He looked around for a while and realized that it would be rather difficult to accommodate both the Qingyun Peak disciples, who rarely had any reason to come down the mountain, and the elders.
After all, the disciples of Qingyun Peak did not often need to descend the mountain.
Even if they all chose various occupations in the future, those jobs would not necessarily require their attention every day.
Lingxian Sect had been so busy lately simply because there were too few people and far too many things to do. Everyone had to juggle several positions, leaving them busier than ever.
As for the elders of Lingxian Sect, they did not normally need to go up Qingyun Peak either.
In other words, everyone’s daily routes did not overlap very much.
Hmm…
Lin Xiao pondered for ten seconds.
Then he decided to try another approach.
He sat down on the ground, took the Heart-Rectifying Mirror out of his private storage, and laid it flat before him. He then raised his right hand and gathered spiritual energy at his fingertip. Using his finger as a blade, he brought it down in a single stroke and split the Heart-Rectifying Mirror in two.
Lin Xiao had already inspected it. It was not constructed from any formation, and after confirming with the system, he learned that the mirror itself was no different from an ordinary mirror. No matter how many pieces it was broken into, it would still remain the Heart-Rectifying Mirror.
The Heart-Rectifying Mirror, which he had only recently obtained, had thus been cut in half.
It had become two mirrors, each two and a half meters long and one and a half meters wide.
Lin Xiao was very satisfied with the result.
The only problem was that they had no frames. Without them, the mirrors did not look impressive enough.
So he immediately tucked the two mirrors under his arm and went to the Artifact Refining Hall in the middle of the night.
Because of their heavy workload—and because most of Lingxian Sect’s elders no longer needed much sleep—the nighttime had practically become the elders’ cultivation period.
The Artifact Refining Hall was empty at this hour.
Once inside, Lin Xiao began gathering a pile of materials according to his own ideas and set about making frames for the two mirrors.
After receiving the reward for completing Qingyun Peak, and considering the system’s attitude toward various matters in the past, he had come to some new conclusions.
Perhaps when it came to sect construction, taking the initiative to build things would bring richer rewards than simply completing system-assigned tasks.
In other words, compared with relying on the system to carry out all sorts of simple, mindless combinations, the system seemed to offer greater support for independently undertaking sect construction, research, and innovation.
Why would a sect-building system have such a preference?
As Lin Xiao pondered this question, his hands remained busy crafting the frames.
To make them look sufficiently grand, he boldly used more than half of his Soul-Nourishing Wood and a piece of high-grade Chilling Jade.
This was the only piece he had cut from his Soul-Nourishing Wood.
Ever since Senior Liao had obtained a Soul-Nourishing Pendant, that section of Soul-Nourishing Wood had returned to Lin Xiao.
The reason Lin Xiao dared to use the Soul-Nourishing Wood so extravagantly was mainly because the system’s reward for his previous research into the Lock Ring had been a Soul-Nourishing Tree sapling.
Once the Soul-Nourishing Tree matured, its trunk would become Soul-Nourishing Wood.
However, he had not been in a hurry to plant the sapling. He had other plans for where to grow the Soul-Nourishing Tree.
If he urgently needed Soul-Nourishing Wood before the tree had matured, Senior Liao’s absurdly large Soul-Nourishing Wood bed might not be entirely off-limits to borrow…
Inside the Artifact Refining Hall, the Soul-Nourishing Wood and Chilling Jade—black and white—shone brilliantly in his hands as they mingled with spiritual energy and various supplementary materials.
Making the frames was not difficult. With Lin Xiao fully focused, they were completed in no time.
The frames were broad, with white as their base color and auspicious-cloud reliefs covering every inch. Black, gleaming lines wound through the carvings, giving them an air of dignified magnificence.
Lin Xiao was very pleased.
He immediately took out the Heart-Rectifying Mirrors and began fitting them into their frames.
However, the instant he embedded both mirrors into their frames, something unexpected happened.
The two framed Heart-Rectifying Mirrors suddenly floated into the air. An invisible force seemed to draw them together, causing them to circle around each other!
