Hui crossed over the barrier’s boundary and stepped onto the familiar grounds of his Master’s peak. He paused, searching for Xixing and Sis Mei.

A friendly hiss caught his ear. Hui turned and found Zhubi curled around Xixing’s body in his large form, his scales shimmering in the sunlight. At the sight of Hui, he let go of Xixing and rushed toward Hui. Midair, he returned to his small form and wrapped around Hui’s neck. In Hui’s smaller size, Zhubi draped down his chest like an oversized scarf.

Hui pet him distractedly. “Where’s Sis Mei?”

Zhubi turned. Hui followed his gaze.

Sis Mei laid by the trailside, undisturbed. Hui breathed out, relieved. Thank goodness. I was afraid she might have been injured in the clash earlier. Luckily, me cutting it short kept her safe.

Heavy footfalls caught Hui’s ear. He whipped around again, eyes wide.

A huge wolf towered over him. It huffed out, lolling its tongue from its jaws, and stared at him. Lifting its lip, it bared its teeth at him.

“L…langlang?” Hui asked, backing away slowly.

The wolf hesitated. It stepped forward, huge weight shifting, its fur rolling in waves. It sniffed the air around Hui, closing its eyes.

Its eyes opened. It stepped forward and nudged Hui, a happy grin on his jaws. Langlang lowered his head and pressed his forehead against Hui’s chest.

Hui stood on his tiptoes and reached out as far as he could. Even then, he barely managed to scratch Langlang’s ears.

Langlang flicked his ears and stepped back, regarding Hui.

“How did you survive?” Hui asked, looking at Langlang. That extermination spell was supposed to wipe out the entire sect. Chen Wuya said it was at… what, seventh stage? Then, doesn’t that imply that Senior Wolf is…

Langlang looked at Hui. He tilted his head.

But if Senior Wolf was that high tier, surely he could take on human form by now? If nothing else, he should be capable of human speech. Is it some kind of hobby of his to remain in wolf-form, unable to communicate or…

Subconsciously, Hui lifted a hand to stroke Zhubi. Zhubi curled around his fingers happily.

…Well, what do I know about spirit beasts? Maybe he’s happy like this. Who am I to tell him how to live his life?

Hui approached Langlang slowly. “Senior, you… could I trouble you to watch over Xixing and Sis Mei while I’m gone?”

Langlang lowered his head again. He closed his eyes slowly, then opened them.

Hui bowed to Langlang. “Thank you, Senior.”

Langlang blinked.

Hesitating for a moment, Hui at last took a deep breath. “Senior Langlang, I mean no disrespect, but why did you not help in our battle?”

The wolf turned away, looking to a distant horizon. Hui turned as well, but whatever Langlang looked at, Hui couldn’t see it.

He sighed. In the end, Langlang is a spirit beast, not a cultivator. He can’t be expected to act on his own to meddle in human affairs. If he doesn’t have a personal reason to join the fight, there’s no reason to risk his life and cultivation over it. I might not like it, but I have to accept it.

Bowing one last time, Hui took off for the peak and Mount Mu hovering above. The journey only took him a few minutes, compared to the hours it had once taken him as a child. Speeding through it at child-size, Hui sighed, remembering how he’d carried water buckets up and down the mountain. At first, it was a necessity, then it was training, and now… now I don’t need to drink at all, and that level of training would be a trifle, utterly pointless.

Hui looked up at Mount Mu as he approached it. The tree glowed a gentle golden in the light. Is it, too, an incredibly powerful being with a high cultivation? Or… would anything be safe on Master’s peak, behind his barrier?

Well, given how much qi I’ve drawn out of it without bothering it in the least, and given that it’s a tree powerful enough to be treated as the central point, if not the foundation, of a sect, I think it isn’t a stretch to consider it at least eighth tier. At the end of the day, though, it’s merely a plant spirit, without much intelligence or much in common with humanity. I can’t judge its cultivation from a human standpoint and expect to fully understand it.

But… given that I haven’t seen any living beings on the peak but Langlang and Mount Mu… it’s probably not the barrier that saved them. Master isn’t infallible, after all.

He slowed as he reached the peak. The hut stood there quietly, the same as ever. Unhesitatingly, he walked over to Mount Mu and settled into the lotus pose, beginning to circulate his qi and draw Mount Mu's qi into his body. After a few minutes of that, he sighed, and instead killed his qi, using the usual void technique to draw qi into his body instead. Why can’t I cultivate like an ordinary cultivator? Why is the void technique the only one that works for me? Is it because I transmigrated? Or am I just weird?

Gold life qi flowed steadily into his body. Hui circulated it, gathering it into his dantian. His lotus body incorporated the life qi readily, absorbing it without the slightest hesitation. He condensed a few songbirds, but there was little point. The same way his ordinary body used qi, and his soul ran on death qi, his lotus body natively processed life qi.

Zhubi crawled out from around his neck and curled at his feet instead, basking in the thick qi and life qi of the peak. Qi circulated through his body. As he laid there, a few flickering pulses of lightning appeared in the distant sky, threatening a tribulation to come.

As he sat there, a thought came to Hui. He gestured, drawing his shattered body out of his storage ring. It hovered over his hand, the pieces held in place by his qi. He guided the life qi into the shattered pieces.

Sparks flew. Hui flinched back, startled. What kind of reaction is—

With his hand further from the pieces, fewer sparks flew. Hui frowned, then slowed the flow of qi further. No sparks flew. Instead, the life qi seeped into the crystalized pieces and ever-so-slowly began to bind them back together.

Piece by piece, his body reformed. Hui watched, wide-eyed, then rubbed his eyes with his free hand, breaking himself from his reverie. If I sit here and watch this ‘til the end, I’ll have lost months of my precious decade. He waved his hand, sending his body over to the hut. Mount Mu’s ambient life qi soaked into the pieces, and they continued to slowly bind together.

This much life qi… I wonder…

Hui closed his eyes and gathered his life qi, sending it toward his hands. He shaped it into an orb, then closed his hands around it and allowed it to merge with his flesh. His hands grew rapidly, and a lotus sprouted out of them. As with Bai Jingwen’s lotus form, the lotus rapidly matured, then died, giving a single lotus seed.

Hui’s eyes lit up. Lotus seed clones! If I bury them here, Mount Mu will grow them more quickly than they’d grow anywhere else. Once a few clones grow here, and can create clones growing new bodies, I’ll have a near-limitless supply of clones!

…Well, that depends on how many seeds Mount Mu can support growing at once, but even so… it’s not a bad idea!

Hui buried the seed under Mount Mu and returned to cultivation. This time, rather than simply draw qi from the mountain, he contemplated it at the same time. Hui sent a qi probe back along the path he used to draw qi from the giant tree, searching into its passages.

A tendril of Mount Mu’s qi lashed out at him. Hui braced himself, expecting an attack or backlash, but instead, it treated him warmly, wrapping him in life qi. His lotus body trembled, resonating with Mount Mu’s qi. In return, Mount Mu began to hum, a low, comforting sound. The life qi poured faster into Hui. Knowledge flowed into Hui’s mind, concepts and ideas he had never thought of, nor considered. He put his hands on his temples and grit his teeth, bearing the pain as Mount Mu forcibly imprinted its knowledge upon him.

Is this… an inheritance? But why me? It hates me…

But wait, I have the lotus body now. Is this because we’re both plants, so it likes me, now?

Hui’s eyes lit up. How wonderful! What a technique! I should keep my eyes open for more ways to trick Seniors—ahem, I mean, to get Seniors’ blessings! Ah, I am still but a disciple on the path of cultivation. I have so much to learn!