Unsheathed

Jiang Shangzhen raised his hands before cupping them together, and a green water droplet formed by the essence of water fortune took shape over the palms of his hands. He then gently closed his hands over the water droplet as he continued, “Back when that accountant went to see you on your island, do you think he was looking up to you? No. What he respected and revered were the rules that had come into existence because of you.

“However, there will eventually come a day when you will feel below him, even if you’re standing at the summit of Palace Willow Island, while he stands at this dock. If you continue in this manner without making any significant changes, then that day won’t be far away at all.”

“I have been enlightened,” Liu Laocheng said.

“As expected, you’re more receptive to the words of an Immortal Tier cultivator,” Jiang Shangzhen said with a smile. “From now on, you have to focus on educating yourself, while I have to focus on cultivation.”

Liu Laocheng heaved a faint sigh.

“Perhaps someday, I’ll return to the Parasol Leaf Continent to preside over the Jade Tablet Sect,” Jiang Shangzhen continued. “If that happens, you’ll be the next leader of the True Realm Sect. When it comes to Liu Zhimao, you can choose to restrict him to the pinnacle of the Unpolished Jade Tier and make it so that he doesn’t even have the courage to reach the Immortal Tier.

“Alternatively, if you’re in a fine mood and deem him to no longer be a threat to you, then you can allow him to reach the Immortal Tier before sending him out to establish a lower sect for the True Realm Sect. I’m not trying to paint a false picture of grandeur for you here. I’m far from a gentleman, but I’m not that unscrupulous.”

A thoughtful look appeared in Liu Laocheng’s eyes.

There were designated people in the True Realm Sect tasked with collecting newspapers from the Parasol Leaf Continent, and at the moment, there were rumors swirling around that the leader of the Jade Tablet Sect may have already gone into seclusion to pursue the unfathomable Ascension Tier.

Liu Laocheng wasn’t unfamiliar with Sect Leader Xun Yuan. After all, they had traveled together extensively across the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent.

In fact, Liu Laocheng had been hand-picked by Xun Yuan to become a guest elder of the True Realm Sect.

However, when it came to someone like Jiang Shangzhen, Liu Laocheng’s ties with Xun Yuan wasn’t even worth half a copper coin in his eyes.

Liu Laocheng took a deep breath, and for the first time in a long time, a sense of ambition welled up in his heart as he nodded and declared, “From this point onward, I can dedicate my life to the True Realm Sect in earnest!”

Jiang Shangzhen turned to Liu Laocheng and gently patted him on the shoulder as he said, “I’m only saying all of this to you because I regard you as a close ally. Please don’t take it to heart if what I said felt a little offensive. If you have taken offense, then you can feel free to respond in kind. Don’t worry about me, I won’t mind. I’m not bothered by just about anything aside from my excessive wealth.”

“You really do deserve a beating sometimes, Sect Leader Jiang,” Liu Laocheng said with a dark expression.

Jiang Shangzhen considered this for a moment, then seemed to have arrived at an epiphany as he exclaimed, “It probably feels that way to you because you’re not a woman!”

————

Over in the Azure Phoenix Nation, Cui Dongshan took a duo consisting of an old man and a young boy on a tour of all of the worthy destinations to visit littered across half of the nation.

Prior to this, Cui Dongshan had obtained a jade seal of the fallen Wenjing Nation from a man who had fallen upon hard times at the Wasp Tail Ferry Station.

This Wenjing Nation hadn’t perished at the hands of the Great Li Empire. Instead, its demise had come at an even earlier chapter in history.

The prince of the fallen Wenjing Nation didn’t seem to have intention of resurrecting the nation. He had been cultivating in an immortal sect this entire time, and even after so many years, he still remained there.

Hence, even if some of the Wenjing Nation’s fortune still remained, its lineage had essentially already been completely severed because no cultivator of the Middle Five Tiers could become the ruler of a mortal nation. This was a hard and fast rule in the mortal world.

Outside of purchasing the jade seal for an absurdly low price, Cui Dongshan had also paid a visit to the old apricot tree, one that held three titles at once, namely Emperor Wood, Prime Minister Tree, and General Apricot. Once there, the young man crouched down at the hollow at the base of the tree and chatted with no one in particular for a long while.

After obtaining the jade seal, Cui Dongshan was determined to complete his collection, so he paid a visit to a certain immortal sect and made a bet with an old cultivator of the dragon aide branch. Each side put one treasure on the line, and after Cui Dongshan won, he bet two treasures against two from the old man. He won that bet as well by the skin of his teeth, and he continued to go all in, betting four against four, then eight against eight. In the wake of Cui Dongshan’s consecutive victories, the old man only had two jade seals left.

