Big Fat Fish's Long-Overdue Evolution

At Wave-Gazing Residence No. 13, after Chen Suqiu said her goodbyes, Jiang Jinyi unexpectedly fell silent. She wasn't quite sure how to start!

Jiang Wangxuan sat in the main seat, watching his little sister, who had seemed listless ever since they finished eating. He knew this sis of his was probably tying herself in knots!

"Jinyi, if there's anything you want to ask, go ahead. In a few days, you won't be able to see me again!"

"How could you?"

Jiang Jinyi sprang to her feet, only to see her brother smiling at her!

Only then did she stammer out her question. "Bro, have you reached Foundation Establishment?"

"Mm." Jiang Wangxuan gave a quiet reply, seemingly without any change in emotion, and simply looked at his little sister.

Just a little closer, and this sis of his would have been collecting his corpse!

Perhaps it was because he had once come so close to losing her that seeing his sis alive and bouncing around again made him feel that things were fine as they were. The more one wanted, the easier it was to overlook what one already had.

After emerging from seclusion this time, Jiang Wangxuan felt that his emotions had grown somewhat richer. Perhaps he had that scarlet crescent moon to thank for it; his usually placid seven emotions and six desires had all been stirred to varying degrees!

He might as well assume that guess was right!

"Bro, weren't you afraid?" A thin mist clouded Jiang Jinyi's eyes, and her voice caught as she spoke.

Jiang Wangxuan fell silent. He had thought his sister would ask why he hadn't told her beforehand, or why he had decided to attempt Foundation Establishment so suddenly.

He hadn't expected his sister to ask whether he had been afraid.

Where was he even supposed to begin? Forging an Immortal Foundation should have been the finest reward a cultivator could give himself for his life of cultivation. Generals died on the battlefield, and cultivators died while breaking through realms; it had been so since ancient times!

Yet Jiang Wangxuan, who had always been well-read in Daoist texts, didn't know how to tell his sister these simple truths.

Had he been afraid? Probably not! Had he felt fear afterward? That he certainly had!

In the end, Jiang Wangxuan had thought [Grand Yin] far too simple. Perhaps Qingheng Great Luo had slaughtered too thoroughly in the recent past, or perhaps the Qinghuan lineage had held the world in its grip for a thousand years, but Jiang Wangxuan truly couldn't empathize with the dark years described in the history books!

He had assumed that for Qinghuan cultivators, cultivating Immortal Methods and breaking through realms was as routine as taking entrance exams and earning qualifications in his previous life.

If Big Fat Fish hadn't come to his rescue in time, if the Black Tide manifested by his own bloodline hadn't happened to counter the scarlet crescent moon, and if not for all his earlier opportunities, his sis would probably be sorting through his belongings in this residence right now!

"It's all over! But Jinyi, why do you still burst into tears at the drop of a hat, just like when you were little?"

Jiang Wangxuan rose from the main seat and patted his sister's stray tuft of hair. "Jinyi, you should be congratulating your brother now. You can also celebrate becoming the first generation of the rich yourself!"

Seeing her brother making his out-of-the-blue jokes to cheer her up, just as he had when they were children, she felt most of the great fear of being parted from him by life and death that had weighed on her heart dissipate!

Still, she said timidly, "You're always going off alone, Bro. I worry about you very, very much too!"

"I'm really afraid that one day I'll actually lose you!"

In the Rising Yang Mansion, Big Fat Fish sat on her master's Spiritual Sense at this inopportune moment, propped up her great big face, and said wistfully, "Jinyi really is a good little sister!"

Jiang Wangxuan reached out and wiped the golden tears from his sister's face. Feeling the dampness on his fingertips, he turned away without thinking. "Come on, I'll take you to the back courtyard. It's where you and Junior Suqiu will be living from now on."

"Oh, okay!" Jiang Jinyi wiped her damp nose herself and looked at her brother's back. Her eyes unwittingly curved into little crescents again!

Had she been too gloomy just now? It seemed she had only been thinking from her own perspective.

Her brother was so gifted and clever. Foundation Establishment might be as hard as ascending to heaven for others, but for him, it should have been as easy as drinking water!

Hehe, what had her brother just said? She was going to be the first generation of the rich. Now that she thought about it, he was right. People on the forums often said that in the past, a great Foundation Establishment cultivator could call himself an old ancestor!

So from now on, she would be the Jiang Household old ancestor's own little sister. That really did make her the first generation of the rich! At the thought, Jiang Jinyi happily wrapped her arms around her brother's arm.

As they walked from the front courtyard to the back, the bewildering variety of secret rooms dazzled Jiang Jinyi: an Alchemy Chamber, meditation rooms, artifact furnaces, a Spirit Plant area, talisman rooms, and other cultivation workrooms related to the myriad arts of immortal cultivation.

"During these next few years in Lüyu, you should see which arts interest you and choose one to study in depth. It'll do you a lot of good later on. Of course, you should still focus on your understanding of the Dao. Once that catches up, your cultivation will naturally rise with it!"

Jiang Wangxuan rarely had the time to talk properly with his sis about the key points of cultivation. She had only just reached Qi Refinement First Level, so it wasn't too late to make long-term plans!

Especially now that he had successfully forged his Immortal Foundation, Big Fat Fish had finally undergone a complete superevolution from the 'half-evolved' state she had been in since forming the silver-white lunar disc!

She had gone from a 'data-ification' that could only protect the Rising Yang Mansion to a superbrain capable of calculating in all directions!

Although Big Fat Fish had been able to help him deduce cultivation methods at the Foundation Establishment Realm, her scope had been limited to him alone.

