Sect Leader Is Under Great Pressure CH 023 Extra: Kun-Lai Past
It was night, and a broken down temple stood deep in the mountains, rain leaking in through the cracks.
Ji Yunlai lightly pressed his chest, feeling that his injury had stabilized a lot.
Glancing around again, he saw the old man was sleeping on the altar letting out snoring noises. The children huddled together on the moldy straw in the corner, sleeping very restlessly.
The rain was getting heavier and heavier.
If it was not repaired, the accumulated water would spread and flood the children.
He got up and went to repair the roof. Fortunately, there was a pine tree just outside the door, and using branches could somewhat provide a blockage.
After busying for a while, when he finally returned to the temple, he was completely wet.
At this time, the spiritual energy showed its usefulness. After a circulation, the water on him completely evaporated, as easy as you please.
It was just that he was now hungry again.
***
At dawn, the old man who woke up began to persuade him to join the Kun-Lai Sect once again, and even showed off a one-handed handstand, using his chest to crush stone and other skills. He also took out a book and claimed that this was a peerless book on cultivation, and if he practiced it he would cultivate into an immortal.
Ji Yunlai ignored his rambling and began to prepare the prey he caught in the trap earlier to cook soup.
In truth, he quite pitied this old man. With just a look, he knew that he was deceived by a swindler who used an incomplete cultivation manual to trick him. Practicing such a manual would of course harm the body and mind, thus it was not surprising he became like this.
Quickly cutting the boiled pork slices into the boiling water in the pot, he then added the refined salt made by himself and also threw in pieces of mushrooms and wild onions. Soon a pot of fragrant rabbit broth was finished.
He had the children line up and handed them their share one by one.
"Big brother, why don't you eat?" Seeing that the bottom of the pot could be seen, the last child holding the bowl looked at him with some trepidation.
"I don't eat mortal food." Ji Yunlai patted his head.
Cultivation was about refining the bones, gathering spiritual energy, and eliminating the impurities in the body. Mortal food not only had little spiritual energy, but also a lot of impurities. After eating these, the spiritual energy that he had developed every day would not be enough to eliminate the impurities. It was not worth it.
And although the fierce beast demons possess a lot of spiritual energy, his injury was still not completely healed, which made it troublesome.
"Big brother, will you leave?" The child asked worriedly.
"Yes, there are about three days left." Ji Yunlai answered him. Three days later, his injury should be almost healed.
***
Three days later Ji Yunlai didn't leave as expected because the old man found a half-burned book on spiritual wards from who knew where.
Of course, it was useless for ordinary people, but Ji Yunlai had a little understanding of spiritual wards, and he was able to calculate the true meaning of several of the seals.
The old man had a lot of books—perhaps they could not be called books. They were all cluttered and messy pieces of paper, all piled up and filling a whole cellar.
Ji Yunlai squatted there an entire day and barely pieced together a page, managing to learn a single new seal.
But the old man insisted that if he wanted to get their Kun-Lai's peerless secrets, he must join their Kun-Lai Sect!
After thinking about it, Ji Yunlai agreed.
He had already given up the idea of entering a proper sect to cultivate. He was born with four spiritual roots—but for many sects who valued single spiritual root, four spiritual roots was actually the same as having no spiritual roots at all. (TN: spiritual roots are required for cultivation and are based on the five elements: fire, water, wood, earth, and metal. There is also variated spiritual roots like lightning, ice, light and shadow which are more powerful and rare)
He was also a twenty-year-old unaffiliated cultivator. If he had known that sixteen was the upper limit for cultivation sects to accept disciples, he might not have gone and bought a book on basic seal knowledge, but bribed the deacon of the Yunshan Sect and got himself inside the sect first.
It was too difficult being an unaffiliated cultivator. Every day his time was filled up with earning spiritual stones and hunting fierce beast demons. There was not much time left to meditate and practice cultivation. In addition, he also had to study seals, so his cultivation level had hardly increased over the years.
Since he was an unaffiliated cultivator, what did it matter where he practiced cultivation?
***
Ji Yunlai came up names for the children, changing names like 'dog egg' 'little dirty' and 'little grass'. Dog Egg was actually unwilling to change, saying that this was the name given to him by his mother. Ji Yunlai told him that geniuses couldn’t be called 'dog egg', only then did Dog Egg agree to change his name to Yan Zhao.
Little Grass often picked flowers by the river and put them in her messy hair. When Ji Yunlai saw that it was a daffodil, he named her Bai Shuixian (TN: Chinese for white daffodil).
Every day the old man was still crazy as always, bringing a child back every once in a while, but after bringing them back he would completely forget about them. At most, he would throw a little bit of food to them, and then teach them some mutilated and nonsense spiritual incantations. Of the children he picked up before, some had run away and disappeared, some died of illness, and others went to the city to beg, treating this broken down temple as a temporary home.
Ji Yunlai sent back all the children whose family could be found, but most were orphans.
He couldn’t do anything about it. The Central Continent had been suffering from a drought for three years now. The Yun State was wiped out by the An State and a lot of food was looted. There were refugees everywhere. Sometimes these children would be snatched away by hungry people when they weren't careful and then stewed into food. Parents eating their children was also a common thing.
It was not as if he could leave them alone, right?
***
Ji Yunlai took the time to buy two pieces of linen and made clothes for these barely clothed children. Winter was coming and double-layered clothes stuffed with cotton made up their winter clothes. In summer, all they had to do was take the cotton out and the clothes could be worn as summer clothes. He made them a little bigger than their actual size as they grew too fast.
Fortunately, he could still be regarded as a cultivator no matter what was said and done. If he was just an ordinary mortal he really would be unable to raise these children.