It was here that Cui Dongshan made a ludicrously lopsided proposal, offering to bet all of the sixteen treasures that he had obtained against the old man’s final two jade seals, but in the end, he emerged victorious once again.

Through this incredible luck, Cui Dongshan was somehow able to obtain all of the other priceless treasures of the Wenjing Nation, following which he began to swagger down the mountain. He casually tossed all of the priceless jade seals into a cloth pouch, then tasked a thin and frail child with carrying the pouch down the mountain, and the jade seals were clanking together audibly the entire time.

Immortal Colored Glaze was feeling very uneasy as he made his way down the mountain alongside Cui Dongshan and the small child. He was terrified that the mountain-protection formation would be activated at any moment to trap them inside. Of course, even if that were to happen, Cui Dongshan would be able to oppose the entire sect on his own just fine, but the same couldn’t be said about Immortal Colored Glaze.

Cui Dongshan had no obligation to protect him if a battle were to break out, so he could easily meet his demise here. He knew that the little idiot traveling with them was the only one that Cui Dongshan actually cared about.

Thankfully, the sect’s betting luck finally improved after losing all those bets, and they decided not to try and keep Cui Dongshan by force.

The three of them had already traveled a very long way.

They had seen a martial arts demonstration from the Lofty Sky Nation’s military and witnessed the Mid-Autumn Lantern Festival held in the capital of the Fortune Mountain Nation. Immortal Colored Glaze was just a little disappointed that he didn’t get to see the five concubines that represented the Fortune Mountain Nation emperor’s strange fetish for rotund women.

After crossing the border of the Azure Phoenix Nation, Cui Dongshan slowed down even further, and he often pulled out a jade seal to rub it against the cheek of the small child, who he referred to as Brother Gao.

All the while, Immortal Colored Glaze had played the role of an old servant, carrying Cui Dongshan’s belongings for him.

However, compared with “Brother Gao,” who was constantly being mocked and derided, Immortal Colored Glaze could count himself very fortunate, so he was frequently telling himself to be content with what he had.

As for all of Cui Dongshan’s strange and sporadic actions, Immortal Colored Glaze had already grown accustomed to them.

For example, they had once encountered a group of three vagrant cultivators, one of whom was named Lü Yangzhen. They had traveled together for some time, and Immortal Colored Glaze couldn’t understand why Cui Dongshan had deemed these lowly vagrant cultivators as worthy of such a friendly reception. In the end, they had even been blessed with a fated opportunity that Cui Dongshan had intentionally left behind for them.

They had “inadvertently” triggered something in a cave that they were staying in to take shelter from the rain to reveal a hidden stash of treasures. One of the three vagrant cultivators had been a formation cultivator, and he was ecstatic to discover a large stack of talisman paper by the name of yellow jade.

It was an exceptional haul that could’ve been sold for a massive sum of immortal currency, and Lü Yangzhen and his other companion had also benefitted immensely. At the time, they must’ve felt like they had stepped on a pile of dog shit, and upon raising their foot to examine the filth clinging to the bottom of their shoe, they were just about to cuss out loud when they discovered that there was gold hiding under it.

At the time, the three vagrant cultivators had been ecstatic, and they turned out to be decent people. After taking a moment to discuss among themselves, they offered to share some of their spoils with Cui Dongshan. In response, Cui Dongshan had put on an ecstatic facade, accepting the offering with such immense gratitude that he was supposedly moved to the point of tears. The entire time, Immortal Colored Glaze had felt utterly perplexed.

Seeing as he couldn’t understand Cui Dongshan’s actions, the best course of action for him was to not even bother trying to understand. Trying to pry into the mind of a cultivator of Cui Dongshan’s caliber would’ve led him to an early demise.

Back in the Blusher Hall of the Lofty Sky Nation, which was filled with female cultivators, Cui Dongshan had stood at the entrance, loudly advertising his paintings for sale. As it turned out, they were all explicit pornographic paintings, and in the end, he was chased down the mountain by a bunch of furious female cultivators out for his blood.

Stories akin to these had been very common events over the course of the journey, and Immortal Colored Glaze felt like traveling with someone so strange and unfathomable had done wonders for his mental cultivation.

However, there were also occasions where Cui Dongshan displayed his more serious side, and whenever he did, it never failed to evoke deep admiration within Immortal Colored Glaze.

In the Golden Osmanthus Temple, Cui Dongshan had engaged in a profound discussion with the abbot, and during the course of their conversation, the abbot had entered a state of deep and immersive meditation.

