Vessel of Worlds

The two of them fell silent for a while before Andy spoke again. "Why didn't you tell me any of this?"

Jian Xin'er smiled bitterly. "Playing multiple suitors at once is hardly something to be proud of. Telling you would only give you something to laugh about. In the entire cultivation world, you might be the only person who's ever been genuinely good to me. It's just a pity that..."

"A pity that his spiritual root aptitude is too poor and Foundation Establishment is hopeless—is that it?" Andy cut in before she could finish.

The girl froze, then spoke with quiet resolve. "That's right. I do think that way. As things stand now, even if you obtain Foundation Establishment Pills, your chances of success aren't good. If you could become a Foundation Establishment cultivator, everything would be wonderful. But if you can't, I'm afraid that from then on, with the gap in our cultivation and seniority, we won't be able to speak so freely in front of others—even though in my heart, Five Roots, you'll always be the person closest to me." By the end, a faint glimmer of tears had appeared at the corners of her eyes.

Andy nodded and said nothing more. Her words sounded heartless, but they were utterly realistic. In the cultivation world, so-called friendships and partnerships were built on the foundation of comparable cultivation. A gap of an entire realm was genuinely difficult to bridge. Setting aside everything else, the vast difference in lifespan alone was more than most could bear.

After a pause, Jian Xin'er smiled. "I came this time just to see whether you were safe. Now that I know you've returned in one piece, that's enough. As for whether you can achieve Foundation Establishment—that's in heaven's hands. Five Roots, with your devotion to the Dao, you hardly need me to say more. I know you'll give it everything you have. Xin'er wishes you success in a single attempt!" With that, her graceful figure turned lightly, and she glided away on her dancing silver ribbon, vanishing into the distance.

Andy watched her receding form, let out a sigh, and continued on toward Recluse Peak.

...

"Junior Brother Zhao, we've arrived!" a grey-robed cultivator said with a smile.

"Senior Brother Lu, why have you brought me here? This looks nothing like the entrance to the crafting workshop!" Andy said coldly, the anger in his voice plain for all to hear.

After reaching Recluse Peak, Andy had been preparing to rent a crafting workshop and begin closed-door cultivation when this Senior Brother Lu Wen from Recluse Peak intercepted him along the way. Lu Wen claimed that the original entrance to the crafting workshops had been damaged in an accident half a month ago and that the new entrance had been relocated. He offered to lead Andy there personally.

Andy was highly suspicious, but reasoned that there was unlikely to be any real danger—the worst that could happen was a longer walk. So he followed Lu Wen, half-believing and half-doubting, for the better part of an hour.

When Andy noticed that they were heading farther and farther from where the crafting workshops should be, into increasingly remote terrain, he was about to confront his guide—but Lu Wen spoke first.

"I had no choice," Lu Wen said with a bitter smile and a look of resignation. "Who told me to be so unlucky? Two competitions in a row, I passed them both and earned two Foundation Establishment Pills—and neither one worked. I had no option but to come to you, Junior Brother!" His tone was perfectly calm, but the content made Andy's blood run cold.

"What do you mean? You're after my things? How do you even know I have Foundation Establishment Pills? I only returned to the sect half a day ago—how could you have anticipated this and been waiting to intercept me?" As he spoke, Andy swept the surroundings carefully with his spiritual sense and detected nothing out of the ordinary. Even so, he deliberately kept moving, putting more distance between himself and the Lu surnamed cultivator.

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"You don't need to know that. I have my ways," the Lu surnamed cultivator said. "Junior Brother Zhao, I was hoping to chat a while longer before making my move, but you're too clever—you keep shifting around and you're about to walk right out of my formation's range!" Even as he spoke, he produced a gleaming golden formation disc and tapped it lightly.

Andy heard the warning and leapt away at once, but he slammed hard into a wall of golden light. He looked around. An enormous golden barrier had materialized from nowhere—more than a dozen zhang wide and four or five zhang tall—enclosing both him and the Lu surnamed cultivator within it.

