Yun Zhi pinched Lu Yang's collar between two fingers and swayed him before her eyes. Still unable to grasp the principle behind what had happened, she set him back down.
Lu Yang was just as baffled. He had followed the mnemonic chant and method Eldest Senior Sister taught him to the letter—so how had it turned into two completely different spells when he cast it?
"This makes no sense."
"I shall demonstrate once more for you." Yun Zhi was a very responsible teacher. Her pedagogical skills were rather mediocre, but her patience was unmatched.
Yun Zhi produced an hourglass and set it upside down on the ground. Then, placing a hand on Lu Yang's shoulder, she stepped through space with him.
Lu Yang felt his vision blur, and they arrived in a bizarre space flanked by multicolored ribbons of flowing light.
Lu Yang instinctively reached out toward the streaming light, but Yun Zhi stopped him.
"That is a phenomenon born of warped space. Forget you—even a Soul Formation cultivator would be torn to shreds, body shattered and soul scattered, upon touching it."
Terrified, Lu Yang jerked his hand back.
Stepping out of the space, they saw a gigantic white serpent coiled around a mountain, swallowing and exhaling the sun and moon as it refined the essence of heaven and earth. Its serpentine eyes gleamed with intelligence. As luck would have it, the two landed right inside the colossal python's mouth and tumbled down into its belly.
Just as stomach acid was about to drip onto them, Yun Zhi took another step, returning them to the bizarre space.
Following in Yun Zhi's footsteps, Lu Yang witnessed all manner of bizarre and fantastical sights: an ocean of magma, a powerful cultivator enduring a lightning tribulation, a silent bladesman bearing a massive, broad saber on his back...
These were sights Lu Yang had never seen or heard of before. It was truly difficult to imagine such wondrous figures and phenomena existed in the world.
Eventually, the two returned to their starting point. Lu Yang was panting heavily, his heart still pounding in shock.
"All the places I brought you to just now lie within the boundaries of the Dao Seeking Sect. You may visit them on your own when you have the chance in the future."
The Dao Seeking Sect was simply vast and boundless; everything beyond its nine core peaks remained uncharted territory to Lu Yang.
"Why don't you try casting the spell again?"
Yun Zhi thought things might turn out differently this time.
Meeting Yun Zhi's earnest, expectant gaze, Lu Yang braced himself and cast the spell once more.
After a full day of practice between the two of them, Lu Yang finally learned how to perceive his underground surroundings, as well as how to avoid getting stepped on after shrinking.
He didn't succeed with Shrinking the Earth to Inches even once, but "shrinking the earth" and "becoming inches" succeeded every single time, each attempt smoother than the last.
By the end, he didn't even need the mnemonic chant; a single thought was enough to cast them, as if he had immersed himself in the art for months or years.
Lu Yang's original intention in learning Shrinking the Earth to Inches had been to travel by magic, and now that he had mastered the spell "Shrinking the Earth" to get around, it technically met his goal.
It was just that the method was hard to put into words, and the speed was a bit slow.
Watching Lu Yang grow and shrink at will, burrowing through the dirt and having the time of his life, Yun Zhi asked casually, "Junior Brother, I heard that you have trouble picking up missions at the Mission Hall?"
"Yeah. Most missions can only be completed by those at the Golden Core stage or above, so very few are suitable for me." Lu Yang was currently contemplating camping out at the Mission Hall for a few days to see if he could catch a suitable mission.
"What a coincidence, then. A few days ago, during a meeting with the elders, someone mentioned that an issue had arisen over at the Herb Garden. A mission was posted at the Mission Hall, but no one has accepted it. I think you're well-suited for it, so you might want to head over and take a look."
Lu Yang knew that ever since Master entered seclusion, Eldest Senior Sister had presided over the meetings in his stead.
"What kind of mission?" Lu Yang was puzzled. His strengths were hardly remarkable within the Dao Seeking Sect, so what kind of mission could possibly be suitable for him—let alone one at the Herb Garden, about which he knew absolutely nothing?
He hadn't even fully learned how to identify medicinal herbs yet.
"You will know once you get there," Yun Zhi replied evasively.
...
In Lu Yang's eyes, the Dao Seeking Sect was practically a miniature cultivation world of its own. Without ever stepping foot outside the sect gates, one could find people to help refine pills, forge artifacts, set up arrays... most of the time, it was entirely self-sufficient.
