Chapter 867: The Beginning of My Training Arc (Patreon)

With that announcement, the meeting came to an end, and the elders left laughing, leaving the empty council hall looking far larger than it actually was. Standing beside my chair, I could still hear the final words of pity from the few elders that weren’t looking forward to my humiliation.

“Don’t die, lad,” Ma Gang had said, slapping a heavy hand onto my shoulder. “And if you lose, at least make the old fart sweat for it.”

“For when you inevitably change your mind, Elder Ke Yin,” Qiao Feiyan had whispered, sliding a small bronze token across the table toward me. “The Hall of Accounts never closes, and it never turns its back on friends.”

The token was still sitting exactly where she left it, if I really needed something from the woman, I could always pay a visit to the hall itself. There was no need to take anything she offered, even if it looked like a simple communication token. I wouldn’t put it past the lady for it to be some sort of tracking device or something.

Shaking my head, I turned my gaze to Elder Lin Youran, who had fallen straight back asleep the moment he had told me to accept. What game, if any, was he playing? A Peak Stellar Realm cultivator knew better than anyone the difference between the peak stage and the early stage, what had gone through his mind to urge someone who broke through a few weeks ago to accept such a duel?

“Don’t overthink it,” Lin Youran mumbled without opening his eyes.

“I haven’t said a word…”

“You didn’t need to; your frowning is enough to keep me awake.” He rolled onto his back. “Those old farts can underestimate you all they want. But someone who cultivates the World Tree Sutra and was able to break through to Stellar Realm within a year? It’d be foolish to not take him seriously. People like that end up in history books.”

That was the most I had heard the elder say.

“I appreciate the confidence, Elder,” I smiled. “But even I’m not certain I could beat a Peak Stellar Realm cultivator.”

“How you are right now?” One of his eyes opened slightly to look me over. “Probably not. But with a little training, you’ll be ready.”

“And you’re going to train me?” I asked, my right eyebrow arched.

“Yes, unless you’d rather I not.”

“No, I don’t mind. I’m just surprised that’s all. You don’t seem the type to take on that much work.”

“I’m not,” he said, pulling the pillow over his face. “But the old pile of bones took the Primordial Silt, so every time I close my eyes, something in my inner world tries to fall on something else, I can’t sleep through that. And since I can’t even get a proper nap anymore, I might as well do something with the time.”

Oh yeah, the Primordial Silt, that reminded me of the debt that I owed the guy. From what I could gather, he needed help to spark the first life on his barren planet, so what could I offer him?

The easy answer would have been some of the World Tree Origin Soil since that treasure could turn his planet green within a season, but with the roots of the Genesis Seed running through every inch of it, I didn’t feel comfortable handing a piece of it inside someone else’s soul. That would be the opposite of repaying kindness with kindness. That would be something Li Tianyu would do…

Unfortunately, I couldn’t give anything that had been grown in my inner world because they were all powered by blue sun energy, and without breaking through to Life Realm, they would quickly fall apart once they left my inner world.

As for living beings, I wasn’t okay with trading them, at least not without their consent and after having ensured that whoever they were going to would treat them even better than I ever could. So that really left the different energy types that I had, and the one that would be perfect in such a situation was the blue sun.

When I had been an Outer Disciple, the deal that I had with Elder Chen Yong, where he could examine the blue sun energy in exchange for teaching me formations, had been enough for him to gain some inspiration that forced him to enter closed door cultivation. And he was a Life Realm expert, so imagine how beneficial an energy centred around promoting life would be to a Peak Stellar Realm cultivator.

Also, because the Genesis Seed had filtered my blue sun, it carried none of the corruption that drove the Lightweavers of the Two Suns World insane, so there would be no harm in letting the elder have a look. And it wasn’t like the two sun energies were complete secrets, the Life Realm elders had seen me use it during the Outer Sect Tournament even if they didn’t understand what it was exactly. To add to that, I doubt Elder Lin Youran was the type to tell anyone, that would take too much effort.

“Elder Lin,” I said. “I think I might have something that can help in your situation. I have an energy that is full of life. I’m not comfortable handing it over because I don’t know what it would do to your inner world, but you can study it if you’d like?”

For the second time since I’d met him, the sleep drained away from his face, and he propped himself up on an elbow.

