Li Qingxue''s hand rested lightly on his arm, steadying him as they drifted downward. She guided him through the humming sea of green until they hovered just above a cluster of seven-colored spirit orchids.
Their petals shimmered like living jewels, pulsing with dense medicinal qi. The old master reached out with trembling fingers and plucked one ripe fruit from a low branch. It was warm, heavy, and perfect—its skin velvety beneath his callused palm.
Real. It was all real.
He had once heard from his master that whenever this fruit appeared in the world, Murim warriors would ughter one another just to im it. Hundreds had died for a single fruit, as it could boost one''s cultivation by fifty years.
Yet now, with all these fruits lying before him, no one was fighting for them.
Truly, times had changed.
He closed his eyes for a long moment, then slipped it into his robe like a sacred relic. “Lead on, Qingxue," he said, voice rough with emotion. "Show me the rest of the Peaks. Every single one."
She bowed once, eyes soft with understanding, and together they rose into the sky.
Over the next hours they swept across the entire mountain range, peak by peak. Each stop struck the old master like a fresh blow to the chest.
As they swept over Spirit Array Peak, the old master stared in stunned silence. A majesticttice of towering crystalline spires now crowned the mountain, each one glowing with soft, pulsing light like living pirs of starlight. The air around them hummed with raw power.
Li Qingxue floated beside him, her voice calm and clear. "This peak is only the centralmand hub, Master. These towers can activate powerful protective formations across the entire Wudang Sect in seconds. But we''ve built dozens more along the outer borders and mountain ridges. They form a giant that constantly pulls spiritual energy from every direction-the forests, the rivers, the sky itself—and channels it straight into the heart of the sect."
She gestured across the vastndscape below. "The result is remarkable. The concentration of spiritual qi has increased nearly a hundred
all of Wu
timespared to ten years ago. The air itself feels thicker now, richer, almost alive with power."
Li Qingxue''s tone carried quiet pride as she finished. “We have thousands of formations interlocking perfectly, cycling and reinforcing each other without pause. They don''t just protect us. They nourish every de of grass, every disciple, and every building in our domain."
The old master''s breath caught in his throat. A hundred times the spiritual energy. In ten short years. He could feel the difference even now-the qi pressing gently against his skin like a warm, endless tide. What had once required constant effort and costly pills now flowed freely, like breathing.
He swallowed hard, the weight of generations of struggle pressing on his chest.
By the time they reached cksmith Peak, the old master''s heart felt battered raw. He had expected the familiar ring of hammers on anvils, the roar of forges, the sweat and song of disciplesboring for days to birth a single de. Instead, the entire peak had transformed into a humming cathedral of industry.
Sleek drones-dozens of them-glided silently through open-air foundries, melting raw ore harvested from the new mines and pouring it into precise molds. Molten metal flowed like liquid starlight, shaped in seconds by arrays of glowing runes.
No more back-breakingbor. No more weeks of hammering. The drones produced wless ingots of spiritual steel, each one purer and stronger than anything the sect had forged in centuries.
The cksmith disciples-only a handful now-stood at wide design tables in a sunlit hall, sketching weapon blueprints. Their brushes moved with calm focus, refining elegant curves and lethal edges.
They never touched the raw metal. Their only role came at the very end: when a finished de emerged from the final quenching chamber, a disciple would step forward, press both palms to the hilt, and pour their own spiritual energy into it, awakening the weapon''s spirit.
The old master stared, jaw tight, as another perfect sword slid out of a machine- gleaming, bnced, already humming withtent power. "They... they don''t forge anymore,” he whispered. "They design. The machines do everything else."
Before he could say more, a tall elder in a soot-stained robe hurried forward, bowing deeply. Elder Bao, master of the peak, had aged well in the decade the old master had been gone. His eyes sparkled with quiet pride.
"Wee back, Sect Master," Elder Bao said, voice warm. "I see Qingxue has been giving you the tour. If I may be so bold... your weapon looks a little dated. Would you allow me to present you with something better? We have several new models ready for Core Formation experts."
The old master''s hand instinctively dropped to the hilt of his sacred de_Cloud- Piercing Sword, one of only three such treasures in the entire Wudang sect.
Forged four hundred years ago by the greatest cksmith master of that era, the de could slice through mountains yet still retain its razor-sharp edge. Pride red hot in his chest.
"This sword has served me through three great wars," he said, drawing it with a ringing chime. "It is no ordinary weapon. I doubt your new toys could match it."
Elder Bao smiled-not mocking, simply certain and reached casually to a nearby rack. He selected a sleek ck de at random. The sword looked unassuming, its edge catching the light like dark ss.
