"What a pity Lu Yang refuses to learn my Fairy Boxing; otherwise, he wouldn't have fainted." The Immortal Fairy felt Lu Yang had plenty of good qualities, but he was simply too stubborn and unwilling to learn her fist technique.
"Fairy Boxing?" Yun Zhi repeated softly. Setting down her chopsticks, an intrigued look flickered in her eyes.
"It's also called the Health-Preserving Fist technique. Once mastered, your body itself becomes medicine. When sick or cultivating, you never need to take medicinal pills again, and no poison in the world can affect you."
"However, if you want to master Fairy Boxing, you must first learn over a thousand fist techniques, like Monk Fruit Fist, Malva Nut Fist, and Ginseng Fist. You have to master them thoroughly, discard the false and retain the true, sift out the dross and keep the essence, using your body as a crucible to fuse all thousand-plus fist techniques into one. That is Fairy Boxing."
Yun Zhi was silent for a moment. Then she rose and solemnly asked, "Could Senior teach me?"
"Of course."
***
When Lu Yang awoke, he was already out of the kitchen.
"Awake? How do you feel?"
*I got knocked out cold from the spice, and you're asking how I feel?* Lu Yang thought to himself.
"My cultivation..."
After moving around only a few times, Lu Yang discovered that his cultivation had actually advanced slightly, progressing from the early phase of the early Golden Core stage to the middle phase of the early Golden Core stage.
He clearly hadn't done a single thing.
"Heh heh, did you think this immortal merely cooked an ordinary plate of scrambled eggs with tomatoes? Impossible! What this immortal made is a cultivation-boosting plate of scrambled eggs with tomatoes!"
"You feel like your cultivation didn't increase by much because you only took a single bite. If you finished the whole plate, this immortal guarantees you'd advance straight to the late Golden Core stage!"
Lu Yang felt that cultivating step by step might be slow, but it had the distinct advantage of keeping him alive.
If he actually followed the Immortal Fairy's theory and cleared the entire plate, Lu Yang feared he would sprout wings and ascend straight to heaven—by dropping dead.
Outside the cave dwelling, Meng Jingzhou shouted at the top of his lungs, "Lu Yang, are you awake yet?"
"I'm awake." Lu Yang stepped out of his cave dwelling, squinting against the harsh glare of the sun.
Meng Jingzhou, Li Haoran, and Qin Yanyan stood before the entrance.
Seeing Lu Yang awake, Meng Jingzhou breathed a sigh of relief. "You're finally awake! You've been unconscious for three whole months!"
Lu Yang started, astonished that the Immortal Fairy's poison could pack such a punch.
Li Haoran said helplessly, "Senior Brother Meng, Senior Brother Lu clearly only slept for four hours."
"Hey, Junior Brother Li, that's uncalled for! Do you know how hard it is for me to successfully trick Lu Yang once? Why'd you have to expose me right away?"
Qin Yanyan watched this exchange in silence. She wondered whether these two peerless young prodigies, Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou, had developed their extraordinary cunning and sharpness by weaving intrigue and deception into their everyday lives.
It seemed very likely.
"Let's go, let's go. We're heading over to find the Fifth Elder. Once the Fifth Elder joins our Heavenly Court Cult, he'll be a founding elder!"
***
With Li Haoran leading the way, the group soon found the Fifth Elder, who was in the middle of refining an artifact.
The Fifth Elder cast his Daoist robe straight into the flames to endure the test of raging fire. When the robe burned crimson red, the Fifth Elder reached in and plucked it from the fire pit, utterly expressionless the entire time.
He pulled a small hammer from his waist and went to work on the garment with a steady *clink-clank*, before plunging it into water. A sharp hiss marked the conclusion of the refinement.
The Fifth Elder surveyed the freshly refined Daoist robe with satisfaction and slipped it on. Only then did he notice Lu Yang and the others watching nearby.
"Ah, it's Little Lu."
"Fifth Elder, are you refining clothing?" Lu Yang asked, somewhat uncertain. The process just now hadn't looked like making clothes at all; it looked like smithing some kind of metallic artifact.
"I am attempting to combine clothing and vehicles."
"Combine them?" The group was puzzled. Did those two things have any connection whatsoever?
