“That’s wrong!” Yun Ling sternly said as he smacked a boy with a paper fan on his head.

“Ouch!” the boy yelled in pain as he covered his head.

“The reason why you cannot gather spiritual energy from your surroundings is that you have way too many distractions in your mind,” Yun Ling said. “Erase all unnecessary thoughts you have. Do not think about anything else. To make it easier for you, make your mind into a blank slate while you open yourself up to your surroundings and do the exercise that I taught you all in the past few days.”

“I, I understand!” the boy said nervously.

“Do it again,” Yun Ling said.

Yun Ling, Yun Xia, Snow Fang, the Lion King Cub, and the seven children were currently on top of a mountain near the capital. Yun Ling had brought them there since three days ago. His reason for doing so was to make the children more attuned to nature to make it easier for them to cultivate.

There was more spiritual energy in mountains compared to places with many people such as the capital. It was because there were too many people using the spiritual energy in the surroundings. Though the spiritual energy used in the capital would be replenished in seconds, it wasn’t as pure as the spiritual energy in the mountain. The reason, once again, was that there were too many people in the capital.

Each time someone used a supreme art, they would leave behind some tainted spiritual energy produced by their supreme art. That tainted spiritual energy would mix up with the pure spiritual energy and thus, the spiritual energy wouldn’t be as pure and as great as the spiritual energy in secluded areas such as the mountains or any places without many people in particular.

If Yun Ling were to cultivate in the mountains alone after having just been baptized, it would take him a week before he could reach the Foundation Establishment Realm. However, if he were to cultivate inside the capital, it would take him one week and one day to achieve the same feat.

The difference might seem small but in the higher realm, getting just a single day less from cultivating could make a huge difference.

It was the reason why when experts go into seclusion, they would go to secluded places. Aside from not wanting to be disturbed, it was more efficient to cultivate in secluded places.

Yun Ling looked at the boy to see if he was doing it right this time.

The boy’s name was Xu Zhen. He was the second oldest among their group. He was exactly eight years old.

Yun Ling then shifted his gaze towards the other children.

The oldest among the bunch was Shi Zhong. Among the seven, he was the most talented. He was also eight years old but he was two months older than Xu Zhen.

Sitting a few meters away from Shi Zhong was a little girl named Wen Xian. She was six years old.

There was also another girl named Lan Huang. She was seven years old. Wen Xian and Lan Huang were the only girls among the seven children which he had helped thanks to his daughter along with their families.

There was a child that Yun Ling was worried about. It was Chu Yuan. A six-year-old kid with blurry vision. He was the total opposite to Yun Ling. While Yun Ling could be said to have the best vision among everyone in the whole world as a Divine Being with Divine Eyes, Chu Yuan on the other hand couldn’t see properly.

Originally, Yun Ling thought that Chu Yuan’s vision would improve after undergoing baptism. But after his body had been remade eight times, his vision had only improved a little bit. He had him checked by their clan’s physicians but even them couldn’t do anything about it for now. It would seem that he was attacked by a supreme art and his brain that was responsible for his vision was damaged. To cure it, they would have to open his head to get to his brain. But that method was way too risky. One mistake and his life would be in peril. In the end, the physicians decided to only attempt to cure it after he got into the Spirit Awakening realm so even if something went wrong, it wouldn’t be too dangerous for him.

He then asked Chu Yuan about the one responsible for his eyes. It would seem that it was those children who were bullying them before. They would always practice the supreme arts that they had just learned on the poor, defenseless boy. His head would always be hit by their supreme arts over and over, until one day, he noticed that he couldn’t see anything clearly anymore along with an extreme headache. Chu Yuan was still a mortal back then, and as a mortal, his body was more fragile than that of a cultivator’s. It wouldn’t be strange if he died after being used as a training dummy by those children. One could even say that he got off lightly with only his vision getting blurry. Aside from dying, there was a big possibility that he would become retarded after all the hits he suffered in his head.

Yun Ling sighed. Among the seven children, Chu Yuan was the most problematic child to teach. Nevertheless, Yun Ling wouldn’t give up on him since he had already taken him as his student along with the other children.

After Chu Yuan, Yun Ling looked at Chen Cheng. He was five years old. The youngest among the seven.

Next to him was his elder brother, Chen Yifan. He was seven years old. Among the seven, he was the second strongest, next only to Shi Zhong.

Shi Zhong, Xu Zhen, Wen Xian, Lan Huang, Chu Yuan, Chen Cheng, and Chen Yifan; that was the name of his seven students.

“Papa! Yun Xia finally managed to gather some spiritual energy from the surroundings!” Yun Xia called out with a happy voice.

Yun Ling smiled and said, “That’s good, Xiaxia. Do the next step like I told you all three days ago. After gathering the spiritual energy in your surrounding, have it cycle inside you before expelling it out. Doing so repeatedly will make your spiritual veins expand bit by bit.”

“I got it, Papa,” Yun Xia said before focusing back on cultivating.

Yun Ling looked at his students once again. When he was sure that everyone was on the right track, he walked far away from them.

It wasn’t only his students that needed to be trained. He too needed some training especially since he was only a few steps away from reaching the Fate Dominion realm.

“Before we go to war with the immortal, I have to make sure I’m already in the Fate Dominion realm then,” he mused to himself before he sat cross-legged on the ground and started cultivating.