Chapter 15
Chapter 15: Three Classics and Five Canons
Xia Huan rubbed his wrist and looked at Shao Heng with a tangled expression.
A moment later, his face smoothed into something almost gentle. “Since Junior Sister truly wants it, Senior Brother can’t very well keep fighting you for it. I’ll yield.”
He’d been so arrogant a breath ago, and now he was all courtesy. Shao Heng didn’t relax. If anything, the sudden shift sharpened her wariness.
She snorted. “Yield?”
She tipped her chin at the wooden token in his hand. “Giving me what was mine in the first place? If that’s yielding, then I guess I count as your lifesaver now, too. If I hadn’t gone easy on you, one punch would’ve finished you.”
Xia Huan’s face darkened. The pain in his wrist twitched again, and whatever he’d been about to say curdled into silence. In the end, he turned and left.
Shao Heng didn’t spare him another glance. She took the wooden token straight to the Law Enforcement Pavilion, had the duty disciple record her name, then collected what she was owed: a bag of White Jade Spirit Rice and the assignment to a spirit field.
Around the hall, other disciples murmured and whispered. But they were careful—Soundproof Charms flickered in their hands as they spoke, sealing their words so no one else could hear.
A girl’s voice, hushed behind the charm: “Sister, didn’t you say Xia Huan always leans on his background? His family’s a cultivation clan, and a few of his cousins even work here at the Law Enforcement Pavilion. He’s always been so full of himself. How did he end up acting like that toward a newly admitted outer sect disciple…?”
Another girl answered, calm and cutting: “He isn’t full of himself. He just bullies the weak and fears the strong. Look at his hand—black and blue.”
The speaker was named Gu Xuan. She glanced toward her companion and kept going, voice still low. “He’s cultivated for more than ten years and condensed nearly two hundred furnaces of spiritual power. His body’s been nourished by that power for ages, and he still got beaten like this by a disciple who hasn’t even entered the Qi Induction Realm. Do you think he’ll dare provoke her again?”
Outer sect disciples were all Lower Grade aptitude, but even within Lower Grade, the gap could be like heaven and earth.
Gu Xuan’s gaze lingered on the direction Shao Heng had gone before she turned back to the girl beside her. “Gu Yu Sui. You joined this year, too. I told you back in the clan that besides cultivation manuals, you should read more classics. It’s obvious you didn’t listen.”
Gu Yu Sui was only twelve, with a round little face pale as snow. She blinked up at her sister, confused.
Gu Xuan flicked her forehead, not unkindly, then continued. “That female disciple hasn’t entered the Qi Induction Realm, and she probably didn’t come from a cultivation clan. Yet she has that kind of strength. She might be born with divine power—Vajra Bone, Savage Soul, something like that. Among Lower Grade aptitudes, those rank near the top. Her chances of advancing into the inner sect at next year’s disciple tournament are very high.”
Understanding dawned in Gu Yu Sui’s eyes.
“Xia Huan thought of that,” Gu Xuan said. “So he lowered his head.”
She reached out and pinched Gu Yu Sui’s cheek. “That disciple entered the sect the same year you did. If you get the chance, befriend her. Even spending a few spirit stones to please her wouldn’t be a loss.”
Gu Yu Sui tugged her sister’s sleeve and scowled, embarrassed. “Alright, alright. I know.”
“In cultivation,” Gu Xuan said, “it’s partners, wealth, and land. ‘Partner’ can mean a dual-cultivation partner, but it can also mean a good friend. Our aptitude isn’t outstanding, so we make up for it where we can.”
Because the Soundproof Charms held, Shao Heng heard none of it. Her spiritual power was still too thin to pierce their seals.
At the counter, a male disciple in his early thirties slid over a yellow-brown talisman and explained it plainly. “This Route-Pass Talisman will guide you to your spirit field once you channel spiritual power into it. The sect has isolation formations set up outside the fields. This talisman is also the key that opens the formation.”
He tapped the paper with two fingers. “You have the right to use the field for half a year. When the pavilion inspects it after six months, if the field is found damaged, you’ll compensate in spirit stones based on the evaluation.”
Shao Heng listened carefully, then asked, “Senior Brother, if I finish the task and still want to use the spirit field, what do I do?”
“Pay rent,” he said. “Eighty spirit stones for a year. Assigned at random. Fertility won’t differ too much.”
Shao Heng nodded. She hefted the rice bag, tucked the talisman into her robe, and left the Law Enforcement Pavilion.
