Lake Island, Beiluo.

While in the middle of setting up the chessboard, Lu Fan could not help but narrow his eyes. A smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

“Oh, already in?”

Lu Fan smiled.

Using a Spiritual Sense duplicate was not really a very ingenious way. In fact, the Lord of the Plane with the orchid fingers once utilized that strategy. However, compared to Lu Fan’s Spiritual Sense duplicate, that of the Lord of the Plane’s was much weaker.

“The Scriptures Depository of Wudi City… The Scriptures Depository of an extremely powerful force in a peak Mid Level Martial World must have the records of many things…”

Leaning on the back of the Thousand Blades Chair, Lu Fan continued playing with the chess piece in his hand.

He seemed to be pondering on something.

Maybe the Scriptures Depository had something that Lu Fan was looking forward to.

He lifted his hand and waved.

A gentle breeze blew by, stirring the Heaven Facing Spiritual Chrysanthemums on the island, while the Biluo Peach Blossoms were lovely and charming. Bamboo leaves were rustling in the Black Bamboo Forest, which sounded like something was being sharpened on stones.

A thick fog started to shroud the island. It gradually covered the sky over Beiluo Lake Island.

On Beiluo Lake.

While sitting straight on the bamboo raft fishing, Lv Dongxuan had a hunch.

“I’ll start going into seclusion. Will meet no one during the seclusion,” Lu Fan said flatly.

His voice came.

Lv Dongxuan trembled. Cupping his hands and slightly bowing, he said, “Yes.”

West Mountain, Beiluo.

In the Trial Pagoda.

Ning Zhao, who had successfully evolved elemental Spirit Qi, suddenly opened her eyes.

She looked at where Ni Yu was sitting cross-legged and saw a Spirit Qi swirl tumbling over her head.

“Ni Yu is finally on the verge of breaking through to the Internal Organs!”

Ning Zhao’s long eyelashes vibrated. She looked like she was happy.

Among so many cultivators, Ni Yu was kind of the most special one.

She had not experienced any critical fights. Nor had she been cultivating hard. All she had been doing was refining elixirs and eating them.

She was the only person who had achieved the Internal Organs Realm simply by taking elixirs.

Ning Zhao seemed to sense something. She looked at Yi Yue in the distance.

Yi Yue, who had been cultivating with her eyes shut, had opened her eyes. She looked at Ning Zhao and barely showed a smile. Her face was a little pale.

Ning Zhao let out a sigh.

“Don’t give up. Heaven blesses the diligent,” Ning Zhao said.

Yi Yue’s thin lips were pressed into a thin line. “Sister Ning, I know…”

“Young Master told me so too. But… Will I really achieve anything?”

“Without talent, will diligence alone work?”

Yi Yue was a little frustrated. She looked at Ni Yu, who was in the middle of a breakthrough, and then turned around to leave the Trial Pagoda.

Ning Zhao did not know what to tell her.

Seeing Yi Yue disappearing from her sight outside of the Trial Pagoda, she could do nothing but let out a sigh.

On the other side, Ni Yu opened her eyes slowly as well. The expression on her chubby face suggested she was struggling.

“Is Sister Yi Yue angry?” Ni Yu said.

Ning Zhao got to her feet and touched Ni Yu’s head.

“Everyone has a unique way. Like what the Young Master said, there are tens of thousands of ways to cultivate, and all of them could lead to immortality. Yi Yue hasn’t found her way yet. That’s all,” Ning Zhao said.

Ni Yu smiled so happily that her eyes narrowed into slits.

“Sister Ning, I’ve achieved Internal Organs. I can refine Body Tempering Elixirs now… I’m going to refine a batch. Sister Ning, would you test the first batch for me?” Ni Yu asked.

In the distance, Jing Yue opened his eyes. He said with a faint smile, “Ni Yu, you are ungrateful. Isn’t it always me who tests elixirs for you?”