Under the moonlight of the night, a faint radiance seemed to shine down upon the Heart-Rectifying Mirrors alone.
Gradually, streams of black-and-white energy seeped out of the frames. Guided by that invisible force, they flowed strand by strand into the Heart-Rectifying Mirrors.
Lin Xiao watched the scene in surprise.
As time passed, the radiance illuminating the two mirrors grew brighter and more dazzling, until it completely enveloped them and formed a huge, round ball of light.
Suddenly, cracks appeared across the enormous sphere!
The next moment, dazzling beams of light shot out in every direction! Even Lin Xiao found it difficult to look directly at them. Then, without making a sound, the sphere of light burst apart, and all the radiance in the surroundings instantly converged onto the Heart-Rectifying Mirrors!
When he looked again, he discovered that the two mirrors, which had been circling each other, had somehow ended up pressed together with their reflective surfaces facing outward.
Once all the phenomena vanished, the space returned to silence. The two tightly joined Heart-Rectifying Mirrors slowly drifted down to the ground like a feather.
Only then did Lin Xiao walk over, pick them up, and store them in his private storage before using the appraisal function once again.
[Yin-Yang Heart-Rectifying Mirror: In its divided form, it is the Heart-Rectifying Mirror—rectifying the self and the heart, illuminating the mind and seeing one’s true nature. Only by understanding one’s own heart can one comprehend the Dao. When combined, it can draw upon the power of the sun and moon to form a Four Symbols Prison, suppressing souls, driving out demons, and sealing away all evil. Friendly reminder: The more people who comprehend the Dao through this mirror, the stronger its power will be when the mirrors are combined.]
How should he put it…
Lin Xiao was filled with emotion.
As expected of him.
Now that he had two Heart-Rectifying Mirrors, he no longer needed to worry about where to place them. He soon found suitable locations for each.
One was placed at the entrance to the cultivation hall on Qingyun Peak.
The other was placed at the entrance to Yao Guang Floating Island.
This was to accommodate sect members who had been away from home. Whenever they returned, they might not necessarily enter the cultivation hall, but they would certainly visit the Spirit Food Hall on the floating island.
Thus, these two locations were where the most people passed through on either side.
After dealing with the Heart-Rectifying Mirrors, he began placing the newly acquired first-grade spirit vein.
A spirit vein had already been placed in the small mountain spring halfway up the mountain. With the nourishment provided by the Chilling Jade cottage, Xiaobai, standing beside the spring, that spirit vein was now faintly showing signs of breaking through to the second grade.
The floating island already had Spirit-Accumulating Mountain.
After careful consideration, Lin Xiao decided to place this spirit vein on Qingyun Peak.
This was their sect’s first disciple peak. How could it possibly be without a spirit vein?
In some matters, Lin Xiao was rather stubborn. He stubbornly believed that places with water were a better match for spirit veins.
Therefore, he chose the small pond on Qingyun Peak where the disciples normally drew water to drink.
Once he had made his decision, placing it there took no more than the blink of an eye.
Although the two spirit veins were located in different places, they were not actually very far apart. A considerable portion of their areas of influence overlapped.
It was certainly true that the closer one was to a spirit vein, the denser the spiritual energy would be. But with the coverage of the two spirit veins nearly overlapping, the spiritual energy around Lingxian Sect instantly surged by a great deal.
Every sect member who happened to be cultivating at that moment noticed it immediately.
The next morning.
After waking up, the people of Beautiful Waters Village at the foot of the mountain all felt that they were more refreshed than usual.
Even the crops outside seemed to be growing with greater vigor.
The villagers, hoes over their shoulders as they prepared to head into the fields to weed, were filled with contentment. Living at the foot of Immortal Mountain was truly wonderful—this year was sure to bring another bumper harvest!
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
to panic—he has a system. As long as an investment target dies, he can claim a reward. And since he is immortal, the one thing he has plenty of is time. ... Countless years later. “Immortal Emperor of Longevity? I invested in him.” “Supreme Celestial Venerable? I invested in him.” “Undying Empress? I invested in her.” “...” “Heh. Once they’ve all died, even the Heavenly Dao will have to kneel and call me Dad.”
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
