Library of Heaven’s Path

“For this lesson, I’ll be talking about the crux to becoming a Celestial God. This is a hurdle that many cultivators have stumbled on, but if they are able to overcome it, their life will undergo a transformative change. They will be able to become city lords in some of the minor cities, and even if we are just looking at the Royal City, it’s the minimum requirement for one to become a leader in the City Guards!

“As is commonly known, there are two main routes to becoming a Celestial God. The first way is through a pure bloodline. With a pure bloodline, even if one doesn’t cultivate much, one will still be able to make a breakthrough easily. An example would be the experts of the Dragon Tribe in the Sky of Cloud Dragon. Those possessing the core bloodline will be able to become a Celestial God upon maturity, and that’s why they are the envy of most human cultivators. The same goes for the first generation of descendants from a Conferred God King. They are set to become Celestial Gods upon adulthood. For the second generation, the probability falls to ninety percent, and for the third generation, the probability falls further to eighty percent… Basically, going down the lineage, the bloodline will become thinner and thinner, till the chances of becoming a Celestial God are no different from those of any other cultivator.

“One’s bloodline is determined at birth, and nothing will change that. So, most cultivators can only rely on the second method to make a breakthrough—cultivation. There is no denying that cultivating to become a Celestial God is fraught with difficulty, and I’m sure most of you can agree with me on this. Not only must the cultivator find a cultivation technique suited to themself, they must also have unyielding determination and confidence, as well as plenty of fortuitous encounters. All in all, less than a one in a hundred high-tier Gods are able to make a breakthrough to Celestial God.

“For this reason, every Celestial God didn’t come about easily. So, I’ll first touch on some of the conventional methods that high-tier Gods use in order to advance their cultivation…”

Fan Zhe began his lecture.

After listening for a moment, Zhang Xuan could not help but nod in agreement.

Even though the lesson prepared by Fan Zhe was a little too technical, which could easily bore a person, the knowledge that he was imparting was spot-on. He conveyed the full picture before going down into the specifics, and he was very thorough in his information. For those who were already close to his breakthrough, there was no doubt that his lessons would be very inspirational.

Zhang Xuan was able to gain a more thorough grasp of what becoming a Celestial God meant after listening to the lecture for a while.

But beyond that, most of what that was covered were things that he already knew. So, he felt that there was no point in him staying and listening anymore.

So, he got to his feet in preparation to leave the lecture hall, only to see the tightly sealed doors being blasted open the next moment.

Pah!

Following that, two figures walked into the lecture hall.

The figure walking in front was a middle-aged man. He had a towering stature, and he was dressed in silver armor. His movements were very disciplined, and his eyes instinctively scanned through the interior of the room with rational coldness.

With just a glance, it was obvious that he was a soldier who had been through the battlefield.

Behind him was a slim young man with a pale face. His aura felt withered, a sign that he had sustained severe internal injuries. Even though his life did not seem to be at risk, the traumas that he had sustained so far would probably make it difficult for him to advance his cultivation any further in the future.

“It’s a Silver Armored General of the military!”

“One must be a middle-tier Celestial God at the very minimum to become a Silver Armored General, right?”

“That’s not all. On top of possessing powerful cultivation, one must display superior fighting prowess and accrue a great deal of merit in the military…”

“Why would such a figure come here?”

“It’s his son. His son has very poor talent in cultivation, resulting in him being rejected by all academies in Royal City. In view of that, he decided to place his son under Fan Zhe laoshi’s tutelage…”

Hushed discussions echoed around the room.

“Silver Armored General?” Zhang Xuan murmured as he assessed the middle-aged man before him.

Indeed, he could sense tremendous power pulsating within the other party’s body. In terms of fighting prowess, he would indeed be much more powerful than Ming Laixiang and the others.

“You are Fan Zhe?”

The Silver Armored General walked right to the center of the lecture hall and glared at Fan Zhe with narrowed eyes. One could clearly sense the billowing rage coming from his presence.

“Yes. May I help you?” Fan Zhe replied.

“You incompetent teacher! Today, I’ll teach you a lesson for leading my son astray!”

With a furious roar, the Silver Armored General leaped forth and threw out a punch right toward Fan Zhe.

