Holding an Exchange Meeting

A year passed in the blink of an eye.

It was New Year’s Eve once again. This time, Lingxian Sect’s annual gathering did not invite any outsiders as it had the year before. Instead, it was held internally, with various rewards and commendations presented to the sect’s disciples. After everyone enjoyed a sumptuous lunch, the event came to an end.

As for the evening banquet, the disciples were not gathered together to eat. Instead, all the disciples were given a holiday.

The seven-day Spring Festival holiday was not exclusive to Xiushui City; Lingxian Sect had one as well.

After Xiushui City had been built, Lin Xiao had told the sect’s disciples that if they wished, they could bring their family members to Xiushui City to settle down. If their relatives were unwilling to leave their homeland, the disciples could also register at the Miscellaneous Affairs Hall. The sect would then arrange for spirit ships to take those disciples home on New Year’s Eve so they could reunite with their families.

Although some disciples lived quite far away, with Lingxian Sect’s current spirit ships and at least a Nascent Soul cultivator piloting them, half a day was more than enough to send everyone home. When the holiday ended, the sect would also dispatch spirit ships to bring those disciples back one by one.

Lingxian Sect’s status in the mortal realm was now completely different. Moreover, the cultivators throughout the mortal realm were all busy gathering resources and earning spirit stones. They had neither the time nor the courage to provoke Lingxian Sect, so the sect no longer restricted its disciples from traveling far away as strictly as before.

In reality, however, there were not many disciples who needed to be sent home. Most had chosen to bring their family members to Xiushui City to settle down.

This year, Xiushui City maintained its tradition of setting off fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

Lin Yun had posted a recruitment notice at the sect’s Miscellaneous Affairs Hall in advance, hiring thirty disciples to gather on New Year’s Eve and put on a fireworks display for the city.

These disciples from Qingyun Peak had gained experience the previous year. Thus, after accepting the assignment, they were not flustered or disorganized at all. Baizhu took the lead in gathering everyone to formulate a complete schedule for the evening ahead of time. They also discussed various combinations of fireworks spells and came up with many new designs.

After finishing their New Year’s Eve dinner early, the Qingyun Peak disciples hurried to their appointed location, brimming with excitement as they presented the citizens of the entire city with a spectacular fireworks show.

The sky above Xiushui City was especially dazzling that night.

After a year of initial adjustment and coordination, everyone working at the Trading Affairs Center had become highly proficient at their jobs. The various departments within the sect had also grown increasingly skilled at manufacturing and producing different goods. It was no longer the situation they had faced at the beginning, when they constantly had to rush around helping wherever there were gaps to fill.

Recently, Lin Xiao had gradually returned to his leisurely routine as sect master. Every day, he either meditated and cultivated or went to the Spirit Food Hall to mooch meals and drinks from Fuzi. Whenever the class schedule at Qingyun Peak’s Cultivation Hall rotated to his turn, he would make time to attend a lesson.

Cultivation still required time, of course, but compared with his previous life, it was indeed much more relaxed.

This was also the result of the System and Senior Liao taking turns urging him on. As the master of a sect, he really could not keep making others nag him to cultivate. It made him look like a student who hated studying and had to be chased by his teacher.

Besides, over the past year, the people of Lingxian Sect had managed to study and digest quite a number of the sect’s many cultivation arts and spells, making use of every spare moment they could find amid their busy schedules.

They could not be said to be highly proficient, but they had all reached the entry level. Every person had learned at least ten or so techniques.

They did not merely study cultivation arts. Every day, they had fixed periods for cultivation, studied cultivation arts and various skills, participated in all kinds of construction work, managed the sect and the city’s many businesses, and maintained the day-to-day administration and operations of both the sect and the city…

When quite a few Lingxian Sect disciples chatted with their families during their holiday, they suddenly realized that they had actually accomplished so much in the short span of a single year.

The disciples of Lingxian Sect were not the only ones to experience this sense of sudden realization. The major sects and imperial families throughout the mortal realm felt the same way.

Whether they were sects or imperial families doing business with Xiushui City or operating passenger-transportation services, when they settled their accounts at the end of the year and saw the surplus of cultivation resources and spirit stones in their storehouses, the heads of each household were so excited that they could barely contain themselves.

Then, when the elders compiled reports on their disciples’ cultivation levels and mastery of various skills over the past year, they discovered that everyone had made considerable progress.

Of course, this “considerable progress” was measured against previous years. It did not mean that their cultivation had truly advanced by leaps and bounds in the short span of a year.

In skills such as talisman crafting and alchemy, not only the disciples but even the elders of the sects felt that their proficiency had improved significantly.

Furthermore, Xiushui City purchased certain goods that the sects and imperial families did not know how to produce, and the people from Xiushui City would even provide them with the manufacturing methods directly. Although most of these methods involved producing items that were not part of the mainstream cultivation world, one had to understand that, in the hands of a truly gifted person, knowledge of one thing could often lead to mastery of another.

As a result, those with talent for various cultivation-related skills in the many sects and imperial families were able to draw inferences from the different manufacturing methods they learned. They made significant breakthroughs along their respective paths.

Because of this, many sects began communicating with one another frequently. Gradually, numerous sects and imperial families began holding all kinds of exchange conferences. Their purpose was to allow their own talented individuals to interact and learn from the talents of other factions, helping everyone make greater breakthroughs in their respective fields. In turn, this would enable them to produce a wider variety of goods and develop more diverse methods.

Moreover, thanks to the convenient transportation and suitable facilities, nearly all the larger exchange conferences were held in Xiushui City.

The first time the Xiushui City Lord’s Office learned about this, the city lord immediately decided to lend a vacant lot in the very center of the city to these conferences free of charge. The city lord’s office had only one requirement: the conferences had to be completely open, allowing anyone in the city who was interested to attend and listen.

To the cultivators, this was hardly an issue. In their view, people who did not understand the subject could listen all they wanted; they would not understand anything anyway.

As these exchanges of cultivation-related skills developed, some sects began entertaining other ideas.

If cultivation skills could be exchanged, then could cultivation techniques and personal insights be exchanged as well?

After all, the highest cultivation level in the mortal realm was only the Nascent Soul stage. Besides, with Lingxian Sect—and a Deity Transformation cultivator from Lingxian Sect—present, what did everyone have to fear? Who could possibly be afraid that another faction might be stronger than them?

No one was stronger than Lingxian Sect anyway.

This had already become an indisputable fact in the hearts of all the mortal realm’s cultivators when Lingxian Sect had swiftly captured Wan Wantong and the nine high-level cultivators from the greater cultivation world in one fell swoop.

Many sects that immediately agreed with the idea of holding cultivation exchange conferences even sent invitations to Lingxian Sect. They hoped that, whenever such a conference was held, Lingxian Sect could send a high-level cultivator to share their cultivation insights. If they could invite that Deity Transformation cultivator, all the better.

Lingxian Sect readily agreed.