Chapter 859: A Little Late to the Elder Council (Patreon)

“What do you mean I can’t go in?” I asked, standing in front of the tall ironwood doors of the Hall of Outer Elders. “This is a council for outer elders, and I’m an outer elder.”

The two guards being questioned tried their best to look professional by keeping their spears upright and maintaining eye contact, but their knees were already trembling, and this was with me keeping a tight control over my aura.

“Elder Ke, please forgive this disciple,” the taller guard with the long neck said after clearing his throat. “As soon as the council meeting begins, the formations on these doors activate, and no one can enter.”

“It’s to stop tardy elders interrupting the discussions,” the shorter guard added quickly.

It made sense that no one wanted to sit through a meeting where people kept wandering in late and asking what they had missed, hell, I would probably want a formation too, but that didn’t stop the frown on my face deepening.

“Don’t worry, Elder,” the stocky guard said with a nervous smile, probably worried I was going to explode any second like a typical elder. “The next meeting is very soon, so you can attend that one instead.”

“When is it?”

“Only  six months, Elder.”

My eyes widened.

What did he mean ‘only’? Sure, I was an elder, but I wasn’t one of those ancient cultivators who had lived through so many centuries that six months passed in a single closed-door meditation. With my cultivation speed, I’d probably be a genuine Life Realm cultivator by then, I couldn’t wait six months to find suitable Stellar Realm techniques.

“That’s too long for me,” I said. “Look, just open the door for me. I’ll slip in quietly, sit at the back, and won’t cause any trouble.”

The two guards exchanged a look.

“Elder, even if we wanted to, we can’t,” the stocky one sighed. “The formation can only be unlocked from the inside, or when the meeting ends.”

To be honest, I had expected something like this.

“Let me have a look at it,” I said. “Maybe I can deactivate it myself.”

The two guards didn’t seem too convinced by my ability, but they just shrugged and stepped to the side giving me access to doors that looked like ordinary slabs of dark ironwood carved with the sect’s crest.

However, as soon as I focused my spiritual sense on them, the formation revealed itself as a thin film of pale gold light that stretched across the whole surface, made up of five rings nested inside each other, each one turning in the opposite direction to the ring beside it. Wherever two rings crossed, a small hexagonal node pulsed slowly, and between the nodes ran lines of script so dense that the characters overlapped. Every few breaths, the outer ring swelled outward a little and then drew back in.

Seeing all this made me sigh in disappointment.

What I had hoped to find was a sloppy job that I could take advantage of, but honestly, I could barely recognise a third of the symbols. I had to admit that whoever created this did a really good job.

Noticing my incredulous expression, the taller guard spoke.

“It was Elder Chen who designed it before his breakthrough to Life Realm, he got fed up of other elders barging in during meetings causing him to spill his wine.”

Why didn’t that surprise me?

Out of everyone in the sect, it had to be the drunk elder who complained about cultivating too fast, who would create a formation so that some arrogant elder didn’t jump scare him into spilling his drink.

Honestly, taking a closer look at it, I could almost hear the outer ring slurring at me when it swelled up and shrunk. Even though it was the elder’s work, I had to find a way to get past it, otherwise I would miss out on the meeting.

“Sorry, Master,” was the thought running through my mind as I placed both of my hands against the formation.

Soft, pale blue threads came out of my left hand and sank into the formation. The Blue Sun energy would follow its line and search through the rings for the locking nodes. This was basically cultivation-style lockpicking.

But I quickly found that the nodes were packed too tightly for my threads to get a proper grip, so through my right hand, I channelled a deep crimson energy into the gold lines. The Red Sun energy was desperate to devour everything that it touched, but against qi it wouldn’t have much success unless I released an overwhelming amount to overcome it. Instead, I let it gnaw tiny pits and cracks into the script because small defects would allow Blue Sun threads to slip through to wrap around the node underneath, so that I could turn them.

“Big brother,” the stocky guard whispered behind me. “What is that in his left hand? I’ve never seen an energy more righteous. He…he must have a really pure dao.”

“Forget about his left hand,” the taller one whispered back. “That red stuff on his right hand is making the hair on my arms stand up. If he wasn’t an elder in our sect, I’d think he’s a demonic sect elder.”

“How can you accuse the elder of that?! Do you want him to hear you?”

“I can hear you,” I said, without turning around.

There was a long silence behind me.

“They’re both very beautiful, Elder,” the stocky guard squeaked. “Big brother can’t see Mount Tai.”

I didn’t pay their comments any mind, shaking my head, I simply focused on getting the work done.

“Fourth ring,” Azure said, helping me however he could. “The node beside your left thumb is turning back.”

