Chapter 314

Chapter 314: Vine King, Lend Me Your Body
At the bamboo lodge of Tai Bai Academy.

A short, red-faced old man leaned against the doorframe, peering out again and again, his anxious expression hard to hide.

A white-haired old woman saw him and let out a merciless snort of laughter: “I told you long ago to discipline Li Da, but you never listened. Now you know how to panic. Just wait, he is about to embarrass himself in front of everyone!”

The red-faced old man glared at her.

The old woman was not scared at all. She even smiled with gloating delight.

The red-faced old man was just about to explode when Dean Mo Xin stepped out to smooth things over.

The red-faced old man still refused to accept it. He said angrily: “Dean, Li Da is our disciple from Tai Bai Academy. Are we really going to stand by and look on while he spars with Yu Zhao and not stop it?”

“He ran over there himself to make a fool of himself. No one can talk him out of it.” The white-haired old woman said lightly.

“Xian Shu! I have tolerated you for a long time!”

“What a coincidence, so have I.”

“Enough!” Dean Mo Xin said in a deep voice.

The white-haired old woman and the red-faced old man exchanged a look, then sat down in silence.

Dean Mo Xin’s expression eased a little: “Today’s spar was outside our expectations, but in my view, it is not a bad thing. Only by feeling shame can one become brave. After this, the disciples will understand their own shortcomings and how cruel cultivation really is.”

The Cultivation World Grand Tournament had exposed the dangers hidden under Tai Bai Academy’s surface prosperity.

Dean Mo Xin and the others had suddenly realized that compared to the other six top-tier sects, Tai Bai Academy already lagged behind by a clear margin. If they did not reform soon, Tai Bai Academy might be the first sect to drop out of the ranks of the top-tier sects.

That was why they had started to assign heavier training tasks and set up exchange activities with the outer sect and others.

The spar between Yu Zhao and Li Da was an accident, but it was also something Dean Mo Xin was happy to see.

Sometimes you had to break things to rebuild them.

Tai Bai Academy needed a full reform, from the outside to the inside.

That was also why he and the other elders chose not to show up.

He was sending a signal to Yu Zhao, telling her to let go and fight as she wished, with no need to hold back.

On the martial practice field.

Yu Zhao looked around and still did not see Dean Mo Xin or any of the elders. She understood at once, and the way she looked at Li Da held a trace of pity.

Li Da still did not know what was waiting for him, but he could understand Yu Zhao’s gaze.

He frowned and shouted: “Yu Zhao, don’t be so smug. If you lose later, everyone will laugh at you!”

“What a coincidence.”

“Coincidence about what?”

“That is exactly what I wanted to say to you.”

As soon as Yu Zhao finished speaking, the disciples around them burst into loud laughter.

To be honest, Li Da was actually well-liked in Tai Bai Academy. If that were not the case, Wei Ying would not have tried so hard to talk him out of the spar after finding out he wanted to fight Yu Zhao.

But their back-and-forth was just too funny. The crowd could not hold their laughter in.

The laughter all around stabbed at Li Da’s nerves. He stepped forward angrily and snapped: “Such shameless boasting. Let’s settle this with our hands. You make the first move!”

His aura suddenly surged. His Dao robe billowed as if in a storm, and the unique pressure of a Nascent Soul cultivator spread outward.

The smiles on the watching disciples’ faces vanished at once, and their expressions turned serious.

Just as a fierce battle between Nascent Soul cultivators was about to erupt, Yu Zhao suddenly raised her hand to stop him.

“Wait a moment.”

Displeasure flashed across Li Da’s face.

“Uncle Master Li, it seems you forgot something. Just now you said that to avoid the suspicion of bullying the weak, you would suppress your cultivation level and only use eighty percent of your strength.”

Li Da’s expression froze.

He really had forgotten.

The pressure coming from Yu Zhao was too strong. He had subconsciously treated her as a dangerous opponent who needed to be handled carefully and had no intention of suppressing his cultivation level at all.

Wei Ying and the others all felt their vision go dark.