Big Fat Fish had monitored every change in his true essence and Law Power as he practiced his cultivation method, then optimized the Autumn Moon Frost Osmanthus Qi Condensation Method step by step. It had really been more like continuous trial and error, akin to the brute-force method!

But the Big Fat Fish of today was no longer what she had been. With him as a Foundation Establishment Realm large model, she could now actively deduce the cultivation methods of other lineages and analyze the Law Techniques opponents unleashed in battle!

She could also copy them into her database and leave them running in the background for her to decipher slowly later, before actively optimizing them into advanced techniques in Big Fat Fish's own version!

Judging by the feedback over the past few days, with the computational power of Big Fat Fish's current version, analyzing a fourth-grade technique alone would take an estimated two months of work!

A third-grade technique, on the other hand, only needed around a week to half a month! To completely optimize a fourth-grade cultivation method, Big Fat Fish estimated around half a year, while a third-grade cultivation method needed only a month!

Judging by Big Fat Fish's estimates, third-grade techniques were standard for Foundation Establishment cultivators, and he himself had been able to force their use after grasping the profundities of his cultivation method at Qi Refinement Perfection.

But fourth-grade cultivation methods were a considerable step above third-grade ones!

Unfortunately, the ability Big Fat Fish had possessed in the Qi Refining Stage to purify true essence had made no progress in this evolution. Big Fat Fish, however, considered that perfectly normal. After Foundation Establishment, the Immortal Foundation was the foundation a cultivator relied on to survive.

True essence and Law Power were merely fuel for casting techniques, while the Immortal Foundation was, in a sense, part of the profundity of heaven and earth. It could also be seen as a partial projection of a divine fruition Divine Ability!

At that level, Big Fat Fish's purification ability evidently had no effect on the Immortal Foundation. However, her early purification had helped him refine his Lunar Essence, bringing it ever closer to primordial moonlight!

If a Qi Ingestion cultivator nurturing their nature in ancient times had possessed that ability, wouldn't they have surely sensed Qi, attained 'truth,' and become a Yellow Crown in a single leap?

"Master, I've already customized an 'I Am a Genius Immortal Cultivation System!' for Sister Jinyi. As long as she follows my system, reaching Foundation Establishment in ten years won't be a dream!"

Big Fat Fish excitedly held up the little toy she had just cobbled together, eager to persuade Jiang Wangxuan to install it on Jinyi!

Jiang Wangxuan's face darkened, and he knocked Big Fat Fish to her knees with a fist of love. "What age do you think this is, and you're still playing at the system genre? Do you think you can measure the mighty power of divine fruition in numbers?"

"Just one rumored fate Divine Ability could spill everything about your ancestors for eighteen generations as easily as reciting a menu!"

"Besides, don't think I can't see the hundred-odd copies of this shoddy system you made on a whim hidden in your food bowl! Big Fat Fish, how can you be so lazy?"

Big Fat Fish turned her back and whimpered aggrievedly, "Haven't I been busy lately? I've been analyzing Cicada Molting Under the Moon, Seeking Purity Epistle that we got on Jinping Mountain, and Renewed Wood's True Exposition of Molting Wood, Crossing Calamity, and Transforming into a Spirit."

"I also have to eat, sleep, and beat up 'Doudou' every day. I'm so busy!"

Jiang Wangxuan sighed in the Rising Yang Mansion. "Leave True Exposition of Molting Wood, Crossing Calamity, and Transforming into a Spirit alone for now. What have you made of Cicada Molting Under the Moon, Seeking Purity Epistle so far?"

"It's amazing! This cultivation method actually isn't of the [Cold Qi] path. It belongs to the [Grand Yin] lineage instead, and I suspect it's sixth-grade!"

"Then leave it in the background for slow analysis. There's no hurry for now. Get ready to free up some computing power to check Jinyi for anything unusual!"

Jiang Wangxuan immediately gave Big Fat Fish her orders, then watched his sister wander around his living quarters with a look of disgust on her face!

Jinyi frowned as she surveyed the utterly bare bedroom, which looked like a prison cell. Suddenly, her heart ached. A life of bitter cultivation like this was far too dreary!

"All right, stop looking. I spend most of the year cultivating in seclusion in the meditation room. I only sleep in this bedroom a few times a year!"

Jiang Jinyi let out a heavy breath. "Bro, if I live here, I can fix up this bedroom, right?"

"You can do what you like with the back courtyard, as long as you don't touch the building's structure. But the back courtyard is pretty big, so you and Suqiu should do what you can. There's no need to make everyday things so complicated!"

His sister glared at her esteemed brother in discontent. She had finally discovered the greatest difference between herself and her genius brother: she was still far too worldly and liked fussing over things her brother considered unnecessary!

"Oh, right, I forgot to tell you something!"

Jiang Wangxuan remembered his unlucky younger brother back home, who had drawn the attention of many people. "Dezhao had a Spirit Root implanted!"

"What?"

Jiang Jinyi jumped more than three feet into the air on the spot, a pale golden phantom flickering over her body, then began circling the room like a little bee.

She kept muttering, "How dare he? The moment I left, he bewitched Mom and Dad into letting him cultivate!"

"That brat! I really misjudged him before. He was putting on such a good act!"

"No, I have to go back and give him a beating. With us away from home, that brat's really turned the heavens upside down!"

Jiang Wangxuan unconsciously covered his mouth, his eyes full of laughter as he watched Jinyi switch from a thoughtful little sister to a tyrannosaur of an older sister in an instant!

This sis of his was just too amusing!

As Jiang Wangxuan laughed, he remembered how he had often mischievously teased Jinyi when he looked after her as a child! Jinyi had always been led around in circles by him, but she never got angry, and before long she would be clinging to him again.

How the years turned. In the blink of an eye, he and his sister had both grown up!