"M-Mother?!"
Xiao Ling looked in shock at the lady before her, who claimed to be her master's mother.
The cold eyes of the woman shifted from the man pretending to faint to the beautiful blue-haired girl.
"No, I'm not your mother. But you must be Xiao Ling, right? I heard from old Wuji that you are the direct disciple of my foolish son. What bad luck…" Ancestor Mo Qianyin assessed calmly, without a trace of warmth.
Xiao Ling felt awkward at her words. She had involuntarily called her mother in shock when she heard her refer to herself that way in relation to her master.
And upon hearing her say she had bad luck, Xiao Ling opened her mouth to deny it, but the words got stuck in her throat. She didn't know if she could directly contradict her master's mother.
Bao Hui, on the ground, however, trembled at those words and ended up opening his eyes, looking irritated at the old woman.
"Mother, what do you mean 'bad luck'?!" he sat up, furious, and asked through gritted teeth. "Do you have any idea how outstanding I am?!"
His disciple was startled by her master's sudden outburst, while Mo Qianyin merely raised an eyebrow at her son, unimpressed.
"Oh… so you didn't really have a heart attack, what a pity," the old woman spoke with slight disappointment, but the small smile at the corner of her lips revealed she was amused.
"Mother!!" Bao Hui, who was getting up, widened his eyes and shouted in frustration.
Xiao Ling felt her mind spinning at the sudden appearance of such a wild mother, but she also secretly found it amusing to see her master act almost like a child in front of the old lady.
She quickly composed herself, stood up, and greeted respectfully.
"Junior greets madam!" she said, masking her amusement with a solemn expression.
Mo Qianyin smiled faintly and, raising a finger, thousands of strands of energy appeared around Xiao Ling, controlling her perfectly like a puppet and making her straighten up.
The girl was startled as she felt control over her body vanish for a moment and took a deep breath at the woman's power.
'As expected. Being my master's mother, she is probably also an immortal!'
She thought, her heart trembling.
"You don't need to call me madam. In the sect, I hold one of the positions of ancestor. So just call me Ancestor Mo," Mo Qianyin explained calmly, before turning to her son, who seemed to want to escape. "Hui'er, where do you think you're going? I need materials, didn't you hear?"
Her words froze the poor Elder Bao, who turned back on the verge of tears.
"M-Mother, your requests are always too expensive. Grandpa hasn't saved much money in this world yet, it might not be enough to buy the materials you want for refining puppets," he explained with a bitter smile.
The old lady nodded with a regretful expression.
"Well… in that case, it's fine if he doesn't have enough," the ancestor said in acceptance, making Bao Hui's face show relief. Unfortunately, she wasn't finished. "…You and him together will definitely have enough."
Mo Qianyin suddenly added, paralyzing the poor Elder Bao, who began to sweat coldly.
"N-No, Mother! You can't do this! Think of your grandchildren, what will they eat?! You can't be so heartless!" he said quickly, kneeling and desperately grabbing her pants, pleading.
Ancestor Mo Qianyin rolled her eyes at him.
"What grandchildren? You don't even have a wife, let alone children. You men of the Bao family are always so stingy, it's just a bit of money," she dismissed his words mercilessly.
But that angered old Hui.
"And you women of the Bao family are always so wasteful! That's why the children at home go hungry — in this case, us men! With this family curse, I will never marry in this life, never!" he roared, his face red with anger.
Unfortunately, his shouting angered the old lady, who mercilessly pinched his ear, making his eyes widen as she forced him to stand up.
"Hmph! Who are you calling wasteful?! This is called investing in combat power. And what do you mean 'not marrying'! One day you'll meet a woman as powerful and beautiful as me and your grandmother and fall hopelessly in love, just like your father and grandfather did. And then… you'll work yourself to death and earn money so your wife can live happily, just like your father and grandfather do for your mother and grandmother…"
The ancestor snorted and dragged her son by the ear toward the depths of the treasury, lecturing him while he struggled.
"No, Mother! You can't say that! It's impossible for me to marry a woman who would spend all my money! I don't want my children to suffer what I suffered—I didn't even have bread to eat as a child!"
