever managed to overthrow them. That alone showed how fearsome their strength was.
Hearing this, Luo Mu's brows knitted into the character for "Chuan." If his guess was right, Bai Shu, whom he had killed that day, had been a member of the Bai Family. Otherwise, Luo Mu couldn't think of any other Bai Family disciple in Jinxiu City who could have been as wealthy as Bai Shu, with so many mid-grade magical artifacts.
Though his doubts were resolved, Luo Mu was now worried. The Bai Family was so powerful, and that was certainly no good for him. If they ever discovered that Luo Mu was the one who had killed Bai Shu, he would be in serious trouble.
There were no walls without ears. Luo Mu decided he had to be careful, lest one careless mistake leave him with nothing but bones.
What Luo Mu didn't know was that Bai Lin, who had once been determined to kill him, was also a member of Jinxiu City's Bai Family. What's more, Bai Lin held an even higher position in the family than Bai Shu. Luo Mu didn't know Bai Lin's name, so he hadn't considered him.
Now that Luo Mu was going to enroll at Jinxiu Academy, it was only a matter of time before the two crossed paths. Luo Mu even planned to ask around about Bai Lin as soon as he arrived. Little did he know how he would feel, or what he would do, once he learned Bai Lin's identity.
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