"A formation!" Andy cried out. A barrier of this size was clearly beyond what any Qi Condensation cultivator could produce with ordinary techniques. Combined with the formation disc in Lu Wen's hand, the answer was obvious.

"That's right!" Lu Wen said, his face smug with satisfaction. "This is a complete formation set I managed to borrow—the Golden Blade Tiger-Subduing Formation. Setting it up cost me three metal-attribute mid-grade spirit stones! I've spared no expense for you, Junior Brother Zhao."

"To deal with a twelfth-layer cultivator like me, why would Senior Brother go to such trouble?" Andy said with a faint smile.

Since the barrier was generated by a formation, there was no escaping without breaking the formation first. He knew very little about formations, but one that required mid-grade spirit stones to power it would certainly pack considerable force. Andy stopped moving, planted his feet, and calmly slapped several defensive talismans onto himself.

"Heh heh—other people might not know how strong you really are, Junior Brother Zhao, but do you think I don't? I've seen you use several high-grade artifacts with my own eyes, and I'd wager you crafted every last one of them yourself!" Lu Wen let out a strange laugh, his eyes fixed unblinking on Andy.

"Quite right—Senior Brother Lu has a keen eye. Here is another artifact I crafted personally. Please, do me the honor of appraising it!" As Andy spoke, he slowly drew out an unremarkable little silver sword. Then, without warning, he poured every ounce of spiritual power into it. The sword let out a sound like a dragon's cry, trailing a streak of silver light as it shot toward the Lu surnamed cultivator. Before it even arrived, the crushing weight of its spiritual pressure was already suffocating.

"A peak-grade artifact!" the Lu surnamed cultivator bellowed—but there was surprisingly little shock in his voice. Calm and unhurried, he produced a pitch-black shield coated in a layer of dark, ink-like light. "So Junior Brother Zhao really does possess a peak-grade artifact. No wonder you came back from Dragon Descent Valley with such a haul!"

The silver radiance streaming from the small sword met the black shield, and that layer of dark light stopped it cold. The seemingly unremarkable shield had completely blocked a strike from the peak-grade silver sword.

"That Mo Yuan Shield is also a peak-grade artifact. Well played, Senior Brother Lu!" Andy's brow furrowed. "You set up the Golden Blade Tiger-Subduing Formation in advance and brought a peak-grade defensive artifact besides—you've certainly come prepared. What I can't understand is how you managed all of this in just half a day. Don't tell me you knew beforehand that I'd make it out of Dragon Descent Valley alive?"

"Junior Brother needn't ask—I won't reveal a thing. Now then, you've shown your hand, so it's my turn. Allow me to demonstrate the true power of the Golden Blade Tiger-Subduing Formation. The man who lent it to me said this formation can slay even Foundation Establishment cultivators!" The Lu surnamed cultivator formed an unusual hand seal and pressed it into the golden formation disc.

What happened next was extraordinary.

The massive golden barrier began to shudder. The scattered points of golden light across its surface slowly gathered together, coalescing into tiny spheres no bigger than a fingertip. In the blink of an eye, those golden spheres transformed into golden knives, each just over three cun long—thirty or forty of them in all.

Andy could sense from their spiritual energy fluctuations that each golden knife carried power equivalent to a mid-stage Qi Condensation technique: the Golden Blade Technique. Thirty or forty golden knives meant thirty or forty Golden Blade Techniques unleashed simultaneously. The formation's power was formidable indeed.

Under the direction of Lu Wen's formation disc, the thirty or forty golden knives came slashing at Andy from every direction without mercy.

If his mid-grade spirit tool—the ice shield—had still been intact, it could have withstood this wave of attacks with ease. But the ice shield had been destroyed in the valley.

He still had several decent defensive artifacts on hand, but they were all high-grade—not enough to block this many golden knives at once. And his spiritual power was being channeled continuously into the silver sword; he had none to spare for controlling additional artifacts.

Andy had anticipated all of this from the start. He had never intended to deploy another artifact. Instead, he pulled out a thick stack of red talismans.