Book 2: Chapter 240: A New Look for Letu Island, Old Faces from Jiushan
Vol 2 Chapter 240: A New Look for Letu Island, Old Faces from Jiushan
The forum had taken on a bit of a strange vibe...
At first, no one really understood the trick to staying anonymous. Word was that Zhou Qianyuan had already been tracked down offline—he probably just held it in too long and posted without thinking.
But those who could get a Tongjian were all elite disciples of Jiushan Sect. Not many were idiots.
Soon, most people wore their aliases so well it left no trace.
“Senior Sister, what are you doing?”
Senior Sister Zhang was leaning lazily in the small pavilion of her courtyard, looking totally at ease, her fingers tapping away on her Tongjian, just like an internet-addicted teen.
“Answering questions.”
Senior Sister Zhang didn’t even lift her head, still immersed in the forum.
Zheng Fa actually felt a little disappointed. Seeing her like this, Zheng Fa grew curious. He extended his spiritual sense into the Jade Slip of Creation, and instantly found out what this silly Senior Sister was up to—
Even though she had an alias, her behavior was way too obvious.
On the forum, aside from the usual gossip threads, there were also quite a few people asking questions.
Most of the help requests were about math:
Math was now one of the foundational disciplines of Jiushan Sect's immortal arts. Every disciple knew how important it was, but at the same time, way too many were being driven mad by it, their Dao hearts collapsing.
Of all the Q&
A posts on the Jiushan forum, the math problem threads were the most numerous.
To encourage disciples to help each other out, Zheng Fa had set up a bounty system—or more precisely, a scoring feature. Disciples asking questions had to reward answers they found satisfactory with Merit Points. Not a lot—more of an honor system than a real transaction.
But over the past two days, beneath these posts, a Merit-devouring monster had appeared—basically a whale in this game:
An anonymous user, single-handedly solving over ninety percent of the math problems on the forum.
And they weren’t stopping—working day and night, clearly enjoying it.
The only thing stopping this person from raking in Merit was that they actually returned ten or even a hundred times the Merit they received on some posts... ŕ𝘈ƝȏᛒЕš
The selected posts tended to be harder problems or novel questions.
This anonymous user seemed to be picking and choosing math problems and devouring them all... and if a question satisfied them, they’d even tip extra.
Zheng Fa didn’t even have to think to know who it was...
He looked at Senior Sister Zhang with a touch of nostalgia:
...She still loved doing math problems this much.
He felt a bit guilty. It had been years since he arrived at Jiushan Sect. When he first got there, he used to offer her tough questions every month. But later, as he got busier and busier, he gradually stopped...
No.
Zheng Fa suddenly remembered—it wasn’t him who stopped. A long time ago, Senior Sister Zhang suddenly said she didn’t like it anymore.
But now, clearly, that wasn’t true.
Senior Sister Zhang was deeply focused on solving problems. She seemed to sense Zheng Fa’s gaze and looked up at him.
Seeing the complicated expression on his face, she seemed to immediately understand what he was thinking. She tilted her head, as if pondering how to explain.
“You were busy.”
“……”
Zheng Fa knew she was explaining why she’d lied about not liking it.
He understood too—their roles had always been shifting. Naturally, they couldn’t maintain the same dynamics forever.
“I really don’t like it that much anymore…”
Senior Sister Zhang pointed at the Tongjian, probably referring to the math problems on it.
Seeing that he didn’t believe her, she added:
“It’s just a way to pass the time when I’m bored...”
She paused, then said:
“Since you came, I haven’t been that bored.”
Looking at her so serious, Zheng Fa suddenly felt that even though his Jade Slip of Creation was still far from a legendary treasure… at this moment, it actually felt very much worth it.
...
“I really don’t know if this kind of simplification is worth it.”
On Letu Island, Madam Xuanhua said to Zheng Fa.
As she said it, she was staring up at a round, glowing Golden Core, her face full of uncertainty.
The Golden Core hovered in the air, tens of meters above the ground, golden and radiant, like a small sun, lighting up Letu Island’s misty night.
Zheng Fa also gazed at the simplified Divine Thunder Golden Core, or rather... Jiushan Realm’s first nuclear reactor.
The reaction within the Golden Core included fusion, fission, and hybrid processes.
The last step, hybridization, in Zheng Fa’s opinion, was the fusion of newly formed particles with Five-Element spiritual energy.
A simplified Golden Core, then, was just a reactor that performed fusion and fission—used purely as an energy source.
“Thank you, Madam Xuanhua.”
Zheng Fa’s gratitude was sincere—be it the Jade Slip of Creation or the simplified Golden Core, Madam Xuanhua had contributed enormously.
