When a public building was damaged to the point that it had to be closed for repairs, typically it didn’t reopen very quickly. That was a truth even in the higher realms— barring, of course, the Celestial Realm when there weren’t really anypublic buildings,per say— and he’d not particularly expected the library to be repaired for some time. Perhaps even a year or two, given just how labyrinthine the bureaucracy of East Saffron seemed to be. As an Immortal Sovereign, even one so drastically reduced, when he made judgements they tended to begoodjudgements.

A few factors conspired to prove him wrong.

For some mysterious reason, all the impediments that had been holding the library back the past few months disappeared. Yuxan’s subtle dealings pulled away,evidentlyintimidated by the pool that they had tried to dip their toes into, and Guxi… well, they had come to somewhat of an agreement. He figured that she had much the same thoughts on the matter that Zhihu had once had— that he was not quite somortalas he liked to appear.

She was right, of course. She just didn’t knowhow right she was.

Zhihu herself was the third factor. She didn’t stop showing up every now and again, though her visits became even more infrequent— apparently inner disciples had far more duties, added to her renewed cultivation effort and the spectre of war that yet hung above East Saffron, made her a very busy woman. Still, she still came by to pester him every now and again, which meant that anyone who was trying to get in the good graces of— or remain out of thebadgraces of— her would be inclined to support the reconstruction of the otherwise unremarkable building.

Finally, perhaps both least expected and most predictable of them all— of all the 32nd Precinct’s many institutions, the Library was perhaps amongst the mostvalued. The communitylikedthem, and the outpouring of support from the alumni who’d learnt within it and the parents of kids who viewed it as a welcoming refuge, and people who from its hallowed halls touched on the knowledge of their honored ancestors, which which they had built they city they lived in… things had moved quickly. Far more quickly than he’d expected.

A few months, now, after he’d blown the place up, he stood in front of the library’s new doors as a small crowd milled excitedly around them. Lexi stood off to the side, arms crossed behind her back and looking almostsmug, a very unusual expression for the normally dour woman, while Janus stood happily with his family.

Perhaps most unusually— to the people of East Saffron, at least— were the two disciples of the Bloody Saffron Sect who stood stoically off to the side. A middle-aged man in Foundation Establishment looked like he wanted to be anywherebutthere, mingling with the common folk of the city, while Zhihu herself looked like she wasdelightingin dragging her junior martial brother through the mud by the mere consequence of her presence.

It was funny, to have such an august turnout to what was, ultimately, an eminentlylocalaffair. The news crew who’d come down to report on the opening of the library was looking rather flustered at their presence…

Lexi gave a short speech, Zhihu clapped— and everyone else followed, becauseof coursethey would— and the library was open. Kids rushed in excitedly, adults followed demurely behind, and even the two sect cultivators deigned to step into the building and poke around like they knew what they were doing.

Well, their new sect liaison did, at least. Zhihuactuallyknew what she was doing, having been here enough times that she quickly navigated past the— very intimidated— crowds, slipping upstairs and to his poor little office.

Luckily, the formations he’d put down in the room— basic things, for the most part— had done their job. The place looked as kempt as if he’d just walked out the day prior, even though he hadn’t been back in months.

It was nice, to see that… the various little things, tiny treasures, reminders of a past that only he knew. That only hecouldknow, given how all the various decorations in his office were— by and large— from a higher realm.

Zhihu let out a sigh as she stepped into the room, relaxing ever so minutely. “I keep forgetting how well done the array in your room is… I doubt any but the elders have something better. Were it not so weak, it might actually inspire jealousy amongst those who know well enough to be jealous.”

He shrugged. “I’m a generous benefactor, after all. I’m perfectly willing to share.”

“Some would rather have everything now, than a little bit later.”

“Some would be fools. I may carry with me a small accounting of family heirlooms—” his family having precisely two members, neither of which were in any place to have leftheirloomsfor anyone; she had no clue that he made everything he owned, and he’d like to continue with that charade for at least a little longer— “but to attack me would be to risk my ire.”

