The Joyous Spirit Boat

Not long after the disciples of Azurecloud Peak joined the Spirit Fields Group, they began learning how to work the land alongside everyone else. Recently, however, they had all taken up another task as well.

Breeding new varieties.

For the sake of this breeding project, Lingxian Sect had stopped serving spirit rice from that point onward.

These days, the Spirit Food Hall’s dinners consisted entirely of dishes, while the staple foods were ordinary rice and flour purchased from the mortal world by the Finance Hall.

The reason was that all the spirit rice remaining in the sect had been reserved by the Spirit Fields Group to serve as seed for this year’s crops.

Even Little Luan was said to be conducting experiments with utmost seriousness.

It was experimenting with fusing the bloodlines of two different demon beasts it had taken a liking to.

As for how exactly two demon beast bloodlines were fused, Lin Xiao had no idea. Little Luan had always been mysterious about it and refused to reveal anything.

Because Little Luan was so busy, Da Tao had recently taken over management of the Beast Garden, as well as arranging work for the new disciples who came there.

Liu Yunan, who had finally found himself with a little breathing room over the past few days, found this rather strange.

Previously, everyone had been urging him to hurry up and arrange for new disciples to join them and share the workload. But now that he had actually done so, why did everyone seem even busier than before the new disciples arrived?

Time quietly passed amid those busy days.

In the blink of an eye, three months went by.

This was the day Lingxian Sect officially began producing its locking rings.

It was also the wedding day of Lin Lei, the eldest grandson of the Lin family.

Although Xiushui Village had seen a great deal of traffic in recent years, public order had remained excellent.

Not only were there no crimes being committed, even the petty theft that had once occurred from time to time had vanished completely.

In fact, during the first year after Lingxian Sect was established, there had still been some idle ruffians and local children sneaking into the villages to steal chickens and dogs.

However, after Hu Liang, who was in charge of patrolling the area around the mountain on Lingxian Sect’s behalf, caught and frightened them several times, no one dared to do anything bad in Xiushui Village or the neighboring villages anymore.

As for the tourists who came from elsewhere, there was even less to worry about.

Seeing the village’s simple and honest customs, and knowing that an immortal sect stood guard behind it, everyone who came here put on a peaceful and friendly expression, regardless of whether they were good or bad at heart.

Therefore, the Lin family had no intention of holding Lin Lei’s wedding too quietly. They would follow the village’s usual customs.

Old Master Lin had already informed Village Chief Du and the heads of the various clans in the village while the wedding was still being prepared.

Thus, before dawn on this day, the Lin family’s old residence was already bustling with activity.

The members of the Lin family had not lived in the old residence for some time. Normally, they only came down every so often to give the place a quick dusting, so they naturally had to clean it thoroughly now.

With the Lin family’s current abilities, any one of them could simply raise a hand and cast a Dust-Cleansing Art to deal with all the dust in the old residence. However, Grandma Lin had firmly insisted that, for this wedding, every corner had to be washed, swept, and wiped down with water.

According to Grandma Lin, a house that had gone unoccupied for too long lost some of its human warmth. The Dust-Cleansing Art could make a place spotless, but it could not restore the lived-in atmosphere that came from people.

Thus, the entire Lin family pitched in and got to work.

For the wedding banquet that day, Jiang Youfu had boldly promised to provide one main dish for every table, while Liu Shengsheng had also agreed to prepare one substantial dish.

The rest would be made by several skilled women from the village.

Things were different now. Given the Lin family’s current prestige in Xiushui Village, it was easy to imagine how many people would come to offer their congratulations and witness the ceremony. Old Master Lin was not stingy either. With a grand wave of his hand, he decided that they would hold a running banquet!

That meant an enormous amount of food had to be prepared.

Eldest Uncle Lin, who was responsible for purchasing the ingredients, returned to the village with a whole convoy of carts piled high with supplies. Everyone who saw him marveled at the sight, while secretly deciding that they would definitely come over and offer their congratulations once the banquet began that afternoon.

With his face glowing with joy, Eldest Uncle Lin carried the ingredients into the kitchen. On the way back from town, people from villages and townships within ten li had all been amazed by his grand procession, offering their congratulations and praise. Just thinking about it made him feel wonderfully pleased with himself.

At noon, everyone ate a simple lunch before preparing to go fetch the bride.

In the countryside, a poor family would usually spend a few copper coins to rent an ox cart from a villager who owned one. A somewhat wealthier family might go to the market town or county seat and hire a donkey cart with a simple carriage. If the rental shop heard that the cart was being used for a wedding, they might even tie red cloth and flowers around the donkey.

But Lin Lei had made other plans for today’s wedding procession.

From the moment the marriage had been arranged, he had been thinking about how to give his bride a pleasant surprise.

The banquet and all the other arrangements had been handled by his elders, leaving him with little to do. So he had decided to come up with something special for the wedding procession.

After thinking it over, he had hit upon the spirit airship from their sect.

Naturally, the spirit airship was no longer the crude version Lin Xiao had casually cobbled together in the beginning.

At present, the Lingxian Sect’s Artifact Refining Hall housed three spirit airships, with carrying capacities ranging from ten to a hundred people. Each one had been crafted with exquisite workmanship.

Naturally, they owed no small part of their designs to the various sketches provided by Mo Yuanjiao, who had grown up surrounded by wealth and luxury, and Liao Pantu, who was extremely well-traveled, as well as to the advice of Old Master Lin, an experienced carpenter.

However, all three spirit airships had been made by Senior Liao and the others, who possessed the strongest artifact-refining skills in the sect.

Lin Lei could barely keep up with all the things he had to learn in the sect’s Artifact Refining Hall, let alone make anything independently.

But once he had decided to use a spirit airship he built himself to fetch his bride, he began spending nearly all his free time studying how to make one, after completing the various production tasks assigned to him in the Artifact Refining Hall each day.

Fortunately, the Artifact Refining Hall possessed a complete manual on spirit airship construction. He studied it diligently every day, and with so many excellent teachers and friends nearby whom he could consult at any time, his learning progressed fairly quickly.

Even so, the actual process of construction was indeed far from simple.

Fortunately, he managed to finish it before the wedding day.

As the sun began to sink toward the west, Lin Lei eagerly led a group of his fellow sect disciples to fetch his bride.

Lin Xiao and the other unmarried young men boarded the spirit airship, which Lin Lei had decorated to look wonderfully festive, and headed for Songyang County.

Over the past few years, Lingxian Sect had occasionally appeared in the mortal world, so people’s understanding of immortals was no longer limited to the vague impression left by the immortal sects recruiting disciples once every few decades.

Even so, immortals remained a rare sight.

Thus, when the people of Songyang County looked up and saw a ship carrying roughly twenty people flying steadily overhead, its sides covered in double-happiness characters and red silk, they could not help crying out in astonishment.

“Mother, look! There’s a ship flying in the sky!” a child shouted excitedly, pointing at the spirit ship.

For a time, those who had witnessed it firsthand, along with people who had hurried over after hearing the news, followed behind the flying ship through the streets and alleys, curious and full of longing.

Someone from the bride’s family had been waiting at the entrance to the alley for the wedding procession. When they saw the impossibly festive ship flying through the sky, Lin Lei—who had visited several times before—standing at its prow, and the enormous crowd following along the street behind it, the woman immediately turned and ran back inside.

Her face flushed bright red as she shouted at the top of her voice, “Guiqing’s wife! Your son-in-law is flying here in a ship!”

Her voice was exceedingly loud, and it was impossible to tell whether she was shocked or thrilled.