When dealing with the Sages of the Three Pure Ones,
Mu Chen felt there was no need to lie.
Laozi frowned slightly.
Puzzled, he asked,
"Die in a calamity? The Great Witch-Demon Catastrophe has already ended, and heaven and earth are clear. If you joined the Human Sect, with me here, how could you possibly die in a calamity?"
Mu Chen said nothing.
I can't exactly say I fucking transmigrated here, can I?
"Um... I'm timid by nature. Please forgive me, Sage!"
"Not even if I guarantee your safety as a Sage?"
"Well... that still seems a little unsafe."
"What about Tongtian and Yuanshi?"
"Uh... if even someone as powerful as Sage Taishang can't guarantee it, they certainly can't!"
Mu Chen seized every opening to butter him up.
Looking at Mu Chen's shifty expression,
Laozi felt curious, but also somewhat amused.
He was one of the Sages of heaven and earth.
Who in all heaven and earth would dare lay a hand on Mu Chen under his protection?
But seeing Mu Chen's resolute expression,
he sighed.
"Very well. It seems the karmic connection has yet to arrive. You have no affinity with the Human Sect."
He had only taken an interest out of appreciation for Mu Chen's talent.
He had been even less willing to let the Jie Sect or Chan Sect poach Mu Chen.
He had never expected that Mu Chen would look down on them, too.
But then he remembered how, when his master had preached the Dao at the Purple Cloud Palace, Mu Chen had not even given his master face. That immediately made him feel much better.
He would not even give the Dao Ancestor face.
Let alone the Three Pure Ones?
Mu Chen said with a beaming smile,
"The Human Race is now poised to rise, with flourishing fortune. The Human Sect will surely do very well. There's no need for me to stand around pointing fingers."
Laozi nodded and said,
"If you change your mind, you may come find me. You are already a member of the Human Race, after all. The Human Sect's doors will always be open to you."
With that, he vanished from the Cloud Sea Grand Formation.
Mu Chen waited a while.
Then, still feeling somewhat uneasy,
he cautiously asked,
"Sage, are you still there?"
"Why not come back in for some tea?"
"Don't fool me. I know you're still here."
After receiving no response for a long time,
Mu Chen finally hurried to seal off the Cloud Sea Grand Formation completely.
Then he let out a heavy breath.
His cultivation had been too low before for him to notice.
Now that he had reached the Daluo Golden Immortal realm, he understood ever more clearly how terrifying the Sages were.
But as for refusing Laozi's invitation,
Mu Chen had no regrets.
At the very least, the future would prove everything.
"The Three Pure Ones are all busy spreading their teachings in the Primordial World now. They won't have time to bother with me. I need to take advantage of this period to keep a low profile and grow stronger."
Muttering to himself, Mu Chen hurriedly entered seclusion.
Ten thousand years.
With Laozi's avatar having visited in person,
that incomparably profound presence had given Mu Chen a sliver of insight.
And so his bottleneck had loosened.
Ten thousand years later,
Mu Chen successfully broke through the bottleneck of the early Daluo Golden Immortal stage and reached the middle stage.
At the same time, he completed the system's fishing task for those ten thousand years and obtained the Twelfth-Grade Karmic Fire Lotus Platform.
This was Patriarch Minghe's treasure.
Seated upon the lotus platform, one would be surrounded by blazing karmic fire. Its defenses were astonishing, and it could burn karma into karmic fire, combining offense and defense.
Simply put, it looked extremely cool.
So Mu Chen used it as his seat cushion.
And with this Innate Spirit Treasure in hand,
Mu Chen's status panel was now looking quite respectable.
"Host: Mu Chen." "Race: Human Race." "Cultivation realm: Daluo Golden Immortal [middle stage]." "Divine abilities: Dharma Heaven and Earth, Heaven Beyond Heaven Incarnation, Thirty-Six Heavenly Dipper Arts, True God Lightning Control Method, Shrinking the Earth into Inches, Body-Protecting Fire God Art." "Cultivation methods: low-tier breathing method, high-tier breathing method, Zhurong Fire Control Method." "Weapons: Imitation Four Swords of Immortal Slaying, Demon Suppression Pagoda, Soul-Scattering Gourd." "Supreme treasures: Samadhi True Fire, one drop of the Origin of Water [can summon all waters of the Primordial World], Hong Yun, Twelfth-Grade Karmic Fire Lotus Platform."
Of these, Mu Chen had already given away both the Demon Suppression Pagoda and Hong Yun.
But if he wanted to use them, he naturally still could, so they remained included.
Mu Chen nodded in satisfaction.
With stats like these, he would undoubtedly be a high-end player in an online game.
Of course,
he was still quite a way from the top.
There was nothing he could do about that. Raising his cultivation was rather difficult, after all.
Just going from the early to the middle Daluo stage had taken countless tens of thousands of years.
Heaven knew how difficult the Daluo Mystic Immortal and Quasi-Sage realms would be.
Just then,
Mu Chen suddenly felt a weight in his hand.
The fishing rod in the pool seemed to have hooked something.
"Ding! The host has been detected encountering a cultivation bottleneck. A system support treasure has been fished up for you: the Heaven-Deceiving Cloak!"