Who Let Him Cultivate?! (WX)-Chapter 698: The Kind-Hearted Ji Hongwen

If a talented youth joined the Cosmos Purple Cloud Palace, with talent, hard work, and fortuitous opportunities, they could cultivate until the Nascent Soul Stage, unify the other two major sects, gather the three command tokens, open the secret domain, receive the ancestral teachings of the founder Zhang Dao, obtain the incomplete Divine Transfiguration cultivation manual from an S-class sect, and smoothly advance to the Divine Transfiguration Stage.

With better luck, they could even join an S-class sect, complete the cultivation technique, and rise rapidly to become a Transcendent Tribulation expert.

Of course, the precondition for all this was the existence of a genuine talented youth, not an old monster like the Wuji Venerable Lord impersonating a youth.

Withdrawing his thoughts, Lu Yang silently watched the scene before him.

Zhang Dao knelt on the ground, kowtowing vigorously. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have stolen. Venerable Lord, you are magnanimous, please spare me!”

Never in his wildest dreams did Zhang Dao imagine that stealing a single cultivation manual would bring a prominent figure like the Wuji Venerable Lord to his doorstep after such a long time had passed.

Zhang Dao was only a little over a hundred years old. Before he began cultivating, the Wuji Venerable Lord was already a lofty Transcendent Tribulation expert, a peerless mighty figure he could never hope to reach in his lifetime.

Is there something wrong with this manual? Does it hide a secret that can tempt even a Transcendent Tribulation cultivator?

Zhang Dao couldn’t figure it out.

The Wuji Venerable Lord sighed softly. “Enough, get up. Your original body is already dead. What remains here is merely a wisp of divine thought. What use is punishing a divine thought with hardly any time left?”

“Many thanks, Venerable Lord!” Zhang Dao kowtowed three more times before getting up.

“However, there is one matter that requires your cooperation.”

“As long as it’s the Venerable Lord’s command, I, Zhang Dao, will brave raging fire and boiling water!”

The Wuji Venerable Lord instructed, “I will join the Cosmos Purple Cloud Palace tomorrow. Later, I’ll find an opportunity to gather the three tokens and come back to look for you. At that time, pretend you don’t know me and impart that manual to me.”

Zhang Dao’s mind was full of question marks; what the Wuji Venerable Lord said was beyond his comprehension. However, he didn’t dare ask more and could only repeatedly nod his head in agreement.

“Wuji, you still want to continue this charade?” The Qianjiao Venerable Lord teased.

Hearing how the Qianjiao Venerable Lord addressed the Wuji Venerable Lord, Zhang Dao broke out in a cold sweat. Judging by her tone, this young girl is also an incredibly formidable figure.

The Wuji Venerable Lord snorted coldly. “Why not?” Having just been beaten up by Lu Yang’s Unbeatable Nascent Soul, he was struggling to accept this fact and needed to go to the Cosmos Purple Cloud Palace to regain some confidence.

The four left the secret domain. Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou hastily bade farewell to the two mighty experts and hurried away. Even from a distance, they could still hear the two experts conversing.

“Why are you following me?”

“To see what you old thing are up to at the Cosmos Purple Cloud Palace.”

Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou quickened their footsteps. The two returned to the stable in the city to find the old horse, who looked at them sideways.

Its cultivation level was the highest in Jiulong City. While others couldn’t sense the commotion outside the city, it perceived everything clearly.

What’s wrong with you two? Weren’t you out recruiting disciples and assessing their character? Why were there auras of two Transcendent Tribulation cultivators in the direction you left?

Can you two please consider the cultivation level of me, your guardian?

“Why are you looking at us like that? It was all an accident,” Meng Jingzhou said truthfully and defended themselves upon noticing the old horse’s skeptical gaze.

“Right, I can confirm what Old Meng said.” Lu Yang stepped forward as a witness.

The old horse rolled his eyes. What’s the point of you two testifying for each other?

After boarding the carriage, they swiftly left Jiulong City. Taking out the small booklet, they drew a cross next to “Xie An” on the first page.

“Let me see. The closest from here should be this person called Gu Junye from Lintian[1] City in You Province. According to the report, Junior Brother Wei Nanfei encountered him while he was on an undercover mission as a private school teacher in Lintian City. Junior Brother Wei praised him as someone who is youthful yet steady, is meticulous in thought, acts only after planning, and has excellent academic results.”