She returned quickly to the disciples’ courtyard, shut the door behind her, and sat down with a bright, restless eagerness. She loosened the bag’s tie and poured a small pile of seeds onto the table.
They were still in their husks, and a faint fragrance rose from them—clean and fresh, nothing like ordinary rice.
Shao Heng stroked her chin. “Let me think. In the ‘Golden Farmer’s Compendium,’ these seeds need to be sprouted in paddy water first. So I’ll need that Spirit Rain Technique the duty disciple mentioned.”
She ran through the steps in her head—sprout, tiller, branch, head, flower, set grain, ripen.
“To ensure pollination,” she murmured, “I’ll also need the Wind-Blowing Technique…”
Decision made, she pulled a pen holder from among the simple decorations in her room and sprinkled in a small handful of rice seeds.
“Heaven births water, flowing through all directions.”
Her fingers formed hand seals—still a little stiff—and she recited the incantation as the booklet described.
A ripple shivered through the air.
Shao Heng felt the change at once. Water-aspect qi gathered and condensed, bead by bead, until droplets formed and fell neatly into the pen holder.
Even on her first attempt, the spell settled smoothly. She couldn’t help smiling.
“Easy enough.”
She leaned closer, watching the seeds darken as the water rose. “The Water-Summoning Technique and the Spirit Rain Technique are both water-aspect spells. The droplets carry qi on their own. The main difference is the area they affect.”
When the water covered the seeds to half a finger’s depth, she lifted one hand, extended a fingertip, and willed the power in her dantian.
A single drop of blue-green liquid formed and fell, tinting the water a clear, luminous green.
Shao Heng held her breath, eyes fixed on the seeds.
Not even a quarter hour passed before the green paled. Husks split. Tiny shoots pushed free, pale at first and then brightening as they rose. In moments, the shoots thickened into tender seedlings.
Shao Heng’s eyes lit like lanterns. “It can speed up spirit plant growth.”
Her mind leapt ahead, quick and hungry. “Then treasure herbs… There’s a very good chance it can do the same.”
The seedlings weren’t seedlings anymore. They were piles of sparkling spirit stones.
That divine ability—Azure Emperor—needed only her spiritual power to condense those blue-green droplets. When her power ran thin, she could recover it through meditation. A business with no cost.
And the sect itself taught that repeatedly exhausting spiritual power and restoring it tempered the yellow sprout and solidified the foundation. Two birds with one stone.
She was just about to coax out more droplets and test a heavier dose when a deafening boom of thunder exploded outside.
It wasn’t ordinary thunder.
The sound struck straight into the soul.
Shao Heng’s whole body jolted. Her vision went black. Her consciousness sank into a fog, dropping and dropping as if the ground had vanished beneath her feet.
Then, in that darkness, an illusion flashed—sun, moon, and stars wheeling in a single breath.
Her mind snapped clear.
Shao Heng sucked in air and threw her eyes open.
Something was wrong.
When she’d returned to the lodgings, the day had been bright and clean, not a cloud in sight. Less than a quarter hour had passed. No storm could gather that fast.
And that thunder… that thunder had shaken the soul.
She swallowed. Fear pricked at the base of her skull, sharp and cold, but she didn’t cower. Instead, she pushed open the window she’d shut earlier and leaned out, scanning the sky.
The sun still hung high. Blue stretched unbroken overhead. No clouds at all—and yet the thunder kept roaring, one strike after another, as if the heavens were being torn open.
Shao Heng leaned farther, tilted her head up, and gathered every thread of spiritual power into her eyes.
Only then did she see it.
Far off, in the direction of the inner sect of the True One Yuan Sect, white lightning had taken shape—massive, coiling, alive. A True Dragon of thunder swam across the sky, its body made of crackling light.
Several streaks of radiance swept past—cultivators, most likely—closing in as if to subdue it.
“What is that thing?”
Within the inner sect, as Shao Heng had guessed, several Sixth Realm cultivators were already using every method they possessed. Their eyes burned with hunger as they stared at the lightning True Dragon, trying to suppress it.
A female cultivator in purple robes threw back her head and laughed. Light flared at her brow, and rolling spiritual power formed a totem scroll behind her. The scroll’s pressure blasted the three people beside her backward in a single violent surge.
“The True One Yuan Sect has inherited its legacy since ancient times,” she said, voice ringing like a bell. “Among the eighty-seven volumes of techniques we preserve, the Three Classics and Five Canons stand above all.”
Her smile sharpened. “Now that the ‘Cavern Mystery Jade Pivot Thunder Scripture’ has manifested in the world, today should be this True Lord’s chance to step into the Seventh Realm!”