Chapter 858: A Cloud, a Pillow, and a Disaster (Patreon)

A/N

This is an Alt POV so we can see what the inner world and inner world spirit of a Stellar Realm cultivator is like. Let's just say, there's no comparison between them and someone like Ke Yin.

Chapter 858: A Cloud, a Pillow, and a Disaster

At the far end of an ironwood table in the Hall of Outer Elders was a strange sight – a small white cloud hovering over a chair. And what was even more strange, but no one batted an eyelid to, was the young man who lay on the cloud with his head resting on a pillow and his eyes open the tiniest amount to claim that he was listening.

This was Lin Youran, and despite being a two hundred and thirty-four years old Peak Stellar Realm cultivator, with his loosely tied black hair and handsome young face, most disciples assumed he was simply a senior brother dodging chores.

Lin Youran never corrected them, why would he when correcting meant talking, talking inevitably led to questions, and questions unfortunately led to more work? If there was one thing that he had hated since childhood, it was anything that made him sweat, so it was fitting that he cultivated the Dao of Leisure.

“—a disgrace!”

A fist slammed onto the table, which made every teacup jump into the air.

“You dare argue with me when the furnace array under Southern Flame Peak hasn’t been reinforced in sixty years!” Elder Ma Gang roared, his thick beard shaking in rage as a wave of hot pressure rolled out from him. “If it cracks during the forging season, my disciples will be cooked in their own workshops. The Nine-Flame Marrow must go to Southern Flame Peak! I will not stand for anything less!”

“Of course, Elder Yang,” Elder Qiao Feiyan said with a warm smile, tapping a painted fingernail on her jade abacus. “No one doubts your devotion to your disciples, but I recall my nephew repaired the furnace array two springs ago. What a capable boy he is. If only he had a suitable position in the Technique Pavilion where he could put his talents to use…”

 “How convenient,” Ma Gang growled through gritted teeth. “I was looking to recruit a disciple to help with the matters in the pavilion.”

“Excellent! I will let him know,” Qiao Feiyan’s smile widened as she slid one bead across her abacus with a soft click. “Does anyone have any objections to the Nine-Flame Marrow going to the Southern Flame Peak to save our beloved elder’s poor disciples?”

No one said a word, so the transaction was carried out. A glowing red stone went into Ma Gang’s pocket and a young man, who wasn’t even in the room, had found himself a lucrative job. Seeing all of this play out in front of him, Lin Youran yawned behind his sleeve.

Everyone here knew what was going on, but no one wanted to say it out loud because as your cultivation increased, so did your pride, or at least that’s what Lin Youran had learned over the years.

It was well known that Stellar Realm cultivators desperately required resources for the growth of their inner world. It was for that reason that cultivators are that level rarely took spirit stones. Instead, the sect paid them with resources for their work. However, what the treasury gave couldn’t cover their needs, so they had no choice but to go out into the world, acquire resources themselves, and even barter with their fellow elders.

As for Ma Gang’s “disciples” that were in danger of being burned alive, no such problem existed, they were in fact a volcano in his inner world that had been short of fire marrow for the past two decades.

In Lin Youran’s opinion, this roundabout way of exchanging resources was ineffective and a waste of time, it would have been better if they wrote their prices on slips of paper, that way the meeting would be over before the tea went cold.

Despite having suggested this multiple times, the elders never agreed, instead their faces would redden, and they would pretend they never heard him. Not being spoken to was actually a very pleasant experience for Lin Youran, but unfortunately, it meant nothing had changed over the past two centuries of him attending these meetings. To be fair, he was rarely present, after all, there were usually more important matters to attend to, like sleep.

“P-perhaps,” a thin voice said, “the Moonwell Essence could… if no one minds… my third moon has been…”

Every head in the room turned towards Elder Pan Shue, who shrank further into his seat as though he wished he could disappear into thin air. It had been a decade since his promotion to Stellar Realm, but he still hadn’t got rid of the bad habit of apologising when someone looked at him for longer than a breath.