"Tsk! Little Hui, don't talk nonsense. Of course there was no bread—you were born with cultivation and didn't need to eat from the moment you came out of my womb. Why the hell would we have bread?"
And so, amid Bao Hui's frantic struggles and shouts, Ancestor Mo dragged him away to empty the hard-earned fortune of the Bao family.
Meanwhile, Xiao Ling stood there from beginning to end, watching everything with her mouth twitching as they disappeared into the depths of the corridor under her master's laments.
…
The days passed peacefully as the Infinite Dao Sect continued on its calm journey.
Aotian remained constantly busy managing the sect, planning, cultivating, and giving attention to Rihai.
Thus, exactly twenty-two days later, and with the help of the new ancestor of the Formation Pavilion, the sect's mountain was restored to an unprecedented glory, even surpassing its state before the Mahayana Mansion fell.
The sect's mountain was like a pearl of extreme beauty in the desolate desert, and one could feel the spiritual energy vibrating along its borders, creating a stark contrast with the spiritual barrenness of the surroundings.
At that moment, inside, the final touches were being applied to the powerful Feng Shui surrounding the sect, about to finally reach its peak and generate perfect elemental balance.
Rumble!!
An intense tremor shook the mountain, startling all its inhabitants.
The older disciples took a deep breath, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu, and quickly rushed out of their caves to witness the miracle that was about to unfold.
As for the newly recruited disciples and the former residents of the Exiled City, their reaction of rushing out was similar, but instead of anticipation, their eyes were filled with fear and concern.
'Master, what's happening?!' Shen He asked anxiously, dressed in white robes with gold trim.
No longer an outer disciple, he had advanced directly to a core disciple after his master was promoted to inner elder.
The necklace with the green stone on his chest vibrated slightly, and a red-haired man suddenly appeared beside him.
Liu Taixuan frowned at the tremors, not understanding where they were coming from, especially as he observed the desert outside the mountain, which didn't seem to be affected.
"It's coming from the sect," he said firmly and closed his eyes, sending his spiritual energy underground to explore.
But when he did, the heart he didn't even possess in his chest began to race.
"How is this possible?!"
An incredulous exclamation escaped his mouth.
Before his spiritual sense, he saw the sect's veins becoming clearer and purer, with numerous black particles of impurity being expelled from them, while the intensity of their energy grew in a terrifying manner.
Soon, both the efficiency and quality of the vein's spiritual energy doubled, transforming it from a medium-grade vein into a high-grade Fifth-Level one.
And when this high-quality energy reached the sect's formations, highly efficient and fueled by the renewed raw energy of the vein, it was immediately compressed, raising its grade once again.
Thus, the sect's environment suddenly reached the perfect grade of the fifth level.
But that wasn't the limit, and at the sect's main peak, the formations continued working with ferocity.
The sect's former headquarters on the desert continent of Beixu possessed a third-level vein that was also of medium quality. After the Feng Shui upgrade, the environment rose to one of perfect quality, but couldn't surpass that due to the natural gap existing between the Golden Core and the Nascent Soul.
However… such a gap didn't exist between Soul Formation and Void Refinement.
Normally, that was how it worked.
The three Body realms consisted of Qi Refinement, Foundation Establishment, and Golden Core. Then came the great transformation, which created a gap, opening the way to the three Soul realms: Nascent Soul, Soul Formation, and Void Refinement.
There was also another natural gap between the Void Refinement realm and the Tribulation Transcendence realm.
That was the rule.
Thus, perfect-grade veins had raw energy strong enough to compress spiritual energy until it reached the low grade of the next realm. That is, as long as it wasn't from the third-level to the fourth-level, or from the sixth-level to the seventh-level.
And the situation in the Infinite Dao Sect was even better.
Because Feng Shui created a perfect environment for spiritual energy, it was reluctant to leave and disperse, and because of that, formations that would normally consume a large amount of the vein's raw energy, used to contain the immense amount of energy within the mountain, became unnecessary.
With this surplus of raw energy, it became possible to perform a second compression of the ambient energy which, this time, without the natural gap between realms, produced excellent results.
Above the sect's main hall, sixth-level (Void-Tier) energy was being generated at high speed.
Although it wasn't instantaneous like the perfect-grade fifth-level (Formation-Tier) energy, in a few days, this sixth-level energy would still be enough to irrigate the entire mountain range.