Ni Yu rolled her eyes at him. She put a sugar-coated Gathering Qi Elixir into her mouth to calm herself down.

Yi Yue walked out of the Trial Pagoda. She was a little down.

She was lost. She was wandering around Beiluo City, without a destination or purpose.

She was a hardworking cultivator, more diligent than most people. However, her Qi Core had a small capacity. Lu Fan had told her that she had little talent for cultivation.

However, she did not give up. And she achieved Qi Core Realm and then Peak Qi Condensation.

She did not want to give up.

She came to Beiluo Lake. The rippling and glistening lake was shrouded in a thick fog.

She wanted to go onto the island, but Lv Dongxuan, sitting on the bamboo raft fishing, told her the Young Master was in seclusion.

Yi Yue felt even more lost. She felt the whole world had abandoned her.

“Yi Yue, why do you want to be strong?”

“Just be Young Master’s maid. Isn’t that good enough?” Lv Dongxuan asked with curiosity while holding a fishing rod.

“As long as you are Young Master’s maid, even if you are an ordinary person, no one in the world will have the nerve to look down on you,” Lv Dongxuan said.

“But how can I be ordinary when I’m already the Young Master’s maid?” Yi Yue answered him with a question.

Lv Dongxuan was surprised. He suddenly did not know how to answer…

Because Yi Yue did make sense. If the maid of the mysterious owner of White Jade City turned out to be an ordinary person, then that would be a shock for the world.

“Young Master won’t care what others think,” Lv Dongxuan said after thinking it through.

Holding her legs, Yi Yue sat on the dock at the lakeside. In the breeze, she looked like she was in a daze.

“But I’m just Young Master’s maid, and I care what others think…”

Lv Dongxuan let out a sigh on the bamboo raft.

When everyone around you was excellent, being ordinary was like a sin.

Even though others did not think so, you could not avoid feeling so yourself.

Yi Yue did not speak.

She looked at where the White Jade City Pavilion was located.

Her thin red lips pressed together. She kowtowed toward the pavilion. Then she got to her feet and left.

Late in the night.

Without telling anyone, Yi Yue left Beiluo City alone with her luggage. She went down the mountain while it was snowing in the middle of the night.

She was a proud person. She wanted to be strong…

Just like what her self-introduction suggested when Lu Fan was asking about his maids’ strength.

******

Nie Changqing fled from the barren mountain.

Once he left the barren mountain, he was like a fish in the sea. The sea was spacious enough for the fish to swim.

He was hiding in the crowd. It was much more difficult for the disciples of Wudi City to find him this way.

Nie Changqing even chose to ambush the enemy instead of doing nothing but wait for his death.

He would only attack Golden Elixir cultivators who were relatively weak.

One by one, he killed a Golden Elixir cultivator in Wudi City.

Nie Changqing was cautious. He heard a seventh-level Golden Elixir cultivator was going to kill him. A seventh-level Golden Elixir cultivator!

It was like a Heavenly Lock cultivator who had opened his seventh section of the spine. Such a man was extremely strong.

Nie Changqing would absolutely die once he ran into this man.

Pressure, under such tremendous pressure, Nie Changqing’s strength was improving steadily.

He finished refining another vertebra while he was fleeing.

Besides, his comprehension of knife spirit was also enhanced.

He had no idea which level he had achieved according to the leveling system of knife spirit, but he was much stronger than when he had just entered the forbidden area.

Outside of Wudi City.

On the muddy road of a ruined village.

Nie Changqing unsheathed the Dragon Slaying Knife. Red blood dripped on the ground.

“Second-level Golden Elixir.”

Nie Changqing breathed out. He smiled at the inner-order, purple-robed disciple from Wudi City lying on the ground.

He took out his last Gathering Qi Elixir and put it into his mouth.

Nie Changqing had almost used up all of his Spirit Qi in the Qi Core to kill this second-level Golden Elixir cultivator.

All of a sudden.

A strong wind started.

The snow seemed to slow down.

Far away.

At the entrance of the village.

