Chapter 861: Is This How You Treat a Junior? (Patreon)

A jade slip fell out of Elder Gong Ru’s sleeve and fell onto the ironwood table.

“Here are the techniques submitted for this meeting,” the elder said, pressing two fingers against it, which caused a soft green light to rise from the jade and spread into a wide sheet of glowing characters that hung in the air.

What I liked about it was the organisation. There were neat tables with headings for different categories such as Offensive, Defensive, Movement, Support, Concealment, and even Soul techniques. Underneath every entry, there was the name of the technique, its grade, its element, the elder who had submitted it, and what they wanted in exchange for it.

It didn’t come across as a surprise that Ma Gang was willing to give away his Nine Furnace Palm technique for either high-quality fire-attribute ores or a similar ranked fire affinity technique. As for Lin Youran, he was selling something called Restful Breath Method, but interestingly enough, there was no price written beside it at all. I didn’t know if that was because that would take too much effort or there was something else at play.

However, what really caught my attention was the heading labelled Complete Sets. Under it, there were full manuals that contained attacks, defences, movement arts, and so on for the main technique. Even though such manuals were more expensive, the positive was that the technique flowed well with each other since they were built on the same foundation. The only set I had similar to such a thing was the Primordial Wood Arts but calling it even incomplete would be generous since whole sections of the manual were missing.

As useful as Phantom Strike had been throughout my cultivation journey, it wasn’t designed to work together with my other techniques. All my techniques were single techniques. This was an issue since every time I switched from one to another in a fight, my qi had to change direction in my meridians, and against someone at my level, that tiny pause could decide whether I landed a hit or took a fist through my chest.

“You need to hide it better,” Lin Youran murmured beside me without opening his eyes.

“Hide what?” I whispered.

“That you want something.”

He wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t realised that my eyes had widened, and even such a tiny movement was something that the elders around me would not miss. Taking full control over my expression, I began to read the entries that were written in the Complete Set section, yet before I could, the projection flickered and vanished, leaving a dozen confused faces staring at Gong Ru.

“As you all saw, these are the techniques that each of you submitted prior to the meeting commencing,” he said, stroking his beard with a frown on his face. “Unfortunately, our young friend here has not submitted anything. And so, as per the rules of this meeting, I am afraid he cannot participate.”

He made a show of the words being difficult for him to say, as though he didn’t want to be the one to break the news to me but had no choice. As for me, I just stared at him, wondering whether the old man was actually serious.

I wasn’t the only one confused, looking around the table, I noticed that Ma Gang’s thick eyebrows had pulled together, Pan Shu was blinking rapidly at his tea, and even a few elders who had glared at me when I walked in were trading quick, uncertain glances.

“Elder Gong Ru,” Qiao Feiyan said, setting down her abacus with a soft click. There was still a smile on her face, but it had gone thin at the edges. “I think your memory must be playing tricks on you. I have attended these meetings for three hundred years, and I know of no such rule.”

“Neither do I,” Ma Gang grunted, folding his arms. “What are you pulling out of your behind this time, old man?”

“Our beloved elder is not wrong,” Duan Hui cut in, leaning forward on his scarred forearms. “This is an unwritten rule, but a rule nonetheless.”

“Elder Duan is right,” The elder beside him nodded quickly. “This is a trade. How can someone take part in a trade if he has placed nothing on the table?”

“But…” Pan Shu opened his mouth while looking at his twiddling thumbs, “when I first joined the council, nobody asked me to…”

“Elder Pan,” Gong Ru said without looking at him. “Did you have something to add?”

Pan Shu’s mouth shut so fast that I heard his teeth click, and he went back to staring into his hands.

“Of course, Elder Ke, the Heavens know that we are not unreasonable people,” Elder Gong Ru said, turning back to face me. “So, if you have anything worthwhile that could benefit the sect, you are welcome to place it before the council.”

Honestly, the sheer nonsense playing out in front of me had started a dull throb behind my temples. This was clearly some power play that the old man and his friends were running to remind the new elder who really ran the Outer Sect, and they weren’t even trying very hard to hide it.

