Jiang Ding spent several months in quiet cultivation before opening his eyes again.
"Great Sun, Senior."
Before him, an elder in a dark blue Daoist robe bowed, his voice tinged with reverence. "I am Tian Qing, director of the Immortal Gate Academy of Sciences. I have come to report to you."
He had been summoned by the Great Sun Heavenly Lord.
This was the work of the academy's director and its many deputy directors: serving the Spirit Transformation cultivators and building research teams around them. They were more like administrators. It did not mean the academy's director was necessarily one of the Immortal Sect's strongest people.
Likewise, although Jiang Ding's Sword Dojo Group had been elevated into the Immortal Sect Sword Dao Academy, Jiang Ding himself was not its director.
"You're Tian Qing?"
"Tian Qing... it's been a long time."
After receiving the memories of his various clones, Jiang Ding looked back with nostalgia. "It was three hundred and twenty-seven years ago, I think. You'd only just reached the Nascent Soul Realm then. You looked so young, but you've aged quite a bit... Have you had a lot on your mind?"
As a cultivator who had mastered the Great Sun Enlightenment Field Technique, Jiang Ding often had younger cultivators seek him out with questions.
That was why he knew the Immortal Sect's younger generation fairly well.
True Lord Tian Qing was one of the most outstanding Nascent Soul Cultivators the Immortal Sect had produced in recent centuries. His achievements in the Array Spirit Algorithm had earned him the directorship of the Immortal Gate Academy of Sciences.
It was a reward. The position made it easier to work at the forefront of immortal technology and to find opportunities to reach Spirit Transformation.
It was also a good chance to deepen his