Pah pah pah!

Even while he was in the midst of his movement, the might of his punch had already compressed the surrounding air tightly to the point that a shockwave rippled all over the room.

You…”

Taken aback, Fan Zhe immediately retreated fearfully.

Padah!

The shockwave of the punch was so great that it crushed the nearby wooden podium. Alarmed, Fan Zhe quickly raised up his arm to counterattack, but recalling the rules of the Master Teacher Pavilion, he gritted his teeth and assumed a defensive posture instead.

Peng!

He was struck square in his chest, causing his back to slam into the wall. At the same time, fresh blood spurted from his lips.

In terms of strength, he was probably on par with the Silver Armored General. However, perhaps due to his experience on the battlefield, the Silver Armored General’s attacks carried extreme aggression and bloodthirst that made him difficult to defend against.

It was like facing a frenzied beast.

“Hold it right there!”

“If you have any problems, we can always talk it out.”

“What are you doing? This is against the law!”

At this moment, the others in the lecture hall finally recovered from their shock. A few parents immediately rushed forward to hold the Silver Armored General back.

Infuriated, the Silver Armored General bellowed, “What the hell do you all think you are doing? This incompetent teacher is not worthy of living on the face of this world!”

Struggling to his feet, Fan Zhe quickly took two deep breaths to recover a bit of his energy before turning to face the Silver Armored General.

“Excuse me, parent, but even if you wish to kill me, you should at least let me know what I have done wrong and give me a chance to make amends!”

He was certain that he had never seen the middle-aged man before him before.

On the other hand, the Silver Armored General grew even more enraged upon realizing that Fan Zhe was not aware of his misdeeds. He pointed at the severely injured young man behind him and questioned, “You don’t even know what you have done wrong? Humph! Do you acknowledge that my son, Zhuo Yan, is your student?”

Fan Zhe nodded in response.

“It’s out of trust for you that I entrusted my son to you, but what did you do? Instead of teaching him well, you forced him to attend additional supplementary class after formal lessons and charged him for it. I understand that you might have some urgent need for money, so I can still turn a blind eye to that, but the least you should do is teach him properly! Yet, you imparted an erroneous cultivation technique to him, causing his cultivation to go berserk. How can you have the face to continue living in this world?” the Silver Armored General roared in fury.

“Zhuo Yan’s cultivation went berserk?” Fan Zhe was taken aback.

He quickly turned to look at the young man and swiftly noticed that there was something amiss about his internal injuries. There were indeed hints of his cultivation having gone berserk. He shook his head in disbelief and said, “What I taught him were rudimentary cultivation techniques, so there’s no way there could be any mistakes with them. How did things turn out like this?”

Enduring the pain from his injuries, Fan Zhe walked over to Zhuo Yan and placed his fingers on the latter’s pulse.

Meanwhile, Zhang Xuan, who had been planning to leave earlier, decided to stay back and see how this matter turned out.

He could not help but recall how his previous self had imparted the wrong knowledge to a student, causing the latter’s cultivation to go berserk. However, back on the Master Teacher Continent, the standing of teachers was so high that even the parents would have to think twice before confronting a teacher.

Yet, the Silver Armored General had barged right into the Master Teacher Pavilion to beat the star teacher up…

It seemed like the standing of master teachers was not too high here.

Perhaps it was because Kong shi had only been in the Firmament for a few decades. If his heritage was passed down for another thousand years or so, people might start to recognize the value of master teachers and view them with greater respect.

That being said, if what the Silver Armored General said was true, Fan Zhe would have infringed on the principles of a master teacher. A teacher should be willing to impart knowledge to their students, but Fan Zhe had intentionally held back his lessons and forced his students to pay for supplementary lessons in order to acquire greater wealth for himself.

Looking at this matter from a moral standpoint, Fan Zhe was indeed unqualified to be a teacher.

It was not to say that teachers should be completely selfless and devoid of greed, but at the very least, they should uphold a basic level of professionalism. Their need for money should not be a reason for them to neglect their responsibilities.

“His cultivation has really gone berserk,” Fan Zhe muttered with a frown.

“It’s good that you have finally admitted it. I’ll kill you today and rid the world of an incompetent teacher!” Hearing those words, the Silver Armored General immediately threw another punch.

