Jiang Lingsu stood where she was, hardly believing her ears.
Her... her dignified self...
Had to build a house with her own hands?
And a thatched cottage at that?!
Were her spells supposed to be wasted on this?
She desperately wanted to say something to Qi Yuan.
Unfortunately, Qi Yuan seemed not to notice her expression at all.
Looking up at the clouds in the sky, he said, "You'd better hurry. It might rain tonight."
Jiang Lingsu blinked in disbelief. "Eldest Senior Brother, what if I don't finish?"
She really wished she could send him a voice message: *Help me.*
"There's a wooden bench in my room," Qi Yuan replied. "If you're afraid of getting soaked, I'll let you sleep on it."
With that, Qi Yuan yawned and stepped inside his thatched cottage.
Jiang Lingsu clenched her fists, glaring at her senior brother's retreating back.
She resigned herself to her fate.
After all, she was not the type of woman who forced others to show tender pity to the fair sex.
Her own affairs, she would handle herself.
Following him into the courtyard, she began gathering thatch and logs to construct her own... nest?
Annoyed as she was, Jiang Lingsu still remembered her true purpose in coming here.
First and foremost was finding that supreme expert.
Although Peak Master Ruan Yixi of Seven Colors Peak had the highest probability of being that expert, there was always the chance it was someone else.
For all she knew, an ancient powerhouse might be slumbering deep beneath Divine Light Sect under a seal.
As for Qi Yuan, she would treat him like any ordinary senior brother—neither getting too intimate nor deliberately cold-shouldering him, letting nature take its course.
Clouds gathered and drifted apart while Jiang Lingsu labored over her thatched cottage.
Where there had once been an empty clearing, a thatched cottage now stood.
Although she had never built a house or lived in a thatched hut before, she was a cultivator proficient in spells, after all.
Moreover, she carried a wealth of treasures on her person.
If the structure felt unstable, slapping a Body-Immobilizing Talisman onto it was enough—who feared collapse then?
By the time she finished, it was still early.
Jiang Lingsu dusted her hands off, gazing at the cottage with immense satisfaction.
"Senior Brother?"
She went outside Qi Yuan's hut and called out.
Regardless, now that she had joined Seven Colors Peak, superficial courtesies were necessary.
She needed to obtain Seven Colors Peak's cultivation arts.
"Come in," Qi Yuan's voice came from inside.
Jiang Lingsu hurried in.
The moment she stepped through the door, she saw Qi Yuan holding a square jade slip in his hands.
She recognized the design.
"Senior Brother, are you playing a game?" Jiang Lingsu asked.
The cultivation world of today was no longer the gloomy, lifeless realm of antiquity.
Entertainment had grown extraordinarily diverse.
Pill gambling.
Listening to music in pleasure houses.
Sword immortal dances.
Even games were abundant.
From its square shape, the slip in Qi Yuan's hand was unmistakably a game jade slip.
Such jade slips typically contained games across various genres.
Combat, dungeon crawling, farming... they had it all.
However, these game jade slips were by no means cheap.
Complex, large-scale titles in particular were inscribed with intricate formations, rendering the characters and backgrounds lifelike and vivid, as though real.
Because of this, jade slip games were wildly popular.
Of course, quite a few were overly explicit and could only circulate beneath the table.
Naturally, anyone who could afford game jade slips was someone with money to burn.
Qi Yuan kept playing, not even bothering to lift his head. "Yeah."
"Senior Brother, have you been playing games all afternoon?" Jiang Lingsu asked.
Thinking about how she had been doing hard manual labor while he sat here gaming, she felt a twinge of injustice.
"Aren't you going to cultivate, Senior Brother? If I'm not mistaken, you should be at the peak of Qi Refinement, just one step away from Foundation Establishment." Jiang Lingsu was also at the peak of Qi Refinement.
"I am cultivating," Qi Yuan said.
Playing games was cultivating?
Granted, some game jade slips contained games that genuinely benefited cultivation, but those were exceedingly rare and precious.
"Playing games? Cultivating?" Jiang Lingsu paused, and then realization dawned on her. "Senior Brother, you belong to the Obsession lineage. What is the object of your obsession?"
Cultivation in the Obsession lineage differed sharply from other paths.
In other lineages, cultivators sought techniques suited to their spiritual roots and cultivated them independently.
The Obsession lineage, however, required identifying an object of personal obsession.
Devoting one's heart entirely to a single thing.
Such as jade, flowers, or swords.
According to the elders of Jiang Lingsu's clan, cultivating the Obsession lineage placed paramount importance on the power of the mind and spirit.
One had to pour their entire soul into the object of their obsession.
Taken to its absolute extreme, obsession became madness.
To the outside world, they always seemed somewhat eccentric and detached.
Consequently, cultivators of the Obsession lineage were notoriously difficult to communicate with.
Jiang Lingsu had encountered cultivators of the Obsession lineage before, but never one obsessed with video games.
Under normal circumstances, anyone obsessed with gaming would be dragged off by their clan for treatment—electrotherapy being the most favored remedy.
After all, the traditional cultivation world hardly recognized games as a valid object for the Obsession lineage.
"Does this count as obsession?" Qi Yuan kept his eyes glued to the slip. "If it does, then I guess it's my obsession."
Jiang Lingsu was left at a loss for words.
Should she arrange some electrotherapy for her senior brother?
Did an obsession with video games have any future at all?
"Eldest Senior Brother, isn't that a little absurd? I've never heard of any great cultivator who was obsessed with games."
In the Obsession lineage, different objects of obsession carried vastly different potential.
If one chose trees, a thousand-year dragon blood tree was far superior to an ordinary tree, and a heavenly fortune tree was better still.
Games... what prospects could they possibly offer?
"It's a new era. We have to embrace new things." Qi Yuan cast a faint glance at Jiang Lingsu.
He had possessed this game jade slip for an entire year now.
He had obtained it even before transmigrating to this world.
In Qi Yuan's eyes, this square jade slip was essentially a handheld console.
Yet this console was quite special—it seemed... capable of connecting to the internet.
His transmigration into this world was deeply tied to this game jade slip.
Qi Yuan even suspected that his eyes' ability to see hidden information originated from it.
In this world, he had seen plenty of game jade slips that bore a resemblance to his, but in truth, they were completely different.
Jiang Lingsu found herself choked of words.
However, remembering what she had come for, she pressed on, "Senior Brother, could you give me Seven Colors Peak's cultivation technique?"
Qi Yuan looked at Jiang Lingsu with a deadpan expression. "Seven Colors Peak's technique cannot be cultivated."
"Why?" Jiang Lingsu asked.
Did Eldest Senior Brother know some hidden secret?
Did it have something to do with the peak master?
"The technique is poisonous."
*Pfft...* If Jiang Lingsu had been drinking water, she would have spat it out on the spot.
In her eyes, Qi Yuan was practically an unhinged madman talking absolute gibberish.
Then again, recalling the intelligence she had gathered before coming here, Seven Colors Peak's eldest disciple was indeed widely reputed to be touched in the head.
So this was hardly surprising.
"Eldest Senior Brother, I don't mind. Just give the technique to me," Jiang Lingsu said.
Qi Yuan sluggishly retrieved a jade slip and handed it over. "This is Seven Colors Peak's cultivation art.
"However, there's only one and a half of it.
"The first part is the original technique. The latter part is my modification, though I haven't finished modifying it yet."
He passed the technique jade slip into Jiang Lingsu's hands.
Chapter 4