“This wasn’t hard,” Madam Xuanhua waved it off, looking like she didn’t care about the simplified Golden Core at all. Then she brought up the value question again, “It’s just… this thing took a lot of resources, and it’s all being used by mortals on Letu Island?”
That doubt wasn’t just hers—disciples who helped build the simplified Golden Core felt the same, as did nearly every disciple in Jiushan Sect.
Zheng Fa gestured for her to look off into the distance.
The simplified Golden Core was located at the very center of Letu Island.
From Madam Xuanhua’s vantage point, the island looked like a blossoming firework—starting from the center and spiraling outward, streetlights were lighting up in rings, illuminating the villages across the island.
As a Nascent Soul cultivator, Madam Xuanhua could even hear the cheers and exclamations from those villages.
She pursed her lips, seemingly understanding what Zheng Fa meant, though her face still showed disinterest.
Zheng Fa understood—she was simply different from him. The lives of mortals weren’t really something she cared about.
He didn’t expect everyone to think like him.
Zheng Fa motioned for Madam Xuanhua to follow, and the two of them walked toward Zheng Fa’s home.
As they walked, Zheng Fa suddenly brought something up:
“When I first joined, I met a Senior Brother named Zhuang.”
Madam Xuanhua looked confused but listened quietly.
“Back then… he asked me a question.”
At that time, Zheng Fa had just entered Jiushan Sect. His first time attending a class at the Talisman Hall, Senior Brother Zhuang had singled him out.
Time had passed. Zheng Fa didn’t really care about that anymore.
But Zhuang’s question—he had never forgotten.
“He asked me: when spiritual energy is abundant, most mortals can’t cultivate and don’t benefit from it.”
“But when spiritual energy declines, the ones who pay the price are also mostly mortals.”
“So he wondered… is spiritual energy—or cultivators—a poison to the Xuanyi Realm?”
Madam Xuanhua rebutted: “How can you compare? A Soul Formation cultivator and a mortal—they’re not the same!”
Zheng Fa gave a slight nod, as if agreeing, but didn’t say more.
The two of them continued walking in silence toward Zheng Fa’s courtyard.
In the villages they passed, every one of them had streetlights glowing.
The “streetlights” were actually extremely cheap versions of Tongjian.
Put simply, they were just signal receivers.
Jiushan Realm, after all, wasn’t like the modern world—it had spiritual energy.
Modern nuclear reactors mostly relied on the idea of “boiling water,” and power transmission still depended on cables.
But Jiushan Realm was different.
Because of spiritual energy interference, wired transmission was far too costly.
Every five meters required a set of shielding talismans…
The consumption of spiritual materials was outrageous.
But Jiushan Realm had its own special advantages—cultivation could easily achieve things modern tech couldn’t—like almost lossless wireless electromagnetic transmission.
The Message Talismans, the more Zheng Fa studied them, the more miraculous they seemed:
To ensure stable information delivery, the electromagnetic waves in Message Talismans transmitted without any energy loss…
So now, Jiushan’s streetlights worked by modifying Message Talismans to transmit light.
This way, Letu Island’s streetlights only needed to decode the Message Talisman, and even the light itself was electromagnetic waves generated by the Golden Core...
Which meant Jiushan Realm’s streetlights didn’t need wires, didn’t even need light-emitting parts.
Ultra-low cost. Extremely long lifespan.
Zheng Fa and Madam Xuanhua arrived at the gate of his courtyard.
Inside, his little sister Zheng Shan’s cheerful voice rang out:
“Mom! This lamp is so bright!”
She was talking about the streetlight just outside their courtyard gate.
To be honest, this was favoritism...
Or rather, the result of those disciples' little schemes during the streetlight planning phase.
Streetlights weren’t exactly free, so they weren’t installed in every home—just close to some, and the “closeness” was certainly deliberate.
Like here, right in front of the Zheng family’s little courtyard—there was one.
No one disputed it. No one was surprised. It just happened, naturally.
Zheng Fa had known this from the start. He didn’t stop it, nor did he want to. He cared about the entirety of Jiushan Realm, but naturally, he cared most about his own family and friends.
So he didn’t argue with Madam Xuanhua.
The two of them stepped into the courtyard and saw Zheng’s mother standing there, squinting at the streetlight outside.
The streetlight glowed brightly, illuminating her face.
Years of hard labor had left wrinkles on her face.
Even though Zheng Fa had been teaching her martial arts all along, her progress had been slow... not just because of talent, but because the education she received as a child was different from Zheng Fa’s and his younger sister Zheng Shan’s.
When facing many things, her first instinct was always to think, “I’m not capable,” and she didn’t have much curiosity either. Sometimes, when Zheng Fa was talking to others about cultivation, she would quietly walk away on her own.