In addition, his needlework seemed to be getting better and better, and his sewing speed could nearly even keep up with his typing speed.
But this seemed to result in some benefits; that hedgehog Yan Zhao hugged him and cried with tears running down his cheeks.
But what was this situation of calling him mama?
And what was this situation of one crying child infecting the rest of the others?
Children were indeed a handful. _(:з」∠)_
***
Xiao Zhang quietly watched him while he calculated seals on the sand table, and then drew three seals based on memory.
Ji Yunlai felt that he had good talent, and taught him to draw some simple seals—for beginners this had little effect. It was just for helping in memorizing whole seals.
Xiao Zhang quickly learned it all.
Then he drew a lot of amulets—the same kind as the ones sold in the Chenghuang Temple, and then brought them into the city to sell.
He didn't come back.
Ji Yunlai rescued him from the firewood room in the Chenghuang Temple at night. There were also a few other children who went to sell amulets with him.
Then he threatened them with the consequences of piracy.
They promised to never do it again.
And then the next day they continued—this time they divided themselves into a group that did the lookout and a group that did the selling. They even found an escape route in advance.
***
Ji Yunlai saw that they only earned a few copper coins after a hard day's work, and reached out to accept the coins.
He found that the children were actually very uneasy, they were all afraid that he would leave.
Ji Yunlai started to teach them to learn to write and practice physical self-defense. With things to do, they wouldn't have time to think about this and that.
Yan Zhao learned the best and the fastest, so Ji Yunlai rewarded him with a wooden sword.
Yan Zhao was very excited. The first thing he did every day was to take it out to practice. He also weaved a scabbard for the wooden sword with grass. No one was allowed to touch it.
The other children's eyes were all red with envy that they also began to work very hard as if holding a competition.
***
Yan Zhao used a trap to rob a passing hunter.
He was given a spanking by Ji Yunlai.
He told him that this was wrong.
But he was an extremely stubborn child and didn't feel that he was wrong. He had always used to rob other children to survive.
Ji Yunlai was very angry and personally sent the hunter home.
The hunter thanked him, his son was also hungry and skinny. His eyes nearly flashed green when he saw the bag of rice that Ji Yunlai gave them.
In troubled times, it was difficult for everyone.
***
When Ji Yunlai went back the next day, the group of children all hugged him and cried so hard they could barely breathe.
Saying that they wouldn't go robbing anymore, so please don't leave, okay?
Later, the children became a lot more obedient.
***
He could no longer count how many formulas had been calculated using the sand table. It took five years to calculate one spiritual ward. At the age of 25, Ji Yunlai finally felt that the speed was too slow.
He decided to do something crazy.
Using the seals he had determined so far he wrote an ordinary small program in his sea of consciousness. Those with spiritual energy would be judged as yang and those without would be judged as yin. Using ordinary logical judgment, a simple seal calculation program was made.
In this way, his calculation speed should be greatly enhanced.
***
One shouldn't mess with one's brain indiscriminately. He succeeded, but he was still a novice and made some mistakes at the beginning, so a bug occurred. The coordination between the soul and the body was impaired, and he had hemiplegia for half a year before he barely managed to recover.
The good thing was that it used to take a few months to calculate, but now it only took one night.
Seven days later, he simplified his first spiritual ward, the materials required to make it were reduced by half, but the power only reduced a little bit.
He managed to successfully sell it, and the price was even worth the same as the original version.
Finally, he didn’t have to go through so much trouble just to eat a meal of meat. He was so touched he wanted to cry.
Twenty years after he arrived in this world, he finally recovered his golden finger.
***
After calculating a large number of spiritual wards, he finally had some money to expand their sect.
The old man seemed not to have lied to him. Judging from the remaining incomplete books and manuals, it seemed that Kun-Lai was truly an ancient major sect which was why there were so many lost ancient spiritual wards and old seals. Over the years, he had only sorted out a fraction of spiritual wards and one cultivation manual.
The cultivation manual sounded very impressive with the name "Supreme Emptiness Immovable True Sutra".
Cultivating it was very stable, but the requirements for resources were too high, such as spiritual grass, pills and elixirs… Hell, if he had the money to buy these, would he still need to even cultivate?
He tried to calculate and amend it so that it would not consume so much money. But once the amendments were made, the changes left it completely unrecognizable.
Of course, he also dared not cultivate it himself.
***
He caught a rabbit. It was very fat and looked somewhat clever.
He prepared to gather a clutch of moon essence to unlock its spiritual wisdom.
And then let the rabbit cultivate it first.
Human Transformation Pills were really expensive.
***
That brat Yan Zhao had actually been cultivating secretly for several days.
He must teach him a good lesson this time.
He wouldn't listen no matter what, this little brat was becoming more and more shameless.
Forget it, he could only keep a careful watch on him.
But three days had passed since he had reached Foundation Establishment, and it seemed that there was no sign of mental disorder?
Then he'll also cultivate it as well.
***
He let the old man cultivate the new cultivation method, and his madness had not been so severe recently.
But occasionally he would still commit a crime.
Therefore, when the old man brought a newly picked up child to show off that he had found another good quality seedling, Ji Yunlai was currently hanging the newly carved plaque on the ruined temple.
Seeing the three words "Kun-Lai Sect", the old man suddenly lost his composure and bursted into both tears and laughter, thanking the ancestors for letting him see the rebuilding of Kun-Lai in his lifetime.
Ji Yunlai comforted him expertly, and then asked if the child was kidnapped and if he wanted to go home.
The child said coldly that he had no home.
"Do you have a name, then?" Ji Yunlai was prepared to pick one for him.
"Li Xianjing." The child answered him coldly.
Then there was no need to change it.
"Then are you willing to stay and join the Kun-Lai Sect?"
"..."