Chapter 2

That had to have been an illusion just now, right?
Their great expert of the Way of Ruthlessness had always been detached and composed. How could he possibly speak in such an exclamatory tone?
Lan Jueqi tilted his head up slightly and stared at Xie Qingyuan without blinking.
Sect Master Xie Tai came over as well and asked, “The Abyssal Reach Selection is almost here. Aren’t things busy over there?”
Ignoring the needle-like pain stabbing through his head, Xie Qingyuan wore a gentle expression and a faint smile as he answered, “The procedures for the Abyssal Reach Selection are fixed. Every time, we simply follow the same process, so there is not much to be busy with. I heard Junior Brother was entering seclusion to face his love tribulation, so I hurried over.”
He paused, lifted his long phoenix eyes to glance at Lan Jueqi, then continued, “It seems I came late, but as long as Junior Brother is all right.”
【Senior Brother must have rushed back to congratulate me, right? What a pity I failed and made him come all this way for nothing.】
That was what Lan Jueqi thought, while aloud he said, “You’re not late. Thank you for troubling yourself, Senior Brother.”
He was deeply grateful for Xie Qingyuan’s concern and pleasantly surprised that Xie Qingyuan had made the trip for him. Yet no matter how strongly his emotions fluctuated, his expression and movements never changed much.
His white robes snapped in the wind, and the silver hairpin binding his hair gleamed coldly. He was like a solitary, distant moon.
Xie Qingyuan said, “It was only a love tribulation. With Junior Brother’s aptitude and talent, you will certainly pass this hurdle when the right opportunity comes again.”
This was not empty flattery meant to please him. Xie Qingyuan was simply stating the truth.
Lan Jueqi was extraordinarily talented and cultivated at remarkable speed. A small love tribulation was only a stumbling block to him; he would break through soon enough.
Lan Jueqi nodded. 【Senior Brother is still just as he always was. How wonderful!】
The younger disciples of Soaring Void Mountain exchanged looks.
By now, they could confirm that the inexplicable voice really did come from Lan Jueqi.
But still… something seemed a little off, didn’t it?
The young disciples wore strange expressions and kept making subtle gestures to one another. Fortunately, their teachers soon led them away, though they continued sneaking hesitant glances at Lan Jueqi before leaving.
Xie Qingyuan’s brows lifted slightly. He smiled again and said a few gentle words, telling Lan Jueqi to go back and rest early.
Lan Jueqi stood still and listened. Only when he heard the final sentence did he remember that he really did need to return and properly summarize and investigate the reason his love tribulation had failed.
An inch of time was worth an inch of gold. He truly ought to seize every moment.
For most failed love tribulations, the cause was easy to identify.
【So… I have someone I like?】
Xie Qingyuan’s smile vanished. He watched Lan Jueqi walk away and remained motionless for a long time.
Once everyone else was gone, Xie Tai finally said, “You’ve been at Abyssal Reach Academy for eighty years without coming back once. I thought I would have to wait another twenty years, until your term ended, before I got to see my son again.”
Whether beast cultivators, demonic cultivators, or orthodox cultivators, all had made peace and stopped fighting among themselves in order to resist the Extraterritorial Nightmares. Abyssal Reach Academy had been founded for this reason, with the three sides joining forces to cultivate talent. The Ten Great Sects, the Demon Palace, and the Three Isles and Ten Continents took turns appointing a headmaster, each term lasting one hundred years.
Eighty years ago, it had happened to be Soaring Void Mountain’s turn. Xie Qingyuan was Xie Tai’s only son, the next young master of Soaring Void Mountain, and he had made major contributions in the war against the Extraterritorial Nightmares. No matter how one looked at it, he was an extremely suitable candidate.
Xie Qingyuan had volunteered to serve as headmaster of Abyssal Reach Academy, and Xie Tai had naturally agreed.
“In another twenty years, I’ll return from Abyssal Reach. Father needn’t worry. A hundred years is only the blink of an eye to cultivators,” Xie Qingyuan said unhurriedly. “I merely thought that Junior Brother was about to become a half-Saint. As his senior brother, it would hardly be right not to come congratulate him.”
“True. A hundred years is a lifetime to mortals, but far too short for cultivators. As for Lan Jueqi…” Xie Tai shook his head with an amused smile. “Do the two of you even count as proper senior and junior brothers? You still cling to a joke from your youth. It’s fortunate Bian Weichen isn’t here, or just see whether he’d lose his temper.”
