Retiring into a New Life

Flowing Cloud Province, the Outer Sect Scripture Pavilion of the Twin Crane Sect.

Before the morning mist had cleared, Mo Chen was already seated behind the first-floor counter, dressed in the gray servant's robe that had been washed almost white.

The Twin Crane Sect had more than ten thousand outer disciples. Most were restless and impatient, bent on quickly advancing their cultivation and breaking into the inner sect. The Scripture Pavilion was where they scrambled for cultivation methods and miscellaneous arts.

During the day, the Scripture Pavilion was always bustling with noise.

That day, a young cultivator barked imperiously at Mo Chen, "Old servant, fetch me the talisman-making Jade Slip from the third floor!"

"Hey, hurry up with the registration! Don't hold up my cultivation!"

After fetching the Jade Slip, Mo Chen continued repairing ancient books and miscellaneous records, his brush laying down neat, small regular-script characters on silk manuscripts.

Faced with their shouting and contempt, Mo Chen never showed the slightest change in expression.

When someone carelessly tossed a Jade Slip aside, Mo Chen bent down to pick it up and returned it to the proper shelf. When someone shouted at him to hurry, he lowered his head and answered without another word.

By day, he was merely an old servant with meager cultivation and nimble hands, someone even the outer disciples could not be bothered to spare a second glance.

Only after dusk settled and the last disciple left did Mo Chen slowly close and lock the doors, activate the Scripture Pavilion's built-in sealing formation, and begin cultivating according to the manuals.

This stark contrast between day and night was exactly what Mo Chen wanted. An utterly inconspicuous corner like this was the safest hiding place for someone who could live forever.

Over those three months, Mo Chen began sorting through the Classics and cultivation manuals in the Scripture Pavilion.

He classified the jade slips one by one and repaired the books volume by volume.

He patched damaged ones with spiritual paste and carved fresh labels for Jade Slips that had been mixed up...

Under Mo Chen's patient, daily efforts, the Scripture Pavilion, once as chaotic as a vegetable market, gradually became orderly.

Three months later, Mo Chen knew the arrangement of every text in the entire Scripture Pavilion.

The Scripture Pavilion had nine floors, with spiritual energy faintly swirling around them. Each floor catered to the needs of cultivators at the Qi Refining Stage. Everything below the fifth floor concerned miscellaneous Qi Refining Stage arts; only from the sixth floor upward were there proper cultivation methods for breathing exercises and refining qi.

After examining everything in greater detail, Mo Chen could recite from memory what was displayed on each floor of the Scripture Pavilion.

The first floor held basic miscellaneous knowledge and sect rules, the second introductory Artifact Refining, the third elementary talisman crafting, the fourth introductory alchemy, and the fifth basic Array Formation.

From the sixth floor upward were primary Qi Refining Stage cultivation methods: metal and wood attributes on the sixth, water and fire on the seventh, the Earth Attribute on the eighth, and mixed Five Elements methods, incomplete ancient arts, and unorthodox cultivation methods on the ninth.

With the Classics back in place and the Jade Slips clearly classified, Mo Chen still did not rush to cultivate offensive arts.

Mundane Disguise Arts could only alter outward appearances. They could fool mortal eyes, but there was no guarantee that cultivators lacked supernatural means to see through them.

After spending these past few months reading miscellaneous accounts and anecdotal records of the cultivation world, Mo Chen discovered that a cultivator's Divine Sense could not actually discern another person's age. However, there was a technique called the Bone-Viewing Art, which used spiritual energy specifically to examine a cultivator's bone age. If it revealed his bones to be over a hundred years old while his cultivation was merely at the Qi Refining Third Layer, the secret of his everlasting life would be exposed!

Then Mo Chen would only be treated as an aberration that defied heaven, captured by the sect to have his soul extracted and refined, and reduced to a specimen for study, unable to live or die.

The silver lining in this misfortune was that the Bone-Viewing Art was an unorthodox technique with no offensive power whatsoever. Its cultivation Incantation was also obscure and difficult to understand, and it could only examine cultivators with lower cultivation than the user. As a result, almost no one practiced it, and the Incantation in circulation was incomplete, with full versions rarely found.

Thus, the likelihood of someone seeing through his bone age with the Bone-Viewing Art was indeed very low.

Moreover, the cultivation world had an unwritten rule: Divine Sense must not scan another person's body directly and could only circle lightly around them. Otherwise, it was naked provocation that could spark a fight to the death.