The abbot’s name was Zhang Guo, and he was a Dragon Gate Tier cultivator. In the wake of his conversation with Cui Dongshan, he immediately began to display signs of a breakthrough to the Golden Core Tier, much to the envy of Immortal Colored Glaze.

In the White Water Temple, Cui Dongshan had sat down on top of a well, which, for some unknown reason, had been sealed. There, he had begun discussing scripture with and imparting knowledge upon a young monk.

First, they debated the notion that any amount of deviation away from the Buddhist scriptures was an act of blasphemy.

All of this was complete unintelligible nonsense to Immortal Colored Glaze, and he couldn’t work up any interest.

Meanwhile, Brother Gao stood by the bamboo door, listening to the conversation between the two as he made some incoherent sounds, still unable to speak.

After a lengthy conversation, the young monk seemed to have been enlightened, and a faint smile appeared on his face as he conceded, “Rare is someone as wise as yourself, and even rarer is someone as foolish as me.”

With that, Cui Dongshan seemed to have accomplished his objective, and he was no longer interested in continuing the conversation. Thus, he jumped down from the well and departed, giving the small child’s head a gentle pat as he passed him by.

As the three of them left the White Water Temple, Cui Dongshan swaggered along as he mused, “If that stubborn boy had refused to see the light no matter what I said to him, then that would’ve been a massive waste of such a bright prospect!”

Immortal Colored Glaze barely understood a word of the conversation that had taken place between Cui Dongshan and the young monk, but he still pretended to have understood as he nodded and said, “I didn’t know you were so well-versed in the teachings of Buddhism, Exalted Immortal Cui. I think you’d do exceptionally well in the debate between the Three Teachings.”

“Quit trying to flatter me!” Cui Dongshan scoffed with an amused smile, while Immortal Colored Glaze scratched his head in a sheepish manner.

“You know what? You possess quite a bit of wisdom yourself. How about you stay here and become a monk?” Cui Dongshan suggested.

“No! I possess no wisdom at all! None whatsoever!” Immortal Colored Glaze hurriedly wailed.

From there, the trio paid a visit to the capital of the Azure Phoenix Nation, where they met the abbot of a small Daoist temple.

The temple was called the Daoist temple, and it was a tiny establishment that directly neighbored a busy residential area.

Cui Dongshan stayed there for a few days, and during that time, he donated quite a bit of money while also doing a lot of reading. The abbot didn’t have much of anything else, but he had a massive collection of books. Furthermore, just his written insights alone from reading those books amounted to close to a million characters.

Cui Dongshan preferred reading those insights over reading the actual books themselves. The abbot was elated that someone was willing to read his insights, and on top of that, Cui Dongshan’s handsome donations were a much-needed injection of funds for the impoverished White Cloud Temple, so he was more than happy to present his writings to Cui Dongshan.

The days that Cui Dongshan spent at the temple were the best that the young Daoist priest there had ever experienced, and he was very sad to see him go. On the morning of Cui Dongshan’s departure, the boy was inconsolable, and the abbot was also left feeling quite glum. He had to have been an extremely incapable master for his disciple to have grown so attached to an outsider after spending only a few days with them.

No more than half a day after Cui Dongshan’s departure, the boy was still feeling very dejected, sweeping away the fallen leaves in the courtyard in an absentminded fashion when all of a sudden, a convoy of several ox-drawn carts arrived outside the White Cloud Temple.

The cart drivers declared that they had come to deliver books to the temple, and sure enough, the carts were laden with all manners of books from the Hundred Schools of Thought, which were carried into the temple by the crateful.

The middle-aged abbot of the temple was left completely astonished by this turn of events, while the young child was ecstatic, jumping and down for joy.

The trio left the capital of the Azure Phoenix Nation on a horse-drawn carriage, with Immortal Colored Glaze serving as the coach driver, Cui Dongshan sitting beside him, and the child napping in the carriage.

“May I ask why you took such an interest in the abbot of the White Cloud Temple when he’s not even a cultivator, Exalted Immortal Cui?” Immortal Colored Glaze asked.

Cui Dongshan was waving his sleeves up and down, alternating between right and left hand as he replied, “He’s the same type of person as my current and past teachers. In times of peace and prosperity, their usefulness seems limited, but in times of peril and unrest, they…”

Immortal Colored Glaze waited silently for the rest of Cui Dongshan’s answer, but there was nothing more to come.

He had already given up on hearing the rest of the answer when Cui Dongshan smiled and concluded, “Make the best teachers. The average teacher can help good students become better. Slightly better teachers teach good students while also not giving up on the bad students, and they make an effort to set bad students back onto the right path.