“Calm down, calm down!”

The other parents quickly tried to pull him back in order to stop him from doing anything reckless.

This was Drifting Specter Royal City, the territory where Demon Monarch Qiankun lived. All who lived in the same city would do well to heed his orders, and this was including the God Kings, or else they might very well be obliterated.

“Zhuo Yan’s father, please calm down. It is impossible for there to be anything wrong with what I imparted to him. The reason his cultivation went berserk must be due to some mistake he made in his cultivation. Let’s first find out the reason behind this matter and resolve the problem, alright?” Fan Zhe said with a wave of his hand.

After that, he turned to the young man. “Tell me what happened before your cultivation went berserk in detail…”

“Yesterday, after going through your supplementary lesson, I returned home and cultivated as you taught me… and somehow, everything just turned out like that!” The young man’s body trembled as he spoke.

“This happened after you followed my cultivation technique? Tell me what you did step by step,” Fan Zhe instructed.

“Just as you said, I channeled my divine energy through the Nascent Helios Three Focused Meridians in my hands before directing them toward the Chongyang Acupoint… In the end, I converged it together in the dantian!” The young man quickly went through the cultivation technique he had been taught.

Hearing the story, Zhang Xuan frowned once more.

What Zhuo Yan had just described was a cultivation technique for low-tier Gods to advance to middle-tier Gods. As he had compiled the Heaven’s Path Divine Art for it, he was extremely familiar with it.

While the method that Zhuo Yan had described was vastly inferior to the Heaven’s Path Divine Art, for an ordinary cultivator, it was quite a decent one. There were not too many mistakes with it, and generally speaking, it could be said to be almost foolproof.

Using such a method, as long as Zhuo Yan could gather sufficient divine energy, it should not be too difficult for him to make a breakthrough. So, how did his cultivation go berserk? Furthermore, judging from the severity of his injuries, it seemed to be quite a severe case.

“There shouldn’t have been any mistakes…”

Fan Zhe was thinking that Zhuo Yan might have remembered the cultivation technique incorrectly, resulting in him making a fatal error in the midst of his cultivation. But contrary to what he thought, Zhuo Yan’s description was all correct.

This left Fan Zhe deeply bewildered.

It was a major sin for a teacher to cause a student’s cultivation to go berserk. Even if he was a master teacher, this was not a sin that he could bear.

“If there’s no mistake, how could my son land in such a state? It’s clearly your incompetence that led to such an outcome!” the Silver Armored General shouted furiously.

“Please calm down. Let’s see if we can treat your son first,” Fan Zhe said as he channeled his divine energy into Zhuo Yan’s body to take a closer look.

Zhuo Yan’s cultivation had indeed gone berserk, and based on the injuries the young man had sustained, the culprit seemed to be the cultivation technique that he had imparted to the young man…

To put it in other words, he did not teach the cultivation technique incorrectly, and Zhuo Yan did not practice the cultivation technique incorrectly, but somehow, Zhuo Yan’s cultivation simply went berserk.

“Just what could have gone wrong?”

Fan Zhe was at a complete loss.

He had been a master teacher for fifteen years now, and he had at least taught eight thousand students to date. This was the first time that he had encountered such a bizarre situation.

Unable to find an answer, he turned to the student behind him and instructed, “Invite Physician Yu Feng here!”

“Physician Yu Feng is one of the more famous physicians in Royal City. He should be able to resolve this problem easily.”

“As long as we can identify the root cause, it shouldn’t be too difficult for us to resolve the problem!”

“Let’s treat your son first. We have plenty of time to discuss the reason for your son’s cultivation going berserk once he’s well.”

“Indeed. That being said, I must say that Fan Zhe has really failed as a teacher. Instead of teaching well during class, he chose to extend his lessons into supplementary classes in order to earn extra income. I have long heard of that.”

“If not for the fact that my daughter is under his tutelage as well, I would have taught him a lesson myself. It’s only out of fear that he would shortchange my daughter that I am holding myself back. Otherwise, if he just misleads my daughter, her future would be ruined!”

“I heard that he sells priority seats in his classroom as well. Parents have to pay an additional sum in order to secure front seats for their children…”