Sure, I wouldn’t claim to be the most patient person, but I had sat through entire lectures from the Stone Emperor without interrupting once, and that took a great deal of self-control. But there was one thing that I couldn’t bear, whether in this life or back on Earth, and that was the frustration of politics.

No one said anything directly, they smiled insults, they veiled their threats as polite words, and they read hidden meanings into words that didn’t have them. How could anyone have the patience to deal with all of that?

Yet complaining wasn’t going to solve anything, I had to figure out how I was going to deal with it because while I was absurdly powerful for my generation, if this ever turned into a real fight, I didn’t have the power to defend myself against a Peak Stellar Realm elder, never mind the rest of the table. Not that I thought for a second they’d dare to lay a hand on the Sect Master’s disciple whilst in the sect.

Even though I hated playing this game, I was at a severe disadvantage because I didn’t have the political experience to talk around this either. I always thought I understood why Elder Chen Yong hated elder meetings, but now I truly understood. No wonder these elders never amounted to anything and were stuck in the Outer Sect, they wasted their time and efforts on petty grievances.

Unfortunately for me, the old man knew that as a newly ascended Stellar Realm cultivator, I didn’t have anything Stellar Realm level to offer.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true.

My inner world held things that would make every cultivator in this hall forget the list they had just seen, Red Sun and Blue Sun energy, rune cultivation from another world, a cathedral full of thrones holding foreign energies, and a pendant holding the knowledge of three paths up to Rank 9.

In some ways, I was the wealthiest cultivator here.

But the hunger in the eyes of the elders dissuaded me from giving into my pride and putting these elders in their place. Without a doubt, this was a ploy to put me down so I would become subservient or to find out what the Sect Master’s legacy disciple was hiding, I wasn’t going to let them bully me into either option.

“No,” I said, meeting the gaze of the old man head on. “I don’t have anything.”

“Ah, what a shame,” Gong Ru’s fake frown widened and he spread his hands with an apologetic sigh. “Well then, in that case, I think it is time for you to take your leave, Elder Ke. Perhaps at the next meeting, when you have—”

Before he got the chance to finish, a wave of power burst outward from beside me.

It swept over the room, and everything it passed over slowed down. The steam rising from the teacups stopped in mid-air and hung there in thin, motionless threads, the flames inside the bronze lanterns sank to small, lazy flickers.

What shocked me was the effect it had on the elders that had spoken out against me.

Duan Hui’s head hit the table with a heavy thunk, and a second later a loud snore rumbled out of his chest. Elder Hou, which was the name of the elder sitting beside him, slid off his chair and folded onto the floor in a heap of grey robes. Around the head of the table, the old men of Gong Ru’s group slumped in their seats one after another, a few still holding their teacups as their hands drifted into their laps.

As for the old man himself, he was still awake, but only barely since his head kept dipping forward before he jerked it back up, his eyelids drooped before he snapped them open, and a bead of sweat rolled down from his hairline into his white beard.

“Dao,” he spat through gritted teeth, the word so full of envy that it twisted his entire face.

The wave had ignored those who had defended me, so they joined me in turning to look to my side, for the first time since I had walked into the hall, I saw Elder Lin Youran sitting upright on his cloud with his pillow shoved aside and his loosely tied hair fallen over one shoulder.

Before his eyes had only ever been open a crack, but now they were wide and fixed on Gong Ru with a cold fury that made the back of my neck prickle. The sleeping elder was now awake, and he was not pleased.

“You have gone too far, Gong Ru,” Lin Youran whispered. “When you played your games with me, I was willing to let it slide, because fighting you was more effort than anything you took was worth. But I will not sit here and watch you bully the new elder.”

Seeing the old man tremble in his seat while the young man on the cloud hadn’t even lifted a finger, I understood that the true difference between cultivators in the higher realms wasn’t techniques and cultivation methods, but it was in fact the dao itself.

Gong Ru had centuries more cultivation behind him than Lin Youran and no shortage of techniques or resources, but he had never managed to comprehend a dao. As for which dao the lazy elder followed, I wasn’t certain, but the snoring filling the hall gave me a few guesses. One thing was clear from watching a Peak Stellar Realm cultivator fight just to keep his eyes open, whatever dao Elder Lin Youran followed, the man had cultivated it to a very high level.

Previous | Next