Chapter 30: Kongtong Mountain Grottoes
After Hua Wushuang finished teaching the three people the 《Sun Moon Concentric Formula》, he watched them leave the Martial Arts Hall with satisfaction.
Recently, test subjects have been quite difficult to find. It was really lucky to be able to receive three people yesterday.
He also got up and walked towards “Autumn Fragrance Courtyard,” where Sect Leader Leng resided.
As soon as he arrived at Autumn Fragrance Courtyard, he saw a rather dignified middle-aged man frowning as he walked out of the courtyard.
The man saw him and said with a fake smile, “Senior Martial Brother Hua!”
“Junior Martial Brother Liu!” He held his head high, not looking directly at him, and replied indifferently, “Junior Martial Brother Liu is not looking for Vice Sect Leader Leng, but instead came to Sect Leader Leng. Could it be that you’ve taken the wrong path?”
This person was Liu Cheng, the Discipline Elder of the Sun Moon Brilliance Sect.
Liu Cheng looked at Hua Wushuang’s appearance and still said with that fake smile, “We are all working for the sect, where can we not go? But what is Senior Martial Brother Hua looking for Sect Leader Leng for?”
“Naturally, I am working for the sect!” Hua Wushuang said lightly.
The two looked at each other, snorted coldly, and walked away in opposite directions.
Hua Wushuang entered Autumn Fragrance Courtyard, walked along the winding path in the garden, past the flower beds where hundreds of flowers bloomed, and arrived in front of the main hall. He cupped his hands and said, “Hua Wushuang requests to see the Sect Leader!”
“It’s Junior Martial Brother Hua! Please come in!” An old voice came from inside.
Only then did Hua Wushuang push the door open. He was no longer surprised by the rare treasures, corals, and giant clams that filled the room.
He bowed and said, “Sect Leader, I instructed three people today.”
Leng Qingqiu’s appearance was quite old, with white hair, but his frame was large, and he sat with great presence. His face was slightly dark, he wore a brocade robe with gold thread, and a mutton fat jade hairpin was inserted in his hair.
At the end of the small hairpin, two people playing chess were carved. The craftsmanship was exquisite, ingenious, and lifelike.
At this time, his expression was not very good. After Hua Wushuang saw it, he said, “Sect Leader, could it be that you are blaming the recent decrease in test subjects? It’s really…”
“I’m not blaming you!” Leng Qingqiu interrupted Hua Wushuang and said, “You and I have known each other for more than ten years. I’m still at ease with your work. As for the matter of test subjects, it’s better to be discreet. After all, we have a reputation in Qiuyang City. If the test subjects are not handled well, it might lead to some people in the sect colluding with outsiders, making the sect disunited, and that wouldn’t be good!”
Most sects in the Jianghu actually treat their new members as consumables or tools.
Some sects promote this kind of “wolf culture” of the strong preying on the weak, believing that only those who have fought their way out are the elite of the sect. As a result, after these elites grow up, they turn around and destroy the sect. The sect’s inheritance is broken, and the “wolf culture” is also broken.
Therefore, the slightly more sophisticated sects nowadays are all promoting “the sect is one big family, everyone who enters is a brother.” No matter how dirty things are in reality, they have to maintain a facade of brotherly love and respect for their elders. In this way, the sect’s inheritance will be greatly extended, and the management cost of the sect will be reduced.
The Sun Moon Brilliance Sect is also like this. It has been passed down for two hundred years, and Leng Qingqiu’s generation is the third generation.
Most of their sect relies on the City Lord and the powerful people in Qiuyang City. Others eat meat, and they drink soup, living quite comfortably.
But it is precisely because they rely on others that Leng Qingqiu knows that their foundation is unstable and they need to unite the sect even more. Even if a little bit leaks from the fingers of a few of them, it is enough to make the people in the sect full and loyal!
Using people as test subjects is ultimately not a righteous path, it is not very moral, and everyone does it in secret. If they make a big fuss about it and make others jealous, it is hard to say whether a few righteous sects might unite and act on behalf of heaven, promoting righteous practices.