Pill refining required spiritual herbs. The Dao Seeking Sect had an enormous demand for pills, and they couldn't rely on outside purchases forever.
To solve the herb supply problem, a massive Herb Garden had been cleared within the Dao Seeking Sect to grow medicinal plants, and the Mission Hall frequently posted missions requesting help with cultivating herbs there.
Cultivating herbs required specialized knowledge, of which Lu Yang possessed not a shred. To this day, he still couldn't tell which herbs or spirit beasts were in the meals he ate every day, let alone cultivate spiritual herbs.
Long before reaching the Herb Garden, Lu Yang could already smell its fragrance. Unlike the scent from Pill Cauldron Peak, which stood a fair chance of being poison, this was the purest medicinal aroma. If an ordinary mortal breathed it in over a long time, it would prolong their life and ward off illnesses and calamities.
At the entrance of the Herb Garden lay an old man, a cattail-leaf fan covering his face as he dozed leisurely on a rocking chair.
"Excuse me, sir, is this the Herb Garden?"
The old man drooped his eyelids and glanced at Lu Yang. "Who're you?"
"Lu Yang."
"I didn't ask your name, I asked your status."
"The Sect Master's fourth disciple, Eldest Senior Sister Yun Zhi's youngest junior brother."
Hearing the first half, the old man wasn't fazed in the least. That old codger of a Sect Master had been gone for ten years; who cared about him? He ought to retire already instead of hogging the seat all day and leaving Yun Zhi to do all the work—what an outrage. But hearing the second half, realization struck him like a bolt of lightning.
A disciple of the Sect Master meant he was Yun Zhi's little junior brother!
The old man sprang to his feet, moving with even more vigor and agility than Lu Yang.
This was only natural. In the cultivation world, one could never judge someone's prowess or age by their appearance. If an old man and a child stood side by side, it was hard to say who was the grandfather and who was the grandson.
Nor did anyone in the cultivation world advocate respecting the elderly and cherishing the young; after all, there was a good chance both the old man and the child could beat the stuffing out of you.
"So Yun Zhi sent you! Why didn't you say so earlier?" The old man threw an arm over Lu Yang's shoulders, warm and chummy as if they were brothers.
"We're all Dao Seeking Sect folks here. Just call me Old Ba. In this little corner of the Herb Garden, what I say goes."
Lu Yang suspected Old Ba was taking advantage of him, but he had no proof.
"What did Yun Zhi send you here for? Picking herbs? How many years of aging do you need—a thousand or two thousand?"
Seeing Old Ba's nonchalant attitude, Lu Yang was suddenly reminded of the meals Eldest Senior Sister cooked for him. Could it be that they were all made with thousand- or two-thousand-year-old herbs picked from the Herb Garden?
Thousand-year herbs weren't cabbages; even for the Dao Seeking Sect, they were quite precious.
No, surely not. Eldest Senior Sister was a frugal person; why would she waste such herbs on him?
Lu Yang asked politely, "Eldest Senior Sister said that the Herb Garden posted a mission a few days ago that went unclaimed. May I ask what the mission is?"
Old Ba came to a sudden realization. So it was that mission. "Do you know how to cultivate herbs?"
"Not at all," Lu Yang answered truthfully.
"Then let me give you a brief explanation. Cultivating medicinal herbs involves quite tedious steps. One of them is loosening the soil, which allows the herbs' roots to better absorb the spiritual energy in the earth and exchange it with the spiritual energy in the air.
"Loosening the soil has always been handled by a couple of Silver-ringed Heavenly King Earthworms.
"Recently, trouble arose in their family, leaving no one to do the work, so I posted a mission to loosen the soil in the Herb Garden. This requires the Earth Escape Dao art, one of the Five Elements Dao arts. Plenty of youngsters know the Earth Escape Dao art, but they all think it's too much of a hassle and refuse to take it. As luck would have it, Yun Zhi had you come."
"So what I need to do is..."
"Imitate an earthworm, burrow into the soil, and loosen the earth in the Herb Garden."
Lu Yang: "..."
Lu Yang suspected Eldest Senior Sister was messing with him, but once again, he had no proof.
Chapter 31