Wei Nanfei had entered the Dao-Seeking Sect in the same cohort as Lu Yang. He cultivated the Incinerating Heaven Burning Blood Art. Although his talent couldn’t be compared to Lu Yang’s and Meng Jingzhou’s, he was still a top-tier genius by outside standards. He had shone brilliantly in the finals, clinching first place in the Advanced Foundation Establishment category.

Lu Yang analyzed, “In other words, this person called Gu Junye doesn’t like talking, enjoys random speculation, and isn’t fond of moving about?”

“You could say that.”

Just as the two were about to continue studying the information on Gu Junye, they felt the carriage shake slightly and come to a stop.

“Old horse, what’s the matter?” Meng Jingzhou leaned out and asked.

The old horse snorted through his nose and gestured for Meng Jingzhou to look upward.

An elegant laugh came from the sky.

“Junior Brother Meng, did Old Dai send you out too?” A young man in Confucian robes descended and greeted them after recognizing the carriage.

“Senior Brother Ji?”

It was none other than Fourth Elder’s eldest disciple, Ji Hongwen, a Basic Fusion cultivator.

Hearing the commotion outside, Lu Yang also peeked his head out.

Ji Hongwen was amused upon noticing Lu Yang. “Old Dai sent both of you out? It seems the sect truly has no one else.”

“Senior Brother Ji, what are you doing here?”

Ji Hongwen waved the booklet in his hand. “Well, Old Dai told me that staying in the mountains all day isn’t beneficial for cultivation, so he sent me out to observe the characters of the people on the name list too.”

“How many have you observed?”

“Just one; I’ve just finished observing one. He’s a good seedling. His father is a mortal, and his mother is a cultivator, but she disappeared when he was young, leaving only half a jade pendant as a clue, while he and his father depended on one another for survival. He claims he wants to work hard in cultivating and become a great cultivator in order to locate his mother through his half jade pendant.

“When he said this, his eyes flickered with an indomitable will. It’s just that his bone foundation is rather average—a Triple Spirit Root—barely meeting the sect’s entry criteria.

“Seeing this kid’s commendable filial piety, I figured I’d help him search for his mother, so I examined this jade pendant carefully. If worn long-term, the half jade pendant can improve one’s bone foundation and constitution. It also hides a cultivation manual inside, which can only be opened after the kid draws qi into his body. From this half of a jade pendant, I concluded the kid’s mother is no ordinary cultivator.

“However, that’s all I could analyze. I still couldn’t find the person. Without any other choice, I went to the Heaven Strategy Sect and asked a friend to use karmic divine abilities to trace the origin and track down the kid’s mother.”

“So you just came back from the Heaven Strategy Sect?” Lu Yang asked.

Ji Hongwen shook his head. “I learned from the Heaven Strategy Sect that the source of the jade pendant’s karma was at the Sea-Listening Sect, a first-class sect in Yu Province, so I went there directly.

“Only after arriving at the Sea-Listening Sect did I discover that the kid’s mother is the Holy Maiden of the sect. She had defied the sect’s wishes and secretly married a mortal. The Sea-Listening Sect was furious and captured her, suppressing her under the sect.”

Realization dawned upon Meng Jingzhou. “Then Senior Brother Ji, you must have decisively taken action, battled the Sea-Listening Sect Leader, and rescued the Holy Maiden, right?”

Ji Hongwen looked at Meng Jingzhou with bafflement. “No? I reported the case to the authorities. The Sea-Listening Sect restricted someone’s personal freedom, constituting the crime of illegal detention. That’s obviously a matter under the jurisdiction of the authorities.”

“Then did the family of three reunite?”

This time, Ji Hongwen nodded. “They reunited.

“After the authorities rescued the Holy Maiden, they arrested a group of members from the Sea-Listening Sect, including the Sect Leader and the Grand Elder. I reckon they’ll be imprisoned for a few hundred years.

“After investigation, it was uncovered that the half jade pendant the kid wore was a supreme treasure of the Sea-Listening Sect, which had been stolen by the Holy Maiden. Since she committed theft, I reckon she’ll also be imprisoned for a few hundred years.

“Why, I just sent that kid to visit her in prison.

“Before leaving, I told him that if he’s interested in cultivation, he can come to the Dao-Seeking Sect to take the entrance exams on the second day of the second month next year. I’m not sure whether he’ll come.”

1. The name “lintian” can be interpreted as “arriving in the sky.” ☜