The answer: fooling the steward with an illusion, creating a new self from thin air

After returning to the Scripture Repository, Mo Chen had no mind for anything else. He went straight behind the counter and sat down, quickly working out what he would need the next day.

Faking his death and taking his leave, then returning to work under a new identity—he had used this routine several times at the mortal world's Wenyuan Pavilion and knew it by heart.

But the cultivation world was unlike the mortal world. Divine Sense probes and secret arts that distinguished truth from falsehood made danger lurk everywhere. The slightest oversight could expose his secret.

The most crucial step now was to give his elderly self a dignified exit and let his present self take over naturally, without arousing even a shred of suspicion in Zhou Ping or leaving any loose end that could be traced.

During the day, Mo Chen performed his duties as usual. The small, regular characters beneath his brush remained as neat as ever, betraying none of the turmoil in his heart.

The sun sank behind the western mountains, and the last outer sect disciple left, muttering curses. After Mo Chen shut the Scripture Repository's doors, the spirit lamps inside lit up automatically, bathing the Shu shelves in a pale blue-green glow.

Mo Chen walked slowly to a corner of the miscellaneous studies Shu shelves on the first floor and drew a yellowed Jade Slip from the lowest shelf.

Five characters were engraved on the Jade Slip: "Shallow Afterimage Illusion Technique."

It was a rudimentary illusion art that Mo Chen had stumbled upon while sorting texts more than a decade ago.

When he first read it, an idea had stirred in his mind. If he could cultivate a clone, he could have it handle the Scripture Repository's daily chores while he freed himself to explore the Twin Crane Sect, gathering more hidden cultivation methods and knowledge about cultivation.

So he had found some spare time to practice the opening section. In just a few days, he condensed a phantom clone.

Mo Chen had initially been overjoyed, but just as he prepared to study it further, he discovered a line of tiny annotations at the end of the Jade Slip that completely extinguished his idea of having a clone work his shifts.

The annotation stated that true cloning abilities in the cultivation world required Golden Core Realm cultivation before one could condense a physical clone capable of acting independently.

Even the lowest-grade Pseudo-Clone Technique required Foundation Establishment Late Stage cultivation, using blood essence and the soul as catalysts.

This "Shallow Afterimage Illusion Technique," however, was merely a rudimentary illusion technique compiled by later generations who had imitated the superficial aspects of cloning abilities. It was not a true cloning technique.

The phantom condensed by this illusion had neither a physical body nor an independent consciousness. It depended entirely on the caster's Divine Sense for control.

It could not even touch physical objects, much less do anyone's work. At most, it could fool people.

On top of that, it could only exist for a quarter of an hour. Beyond that limit, its spiritual energy would run out and it would disperse on its own. It had no practical value whatsoever.

"Fuck! What a waste of effort!"

Finding the illusion as unrewarding as a chicken rib—too little meat to enjoy, yet a pity to discard—Mo Chen had tossed out a couple of complaints about its author before setting it aside, never to touch it again.

Yet now, this seemingly useless afterimage illusion had become the very thing he would rely on to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new.

There was also something even more important: he needed to raise his cultivation. Although the Breath-Concealing Art and the illusion method claimed they could completely deceive cultivators at the same level, advancing another step would be safer and give him deeper reserves of magical power.

Mo Chen's cultivation was currently at the peak of the qi refinement fourth layer. It was not that he could not advance to the fifth layer; he had deliberately held himself back.

Otherwise, an outer sect cultivator advancing too quickly would only draw attention.

The secret of his Longevity was something the entire cultivation world would flock to like ducks. Only by keeping his cultivation around the fourth or fifth layer could he conceal himself more effectively.

Not contending was itself a way of contending; seeking slowness was also a way of seeking speed.

But now, that was no longer necessary.

He had to advance one layer first, then have a false figure stand in for him.

"At this point, all I can do is clutch at the Buddha's feet at the last moment."

Mo Chen sighed softly and took out the "Black Turtle Breathing Method" as well.

This cultivation method could take him all the way to the Foundation Establishment Realm. It also drew upon wood- and water-aspected spiritual energy to balance the various impure spiritual powers within his body, making it especially suitable for someone with mixed spiritual roots like him.

Following the fifth layer's formula, Mo Chen circulated a lesser celestial circuit. His cultivation, suppressed for nearly a hundred years, naturally broke through to the qi refinement fifth layer.