Releasing a deep breath, I pushed more Blue Sun energy to hold it into place while letting the Red Sun energy gnaw at the line that was feeding. The outer ring swelled again, and this time, when it drew back in, a sharp sting shot through my right palm as the formation tried to push my energy back out.

“Two left,” Azure said, while I gritted my teeth and kept my hands where they were. “One.”

The last node turned with a soft click causing the rings to slow and stop.

“He actually did it,” the taller guard breathed as the gold light dissipated.

Not wasting any time, I straightened my robes and pushed the doors open to be met by a hall that was a long room with paper screens along both walls and bronze lanterns hanging from the rafters. In the centre stood an ironwood table with a cup of tea in front of every chair and a small clay jar sealed with yellow wax sitting in the middle. There were maybe a dozen or so elders sitting at the table, and every single head snapped in my direction with rage evident on their faces.

“Who dares interrupt the Outer Elder council?” a bearded elder roared, rising to his feet.

Before I could even explain what I was doing here, I heard two heavy thuds behind me, and when I swept my spiritual sense back, I found that both guards were lying face down with their cheeks pressed flat against the floor, fighting to breathe.

“Master,” Azure said. “It’s the combined spiritual pressure from the elders.”

“Oh,” I replied in my mind, blinking. “I didn’t even realise they had it out.”

For the past few months, I’d been exposed to Rank 9 aura, which was equivalent to Civilisation Realm, almost daily. I mean I had even watched a giant red eye stare at me through a hole in the sky. So, that was why the pressure of a dozen Stellar Realm cultivators didn’t register with me anymore, but the guards were different.

If I didn’t do anything, they’d suffocate, so I released my aura and wrapped it around the two of them to lift the pressure off their backs.

“Thank you, Elder Ke,” the stocky guard wheezed, climbing back to his feet. “Thank you.”

I didn’t respond because I was looking at the bearded elder who was now bent over at the waist.

“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.” A woman with painted fingernails and a jade abacus under her hand rose and bowed gracefully. “What a pleasant surprise. Here I thought legacy elders found our little gatherings too small to bother with.”

A thin elder on the far side jumped up so fast that he bowed straight into the edge of the table with a loud thunk.

As for the others, they didn’t look so pleased. The oldest elder at the head of the table, whose white beard reached his chest, gripped his jade slip until it creaked, and his face turned a blotchy red. Beside him, a scarred elder with bulging arms leaned back and folded them across his chest.

I almost sighed.

A small, naive part of me had hoped that Stellar Realm cultivators would have grown past petty drama and grudges. These people had built stars and moons inside their own souls, so surely somewhere in all those centuries they had learned to let things go. But I guess not. If anything, they were more stubborn and stuck to their ways.

“Not even a hundred years old?” the scarred elder muttered. “This is simply a child in elder’s robes.”

I ignored him.

Starting a fight in my first council meeting would cost me the techniques I had come here for and burn bridges before I could build any. Also, in some ways, he wasn’t wrong, compared to them, I was a child, but not a normal child, I just happened to be a child who had saved multiple worlds.

What drew my attention was the small white cloud hovering over a chair in the far end of the room, and lying on top of it with his head on a pillow was a young man in pale-blue robes with his black hair loosely tied.

Even though, he had bowed with the others when I came in, he had already climbed back onto his cloud at the first opportunity. What I found interesting was that there were empty chairs around him, it seemed that nobody wanted to sit near the elder who looked like he was about to knock out any second.

Honestly, that was enough for me to start walking towards him.

After all, if the people glaring at me wanted to keep their distance from him, he was exactly the person I wanted to sit next to.

“Elder Ke?” the bearded elder called after me, his hand still pointing at the chair beside him. “The seat is here.”

“Oh dear, Elder Ma,” the woman with the abacus said. “It seems your chair wasn’t warm enough.”

“He’s going to sit with Lin Youran?” someone whispered.

“Of course the child would pick the laziest man in the sect,” the scarred elder snorted.

“Perhaps Elder Ke wishes to learn how to sleep through his duties,” the white-bearded elder said coldly. “Elder Lin has not offered a useful word in two hundred years. I am certain he will make an excellent teacher.”

A few of the elders laughed, but I didn’t care because I had read enough webnovels to know that the person everyone in the room looked down on was usually the one worth knowing. Not to mention, if this Lin Youran guy couldn’t even be bothered to stay awake during a meeting, he probably couldn’t be bothered to scheme against me either. And since I was new to this elder thing, I needed someone like that.

 “Hello, I’m Ke Yin,” I introduced myself with a smile when I got to the cloud. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

The young man’s eyes opened a tiny bit wider, which seemed to cost him a great deal of effort. He looked at me, then at the empty chair beside him, then back at me and made a soft “mm” sound, which I took as a yes, since a full sentence was apparently too much effort.

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