Deep down, she felt that cultivation was something distant, something she could never reach.
And in Zheng Fa’s eyes... that mindset was the biggest obstacle to progress.
But today, the wrinkles on her face seemed to soften a bit. The way she looked at the streetlight—there was a rare curiosity in her eyes.
“Is that... a light?” she asked Zheng Fa.
Zheng Fa nodded.
“It’s so bright... much brighter than candles,” Zheng’s mother said, then asked, “How’s it made?”
Zheng Fa didn’t show the slightest impatience just because his mother had no cultivation. Instead, he gently explained what a Golden Core was, and what a simplified Golden Core meant.
Zheng’s mother listened more attentively than usual.
After a long while, she finally nodded slowly.
“Cultivation is a good thing.”
Madam Xuanhua looked puzzled. Who didn’t know cultivation was good?
Was Zheng Fa’s mother only realizing this today?
Unexpectedly, Zheng’s mother slowly started counting on her fingers:
“We grow more food than before.”
“We have more vegetables than before.”
She looked toward the few small plots of the vegetable garden in the corner of the courtyard, smiling as she spoke.
Then she looked up at the streetlight in the sky.
“The light is brighter than before too.”
Zheng Fa listened to her assessment. He didn’t look at Madam Xuanhua, but Madam Xuanhua suddenly understood something—
Sometimes, just those few sentences from Zheng’s mother might be enough to make everything worth it for Zheng Fa.
And her idea of what was “good” about cultivation was different from the one Madam Xuanhua had always understood. She couldn’t quite put into words what that difference was.
But if Zheng Fa were to explain it, he might say—
Money is a good thing. Science is a good thing. But those two things aren’t good in the same way.
...
Madam Xuanhua took her leave from the three of them, heading from Letu Island toward Ten Thousand Immortals Island.
Somehow, she kept noticing things she’d never paid attention to before—
Several farmers, after a long day of work, had pulled out little stools and were sitting beneath the streetlight, enjoying a rare moment of leisure.
A young boy who didn’t look well-off stood under a streetlight, holding a schoolbook, softly reciting its contents.
The fields had changed too. Several test plots were now equipped with lights. A few disciples studying agriculture stood among them, seemingly recording something:
Madam Xuanhua knew this was part of a new project Zheng Fa had proposed—something about studying how light affected various crops in Jiushan Realm, hoping to further increase food production.
As she walked, she suddenly understood why Zheng Fa had brought up that Senior Brother Zhuang—
Faced with Zhuang’s question, her answer had been to refute him.
But Zheng Fa’s answer was... all of this.
Spiritual energy, cultivators—in Xuanyi Realm, maybe they were the cause of mortals’ suffering.
But in Jiushan Realm, things were different.
She came to a gentle stop, looking back in the direction of Zheng Fa’s home. She didn’t know which answer was more realistic, but she did know which answer would better convince that cultivator named Zhuang.
...
What the simplified Golden Core changed wasn’t just Letu Island’s appearance—it changed Economic Development Zone Island too.
Compared to Letu Island’s humble streetlights, the changes on Economic Development Zone Island were downright flashy—many shopfronts had turned vibrant and dazzling, with signs that shimmered with radiant light.
The lighting inside the shops was carefully designed to highlight the goods. First-time visitors couldn’t help but slow down again and again, reaching for their storage bags.
In truth, these kinds of “visual effects” had always existed in the shops of big sects.
But no place had ever done it quite like Economic Development Zone Island—even stores owned by mortals were this ornate and refined. Hundreds of such shops clustered together made the night sky feel gentler, leaving cultivators who’d never seen anything like it utterly spellbound.
These days, the island was thriving more and more:
For merchants, stability was the most sought-after thing... and now that Xuanyi Realm was in increasing chaos, with rumors of the Demon Ancestor’s arrival flying everywhere, causing widespread fear, the stability of Jiushan Realm had become especially precious.
At the same time, External Pills were becoming more and more well-known. Especially among Foundation Establishment cultivators, some were even willing to sell everything they owned just to buy one to boost their strength.
Nowadays, Jiushan Sect even had to limit External Pill sales—maybe just one per month.
Crowds moved through the glittering lights of Economic Development Zone Island. In a time when the Xuanyi Realm’s situation grew ever more tense, they actually felt a long-lost sense of prosperity.
“So this is Jiushan Sect?”
A woman looked around excitedly, then suddenly turned to ask the man beside her.
The man nodded.
“What was there to betray in this sect?” the woman widened her eyes. “What, life was too comfortable for you?”
Chen Ting twitched the corner of his mouth. Looking at the brilliant lights of the Economic Development Zone, the expression on his face was one of complete disorientation—
When I defected from Jiushan Sect... it didn’t look like this.