Lan Jueqi and Xie Qingyuan were indeed both disciples of Soaring Void Mountain, but they did not belong to the same lineage, and the cultivation methods they practiced could not have been more different. Lan Jueqi cultivated the mental art of the Way of Ruthlessness, while Xie Qingyuan cultivated Soaring Void Mountain’s unique Ice-Drinking Canon.
Strictly speaking, as members of the same generation, it would have been more appropriate for them to address each other by name.
Xie Qingyuan neither agreed nor disagreed. “Bian Weichen has already fallen. Lan Jueqi is the only person left in the Suncrest Peak lineage. Who is there to control him now?”
Speaking of Lan Jueqi’s lineage, Xie Tai instructed him, “Since you know that, put a little more thought into it. If you see any promising seedlings during this Abyssal Reach Selection, keep an eye on them. That way, all these years of him calling you Senior Brother won’t have been for nothing.”
Xie Qingyuan asked, “Does Lan Jueqi want to take a disciple?”
“He’s never said so,” Xie Tai replied. “But I was thinking their lineage has to have a successor. Lan Jueqi spends every day pondering and researching the Way of Ruthlessness, and over the years he’s published rather a lot of research, one piece after another. I think if he found a disciple to guide in cultivation and occupy some of his time, not only the disciples on this mountain who cultivate the Way of Ruthlessness, but every other cultivator of the Way of Ruthlessness in the world might finally get a little breathing room.”
The Extraterritorial Nightmares had finally retreated, and the cultivation world had entered a period of recuperation. People really should not have to suffer this much.
Xie Tai rubbed his nose, trying hard to banish from his mind the image of an elder of the Way of Ruthlessness from Soaring Void Mountain who, upon hearing that Lan Jueqi was about to face his love tribulation, had finally broken down and come to him sobbing so hard that tears and snot streamed everywhere.
Whether Lan Jueqi succeeded or failed in this love tribulation, afterward he would certainly conduct an in-depth study. Cultivators of the Way of Ruthlessness everywhere would once again have more material to learn.
The grind. It was far too much of a grind.
Everyone else on the Way of Ruthlessness was exhausted from being dragged into it.
Xie Qingyuan said, “Abyssal Reach Academy hasn’t added or removed any teaching material related to the Way of Ruthlessness in ten years.”
Xie Tai could not help blurting out, “Once he produces new research from this, maybe we’ll have to revise it.”
Xie Qingyuan: “……”
After a long moment, he said, “Whether he takes a disciple should depend on his own wishes. Soaring Void Mountain does not accept just anyone, either.”
Xie Tai sighed. “Their lineage has truly suffered one misfortune after another. Never mind Bian Weichen—Lan Jueqi’s senior brother and senior sister both later fell in love and became unable to pass their love tribulations, so they simply stopped cultivating the Way of Ruthlessness. I’m genuinely afraid their inheritance will end with them.”
Xie Qingyuan froze. “If they couldn’t pass the love tribulation, they simply chose not to pass it?”
“Yes,” Xie Tai said. “The eldest started it. Bian Weichen was furious at the time; even when they met later on the extraterrestrial battlefield, he never gave him a pleasant look. As for Lan Jueqi’s second senior sister, didn’t Lan Jueqi even chase her down and expel her from the sect on behalf of their master?”
Xie Qingyuan had doubts about Xie Tai’s claim that he could read Bian Weichen’s expression at all, but he did know about the latter incident.
It had happened after Bian Weichen fell.
At the time, Xie Qingyuan had even heard others joking that the tradition of Suncrest Peak was simply not to bother with a love tribulation if one could not pass it: stop cultivating the Way of Ruthlessness and take another path instead, and everything would go much more smoothly.
Xie Qingyuan put away his casual smile. “This isn’t a small matter. I’ll stay here a few more days.”
Now that Xie Qingyuan was no longer making excuses or refusing, Xie Tai finally nodded in satisfaction. “I won’t say anything else. Soaring Void Mountain will eventually be handed over to you. I’m already old and have wanted to retire for many years. I’m only waiting for your term to end so you can return and take over.”
Only when no one else was around did Xie Qingyuan form a hand seal and tap the point between his brows.
“Bzzzt…”
The sound of electrical static rang out again.
Xie Qingyuan: “System?”