“You’re a mortal,” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. In a way, it was. There was no cultivator in the entire realm that would be able to think of him as anythingbuta mortal… except for those with the mind to think beyond what was merely present in front of their eyes. In many ways, he was sure his mortality was a better shield againsthigherlevel cultivators than it was relative juniors like Zhihu; they were at least accustomed to being unable to perceive the mysteries of their elders. Those elders, though, tended to be rather arrogant in their assurance that they knew all under heaven…

It had been something that peak cultivators of pretty much every realm he’d ever been to had thought. It was rather hard to disabuse them of that notion, too… well, without blowing up their mountain, but that tended to get them rather upset.

He smiled his most enigmatic smile— which was a very enigmatic smile indeed, even for a mortal such as him— and leaned back, letting his room speak for himself. Letting thebuilding they stood inspeak for itself. Someone who was able to defeat a Sundering level cultivator, even if that was just by the strength of their background… that person was not to be underestimated.

Finally, Zhihu just huffed and looked away, tacitly giving him the win. “Fine. Keep your secrets.” He made sure just to smile a little more, at that, and she rolled her eyes. Then, softer, kinder and morehuman— “I do appreciate your generosity. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the debt I owe you for the bloodstone.”

“Have you finished refining it yet?”

Zhihu gave him alook. “Of course I haven’t been able… ah, of course, you wouldn’t know about what it’s like to absorb such treasures.” She chuckled. “I keep forgetting that you don’tactuallyknow everything. You sure act like it sometimes… treasures like these tend to take time to properly assimilate, and the elder who supervised my ascension said that the one you gave me is an exceptionally potent spiritual treasure. It sits in my core now, purifying my qi until I can fully assimilate it.”

“I… see.” Hehadn’tactually known that— not in the sense that he didn’t know what’d happen when people absorbed spiritual treasures, but rather that he’d expected much more of even this small realm’s cultivators when it came to their capability in dealing with such simple matters. The treasureshouldhave been entirely consumed during her ascension, but… well, if she was getting benefits out of it, he supposed it was fine. “I’m glad that you’re making use of it still.”

“I wish I could make better use of it, but the elders say that such things aren’t to be rushed…” she sighed, shaking her head. “Everyone in the sect has been rather frenetic recently, as I suppose you can imagine, what with the recent attacks and all.” He very much didnotreact to that. “I’ve been trying to comprehend the broken weapon of yours, but I’ve found little success there as well. The spiritual smith I took it to found it to be an interesting and expertly made trinket, but whatever broke it has rendered even the spiritual material it was made out of essentially useless. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. I couldn’t use it anyways,” because it was broken; he said nothing about his ability tofixit— “and it’s better in your hands anyways.”

She paused for a long second, staring at him, staringintohim… if he didn’t know that there wasn’t anything she’d be able to find, he might have even been nervous. Finally, she spoke. “Are yousurethat you don’t want to become a cultivator? It’s late for you to start, but you’re… you. If anyone could surpass the heavens after a late start, it would be you.”

He considered it. Surprisingly, even for him… it did sound fun, to at leastpretendto be a new cultivator, and work his way up through the ranks, and perhaps find some sort of schadenfreude in seeing arrogant elders realize just who they were talking to… but, no, that was petty. He could be petty on the rare occasion, but to make his whole experience in the realm one of petty games felt… so much the lesser, compared to what he already had,here, below it all.

For that, he shook his head. “I’m content with my current position here.”

“I don’t know how youcanbe. Even if you were secretly a core formation cultivator, surely youhaveto be feeling the burn of the years as they slip through your grasp. Two years away from any cultivation, away from anyadvancement…” it was not something that was easy on most cultivators, caught up in the rat-race as they were, but to him…

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

He was already immortal. He was somuchof a cultivator that to them he almost wrapped right back around into not being a cultivator at all.

Mingtain just smiled. “I’m nothing but what you see.” And everything she did not; there was a particularly poignant trick of words in there, given that he waslight, and she was not quite at the level that her sight was wholly divorced from the physical reality of photons and such. But that was all besides the point, ultimately. “I do not want to ascend.”

“You’ve ascended further into your craft than most have in their entire lives, and I mean that in thecultivatorsense of the word.”

“Into my craft, yes. Not into cultivation.”

“Are the two all that different? The elders often speak of their craft as the truest form of their cultivation, whatever they mean by that. I don’t know if I entirely agree with that— surely they have some idea of what they’re doing, but qi is qi. I’m sure it would bechild’splay for you to gather some qi for yourself with one of those formations of yours.”