Unlike the Demon Sect, righteous sects always need a reason to devour people!
✿✿✿
“It’s a pity about the manor outside the city a few years ago!” Hua Wushuang said with regret.
That was a few years ago. They built a manor in a remote place outside the city, where they could gather and train refugees with no foundation, greatly increasing the progress of deciphering martial arts techniques! However, in the end, all the people in the manor went crazy, and some even escaped, causing a big commotion. They had no choice but to abandon the manor.
“The secret techniques passed down from the Kongtong Mountain Grottoes are always difficult to decipher!” Leng Qingqiu said, “The Great Cai’s hidden library is truly fascinating!”
“It is said that those sects are already planning to bypass the mechanisms of the Kongtong Mountain Grottoes and enter the grottoes!” Hua Wushuang said.
“Heh… what if they enter? A single 《Thoughtless Divine Separation Formula》 has taken us years to decipher. What’s the use of having more secret manuals if we can’t understand them?” Leng Qingqiu said with a sneer.
A useful secret manual can change one’s fate. A useless secret manual, even a hundred of them, is just taking up space.
“The Sect Leader is right!” Hua Wushuang bowed and said.
He knew that there never was a 《Sun Moon Concentric Formula》, only a 《Thoughtless Divine Separation Formula》 that they had obtained by chance from Kongtong Mountain Market.
The Kongtong Mountain Grottoes were the library of the Great Cai Dynasty. Because the environment and climate here were relatively special, dry and ventilated, suitable for storing books, the Great Cai dug out caves and used them to store books.
The grottoes were huge, divided into eight mountains and twelve caves. After the fall of the Great Cai Dynasty, after hundreds of years of formal and informal digging, most of the Kongtong Mountain Grottoes had been excavated. However, these excavated places were not the main caves.
Kongtong Mountain Market was a small town not far from the Kongtong Mountain Grottoes. Naturally, the local specialty of the town was the martial arts manuals excavated from the Kongtong Mountain Grottoes.
The sale of martial arts manuals in the town was quite particular, divided into two types: buyout and copying.
The so-called buyout was very simple, it meant buying the original, and the seller also guaranteed that there were no copied versions.
Copying meant copying the seller’s martial arts manual yourself. What it looked like after copying was your own business!
The prices of the two selling methods were worlds apart. But what their Sun Moon Brilliance Sect was not short of was money! A few years ago, Leng Qingqiu and Hua Wushuang went to Kongtong Mountain Market together. If they thought it was useful, they would buy it directly, regardless of whether it was a buyout or a copy. Anything that could be solved with money was not a problem!
After a lot of research and experiments, only the 《Thoughtless Divine Separation Formula》 could solve Leng Qingqiu’s hidden danger!
The 《Thoughtless Divine Separation Formula》 was a very special secret manual. It could neither strengthen Qi and Blood nor perfect “Essence and Spirit.” Instead, it was an auxiliary technique that purely strengthened the spirit!
If one’s spirit is compared to a water cup, then the Visualization Method is to make the water in the cup slowly fill up, reaching the perfection of “Essence and Spirit.” The 《Thoughtless Divine Separation Formula》 is to make the water cup slowly bigger, while the amount of water remains the same!
Although Leng Qingqiu was at the Celestial Cycle realm, he was eager to break through in his early years and injured his Visualization Deity. This resulted in him becoming a Celestial Cycle expert, but one with the weakest combat power among Celestial Cycle experts. Ordinary people didn’t know, but his younger brother, Leng Qianye, knew it very well.
Leng Qianye had been watching from the sidelines, waiting for him to weaken, so he could defeat a Celestial Cycle expert with his Qi Sea realm cultivation, build up his confidence, break through to the Celestial Cycle realm, and become a Celestial Cycle expert!
The 《Thoughtless Divine Separation Formula》 could allow him to multitask, strengthen his spirit, and make up for the shortcomings in Leng Qingqiu’s early cultivation.
The only problem was that this secret manual was too difficult to decipher!
The dishes on the menu are served!