“At… bzzzt… at your service,” the mechanical voice replied.
“Something from beyond the heavens?” Xie Qingyuan withdrew his hand, thoughtful.
When the System had descended and bound itself to him, he had thought it was an Extraterritorial Nightmare.
The Extraterritorial Nightmares could manipulate thoughts and attack the mind. But with Xie Qingyuan’s Tribulation Crossing cultivation, his soul was incomparably resilient. There was no possibility that a System which malfunctioned the moment it was threatened could invade him.
Besides, Xie Qingyuan had never heard of any Extraterritorial Nightmare possessing such a strange ability.
This System’s target was extremely clear: it had come for Lan Jueqi.
It had simply found the wrong person.
Cultivation assistance was something neither Xie Qingyuan nor Lan Jueqi needed anymore, while Mind Reading…
seemed to have been reversed.
Although he could not separate it from his body for the time being, given how useless this System appeared to be, Xie Qingyuan decided to tolerate it for now.
====
Most of the conversations on Soaring Void Mountain that day revolved around Immortal Venerable Radiant Ascendance, Lan Jueqi.
First, he had failed his love tribulation. Then his inner thoughts had leaked out.
“Ahem… actually, I think it’s pretty normal,” a disciple cultivating the Way of Ruthlessness finally said. “Who says that just because we cultivators of the Way of Ruthlessness don’t like talking, we can’t think a lot!”
Once someone spoke up, others quickly chimed in.
“We’re only trying to maintain an aloof appearance! It’s hard work!”
“Exactly! Immortal Venerable Radiant Ascendance really does deserve to be the foremost cultivator of the Way of Ruthlessness. He thinks so much, yet he can condense it all into ten characters!”
They had said it before: outgoing chatterboxes should not cultivate the Way of Ruthlessness.
Every time Abyssal Reach Academy offered its “Foundations of the Way of Ruthlessness” course, this point was emphasized, yet plenty of people still insisted on overcoming the difficulty.
Aside from the fact that the Way of Ruthlessness was compatible with an enormous number of spells and divine techniques, Lan Jueqi himself also played no small role.
Across the entire cultivation world, Immortal Venerable Radiant Ascendance Lan Jueqi had already brought the Way of Ruthlessness to great mastery. Whenever the cultivation world discussed the Way of Ruthlessness now, Soaring Void Mountain was universally acknowledged as the best.
Even if Lan Jueqi’s master, Bian Weichen, had survived the war against the Extraterritorial Nightmares, he would not have dared claim that his own attainments surpassed Lan Jueqi’s.
Unlike most cultivators, Lan Jueqi did not rely on weapons heavy with killing intent. His true strength lay in spells and divine techniques, while his weapon, the Jade Guide of Gathered Radiance, leaned more toward support.
Magical weapons could be lost or worn down. Spells and divine techniques could not.
The name Lan Jueqi represented the upper limit of what spells and divine techniques could achieve.
Countless cultivators dreamed of becoming like Lan Jueqi: answering the call in a crisis and turning the tide on the extraterrestrial battlefield. With one sweep of the Jade Guide of Gathered Radiance, ten thousand stars answered, and the Extraterritorial Nightmares turned to ash amid their screams.
Xie Qingyuan arrived at Suncrest Peak riding on moonlight.
Lan Jueqi had already been waiting for quite some time.
“Senior Brother!”
“Junior Brother, I trust you’ve been well.” Xie Qingyuan smiled, moonlight bathing him in a soft glow. “A clear breeze, a bright moon, and tea to accompany them. Junior Brother has been thoughtful.”
The charcoal in the little brazier glowed red. Sweet-scented steam pushed up the lid of the teapot, making it clatter and flutter.
Lan Jueqi turned the sugar jar upside down. Every sugar cube inside tumbled into the teapot with a series of thuds, after which he poured the tea.
He lifted a hand, inviting Xie Qingyuan to drink first.
Lan Jueqi set the now-empty sugar jar beside another identical jar, then lifted his own teacup and took a sip.
【It still doesn’t seem sweet enough. Will Senior Brother be able to drink it?】
Using the motion as cover, Xie Qingyuan tapped between his brows. Amid the System’s crackling static and needle-like pain, he swallowed the tea.
“Delicious. Junior Brother’s tea-making skills have improved again.”
He put down the cup, his eyes and brows full of amusement.