Do you think it's appropriate

These days, Lin Xiao had been run off his feet.

After returning to the Artifact Refinement Hall and finishing the most important high-grade artifacts for this shipment with Hu Liang, he had been preparing to lend a hand with some of the hall’s other orders. It wasn’t that he was playing favorites. The Alchemy Room had Yigao, the Formation Hall had Mo Yuanjiao, and the Spirit Field Team was likely producing so much that they had more than enough stockpiled and had no trouble meeting demand.

The Talisman Workshop had He Yi and Liu Chun—first and thirty-ninth place respectively in the Talisman Masters’ Tournament—holding down the fort. The Medicine Garden had Senior Liao, while the Beast Garden sold relatively little.

That left the Artifact Refinement Hall as the only one facing somewhat greater difficulties.

Hu Liang’s artifact-refinement skills had started from nothing. Although he had improved at an astonishing pace, he still couldn’t match the terrifying learning speed of Sun Yigao and Mo Yuanjiao. Worried that Hu Liang might be under too much pressure, everyone took turns coming over to help whenever Lin Xiao was in seclusion.

As for Lin Xiao, whenever he wasn’t in seclusion, he would make time to work alongside Hu Liang, while also teaching him how to refine some of the more difficult artifacts.

Hu Liang saw everyone’s tolerance and assistance, and kept it all in his heart. On ordinary days, he practically buried himself in the Artifact Refinement Hall, earnestly studying all kinds of refining techniques and insights. He would often even forget to eat the dinner Fuzi had prepared.

Although Hu Liang’s life could hardly be called easy, he felt happier than he had back in Xiushui Village at the foot of the mountain, when he had yet to begin cultivating and had been crammed together with his entire extended family.

He had something to do every day, which made him feel secure. There were no longer any uncles and aunts scheming against his family, and poverty no longer tied his hands.

As long as he worked hard at cultivation and at learning artifact refinement, he could see progress every day and gain a sense of accomplishment. He liked this kind of life.

Hu Liang felt no pressure from everyone’s overt and covert assistance, because that was simply how they had grown up.

Whenever pests ruined one family’s crops, or their seedlings fell ill, or famine struck, the others would save a little from their own food stores and pool it together. Whenever a family quarreled—sometimes even coming to blows—the other children would take the upset parties into the mountains or down to the river to run wild, throwing away all those miserable feelings.

That was how they had always been. Now they merely had cultivation and careers of their own. In the end, nothing was really different.

Lin Xiao remained busy in the Artifact Refinement Hall until evening before finally stopping.

He had already prepared most of the hall’s high-grade goods for the month. Next, he would have time to arrange some of the matters that lay ahead.

Remembering what He Yi had told him earlier, Lin Xiao left the Artifact Refinement Hall and headed for the Medicine Garden on Yaoguang Floating Island to find Senior Liao.

It had only been half a month since Liao Pantu emerged from seclusion. At present, he was consolidating his cultivation in a flower pavilion in the Medicine Garden. Everything there was being managed in an orderly fashion according to his arrangements.

As soon as Lin Xiao entered the garden, he could see from a distance several small figures working among a brilliant sea of flowers. They were presumably the disciples responsible for the garden’s daily upkeep.

At the very center of the Medicine Garden, beside the crescent-shaped lake, a figure sat quietly in meditation beneath the flower pavilion.

Before Lin Xiao could even reach him, Liao Pantu seemed to sense his arrival and opened his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Liao Pantu asked disdainfully. “Now that you have the time, shouldn’t you hurry up and cultivate more? I’ve already reached the Divine Transformation Realm, while you, as the sect master, are only at the Nascent Soul Realm. Do you really think that’s appropriate?”

Lin Xiao walked over with a beaming smile and sat down beside him on the ground. With a casual wave of his hand, he set up a soundproofing formation around them, completely unconcerned.

“What’s so inappropriate about it? Isn’t it perfectly normal for a sect’s presiding elder to have a higher cultivation than its sect master?”

“Hmph. You’ve spread your net so wide, yet you still don’t hurry to raise your cultivation. If your development really moves too quickly and attracts too much attention, having only me as a Divine Transformation cultivator might not be enough.”

As the saying went, ginger really was spicier when it was old. Although Liao Pantu had been in the mortal world for only a few years and rarely left his residence, meaning he knew little about the mortal world’s affairs, that did not prevent him from developing a sense of impending danger after observing the sect’s current expansion and arrangements.

Once they got down to business, Lin Xiao stopped trading barbs with him and told him everything He Yi had reported earlier that day.

“There’s really such a thing?” Liao Pantu asked in surprise. “Who would have thought that Wanwantong, which runs rampant across the northern and southern spiritual regions, would have extended its reach all the way here?”

“This can’t even be called extending its reach,” Lin Xiao added. “It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the mortal world is completely under Wanwantong’s control.”

Liao Pantu glanced at him and raised an eyebrow. “Judging by how calm you look, you already have a plan?”

Lin Xiao rubbed his nose and gave him a sly grin. “I do have a few ideas. That’s why I came to discuss whether they’re feasible with you. I might also need to trouble you to lend a hand.”

Liao Pantu snorted. “I knew it. You never come to see me without wanting something.”

Though he complained, he still asked, “Go on, then. What do you intend to do?”

Lin Xiao asked, “What do you think about capturing all of them? Whether they’re Wanwantong’s informants and spies, or the cultivators sent by those sects in the cultivation world to investigate us.”

Liao Pantu: “…”

“Your proposal makes it very difficult not to believe that you’re an accomplice of the Jishi faction,” Liao Pantu said, utterly speechless. “Besides, the cultivators from those major sects are easy enough to deal with—they’re operating in the open and never intended to hide themselves. But how do you plan to find Wanwantong’s informants? Do you know how many there are?”

“Senior, you’re overlooking the cultivators of the mortal world,” Lin Xiao said. “After Wanwantong spent so long planting informants throughout the mortal world, the various sects and imperial clans here surely know exactly who those informants are. They simply lack the strength to resist, so they have no choice but to tolerate them.”

“And I’m not saying we should capture and kill them. We only need to restrain them so they can’t send any information to the cultivation world. That will give us time to develop properly. Once our strength is sufficient, we can deal with them then.”

Liao Pantu thought for a moment before asking, “But whether it’s Wanwantong or those major sects, if their people disappear for too long without sending any word, they’ll certainly realize that something has gone wrong. Then they’ll send more people here. They might even send cultivators with higher cultivation than the ones here now. What will you do then?”

Lin Xiao replied, “Wanwantong probably won’t discover it too quickly. The mortal world and the cultivation world are separated by the Spirit-Exhausted Lands, and the journey between them is extremely far. Making a round trip takes a considerable amount of time, so they definitely won’t send messages too frequently.”

“Besides, I put myself in their position and thought it over. If I were in charge of Wanwantong, I would certainly send over a high-level cultivator with enough authority to make decisions to a certain extent. Then I would have Wanwantong’s people in the mortal world handle the less important matters themselves.”

“Only when something major happened—such as someone being on the verge of breaking through to the Divine Transformation Realm—would they send a report to headquarters. They couldn’t possibly report every trivial matter, could they? Unless Wanwantong has a highly convenient teleportation formation like ours, and is also willing to spend a huge amount of spirit stones on travel expenses for the round trip.”