Everything flowed as naturally as water finding its channel, without the slightest obstacle.

After briefly stabilizing his qi refinement fifth layer cultivation, Mo Chen hurriedly pressed the jade slip to his brow, sank his divine sense into it, and studied the illusion formula anew, word by word and sentence by sentence.

Following the formula, he circulated the meager spiritual energy within him, sketching an outline in the air and imitating his own figure and appearance, repeating it ten times, a hundred times...

Mo Chen kept correcting the spiritual energy's path and refining the phantom's features, striving to reproduce every detail of his gait and expression.

The night deepened outside the window, and the spirit lamps flickered. Without sleep or rest, he cultivated like this for an entire night.

The phantom stood quietly, identical in every respect to the Old Mo guise he had worn for forty years. Even the slight limp in his walk had been reproduced with lifelike precision.

It remained fairly stable, lasting a quarter of an hour before slowly dispersing, exactly as the Shu had described.

"It worked."

Mo Chen felt a little of the tension ease from his heart.

A night of arduous practice had left him utterly exhausted, but he had finally brought this chicken-rib illusion to a usable level, enough to handle today's encounter.

Mo Chen activated the "Disguise and Form-Change Formula." In an instant, his aged exterior fell away entirely, and as spiritual energy circulated, a face untouched by the years emerged.

With fine brows, clear eyes, and not a wrinkle in sight, he looked unmistakably like a youth of eighteen or nineteen, a completely different person from the decrepit Old Mo of the previous night.

Looking at himself in the mirror, Mo Chen could not help falling into a brief daze.

Memories of the past surged into his heart like a tide.

That had been before misfortune struck Mo Chen's family, when he still lived in a rural village.

Every day, Mo Chen worked in the fields, plowing, weeding, and carrying water, neglecting none of it.

Everyone in the village found it strange. Despite the sun and rain, no matter how hard he labored, Mo Chen's appearance never changed. His figure remained handsome and straight, without a trace of a field worker's dark, weathered roughness.

Farmers passing through the village often pointed at him and remarked that he "didn't look like a farmer, but like a pretty boy living off others."

What embarrassed Mo Chen even more was that not one of the village's marriageable girls dared discuss marrying him.

In private, they whispered that Mo Chen had reached twenty without showing any age and still had such delicate skin. He was clearly some mountain fiend in disguise, and marrying him would probably mean having their yang energy sucked away.

Those rumors pierced like needles, yet Mo Chen alone could find no way to defend himself.

Mo Chen still remembered returning home after finishing his farm work that day. In the dim room, he stood before the old bronze mirror, mottled all over with corrosion, staring blankly at his unchanging face.

Back then, his heart had been filled with fear and unease.

When he was twenty-five, rumors of his Longevity spread to the nearby city, prompting powerful officials and wealthy nobles to offer rewards.

There was even a saying then that a tael of Mo Chen's blood was worth a tael of gold in the city.

In the end, after fleeing for several years, Mo Chen traveled eight hundred li to the capital. With his father's token, he became an apprentice to a Shu copyist at the Wenyuan Pavilion, finally gaining the chance to work as a young scribe.

A hundred years passed in the flick of a finger. From a mortal Shu library to a cultivators' Scripture Repository, the people around him had changed again and again. Seas had become mulberry fields; familiar things remained, but the people were gone.

Only the face in the mirror had not changed in the slightest.

Mo Chen came back to himself and adopted the manner of a reserved, wooden mortal youth.

I am my own nephew.

Still, he had to admit that using an illusion in front of other cultivators for the first time left him unsure of himself.

After straightening his robes and making sure his appearance was in order, Mo Chen picked up the forged household registration silk scroll he had prepared beforehand and hurried out of the Scripture Repository toward Zhou Ping's Cave Abode in the mountain hollow.

Mist wreathed the hollow in the early morning. The smell of alcohol still lingered around the entrance to Zhou Ping's Cave Abode; clearly, he had drunk late into the night again.

Standing outside the cave entrance, Mo Chen stirred his Divine Sense slightly. A phantom of Old Mo instantly condensed beside him, stooped and wearing a deferential expression, exactly as he had looked when taking his leave the day before.

"Reporting to you, Steward. This old man has brought his nephew, Mo Xiaoyi, to report for duty and await your assessment."