Chapter 94 – Repairs

Zhan Changfeng swept the food box with her spiritual sense and noticed an extra dish inside. “Was this a mistake? I didn’t order this one.”

The waiter waved his hands repeatedly and grinned. “No mistake, no mistake — the extra dish is a gift from the proprietress to you.”

Zhan Changfeng glanced at Li Baimao, then took the food box with a thoughtful look and a warm smile. “Please pass along my thanks to the proprietress.”

The waiter was more than happy to oblige. When this young girl wasn’t smiling, she was cool and distant, but when she smiled, she was gentle and carried a faint scholarly air — her presence was remarkably soothing. He wouldn’t have minded giving her even more dishes on the house.

Zhan Changfeng bid farewell to Li Baimao and returned to the Lakeside Cottage, handing the food box to Fan Zhili. Fan Zhili was momentarily stunned — he hadn’t expected her to go out and buy food.

When she had stayed at his home the night before, he’d learned that Zhan Changfeng subsisted solely on Fasting Pills and didn’t eat ordinary food. So today, when he noticed she hadn’t seemed to prepare any dinner, he’d brought some over himself.

Now that he thought about it, it wasn’t that she’d forgotten to prepare — it simply hadn’t crossed her mind at all. She didn’t eat herself, and she was a little oblivious to social niceties. Why would she have thought to arrange a meal for the villagers doing work for her?

Fan Zhili weighed the food box in his hands. Even without lifting the lid, the aroma came wafting through — this must have cost a fair bit. Had she finally come around?

He turned back cheerfully to call out to the villagers: “Miss Yi bought supper for you all! Let me see here — oh my, it’s from Li San’s place too! You’re all in for a real treat today. Hurry up and finish what you’re doing, otherwise don’t blame me when the food goes cold!”

The villagers erupted in excitement.

“Is it really from Li San’s place? Last time I bought one dish of bamboo shoots with sliced pork, it cost me twenty-four Spirit Pearls!”

“Her meat is something else — all game from the wild mountains, so chewy and tender at the same time. Oh no, I think I can already smell it.”

“We’re really blessed today. Thank you, Miss Yi!”

The working villagers offered one thanks after another, their spirits running high.

Fan Zhili came back to Zhan Changfeng’s side. “How does it feel? Sometimes a small gesture can make all the difference, don’t you think?”

Zhan Changfeng understood what he meant — it was simply a matter of social warmth.

The commotion over there was technically connected to her, yet she felt nothing in particular about it — neither good nor bad, neither here nor there.

Still, if doing this could improve the efficiency of their work, she was willing to spare a little extra thought toward it.

So she smiled and said, “You make a good point. It does make a difference.”

Fan Zhili genuinely broke into a smile this time.

When the hour of Xu arrived, the villagers wrapped up and headed home. Fan Zhili said, “There’s nothing in this house yet. Why not stay at my place again tonight?”

“I wouldn’t want to trouble the Village Chief. One room is more than enough.”

“Fair enough. We’ll be off then, and back again tomorrow.”

Zhan Changfeng turned around. The color of her eyes gradually shifted to a deep crimson, and the air immediately grew cold. Frost crystals formed on the ground beneath her feet as she walked, as if a killing frost had descended.

She made her way to the balcony overlooking the lake and sat cross-legged on a tree stump to meditate, the moonlight falling precisely upon her. This place was heavy with yin energy, making it ideal for cultivating Pure Yin power.

Pure Yin power embodied “stillness” — it was the force closest to death itself. The moment it emerged, the ghosts lurking at the bottom of the lake, the demons haunting the mountain forests, all shrank back and curled up. Living creatures with any spiritual intelligence instinctively gave the area a wide berth. Even fish, whose memories were notoriously poor, swam far away. The minor spirits and specters that had been stubbornly clinging to every corner of the cottage scattered in all directions.

In a matter of moments, the surroundings of the cottage fell utterly silent — still as death, pure as crystal — with only the night wind, unwilling to be left out, idly brushing the lake surface, rustling the leaves, muttering its quiet complaints.

Zhan Changfeng had already reached the Prenatal realm. The next stage was Foundation Establishment.

But she wasn’t entirely clear on what Foundation Establishment entailed.

How should one break through in terms of realm? How should cultivation be advanced?

Would the path to Foundation Establishment differ depending on one’s cultivation art or sect lineage?

Now that she had reached the Prenatal realm, she had a vague sense that breaking through was no longer simply a matter of accumulating power and achieving mental clarity. She had hazy guesses, but could never quite find the way in.

This was the disadvantage of having no master to guide her. Some secrets of cultivation could not be conveyed by a single manual, nor captured in the accumulated wisdom passed down by word of mouth.

If lone cultivators had any real chance of attaining the Dao, why would orthodox Daoist sects exist at all? Why would lineages and traditions matter?

Zhan Changfeng had once thought she could cultivate the Nine-Cycle Rebirth Art on her own, and that her primary reason for infiltrating a sect was to access more resources to restore her physical body. But thinking back on it now, she realized how naïve she had been.

After being refined by the Nine-Tiered Lotus Platform, her Pure Yin Bones no longer afflicted her physical form, and the reappearance of her dantian had temporarily eliminated the risk of exposing her Pure Yin Bones.

Her physical body — she was no longer in any rush about it. Whether she restored it or not made little difference now.

When she looked at it that way, joining a sect wasn’t the key issue. Finding the origin of the Nine-Cycle Rebirth Art was.

She vaguely remembered that both the Nine-Cycle Rebirth Art and the Ink-Jade Archer’s Ring had been given to her by someone — which meant there was someone else out there still practicing this inheritance.