“Qi and cultivation are not quite so easy. There is a reason, after all, that the pill you give all your disciples is important.” Zhihu nodded reluctantly, to that. It was a curious little fact about the realm he’d found himself in— spiritual roots were relegated to trivialities and ancient lore, where even in the Heavenly Realm they were some of the most important indicators of power. Perhaps that was partiallybecause, borne out by whateverreformstheir ancient Empire of Twelve Constellations had made, the lower eschalons of power did not really rely on the strength of their spiritual roots instead.

It was a bit amusing, to know that essentially every cultivator in the entire realm would be considered as mortals, and that some of the greatest talents were wasted. He did not think that it wasn’tfitting, though… yet, still, some twist of the long hand of fate over the face of their world. That it was a fate set in motion thousands upon thousands of years earlier did not make it anylessfate.

“Are you looking for a perfect ascension? Enlightenment?”

“So youdoknow about enlightenment…”

“I know enough to know that it’s a futile chase, more fleeting than the greatest secrets of alchemy, more exacting than the highest level of the formation art, more profound than the deepest of cultivation methods. That to search for it is to search for a cloud in the desert, or a drop of water in the ocean.”

“So it goes, with that sort of thing.” Frankly, if heactuallygot an enlightenment here, in this small realm— a real one, not one that he faked for whatever reason that stole over him at the time— then he’d probably blow the whole place up with the sheer profundity of his ascension. At the very least, the fabric of their Chaos Sea would be permanently torn up, though he’d ascend to a higher realm before he let the place gettoosavaged by the divine powers that would invoke…

Though, that dealt with the nature of the realms and the truths of reality— true reality, the sort of thing that lay in only the margins of existence, and the strange and folding hierarchies of the realms, and the sort of thing that even his fellow Immortal Sovereigns still spent enormous effort puzzling out even the slightest fraction of a slimmer of. They had put in so much effort into it all, each of them gods amongst gods, and yet still the inscrutable mysteries remained mysterious.

To gain enlightenment here, on this backwater world in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing… the very idea was laughable. So he discarded the thought and simply let the conversation die off into a comfortable sort of silence, the silence of an amicable companionship, shared between fellows at the end of a breath…

It was nice to be back.

“How do you think that the students are doing?”

Zhihu cocked her head. “You mean Avyr and Lily?” He nodded. “I took the liberty of checking up on them not too long ago. Lily has got her mind on some rather intense project— Daoist Severing Dust wouldn’t tell me what exactly she’s working on, but he seemed excited enough at the possibility that she might succeed. And, while heisa rather excitable fellow, I can tell thatthisexcitement was real, which probably means that your disc— yourstudent— is working on something of rather particular note.”

“That’s good to hear.” She’d already made a very potent weapon— perhaps she wanted to forge further into the ways of artifice, and make something truly powerful? It was within her reach, he was sure, to lay out at least the blunt sketch of an armillary sphere or a spiritual anchor, or a cultivation chamber or any of the other such treasures that would make Elders fight over the right to take her on as their student. Still, it was better that he recused himself from that sort of thing. Hovering over students wasn’t the best way to let them grow… probably…

It’d been a long time since he’d had a student, alright? He shouldn’t have been expected to remember all the intricacies of the proper pedagogical tactics.

He shook his head, dispelling the sudden thoughts. He wasn’t really going to be teaching them much in the future anyways, when they went to the Bloody Saffron Sect, so it was for the best that he kept himself away. Definately. “And Avyr?”

“He’s not as prone to doing utterly ridiculous things like his friend, but I have it on good authority that he’s confounding the entire school with how good he is at his classes. His liaison has been actively putting roadblocks in his path, and yet he seemed to move through them like he doesn’t even notice they’re there.”

“His liaison has…” he tried to keep his voice steady, but it was clear that Zhihu could hear the unspoken threat in his words. Themalice.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t do anything rash. The man has the backing of several powerful masters in the sect, and he won’t hesitate to deal with a mortal that actually fights back. He’s somewhat of a purist, so it’s not wholly unexpected that he’d object to the presence of a cat in the sect. I imagine that’s going to ruffle a lot of feathers.”

