Bad Guys, Dummies

Little Luan was extremely attached to the peachwood sword.

It was all for the promise Lin Xiao had made to it. Aside from managing the Beast Garden, it spent all its time seriously pondering how to transform into human form.

After learning that advancing its cultivation would be far too difficult, it turned instead to seeking a magical method of transformation.

And so that Lin Xiao would not accuse it of faking things, it had painstakingly studied an even more ingenious transformation technique.

With that kind of dedication, there was no way Lin Xiao could fool it with a single Azure Profound Flame.

There was nothing Lin Xiao could do but promise, “I’ll find the time in a couple of days to pick a branch from the peach tree and refine a peachwood sword for you.”

“Go now!” Little Luan refused.

It had spent so much time mastering the transformation technique, yet Lin Xiao had not even left it a peachwood sword. It found it very hard to believe the “in a couple of days” coming from Lin Xiao.

“All right, all right, we’ll go now. I’ll go right now.” You couldn’t keep deceiving a child, or he would lose all credibility in its eyes in the future. Lin Xiao hurriedly surrendered and made his way to the Ten-Mile Peach Blossom Tree.

Everyone in the sect was busy, so there was not a single person near the Ten-Mile Peach Blossom Tree at that moment. As soon as Lin Xiao arrived, Little Luan followed close behind.

“That branch! That branch!” Little Luan cried, pointing at a branch on the Ten-Mile Peach Blossom Tree with an exceptionally elegant shape.

Lin Xiao raised his eyes. Well, this little chick certainly knew how to choose. The branch was evenly shaped and bore several blossoms, while the peach leaves above it were a beautiful, tender emerald green. It was exceptionally attractive.

“What do you want that one for? No, no, that one won’t make a good sword.” As he spoke, Lin Xiao casually snapped off an old branch from the edge of the Ten-Mile Peach Blossom Tree, one with hardly any flowers or leaves left. “This one is good. We’ll use this one. Come on, let’s go back and make you a peachwood sword!”

With that, he turned around and dashed toward the Artifact Refining Hall without waiting for Little Luan to react.

Little Luan: …

Little Luan watched Lin Xiao’s retreating figure, then turned to look at the beautiful branch it had chosen on the peach tree beside it.

Forget it. Since Lin Xiao said that branch would make a better peachwood sword, it was probably true.

It was about to have a peachwood sword!

At the thought, Little Luan happily narrowed its beady eyes and flapped its wings twice in delight.

“Bully.”

The sudden voice startled Little Luan, which had been feeling happy just moments before.

The voice was lively and ethereal, with a childlike crispness to it.

Little Luan looked around, but there was no one nearby. Its spiritual sense had not detected anyone in the vicinity, either.

Besides, it had never heard that voice before.

“Cluck?” Little Luan tilted its head in confusion.

“Idiot.”

The voice appeared again.

This time, Little Luan seemed to identify where it was coming from.

Its gaze shifted toward the Ten-Mile Peach Blossom Tree standing quietly in the cold wind.

“Cluck-cluck, was that you talking?”

But the voice fell silent once more.

Little Luan waited for quite a while, yet heard nothing else. It stood beneath the tree, looking this way and that, and even circled around the tree once, but found nothing unusual.

At last, it stuck out its rump and dropped two piles of spiritual fertilizer beneath the tree. Only then did it leave, thoroughly satisfied.

Lin Xiao knew nothing about what had happened there. He had already returned to his own artifact-refining room in the Artifact Refining Hall, where he tossed the peach branch he had just picked and some spirit stones into his item synthesizer.

There was no way he was going to refine it himself. Not to mention that anything he made would certainly be inferior to a product created by the system, he could only refine an ordinary peachwood sword—at most, one at the level of a common magical treasure. The one produced by the system, however, was fully named the “Myriad Realms Unified Peachwood Sword,” and it possessed tremendous growth potential to boot…

Besides, he had no time. The most important thing at present was to catch up on the orders.

Not to mention that, as sect master, he still had to find time to cultivate and raise his cultivation as quickly as possible. Although Senior Liao had successfully advanced to the Deity Transformation realm, which sect would ever complain about having too much battle strength?

The next moment, a brand-new peachwood sword appeared in Lin Xiao’s private treasury.

Little Luan had been waiting eagerly at the entrance of the Artifact Refining Hall. When the other disciples invited it inside to sit for a while, it merely shook its head and continued waiting quietly outside.

When Lin Xiao came out, he saw Little Luan squatting at the entrance in a posture resembling a hen sitting on her nest.

“Little Luan, did you lay an egg?”

“Cluck, no. How do you lay an egg? Do you know how?”

Its tiny chicken eyes were filled with confusion.

Lin Xiao: …

He had actually been asked by a hen how to lay an egg.

“Here’s your peachwood sword. Take it.” He pulled out the peachwood sword and handed it to Little Luan.

The moment Little Luan saw the peachwood sword, its eyes lit up. It immediately stood and extended its left wing to take the sword. Then it suddenly remembered something and promptly transformed its left wing into a small hand before solemnly accepting the peachwood sword from Lin Xiao.

Once it had the sword, it could not bear to part with it. It held it up before its eyes and examined it closely. Its right wing also transformed into a little hand, and the two hands gently cradled and stroked the peachwood sword. From its chicken beak came a series of happy “cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck” laughs.

Seeing this, Lin Xiao’s heart softened. Children really were easy to please. A single peachwood sword was enough to satisfy it.

At that moment, Lin Xiao’s lock ring indicated that someone was contacting him.

“Little Luan, go back and play with it slowly. I have something else to take care of, so I’m going inside first, all right?”

“Cluck-cluck, goodbye!”

Now that it had its peachwood sword, Little Luan raised its wing-hand and waved it clumsily at Lin Xiao. Then it hugged the sword and left the Artifact Refining Hall without looking back.

Lin Xiao answered the call through his lock ring.

“Sect Master, I have something important to report.” He Yi’s voice came from the other end, somewhat grave. “Recently, I’ve been observing the sect’s movements. It seems that the sect intends to vigorously promote its reputation in the future, as well as encourage the entire mortal world to conduct business at the trading center in Xiushui City. Is that correct?”

Although the Lingxian Sect had not explained all of these future arrangements to its members and disciples in the monthly sect reports, every action the sect had taken so far had been reported in detail without any concealment. Therefore, it was perfectly normal for someone to infer the sect’s future development by piecing together its various actions and its dealings with Xiushui City at the foot of the mountain.

Hearing this, Lin Xiao replied, “That’s right. What about it?”

He Yi took a deep breath before saying, “I wonder whether Sect Master knows why the mortal world has not produced a single Deity Transformation cultivator in all these years—or about the fact that some organizations in the cultivation world have been controlling the channels through which resources are traded to the mortal world.”

Lin Xiao was not particularly surprised by He Yi’s words.

Over the past few years, he had gained an increasingly thorough understanding of the mortal world, so he was naturally aware of the difficulties it had faced all along. He had also wondered why the gap between the mortal world and the cultivation world was so enormous.

Although the mortal world had far thinner spiritual energy than the cultivation world, its cultivators were not entirely without wealth. Yet cultivation resources and other necessities were pitifully scarce.

One might say that the market in the mortal world was too small to be worth the cultivation world’s attention. However, the cultivation world did send resources there for sale—the prices were simply exorbitant. Each time, the cultivators of the mortal world had to grit their teeth and purchase only the items they desperately needed.

Clearly, that was far from normal.