If someone was practicing it, they would inevitably have left traces in this world.

But she couldn’t rely entirely on finding those traces. In the meantime, it would serve her well to come into contact with cultivators of higher cultivation. If she could learn the specifics of Foundation Establishment through some other channel, it would save her considerable effort.

She recalled that Qingbai Mountain Community School had a teacher at the Foundation Establishment realm.

This teacher’s name was Yao Yu, and he taught Spells. She had enrolled in his course.

Before dawn at the hour of Yin, Teacher Yao Yu’s class was set to begin.

Zhan Changfeng made her way to Teacher Yao Yu’s teaching location — a bare, sheer cliff face. No one had arrived yet.

At the foot of the cliff stood a drafty thatched hut, and she could just make out a figure lying within.

Zhan Changfeng walked over and performed a formal Daoist bow. “New student Yi Zhan. I hope to learn your spells, Teacher.”

The figure inside said nothing, gave no sign, and made no response. Zhan Changfeng said nothing more and did not leave, simply waiting in silence for an answer.

Dawn light leaked over the horizon in the distance, and one by one, students began to arrive. They glanced curiously at Zhan Changfeng for a moment, then tucked up their robes and began climbing the cliff face.

By the time the sun reached midday, some students had already climbed up and down the cliff several times. When they paused to rest, they noticed Zhan Changfeng was still standing there and couldn’t help but point and speculate.

“Never seen her before. Must be an associate student.”

“She’ll be waiting until the grass grows before she gets a response. Teacher Yao Yu can’t stand people who bought their way in.”

They spoke in hushed voices, but how could a Prenatal realm cultivator like Zhan Changfeng fail to hear them?

Zhan Changfeng heard it — and so did Teacher Yao Yu.

Teacher Yao Yu also knew that Zhan Changfeng had heard it. He found this irritating. If she’d heard, why was she still standing there without the sense to leave?

He called out loudly, “You’ve already reached Postnatal realm perfection and you practice the martial path — what do you need to learn here for!”

Teacher Yao Yu’s voice was booming, and all the students nearby heard him. Looks of disbelief spread across their faces as their gazes shifted toward Zhan Changfeng.

“Postnatal realm perfection — did I hear that right? She’s actually at Postnatal realm perfection?!”

“That can’t be right. The strongest person in our school is He Ming, and he’s only at Postnatal realm great completion.”

“Exactly — and He Ming is already sixteen. He can’t compete in the Six Academies selection anymore, so he’s been focusing entirely on the general examination.”

“So what if she’s at Postnatal realm perfection? Teacher still won’t teach her.”

“True enough. And besides, the martial path is easy to cultivate — how can it compare to our spell path?”

Zhan Changfeng paid none of this any attention. She replied, “Teacher Yao Yu, that reasoning is flawed. Cultivation has its martial and spell paths, but the Dao itself has neither. At the beginning of the Dao, it was divided into five arts: mountain, medicine, fate, divination, and physiognomy. Within ‘mountain,’ one cultivates the body and spirit through meditation, martial arts, medicinal herbs, talismans, and esoteric texts. It is only because the mind cannot serve two masters that martial arts became the chosen method, eventually giving rise to the martial path as a distinct discipline.”

“The spell path refines the self by drawing in and exhaling the primordial energy of heaven and earth; the martial path strengthens the five elements within the human body using that same primordial energy. They share the same source and ultimately lead to the same destination. Why should a martial cultivator be barred from learning spells?”

“Foolish. How could a brute understand the subtleties of spells? Look at how many martial cultivators there are — how many of them actually succeed in the end? Foundation Establishment alone weeds out seventy percent of them!”

Zhan Changfeng noticed he had mentioned Foundation Establishment and adopted a humble posture, asking modestly, “This student has heard that the cultivation methods of the spell and martial paths differ. For the martial path, breaking through to the Prenatal realm is a matter of accumulating power — transforming essence and vitality into primordial essence. For the spell path, it is a matter of elevating one’s state of mind — finding one’s own Prenatal True-One Spirit. That, I suppose, is the fundamental difference between the two paths. Accumulating power must be simpler than achieving a mental breakthrough.”

Teacher Yao Yu let out a scornful laugh. “The martial path is open to anyone; the spell path produces only one cultivator in ten thousand. What, are you thinking of crossing over to my spell path?”

His words were dripping with reverence for the spell path and contempt for the martial path, as though it were trash to be discarded — not once acknowledging that martial arts had originally been part of the Daoist arts.

Zhan Changfeng thought his view was lopsided, but most cultivators lived according to their own understanding of the Dao, and she hadn’t come here to debate. So she refrained from arguing further and instead went along with him. “I find the subtleties of spells deeply fascinating and wish very much to study them. I respectfully ask for Teacher Yao Yu’s generous instruction.”

In her mind, both spells and martial arts were the Dao — both were things she intended to explore deeply — so there was nothing dishonest in what she said. But in Teacher Yao Yu’s ears, it carried a different meaning entirely.

Teacher Yao Yu was pleased that someone had come to abandon the martial path in favor of spells. And observing her conduct — proper and measured, nothing like a martial brute — along with the evident respect she showed him, he found it difficult to refuse. Even if he had no desire to teach her, he had to uphold the spell path’s appearance of magnanimity and give her at least a nominal chance.

“All right then — follow the rules. Go learn from Teacher Mingshan first for his ritual etiquette, then from Teacher Heitie for his body-tempering course. Pass both, and then come find me!”

Teacher Yao Yu knew she had enrolled in nine courses altogether. This arrangement would inevitably create scheduling conflicts, and in the end, she might not manage to learn anything at all. Hmph — young people were just too greedy.

(End of Chapter)