“As for the best teachers under the heavens, they are willing to extend the utmost patience and kindness to the most ignorant and heinous people in the world. Wherever these people go, they bring with them the gift of education. Some people find them noisy and pedantic, but that matters not to them as long as some people are benefitting from their teachings. They are not high-and-mighty preachers.

“Instead, they are the source of the clear and pure water that runs through the hearts of everyone in the world. The water flows down, passing by everyone’s feet, so they nourish everyone while also being lower than everyone, and anyone can bend down to scoop up some water for a drink.”

All of a sudden, Cui Dongshan reared up and raised an arm up high as if he were holding a cup of wine. In this instant, his features were glowing with exuberant jubilation as he cried, “There are countless delicacies in the world that everyone yearns for, and rightly so, but is it not the greatest blessing under the heavens to have a readily available source of water that anyone can draw from freely whenever they feel thirsty?!”

Immortal Colored Glaze fell into a cautious silence.

Cui Dongshan was always spouting this type of inexplicable nonsense, and whenever he did, Immortal Colored Glaze would be at a loss for how to respond.

All of a sudden, he received a kick to the back of the head as Cui Dongshan yelled, “You’re not going to say anything to flatter me? You’re not even going to applaud?!”

Immortal Colored Glaze hurriedly began thinking about what angle he could praise Cui Dongshan from.

However, impromptu flattery was not his strong suit, so he had to think of what to say. On top of that, the kick to the back of the head had placed him under such immense pressure that his mind had gone blank, and he was at a complete loss.

Thankfully, Cui Dongshan let him off the hook as he said, “Forget it. It’s not like you’ll ever have the fortune of going to Downtrodden Mountain anyway.”

Immortal Colored Glaze heaved an internal sigh of relief.

Right at this moment, a series of azure paper birds began to flutter around the carriage as if they were living creatures.

These birds hadn’t been folded using yellow jade talisman paper purchased by cultivators of the Middle Five Tiers. Instead, it was clear white talisman paper, whose color resembled that of the clear skies after a storm.

It was said that this type of talisman paper was reserved solely for the finest of talismans crafted by Daoist sects, and they were supposed to be extremely expensive and precious.

Immortal Colored Glaze was technically a cultivator of the talisman branch, and even though he didn’t know the name of this talisman paper, he knew that the most profound type of talisman paper under the heavens was precisely this color.

In light of that, it was a complete travesty in his eyes that this talisman paper was being used to fold paper birds.

If this talisman paper had been in Immortal Colored Glaze’s possession instead, he would keep it as a priceless treasure to be passed down for generations to come!

This journey had proven to be quite laborious, and Immortal Colored Glaze hadn’t reaped any benefits at all from all this time that he had spent with Cui Dongshan. He could only pray that at the end of this journey, Cui Dongshan would give him some minor reward for at least being a useful servant.

At the thought of being a servant, Immortal Colored Glaze’s mood instantly improved slightly.

Compared with himself, the little idiot in the carriage was the real servant. In fact, he was being treated like a mule!

“Let’s go another route,” Cui Dongshan suddenly said. “We’ll slip the Liu Clan’s Lion Garden and go visit some poor guy instead.”

Thus, Immortal Colored Glaze drove the carriage in a southward direction along the route stipulated by Cui Dongshan.

Throughout their journey through the Azure Phoenix Nation, they had heard many rumors about the Lion Garden.

The leader of the Liu Clan had once been a leading figure among the literati of the nation, but he had since completely fallen from grace. What was once a widely respected and revered figure was now being denounced as a scholastic parasite, and not only had all of his poems and other writings been deemed to be completely worthless, it seemed that there was more and more dirt about him being dug up by the day.

In light of all of this, not a single one of the former assistant minister’s friends and acquaintances had attended the wedding of his second-eldest son, Liu Qingshan, who had married a foreign woman of no particular distinction after returning from a long journey.

As for the eldest son, Liu Qingfeng, who was deemed to have betrayed the clan, he had already been removed from the Liu Clan’s genealogy tree, and he was currently serving as an official of rather lowly caliber, overseeing the logistics of the transportation water channels.

He had received a promotion from his past role of county magistrate, in a nation like the Azure Phoenix Nation, where things like reputation were held in extremely high regard, everyone was of the opinion that he wouldn’t be able to climb much higher than this. In fact, there was a good chance that he would be completely booted from the officialdom altogether someday, and if that were to happen, he certainly wasn’t going to be missed.