“Your third moon?” an old man with a thick white beard rasped from the head of the table. “You think it is proper to complain about your third moon when the Medicine Hall does not have enough Moonwell Essence to create healing pills for our injured disciples? Tell me Elder Pan, do you think this is befitting of an elder like yourself?”

This old man was nearly nine hundred years old, and without question he was the oldest amongst them. Elder Gong Ru’s political experience wasn’t something the young elder could bear, his face turned pink and he began to sputter an apology.

“N-no! I would never—”

“Then we move on.”

And like that, the Moonwell Essence went to the Medicine Hall. It just happened to be an interesting coincidence that Gong Ru’s great-granddaughter was one of its main representatives.

Lin Youran held back a sigh; regretting being forced to attend.

Usually, he would have stayed in bed fully focused on cultivation.

Unfortunately for him, this month there was a small clay jar sealed with yellow wax sitting at the centre of the table, holding Primordial Silt, which was grey-green mud dredged from the bottom of the Jade Spring Lake.

What made it special was that life qi had settled inside of them for tens of thousands of years, and what made it rare was that the sect harvested one jar every twelve years. Had it been any other time, Lin Youran wouldn’t have paid any attention to it, but now he needed it, and that annoyed him greatly.

The Heavenly Repose Scripture, his cultivation method, was very convenient for him as it let his inner world refine qi by itself while he slept faster than most cultivators could consciously refine it. That had been the main reason why he had chosen it, but nobody had told him that it never stopped, and how that could become a problem, a major problem.

Cultivation in the Stellar Realm was quite simple in principle. A cultivator lit up stars, shaped moons and planets from its energy, and worked diligently to set them into stable orbits. And none of that had been an issue for Lin Youran, in fact with his Dao, it had been effortless to allow everything to follow its natural path.

However, now the sky was finished, the excess qi that he was absorbing had to go somewhere if he didn’t want his moons to grow too heavy for their orbit and cause great instability within his inner world. Despite trying different remedies here and there, none of them were permanent solutions, the only true solution was to create living things which could one day cultivate.

So, Lin Youran was left with no choice but to start preparing for a breakthrough to Life Realm.

Honestly, that sounded exhausting, but if he wanted to remain true to his ten-thousand-year plan, which was to sleep, nap, then sleep some more, he had no choice but to breakthrough. After all, a shaky soul wasn’t known for quality sleep.

To spark the first life on a barren planet, there were different ways of doing so, and one of those ways was using life qi strong enough to take root in bare stone. So, this was why he was here putting himself before this unbearable drama. Now all he had to do was wait for the others to wear themselves out, then ask for it when everyone was too tired to care.

While Gong Ru read out the next item, Lin Youran closed his eyes to enter his inner world.

Like most Stellar Realm inner worlds, the Eternal Leisure Paradise was silent.

In the sky, there were nine different stars, each with multiple moons of different sizes orbiting them. They looked down at his grey planet, which was mainly full of mountains floating with clouds and rivers wrapped around their bases. It had taken countless hours of sleep to achieve such perfect symmetry.

“Mianmian,” Lin Youran called out when he noticed the smallest moon sitting a hand’s width lower than it should because of the excess qi pulling it down.

It took a minute, but finally a small grey-white cloud drifted out from behind a mountain. It had two dark dimples that served as eyes. Instead of heading towards Lin Youran, it seemed to get distracted and wander off to the side. A cough from Lin Youran reminded it where it was going and it came to a stop before him.

“…Master.”

Lin Youran had named his inner world spirit after sleep, since that was what it did best. In the centuries since its birth, it had learned around a dozen words, and at least three of them meant sleep or something related to it.

“Do you remember last week when I told you to keep the extra qi off the moons,” he said. “Where did you put it?”

“Pillow,” the little cloud declared, puffing up proudly.

“…Pillow?”

Mianmian floated upwards until Lin Youran saw that above the tallest mountain was an enormous dark cloud that had been pressed into a neat rectangle with four puffy corners. Every few seconds, a thread of white light flickered across its underside with a low crackle as it continued to swell.

“For master,” Mianmian said happily. “Big. Soft.”