A purple-robed youngster was standing there quietly. He was carrying a knife at his waist too. His hand was holding the handle.

Nie Changqing felt threatened…

By that purple-robed youngster.

“Stowaway, arrogant knife.”

“It was not easy at all to locate you,” the youngster said slowly.

His voice was a little magnetic.

“I’m Wang Qianxun, sixth-level Golden Elixir, ranked fifth among the inner-order, purple-robed disciples of Wudi City,”the youngster continued.

“I’m very interested in the magic knife in your hand,” the youngster said with a smile.

“Give me your knife. And I’ll let go of you. How does that sound?”

******

In the valley of the Supreme Knife School’s forbidden area.

It was an ordeal for Li Sansi.

The woman in this valley was a witch. She was evil and cruel…

Like a dirty viper living in the dark.

Withered vines held the Supreme Knife School’s disciples. This woman would kill three of them every day, like three meals per day, drinking their blood until they died. Her way was ruthless.

Hanging upside down from the ceiling of the cave, Li Sansi was scared out of his wits to see the woman kill the Supreme Knife School’s disciples. Gradually, that fear developed into despair.

It might be his turn when all of the Supreme Knife School’s disciples were dead.

Li Sansi had no idea at all what attainments this woman had achieved.

He only felt she was too strong for him to fight. Was she a Heavenly Lock?

No, she was even stronger than Heavenly Lock. He even felt as if he was facing Young Master Lu from Beiluo when facing her.

This witch was as strong as Young Master Lu!

But after all this time here, Li Sansi had also realized this woman seemed to be trapped here.

While still hanging upside down here, besides listening to the tragic screams of the Supreme Knife School’s disciples, Li Sansi had been observing the cave.

He was an Internal Organs cultivator who had refined all of his five organs. The five organs corresponded to eyes, nose, mouth, ear, etc. Internal Organs cultivators could see better, so they could see clearly during the night.

Despite the darkness in the cave, Li Sansi was able to see the many dead bodies littered on the cave floor.

Some of them belonged to humans, while others belonged to small animals. There were even dried corpses of snakes and insects…

This woman had been feeding off snakes and insects in the cave.

Li Sansi certainly was not in a situation to have sympathy for her. After all, it would not be long before he would end up in the same state as these snakes and insects.

When the last Supreme Knife School’s disciple had been brutally killed…

It became eerily quiet around Li Sansi.

In the cave, he could only hear the woman’s breathing and the withered vines’ movement.

Finally…

A bloodstained face showed up before Li Sansi.

That woman’s eyes were like two candlelights in the night, with a luster cold enough to freeze people up.

Staring at Li Sansi, she said in a beautiful, charming voice, “You are not from the Supreme Knife School…”

Li Sansi was stunned. He did not expect the woman to ask him questions before drinking his blood.

“Are you being chased by the Supreme Knife School?”

Li Sansi was about to answer her, but the woman spoke again.

“You have a nice body. It’s not easy to meet the Supreme Knife School’s enemy…” the woman said.

She touched Li Sansi’s cheek gently with her hand stained with mud and with long, narrow fingernails.

Li Sansi turned pale.

Don’t do this.

“Do you want to stay alive?” the woman asked.

She licked her lips with her tongue.

“Well…if it’s possible… Living is good,” Li Sansi answered.

“It is possible as long as you agree on one thing…” the woman said.

“Please tell me, Miss.”

Li Sansi’s face trembled. Did the woman have dirty thoughts about him?

“Miss?”

“Hahaha…”

“You look young, maybe only twenty-something. I’ve been sealed in this cave for fifty years! Miss? Hahaha…”

The woman burst out laughing. Countless withered vines pierced into the walls, gravels falling to the ground.

“I can let you out, but on one condition… You must kill that bastard Ye Shoudao from the Supreme Knife School for me!” the woman said coldly.

Li Sansi felt a tremendous amount of killing intent, which almost suffocated him.