"Why wouldn't there be a connection?" As a grandmaster of artifact refinement, the Fifth Elder took it upon himself to enlighten them on the spot.
"A vehicle, whether it be a horse-drawn carriage or a flying boat, is a tool to make traveling convenient, correct?"
"Carriages, flying boats, and flying swords all share a single feature: they carry us."
"If that is the case, why have we always overlooked the most common object that carries us—clothing?"
Lu Yang thought about it and realized he had a point. Clothing was worn on the body; looking at it from another angle, didn't clothing envelop the body? Humans were the carriers of clothing.
"Therefore, I believe clothing makes for the most suitable vehicle. Look."
The Fifth Elder circulated his spiritual power, and the refined Daoist robe lifted upward, bringing him into the air along with it.
The Fifth Elder circled once through the air before landing steadily. Turning back to the group, he continued, "Under normal circumstances, one must reach the Golden Core stage to fly independently, with sword cultivators being the sole exception since they can ride flying swords at the Foundation Establishment stage."
"If Foundation Establishment sword cultivators can fly on swords, why shouldn't ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivators be able to fly on clothes?"
"Granted, my current method of refining these garments is too convoluted, so Foundation Establishment cultivators can't wield them just yet. But once I refine and simplify the process, register a patent, and promote it across the cultivation world, won't an endless stream of wealth pour into my Weapon Refinement Peak?" The Fifth Elder beamed with excitement. Once Weapon Refinement Peak had money, they could purchase more materials and forge even better magical treasures.
"The Fifth Elder is truly a genius!" Lu Yang said from the bottom of his heart, genuinely thinking the idea held immense potential.
The Dao Seeking Sect possessed limitless spirit stones precisely because of prodigies like the Fifth Elder and Seventh Elder in artifact and pill refinement, with their crafted artifacts receiving widespread acclaim across the cultivation world.
"And who is that little girl?" the Fifth Elder asked, pointing at Qin Yanyan.
"She's the daughter of Junior Brother Li's ex-wife," Lu Yang explained.
The Fifth Elder jumped in fright. When had his disciple gotten married?
"The daughter of my wife from my past life!" Li Haoran hurriedly clarified.
Realization dawned on the Fifth Elder. "Oh, Qin Yanyan, right? Haoran mentioned you before. In that case, you count as my grand-disciple."
Qin Yanyan was speechless.
She was beginning to regret coming to the Dao Seeking Sect. Her seniority here was the lowest of all. Setting aside Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou constantly calling her their niece, now she had been demoted straight to someone's grand-disciple.
Just as Qin Yanyan was about to say that past lives were past lives and this life was this life and shouldn't be conflated, she saw the Fifth Elder retrieve a magical treasure from his robes.
"Seeing as this is our first meeting, reason and courtesy dictate I give you a gift. I don't have many great treasures on hand, but you look to be a talisman cultivator. Take this talisman brush. It has eighteen common talismans inscribed inside; channel your spiritual power and you can draw them instantly. It should prove useful to you."
Qin Yanyan was stunned by the artifact's properties. A talisman brush was an indispensable magical treasure for a talisman cultivator. She owned one herself, containing ten types of talismans, which Su Yiren had commissioned from a renowned artifact-refining master. That master had explicitly stated that ten talismans was the absolute limit for a Golden Core-grade talisman brush.
"Th-this is far too valuable. I cannot accept it."
"Just take it. It's merely a trinket I made in my spare time; it isn't worth much," the Fifth Elder said generously.
Li Haoran stared at Qin Yanyan with unconcealed envy. Why was it that when his master first met Qin Yanyan, he gave her a gift, but when his master first met him, he tossed him straight into molten magma?
"Right, what did you all come to see me for?" The Fifth Elder finally remembered that Lu Yang's group must have had a reason for seeking him out.
"It's like this: we have established the Heavenly Court Cult. We boast profound heritage, ancient immortal legacies, backing from a great clan, a member who was once at the half-step Tribulation Transcendence stage, and the first-in-line successor to the Nine Nether Cult. We would like to invite you, Fifth Elder, to serve as a protector of our Heavenly Court Cult."
Chapter 317