“Mianmian,” Lin Youran said carefully. “That is a thundercloud.”

“…Pillow?”

“It is a pillow that is going to explode.”

The little cloud’s dimples moved from him to the giant cloud and back, and slowly, its edges drooped. “…Bad pillow?”

“Very bad pillow.” He rubbed his temples. “Take it apart slowly and put a little into each river. Only a little.”

“Little,” Mianmian repeated, pulling a tiny wisp of qi from one corner of the thundercloud then dropping it into the nearest river. When it was done, it looked back at him, waiting for praise like it always did when it had completed the littlest of tasks.

“Good,” Lin Youran said, patting it. “Keep doing that until the pillow is gone, okay?”

“…Gone?” Mianmian whispered as it deflated.

“You can keep a small one,” Lin Youran sighed, not having the heart to deny it. “But keep an eye on the smallest moon.”

“…Eye?”

“I mean watch it.”

With an excited nod, the cloud got to work, and when it was finally done, it flew up to the smallest moon and then immediately began to snore as sleep overtook it. The moon dipped another finger’s width under the extra weight, so Lin Youran nudged it back into place with a thread of his Dao while Mianmian snored on without noticing a thing.

Lin Youran opened his eyes in the hall and let out a long sigh at the sad reality of inner world spirits at the Stellar Realm. One of the main reasons he continued to cultivate was so that his inner world spirit could develop. It was rumoured that at the Civilisation Realm, an inner world spirit became clever enough to run an entire world by itself, it could settle disputes, and even bargain on its master’s behalf in places the ancient experts refused to name.

All Lin Youran had to do was work for two more major realms, and then finally Mianmian would develop to the point it could handle everything while he slept. Now that was the true dream.

“The next item is the Primordial Silt,” Gong Ru declared, making Lin Youran’s eyes open slightly wider. “As you all know, we have only one jar—”

Before he could finish speaking, the doors of the hall swung open, making every head snap in that direction.

Ma Gang’s chair scraped back as his aura surged out, Gong Ru’s frown deepened, and even Qiao Feiyan’s smile went stiff at the corners. In an instant, the pressure of a dozen Stellar Realm cultivators rushed across the hall, making the lanterns sputter and the paper screens rattle in their frames.

“Who dares interrupt the Outer Elder council?” Ma Gang roared.

The pressure should have forced the intruder to his knees, but the young man simply stood there blinking in mild surprise while his sleeves stirred. As the elders’ gazes narrowed onto him, they noticed the colour of his robe and what that meant. The faces around the table lost their colour as every aura in the hall pulled back at once.

There was no one in the sect except they recognised the face looking at them.

This was the young man who had won the Outer Sect Tournament then walked into the Elemental Chamber at the Qi Condensation Realm and out at the Stellar Realm. This was the young man whose golden avatar had towered over the sect, flattening his own pavilion. This was the Sect Master’s personal Legacy Disciple – Elder Ke Yin.

The first one to bow was Ma Gang.

“Elder Ke! Forgive me, I…I didn’t realise it was you.” His head was almost touching the ground. “You honour us. Please, sit down. There’s a seat beside me. Come.”

“Elder Ke.” Qiao Feiyan rose and bowed gracefully. “What a pleasant surprise. Here I thought legacy elders found our little gatherings too small to bother with.”

Pan Shu jumped up so fast that he bowed straight into the edge of the table with a loud thunk.

Some elders stayed exactly where they were. Gong Ru’s fingers tightened around his jade slip until it creaked, and his face darkened to a blotchy red. Duan Hui, a scarred body cultivator, leaned back and folded his bulging arms, while the two elders beside him stared at the tabletop.

“Not even a hundred years old? This is simply a child in elder’s robes,” Duan Hui muttered, quietly enough to deny it later.

With a lazy sigh, Lin Youran swung his legs off his cloud and bowed with the others, making sure to give the new elder the respect that he deserved. However, inwardly he was already cursing his luck. Here there were elders who had spent three hours fighting over leftovers. A famous young genius walking in without warning. Half the table bowing, the other half glaring. That only meant one thing – trouble, and trouble meant effort.

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