“They’re just going to have to deal with it.”

Zhihu grinned— and it was not a particularly kind grin. “Yes. Yes they will.” She seemed to take a certain sort of glee from the upcoming frustrations of her sectmates, which… well, as a recently ascended inner sect disciple, that much was only to be expected.

Mingtain could not lie; he took much the same pleasure in thinking of how the more arrogant cultivators would react to having to teach someone so…different. Not even a spiritual beast, which had their place in the typical hierarchy of cultivation, but something different entirely. A fairly rare thing, amongst the many realms.

“I heard that he was working on something of particular note in his spiritual herbs class. Apparently, it was ruined over the winter, but even then the person that I spoke to was beyond impressed at the quality of herb that he’d managed to grow in only a season.” Of course he would have done well at that. Mingtain was no spiritual farmer, but he knew how dependent on qi senses and fine control such things were— and the cultivation technique he’d given the cat was certainly not lacking in either of those.

Still, aproject… that was interesting. He’d not heard of anything like that. “Did you know what it was?”

“No clue. I know what ruined it though— apparently he’d set a special regimen, where he would carefully expose it to a certain amount of extreme yang qi every day, but only on specific parts of the plant… the bulb, I think? I can’t tell you more. I was never assigned to the spiritual grain fields or the gardens in the course of my duties, so I don’t know enough to judge. Sorry.” Hm, a puzzle… he sat back in his chair, thinking it over. There were only so many things that could result from such an action. The problem was that ‘so many things’was a rather accurate depiction for the myriad results that could result in such application. Presumably, it was more exact than Zhihu’s retelling, but still…

The plant wasn’tdead. Or dying— rather, it’d beennurturedby the qi somehow, so that immediately excluded a lot of the options. A great majority of the options, even— qi may be a vital force, usually, but extreme yang qi and plants rarely went together well. He would know… but neither was itpurelynurturing it, because that was unnecessarily restrictive. Even the best herbalist knew that therootswere a better place to nurture, and if not that, theleaves— for the nature of yang qi worked well with them. The bulb was a weird decision, as it was rather delicate and might be corrupted…

He smiled as he realized what Avyr was trying to accomplish. Or, at least, anideaof what he was trying to accomplish. It was a rather clever thing too— dredging of positivelyancientmemories of back whenhe’dbeen a young immortal, experimenting with the refining arts by making use of the robustness of flora. How nostalgic.

Zhihu noticed his smugness, and cocked her head at him. “You figured something out.”

“I have a suspicion, at least.”

“Which, knowing you, is acorrectsuspicion.”

“I could always be wrong.”

“Really, now?” Even he had to admit, it was somewhat unlikely; he was ignorant of a great many things, but cultivation could not be said to be among that number. “Well, I’ll suppose I’ll just have to wait and see. If you think that you’re going to be getting rid of me when your students get into the sect, then you’re going to have to think again. After all, if you want to keep up with them…”

A flash of irritation flared through him at theinsinuationof a threat, the mere possibility that she had thenerveto defy him so… but, ultimately, she was just a fourth step initiate on the path of cultivation, and not a particularly deep path either. It was all in good humor. “Well, I am in your care, honorable disciple.”

Zhihu made a face. “Really, you should be the one taking care ofme…” she laughed, then softly. “No, no, I jest— you’ve already taken care of me enough for a thousand years. I’ll remember you for the rest of my life, and with any luck, I might even ascend into the heavens. Isn’t that immortality, of a kind?”

She was trying to provoke him, he knew. If there was one thing a cultivator could do to make themselves a nuisance to mortals— beyond, of course, all the indiscriminate violence and internecine politics that their kind tended to get up to in the pursuit of ever more lofty spheres of power— it was to rub their longevity in their faces.

He didn’t react, though— a lack of reaction that might be telling, in a way. Rather, he just smiled mysteriously, letting the mischievous glee of a joke only he knew the punchline to filter into his eyes. So bright— as bright as boundless radiance.

Things were good, in East Saffron. Soon, perhaps, they’d even be better…

For now, though, he was merely a librarian, in a small library, mortal. As far as anyone knew… he was nobody of note.

Zhihu narrowed her eyes at him, and in return, he just smiled.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by lotustale.com