Gu Chengming had no idea that, at this very moment, over at the Hidden Sword Pavilion, a certain truant elder was spiraling into an increasingly frantic state over a cliffhanger ending.
His own days, by contrast, were passing smoothly — even methodically, one might say.
True, the Qingxin Formula now had a clear route forward.
But the Huiyuan Sword Art's favorability, as if in deliberate contrast, had ground to a halt.
Ever since the last time he'd given that senior sister You Yuyao of Jingshui Pavilion a thorough thrashing, the Huiyuan Sword Art's favorability had stopped climbing entirely.
Was it just harder to raise the further along you got?
Whether he practiced or didn't practice, the favorability just sat there, inching forward at a glacial crawl as the days went by.
Hmm... maybe he'd hit a bottleneck?
Gu Chengming stroked his chin, lost in thought.
Drawing on years of galge experience, he knew that this kind of situation usually meant the favorability had reached the ceiling of its current stage. You'd need to trigger a specific "bond event" or clear some high-difficulty "breakthrough quest" to shatter that ceiling and unlock the next chapter of the story.
Sadly, real life wasn't a game. There was no golden exclamation mark floating above anyone's head to point him toward the next quest trigger.
"Whatever. Stressing about it won't help," Gu Chengming sighed, consoling himself.
At least, aside from this difficult main heroine, the other two were showing very satisfying progress.
The Qingxin Formula was straightforward enough — writing story scripts steadily built up favorability, same as sword practice had before. He'd found his route.
As for the Hundred Bones Resonance, which had been dead silent for so long, he still hadn't formally broken through to it — but Gu Chengming could feel it. That thin paper screen was almost ready to tear. The qi and blood within his body were quietly accumulating, like floodwaters building behind a dam, held back by one last narrow pass.
Once the flow gathered enough force, it would be only a matter of time before it burst through.
Though, when he put it that way, it was honestly a little embarrassing.
Anyone hearing this out of context might think he was grinding his way toward the H-route of some especially tricky hidden character.
Just as he was musing on all this, there came a knock at the courtyard gate.
It was Jiang Lu.
Upon learning that Gu Chengming had already "repaid" a portion of his debt to Yu Wenqiu, Jiang Lu's expression went through a spectacular series of transformations — whatever scenario he'd constructed in his head was clearly something that defied description.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Closed it, then opened it again. In the end, it all collapsed into a single long, deeply meaningful sigh.
"Senior Brother Gu... you've worked hard."
"...?"
Gu Chengming was thoroughly baffled.
The two exchanged pleasantries for a bit, and then Gu Chengming remembered something important and brought it up:
"Right, Junior Brother Jiang — do you happen to have any body-tempering salves on hand? Something like Cold Bone Paste? If it's not too much trouble, could you spare me some? Or at least point me toward where I might get hold of some?"
"Cold Bone Paste?"
Jiang Lu found that a little odd.
It was indeed one of the more common First Realm body-tempering salves — nothing rare about it. But the Wenjian Sect was a sword cultivation sect, and disciples who practiced body-tempering methods were few and far between. The sect's resource distributions allocated almost no quota for that kind of salve.
That said — hadn't Gu Chengming just collected a full year's worth of cultivation resources only a few days ago? Even if the quota was small, he'd only just received it. By rights, he shouldn't be running low at all.
Gu Chengming seemed to read the confusion on his face and explained:
"To be honest, the body-tempering method I'm currently practicing is... a bit unusual. It burns through resources at an extraordinary rate. And on top of that..."
He let the rest trail off, too embarrassed to say it aloud.
After all, admitting that his aptitude was so poor he couldn't break into a technique through normal means and had to supplement with stacks of medicine was the sort of thing a man just couldn't bring himself to say out loud.
Jiang Lu didn't dwell on it, and simply said:
"Don't worry about it, Senior Brother. Leave it to me. I've still got some stock on hand — I'll bring it over later tonight. And if that's not enough, I'll ask around among the other junior brothers and sisters."
"Then I'm in your debt, Junior Brother Jiang." Gu Chengming cupped his hands in thanks.
Jiang Lu didn't linger. After a few more words of small talk, he took his leave.
—
After leaving Gu Chengming's courtyard, Jiang Lu didn't head straight back to his own quarters. Instead, he made a detour to the Hidden Sword Pavilion.
Since he'd already promised Senior Brother Gu, he figured he might as well stop by the technique hall and see if there were higher-quality body-tempering salves he could exchange for.
Standard Cold Bone Paste might not be potent enough for where Senior Brother Gu was at now.
When he walked into the Hidden Sword Pavilion, however, he was met with a scene that only deepened his conviction in his theory.
Elder Yu — normally so cool and aloof, lazy as she was but at least putting on a decent show of propriety — was at this moment slumped entirely over the front counter, yawning broadly, knuckling the drowsy blur from her eyes.
"Haahhh..."
Yu Wenqiu wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, radiating the bleak, listless energy of a woman utterly hollowed out.
Something clicked in Jiang Lu's mind.
He thought back to what Gu Chengming had said about already repaying "a portion of the debt." Then he looked at Elder Yu's current state — the very picture of someone completely drained...
Could it be that... last night, Senior Brother Gu had actually...
Just then, the disciple token at his waist buzzed and hummed, jolting him out of his runaway imagination.
He picked it up and looked. His expression shifted slightly.
His master was summoning him.
With no other choice, Jiang Lu reluctantly set aside the matter of finding medicine for Gu Chengming.
—
Huiyuan Gate. The Hall of the Meritorious Elder.
The hall's furnishings were austere and spare. Shelves lined both sides of the room, packed densely with scrolls, case files, and jade slips.