“Why…why would you offer me that?”

“Because I owe you for standing up for me, and now that you’re offering to train me too, I’d owe you twice.” I said. “I don’t sleep well when I owe people.”

“I didn’t help you because I wanted something in return,” he said, shaking his head. “But I’m also not foolish enough to turn it down, though the thought of studying sounds exhausting.”

“Then don’t study it,” I said. “Lie back and look at it for however long you want.”

“Hmm, I like the sound of that,” he replied, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. “But you can show it to me later. For now, we need to start your training.”

***

With that, we made our way through the sect, him floating on his cloud while I walked beside him. I didn’t know exactly what I had expected, maybe a secret dimension, a hidden cave, or even somewhere with a waterfall, since every training arc I had ever read had a waterfall, instead we came to a stop outside the Technique Simulation Rooms.

Behind the reception desk, Ruan Fei smiled when he saw me, then noticed the cloud and dropped his brush.

“Elder Lin? You’re… awake? It’s been a while since you last visited.”

“The duty of being a Senior Brother calls,” Lin Youran said. “Is Room Seven available?”

Ruan Fei nodded, leading us to the same room that had produced a simulated young master named Cao Yu, who insulted me for a full minute, dropped to his knees the moment I summoned a giant golden hand, then climbed back up and insulted me again once it disappeared.

When Ruan Fei left, Lin Youran tapped the control panel without bothering to sit up.

SPARRING OPPONENT

CULTIVATION: PEAK STELLAR REALM

ENVIRONMENT: OUTER SECT MARTIAL STAGE

A small copy of the Martial Stage formed above the panel, empty stands and all.

My disappointment must have been obvious because Azure chimed up.

“Master,” he said. “You’re making the face you make whenever a story doesn’t go how you expected.”

It wasn’t my fault. When the elder had offered to help, I had expected more than fighting a simulated Peak Stellar Realm cultivator over and over for the next two weeks. Honestly, it would probably be better to world walk to a realm where time passed faster—

A soft beep cut my thoughts short as a screen that I had never seen before opened.

AUXILIARY CONFIGURATION

· ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS

· COMBAT RESTRICTIONS

· TREASURE INTEGRATION

His finger tapped the last option.

PLACE TREASURE WITHIN THE CENTRAL ARRAY.

A circle in the middle of the floor slid open, creating space for Lin Youran to place a palm-sized piece of clear jade with a single green leaf that was now mostly brown sealed inside. As soon as it clicked into place, a pale blue light spread outward until every panel in the room was glowing.

Seeing my questioning look, the elder spoke up.

“One day, back when I was an Outer Disciple, I skipped morning practice to fall asleep beneath an old tree on the far side of the mountain,” he said. “I was having the best sleep of my life when this decided to fall on my head.”

I nodded because that was a totally normal way for a treasure to land in the lap of a protagonist character.

“I tried to ignore it at first,” he continued, “but I quickly realised it was related to the Dao of Time, and when it is inside a formation, it can be used to speed up the passing of time.”

My eyes widened at that because that was one of the most powerful daos, and the rarity of such treasures only made it more valuable. I didn’t understand why he was willing to use it on me. The question running through my mind must have shown on my face because he went on.

“I’ve spent the past two centuries using it when I needed it, so there’s only a little bit of energy left in it before it becomes useless, and since two weeks isn’t actually long enough for you to learn what I have to teach you, we might as well use it.”

He made it sound so simple, I couldn’t tell if this was happening to me because of my overwhelmingly positive karma or if Lin Youran was just genuinely a good guy, but I couldn’t think about it too deeply because he tapped the panel once more.

TEMPORAL FLOW: 1 : 10

DURATION INSIDE: 140 DAYS

That’s almost five months of training under a Peak Stellar Realm cultivator who had comprehended a dao to a good level, while Gong Ru spent two weeks bragging about the lesson he planned to teach me.

It was ironic that for someone who had spent the past year avoiding protagonist tropes, I was now living through the most famous one of all, the training arc, where an absurdly powerful master with a secret training cheat helps the protagonist grow strong enough before the big battle. And from what he said, this seemed to only be the beginning, what in the nine heavens was the laziest man in the sect going to teach me?

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A/N

Comment below what you think Ke Yin should focus on for the training arc and what Lin Youran will teach him