Yet Mo Chen was not worried. His decades of experience as a clerk in the mortal capital had convinced him that wherever those above laid down policies, those below devised countermeasures. As the saying went, all things had something that nurtured them and something that subdued them.

If he supplemented his disguise with other secret arts, he could keep himself safe in most situations.

So Mo Chen settled his mind and plunged headfirst into the category of unorthodox and miscellaneous formulas, searching book by book and scroll by scroll. Eventually, he selected the three spell manuals best suited to him:

The first was the "Breath-Concealing Art," the most basic spiritual energy concealment technique. It could suppress his spiritual energy fluctuations to the utmost, so that even if Divine Sense swept over him, it would merely register the faint spiritual energy of an ordinary servant and pay him no further attention.

The second was the "Form-Concealing Art," which could conceal the fluctuations of his vital energy and blood, causing a cultivator's figure to disappear from the sight of others;

The third was the "Disguise and Form-Change Formula," an orthodox disguise spell of the cultivation world that far surpassed mundane Disguise Art techniques. It could not only alter his skin and appearance but also subtly adjust his bone structure and falsify the age of his flesh!

Though none of these three spells was an offensive art, they were Mo Chen's means of preserving his life.

In the days that followed, Mo Chen remained unhurried and patient. By day, he continued carrying out his duties as a servant; by night, he shut the doors to study the spell Incantation and sat cross-legged to breathe in spiritual energy.

The Breath-Concealing Art and Form-Concealing Art were quite simple and had little in the way of prerequisites. They could be practiced at the second or third level of Qi Refining. The Disguise and Form-Change Formula, however, took more time, and Mo Chen spent a full year mastering it.

As he activated the Hand Seal, Mo Chen's bones sank slightly inward, and a few fine wrinkles appeared on his skin. Even his white hair looked perfectly natural, far beyond anything his old Disguise Art techniques from the martial world could achieve.

In no more time than it took to drink a mouthful of water, Mo Chen felt that his appearance had aged ten years.

To test its effects, Mo Chen deliberately walked around the repository in the guise of an old man during the hours when disciple traffic was heaviest.

A few disciples glanced at him, but merely assumed that the old servant had grown frailer and more haggard with age. A handful of disciples with somewhat higher cultivation, at the seventh level of Qi Refining, inadvertently swept their Divine Sense over him and sensed only an ordinary old man nearing the end of his lifespan, with nothing unusual about him.

Of course, it was quite likely that no one cared about an old cultivator. Most people were concerned only with their own cultivation progress and busy figuring out how to save enough Spirit Stones to buy a Flying Sword.

After all, spending time memorizing the habits and gestures of an old warehouse keeper was certainly less useful than spending that time memorizing a few more lines of a cultivation Incantation!

This continued for several days, yet not a single cultivator entering or leaving the Outer Sect Scripture Pavilion saw that Mo Chen's appearance was a Disguise or detected the slightest flaw.

The heart Mo Chen had held in suspense for over a hundred years finally settled firmly into place. The danger of cultivators seeing through his mundane Disguise Art had been completely erased by these three cultivation spells. From then on, his means of hiding in the cultivation world had no more flaws.

Having resolved his greatest lingering concern, Mo Chen returned to lying low, day after day.

Spring gave way to autumn, cold and heat alternated, and forty years passed in the blink of an eye.

Mo Chen always appeared before others as an old man, using his disguise and form-changing spell each year to make himself look a little older. In truth, he was already a hundred and seventy years old.

Throughout those forty years, the taciturn old servant in the Scripture Pavilion sorted the Classics, signed documents, and stamped seals by day, then shut his doors to visitors at night. While polishing his breath-concealing, form-concealing, and disguise arts until they were as perfectly tempered as a furnace's pure blue flame, he quietly studied the Scripture Pavilion's other low-level cultivation methods.

Mo Chen already knew the basic Five Elements spells by heart and had even dabbled in certain unorthodox spells.

He had practiced even spells with no offensive power, such as secret techniques for binding spirit beasts to a master and the Rainfall Technique. After all, no one else had an endless lifespan like Mo Chen; everyone seized every moment to advance their primary cultivation method.

Mixed spiritual energy flowed slowly through Mo Chen's meridians. Though as slow as dripping water, it never ceased.

Consequently, Mo Chen's cultivation had still made little progress. He was only at the Qi Refinement Fourth Layer, having barely entered the middle stage of Qi Refining.

Forty years. It was time to retire and let another version of himself take his place.

"Tomorrow, I'll visit the home of the steward in charge of the Scripture Pavilion and find an excuse to recommend a nephew for a position here."