"This one cost us roughly three hundred thousand spiritual stones to produce," he said mildly. “High-grade spiritual steel, tripleyered rune matrix, self-sharpening core. Please, Master. Test it against yours. No harm in a friendly sh."
The old master snorted. "You would break your own de, Elder. Cloud-Piercing has never been bested."
He raised the sword and brought it down in a clean, controlled arc. Steel met steel with a sound like a thunderp.
The ring of impact echoed across the peak.
Then-crack.
Cloud-Piercing Sword snapped clean in two. The upper half spun away and ttered across the stone floor, its broken edge dull and ordinary.
The old master stood frozen, staring at the jagged stump in his hand. His sacred de his pride, his legacyy ruined at his feet like a child''s wooden toy.
Elder Bao lowered his own sword, expression gentle. "The new forging process raises the base quality far beyond what we could achieve by hand. Even our standard des now outss the old masterpieces. Ten years, Master. That''s all it took."
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the soft hum of machines in the distance.
The old master''s knees trembled. He slowly sheathed the broken half of his sword, fingers numb.
A decade of seclusion, and the world he had protected with blood and bone had left him behind. His greatest treasure, reduced to scrap in a single careless swing. The old master looked up at Li Qingxue and Elder Bao, his eyes glistening with a storm of raw emotion-pride, disbelief, and a deep, aching worry that refused to fade.
"Still..." he sighed, the sound heavy and tired. "I''ve walked through nearly every peak now. Everywhere I turn, drones and machines are doing the work. I hardly see any disciples anymore. Are we chasing wealth and materials so hard that we''ve forgotten how to raise our own people? If we trade cultivation for profit, we lose the very heart of Wudang."
Li Qingxue bowed deeply, her posture perfect with respect. “Master, ten years ago when you entered seclusion, the sect had ny-seven thousand disciples. Roughly one thousand had reached Foundation Establishment, and only three elders and you had stepped into Core Formation."
The old master nodded slowly. "Yes. That is exactly the Wudang I left in Jun Jiu''s hands. But now... I barely see our people at all."
Li Qingxue continued. “Master, may I ask—at the height of our glory, when the founder still walked these mountains, how many disciples did Wudangmand?"
The old master lifted his gaze to the
distant sky, his expression turning solemn as old memories stirred. "My own master once told me that in our
дим?
goldenage, we stood at three hundred thousand disciples. Five thousand in Foundation Establishment fifty in Cope Formation, and one Nascent Soul-our founder himself. That was
when Wudang ruled the entire
murim world. Even the kings of Xia
called our founder brother.”
Li Qingxue bowed once more, then spoke the words that stopped his heart.
“Master..... right now, Wudang has five hundred thousand disciples."
The old master choked. "Five hundred thousand?"
“Yes,” Li Qingxue said steadily. “And twenty thousand of them have already reached Foundation Establishment."
"Twenty thousand?" The old master staggered back a step, his face pale. In his entire long life, he had never been struck this hard. The shocks of this single day already outweighed everything he had endured in the past two hundred yearsbined.
Li Qingxue pressed on, gentle but unflinching. "We currently have four hundred Core Formation experts. Our target is one thousand within the next five years." The old master stared at her, heart hammering against his ribs. "You''re joking... right? Four hundred Core Formation experts? That''s impossible."
Li Qingxue shook her head, a small, knowing smile on her lips. "With spiritual energy so thick you can practically chew it, plus the
high-grade pills and spiritual fel
we churn out every day, cultivation has be ridiculously easy. These days many new disciples bres
through just by eating well and sleeping like logs. Honestly, if they
worked any harder, they''d probably
ascend even faster.”
The old master stared at her as if she had just suggested robbing his ancestors''
graves and using their bones as cultivation aids.
Eat... and sleep? To raise cultivation?
His face twisted like he had bitten into a lemon marinated in vinegar for a hundred
years. Madness. Pure, unfiltered madness.
He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to steady the whirlwind inside him. "Tell me
the truth, Qingxue. Why is Jun Jiu doing all of this? What is his real purpose behind
turning our sect into... this?"
Li Qingxue hesitated for the first
time, choosing her words with care. "Jun Jiu once said he made a promise with you. In five years Xia''s time, he intends to lead the Mum Alliance. And ept him peacefully... he will use
as they refuse to
every person we have built here to
storm the Alliance and take it by force. In his own words, Master-he
is building an army."
The old master''s mouth fell open in pure disbelief. “Building... an army?"
Silence stretched between them, thick and heavy.
Finally, in a hoarse whisper, he asked, “Where is he now?"
Li Qingxue met his gaze directly. "He is already in Xia. He has gone ahead to
prepare and will soon open a new path for us there."