“Who is this Ye Shoudao? What is his level?”

Li Sansi thought he should ask about such information.

“Ye Shoudao, leader of the Supreme Knife School. The bastard only has one arm. He is a hypocrite. As to his level, he is in Soul Transformation Realm, the peak of Nascent Soul Realm… You know how he lost that arm of his?”

“I bit it off!” the woman said with a cold smile.

Li Sansi felt a chill creep over him.

“Miss, you must be kidding… I’m just a weak Daoist monk. How can I beat a man at the peak of Nascent Soul Realm?” Li Sansi asked.

“I know you are weak, but you have a great foundation. I’ll lend you my Nascent Soul to help you cultivate so that you can achieve Nascent Soul Realm as quickly as possible!” the woman said, while her tongue was licking her lips.

Li Sansi was scared out of his wits.

Did this woman intend to use his body as a furnace?

Li Sansi’s pupils shrank.

His Spirit Qi started to flow and transformed into a Spirit Qi armor. He would try his best to fight back. Even if he died, he would die with dignity!

“Hahaha…”

The woman’s charming laugh echoed in the cave.

The next second.

She opened her mouth, and innumerous blood gushed out onto Li Sansi’s face. Covered in the blood, Li Sansi’s body was lifted.

******

The Great Qian Matriarchal Empire.

A jail wagon was advancing slowly along the main avenue leading to the Imperial City of the Great Qian Matriarchal Empire.

The folks of the empire were watching from both sides of the main avenue. Those women were all looking and pointing at the man in the jail wagon.

In the jail wagon.

Ding Jiudeng was calmly sitting cross-legged.

His hands were pressed together. He had been feeling terrified after being caught.

However…

He went into a daze. When he had come to himself, he felt dull, and the feeling of fear was also gone somehow.

The wagon rocked into the Imperial City.

Ding Jiudeng knew there was no way he could escape.

Around the jail wagon, there were almost ten Golden Elixir cultivators as well as ten-odd Foundation Building cultivators, who are comparable to Internal Organs cultivators.

How would he be able to escape?

He would not be able to escape even if he was scalped.

He looked up at the sky. It was a beautiful day. And there were so many pretty women around. Ding Jiudeng let out a long sigh.

It was really too bad for him.

******

Scriptures Depository, Wudi City.

While in control of Feng Yilou’s body, Lu Fan was looking at the Scriptures Depository in front of him.

The building was composed of three stories. Each story was filled with books, some of which were very old and ancient.

With his hands behind his back, Lu Fan walked up to the first bookshelf. He took a roll of bamboo slits unhurriedly.

He unfolded it. The handwriting on the bamboo slits was a little illegible. Besides, Lu Fan did not understand the language.

That was a little tricky.

Feng Yilou, controlled by Lu Fan, slightly frowned.

If he could not read, then it would be meaningless for him to enter this Scriptures Depository, and his intention of studying the books and scriptures kept here and even coming up with a plan to upgrade his Mid Level Martial World would undoubtedly be frustrated.

All of a sudden…

An idea occurred to Lu Fan.

He shifted his consciousness, and the lines in his eyes started to shift up and down.

Glancing over each line, he flipped the bamboo slits and books quickly.

Then everything recorded in the bamboo slits and books was somewhat scanned into Lu Fan’s brain, and it was projected in the Dao Impartment Platform.

In the Dao Impartment Platform.

Lu Fan’s body emerged, sitting on the platform.

He waved his hand. The three-legged All Method Furnace showed up in the center.

Then, one by one, the scanned bamboo slits went into the All Method Furnace.

It did not take long for the All Method Furnace that had been upgraded to level two to translate the content to a language that Lu Fan could read, and the translated pages were all included in a single book suspended in the air.

At the center of the platform, Lu Fan broke into a smile of satisfaction.

His eyes were very bright. Looking at that floating book, he had a bold idea.

Maybe…

He could scan everything in the Scriptures Depository of Wudi City and empty that place.

…