By then, everyone in the sect would cultivate in an environment capable of raising Void Refinement experts.
Thus, under everyone's shocked gaze, the sect's environment rose countless levels, leaving all of them paralyzed before such a miracle.
"H-How…"
Liu Taixuan, even being essentially a Mahayana now, had his jaw dropped and eyes wide open in perplexity at the scene.
If restoring the energy of a vein that was under constant siphoning by a Mahayana Mansion was already absurd in his eyes, making a medium-grade vein leap into a new realm was simply impossible.
Fortunately, he quickly composed himself and shook his head with a bitter smile.
'What am I thinking? Aren't these the things only a legendary immortal could do? And isn't there a sect full of them right here?'
Old Liu reflected with an ironic smile, soon putting it behind him.
But when he inadvertently looked around, his eyes blinked and his brow furrowed in concentration.
'The Dao seems… clearer?'
Liu Taixuan froze and then quickly rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw he wasn't hallucinating.
The patterns that governed the world, now within the sect, were no longer under their previous controlled chaos. They seemed more organized, more potent, and more visible.
He analyzed it several times and, upon confirming he wasn't insane, his heart made a huge leap.
'To think they can actually harmonize the Dao…'
'Immortals… truly are on another level.'
Old Liu swallowed dryly, as shocked as everyone else there, but for different reasons.
…
Elsewhere in the sect, Aotian also noticed this and took a deep breath.
His ancestors could now see the Dao a bit more clearly within the sect compared to before, which made him feel that there was now some chance of beginning to study it on his own.
Before, even if he tried, everything was too obscure and difficult.
It was as if the previous visualization degree was 0.0001%. And now, that percentage would be 0.001%.
Although it seemed like a small difference, it was actually ten times greater than before, and with his numerous minds studying together, perhaps he would obtain some degree of results this time.
As for Liu Taixuan's visualization percentage, Aotian judged that, being in the Mahayana realm, it should be a thousand times greater than his current one.
It wasn't that the difference between a Mahayana and a Tribulation Transcendent was that large, the problem was that the ancestors had just entered this realm, and that was why the difference was so great.
Aotian, through his studies of the Dao in recent days, created a certain theory about visualization rates.
First, his avatars, being at the 1st level of Tribulation Transcendence, originally should have an extremely tiny visualization percentage, perhaps 0.00001% or less. But, due to Feedback, Aotian's understanding of the Dao was forcibly elevated, and that visualization percentage also increased, reaching 0.0001%.
Based on his theory, the visualization level of someone who had reached the perfection of Tribulation Transcendence—Old Liu's former realm—was 0.001%, ten times higher than the avatars' current level without Feng Shui assistance.
Aotian used the feedback, along with direct questions to Liu Taixuan, to cross-reference the data and reach that conclusion.
And, according to Old Liu, when he entered epiphany, his visualization made a huge leap. If it was 0.001%, it turned into 0.015%. This degree of visualization broke a barrier, directly entering Mahayana territory, and, along with the super enlightenment of the epiphany and Aotian's words through the avatar Wen Tai, he advanced.
After the effects of the epiphany faded, Liu Taixuan's soul realm was already Mahayana, although he couldn't exert its full power nor had he truly advanced. Even so, his visualization stabilized at 0.01%.
In the end, everything boiled down to:
0.0001% - Ancestor-Level Avatar
0.001% - Ancestor-Level Avatar + Feng Shui
0.001% - Tribulation Transcendence Perfection
0.01% - Tribulation Transcendence Perfection + Feng Shui
0.01% - 1st level Mahayana (Liu Taixuan)
0.1% - Liu Taixuan + Feng Shui
0.1% - Probably the next realm
That was the idea. But the visualization percentage doesn't mean mastery of the Dao, it only shows the ease with which one can perceive it to study it.
In that regard, the sect's Feng Shui once again became a monstrous advantage, allowing Tribulation Transcendents at perfection within it to see the Dao as clearly as Mahayanas outside it. And Mahayanas within it could probably see as clearly as those in the next realm outside.
Realizing this made a wide smile appear on Aotian's face.
'This is going to be interesting…'