The air carried a faint, mingled scent of ink and aged paper.
Jiang Lu's master, Liu Enchuan, was seated at the writing desk with a deep furrow between his brows, a freshly tabulated disciple evaluation report in hand, heaving one long sigh after another.
The so-called Meritorious Elder — as the title implied — was the elder responsible for overseeing all core personnel functions within a gate: disciple assessments, merit records, promotions, and disciplinary matters.
It was a position of real authority. It was also the kind of position that gave you a receding hairline.
Especially for Huiyuan Gate in its current state.
Liu Enchuan stared at the wretched figures in the report and felt a dull ache behind his eyes.
"Hah..."
He set the report down and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, swamped with a feeling of helplessness.
The state of Huiyuan Gate right now could generously be described as a "dearth of talent." Competing with the other gates within the Wenjian Sect was already out of the question. Simply not finishing dead last had become a pipe dream.
The reasons behind this situation were complicated, but it all traced back to one root cause: there were just too few genuinely outstanding disciples to hold the gate's reputation up.
Huiyuan Gate's resources were meager to begin with. What trickled down to each individual disciple was barely enough to scrape by.
Mediocre sword arts, mediocre resources, and a disciple pool that was mediocre at best and frankly subpar at worst — it had created a vicious cycle.
Talented seedlings took one look at Huiyuan Gate and bolted to the other gates. What remained were those of ordinary aptitude, or the ones nobody else had wanted.
"There's so much to rebuild from the ground up..."
Liu Enchuan exhaled and let his gaze fall to the name at the very bottom of the report — the one that stood out like a sore thumb: Gu Chengming.
Just thinking about that name made his brow furrow tighter.
If one were to name the single most representative example of Huiyuan Gate's talent problem, it was probably this Gu Chengming.
Three years since joining, still stuck at the First Realm, Third Layer.
At any other gate, he'd have been counseled out or demoted to odd-jobs work long ago.
It was only because Huiyuan Gate was so desperately short on bodies that they'd kept him around at all.
But with the triennial Grand Examination drawing near, if Gu Chengming still showed no improvement and actually got expelled from the Wenjian Sect — well, Huiyuan Gate would become the laughingstock of every other gate for years to come.
As the Meritorious Elder, he couldn't afford that kind of humiliation either.
Which was precisely why, a few days back, he'd specifically told Jiang Lu to go remind that Gu Chengming to at least put in some effort — to not lose so badly it made everyone's faces hurt.
"Knock, knock, knock."
At that moment, a light knock came at the hall door.
Liu Enchuan set his thoughts aside and said in a measured voice: "Come in."
The door swung open. Jiang Lu stepped inside and bowed respectfully. "Disciple Jiang Lu greets Master."
At the sight of his most prized disciple, the furrow in Liu Enchuan's brow eased slightly.
He was quite pleased with Jiang Lu.
Steady temperament, dependable in all things. His aptitude wasn't peak-tier, but within Huiyuan Gate as it stood today, he was a standout among a short lot — someone with genuine potential to develop.
With a bit more tempering, he'd certainly become a cornerstone of the gate someday.
"Mm, rise."
Liu Enchuan asked a few casual questions about Jiang Lu's recent cultivation progress. Jiang Lu answered each one clearly and methodically.
After the brief pleasantries, Liu Enchuan cut to the point.
"That matter I sent you to handle... Gu Chengming — how is the situation?"
Hearing this, Jiang Lu inwardly understood at once.
He'd known this was most likely why his master had called for him.
Looking at his master's worried expression, Jiang Lu stifled an inward smile — outwardly, his face was perfectly relaxed.
He said with a smile, "Master, there's no need to worry. As for that matter — even if you did nothing, the situation you're concerned about simply isn't going to happen."
"Oh?"
Liu Enchuan raised an eyebrow, looking at him with mild surprise.
That sounded like... there was more beneath the surface?
"What do you mean?"
Jiang Lu let the smile fade, and his expression turned serious.
He sat up straight and met Liu Enchuan's eyes squarely.
"Master, I have spent considerable time with Senior Brother Gu these past few days, and I've discovered some... rather surprising things."
Then, he laid it all out in full detail — everything that had happened over those recent days.
From Gu Chengming identifying the flaw in his sword technique at a single glance and offering a few offhand pointers that had benefited him enormously — to Gu Chengming standing in the training grounds at merely the First Realm, Third Layer, relying purely on his sword art mastery to beat You Yuyao of Jingshui Pavilion — First Realm, Ninth Layer — into complete and utter helplessness. He'd even reduced her to tears on the spot.
Finally, Jiang Lu drew a slow breath and delivered his conclusion:
"So, Master, you truly have nothing to worry about when it comes to Senior Brother Gu being expelled. In this disciple's view, Senior Brother Gu is in fact a sword art prodigy — a dragon lying hidden in the deep."
"..."
Liu Enchuan listened to all of this feeling like he was being read a particularly far-fetched penny-novel.
This kind of story beat — how had it wandered out of some low-grade street stall storybook and into his hall?
Liu Enchuan stared at Jiang Lu for a long moment before finally asking, with considerable hesitation:
"Lu'er... have you been over-practicing your sword lately? Feeling... scattered in the mind?"
The implication was unmistakable — he was treating Jiang Lu's account as the delirious ravings of someone who'd pushed cultivation too hard and fallen into qi deviation.
Jiang Lu's speech came to a halt. He seemed to recognize that his word alone — with no evidence to back it up — was never going to convince his master.
After all, a month ago, even he wouldn't have believed a story like this.
He said, resigned: "I know this is hard to believe. But... seeing is believing, and hearing is not."
"If Master doesn't believe it — why not go see for yourself?"
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