[He’s done for. We’ll be carrying him off the field later.]

Back in the bamboo lodge, Dean Mo Xin could not help but shake his head.

Even a lion used its full strength to catch a rabbit.

Carelessness and underestimating the enemy were fatal mistakes.

In this fight, Li Da would lose without injustice.

Li Da let out an awkward laugh, then gritted his teeth and forced himself to say: “I was too arrogant earlier and spoke out of turn. I take that back. You are very strong and worth my full strength.”

He admitted it honestly, which made Yu Zhao think a bit better of him.

Her expression turned solemn.

“Uncle Master Li, please guide me.”

“Please.”

As soon as Li Da spoke, he reached into the air and pulled out a cyan seal from the void.

He formed hand seals with both hands and tapped them onto the cyan seal.

The spiritual energy in the area rushed toward the seal at once. The cyan seal grew with the wind and soon became half the size of the martial practice field. As it moved, spirit power howled around it, its pressure heavy and oppressive.

Yu Zhao, however, did something unusual. She did not summon the Mirror of Fleeting Lives. Instead, she took out a round, plump seed from her sleeve.

The moment that seed appeared, even Dean Mo Xin, far away in the bamboo lodge, could not help but be startled.

It seemed that in the short time since they had last met, Yu Zhao had gone through another stroke of good fortune.

“Go!”

Li Da flicked his sleeve, and the huge cyan seal smashed straight down at Yu Zhao.

A pale cyan light fell over Yu Zhao. At once, she felt the space around her lock up. That meant she could not use any teleportation art to escape.

Thankfully, she had no intention of dodging anyway.

Back on Myriad Flowers Island, when she had followed Senior He Huan to learn incense crafting, Senior He Huan had been delighted to find she had a good talent in the way of plants. So Senior He Huan had given her a seed.

That seed was actually a dead seed that had fallen off Senior He Huan’s body. After being carried and nourished by her for many years, it had gained an unusual ability.

As long as Yu Zhao poured spirit power into it and then used the Illusory Tide Art to activate it, she could transform it into any spirit plant she had ever seen.

After she obtained the seed, she had also kept it close and warmed it with her own spirit power. Today was the day to test the results.

She half lowered her eyes and pictured something in her mind. Just as the cyan seal was about to fall, she bent down and pressed the Joyous Union Seed into the ground.

“Vine King, lend me your true body for a while!”

Boom!

The ground shook at once. A thin vine tore out of the earth, then grew crazily at a speed like lightning.

Its tender green color faded in a few breaths into the dry brown of something that had weathered many storms. As everyone watched, its wrist-thick body swelled and thickened at a speed visible to the naked eye.

One zhang, three zhang, five zhang…

Bang!

The cyan seal slammed solidly into the vine.

The huge crash snapped the stunned crowd back to their senses.

“Wow! So this is Senior Sister Yu Zhao’s illusion art? It’s way too strong!”

“Is that vine really formed from an illusion art? I can’t see any flaws at all!”

“Uncle Master Li’s Azure Chant Seal smashed into the vine, but it doesn’t look damaged at all!”

“Impossible!”

“See for yourself!”

Everyone stared hard and then fell silent.

The brown vine had taken the blow head-on, but was completely unaffected. It was even still growing, and looked like it would soon spread past the edges of the martial practice field.

Just as the bystanders were wondering whether they should back away, the vine finally stopped growing.

They looked at the scene on the martial practice field and the place became so quiet that not even a crow could be heard.

Now, one half of the martial practice field was occupied by the vine, while the other half was filled by the Azure Chant Seal floating in midair.

The two giant things squeezed the space of the field to its limit, making everyone feel cramped, as if it was hard to breathe.

Back in the bamboo lodge.

No one spoke.

Dean Mo Xin let his gaze sweep over the remaining elders one by one. “Now do you understand the gap between the disciples and Yu Zhao? If she had not personally come into contact with that vine, how could she create a clone this realistic with her art?

“For her to achieve this, talent is only one part. Her hard work and toughness are even more precious.”