But he scarcely had the time to contemplate what was happening when the old man suddenly pulled out a black pipe from his pockets and blew it on one end while glaring at him warily.

A shrill sound escaped from the wooden confines of the pipe, alarming all present. Far away, many more looked in their direction as a commotion rose up among the crowds.

"Mother look! The old man is just like that crazy fellow from our village who walks around naked and whistles!"

A very young girl asked her mother, who panicked and tried to stop her child from making further comments about the old man's action. But the over-enthusiastic girl kept shouting.

"Is he going to take his clothes off too, now?"

The old man who was busy blowing air into the pipe choked and almost bit off the portion of the pipe in his mouth. Yet after glaring at the little girl, he resumed his action, as if his dignity wasn't worth enough compared to what he was doing.

Han Xuhan was still somewhat stunned as he watched the exchange and felt alarm bells ringing inside his head.

No way in hell was this unrelated to his bloodline test results! Something must be terribly wrong. Was he a descendant of an enemy ancestor of this sect? After all, every sect had a huge amount of enemies. Neighbouring sects, rivalry between sect leaders, and demonic sects that were hated by everyone. If that was the case...

Xuhan somberly looked at the sky and muttered,

"Ah, ancestors. I'm coming to you very soon. Start the preparations for a Welcoming ceremony. I'm sorry that I couldn't leave a few children to continue our bloodline. My 'could've been' wife, please don't blame me. Your husband was a heroic man..."

The few kids around him who heard his mutterings had very strange expressions on their faces as they suddenly moved away as if afraid of catching diseases from him.

While he gazed at the sky and continued to think about how painful his death would be, a sudden powerful gust of air appeared out of nowhere. Everyone looked toward the source of the wind and gasped.

"I-is that an actual cultivator?"

"I didn't even see how fast he was!"

"So cool!"

"Why is he posing like that?"

"Who said that? Who said I'm posing?" A sharp and irritated voice cut the strings of exclamations and made the hubbub die down. Xuhan looked the newcomer up and down and realized that the whistle must have been used as a form of emergency summoning of an influential figure of the sect.

The guy strutting toward the old man like a proud peacock certainly looked quite impressive with his voluminous colourful robe that seemed to work as a cape to add in a dazzling effect, alongside the unsheathed sword in his hand that sparkled despite the day being a gloomy one.

Upon noticing him, the old man finally stopped whistling and bowed very formally.

"Elder Mu, greetings!"

The guy waved him off impatiently and looked around at the crowd of onlookers.

"What is it? Hurry up !"

Not flustered in the slightest, the old man rushed forward and whispered something to the elder's ear.

The guy, upon hearing the old man out, became visibly tense and whipped his head to focus on Han Xuhan.

Extremely tense, Xuhan focused on the sword in his hand, gulping down the urge to sincerely apologize for whatever reasons his bloodline ancestors had a feud with this sect.

However, things became even more confusing and alarming with what followed next.

The titular elder Mu suddenly rushed toward Xuhan and caught him by his collars, following which, Han Xuhan experienced the sensation of flying freely like a predatory bird in the sky for the first time in his life. As poetic as that sounds, it was an experience he would probably remember in his nightmares in the following days.

With his stomach heaving, by the time he had finished painting the elder's expensive-looking robes with his half-digested breakfast, he had found himself back to the ground, although not on his feet but on his face which was still leaking the last traces of the slimy pudding.

"My robes!" Elder Mu moaned in a high-pitched and un-manly voice.

Disoriented, Xuhan slowly got back to a sitting position and wiped off the liquid from his chin while the elder nearly tore off his robe and patted himself all over to see if any other part of his body had come into contact with the vomit.

"You got what you deserved. Why would you drag a poor mortal through the air like that ?" A voice from behind made the two of them turn around.

An impressive-looking building with all sorts of cool-looking pictures on the walls depicting cultivators mediating till their asses became a part of the ground greeted Xuhan's sight. It instantly killed off half his enthusiasm for cultivation, which wasn't much considering his current situation.

In front of the building stood the speaker who had drawn their attention with her chastising words to elder Mu. The elder looked quite guilty of his actions, although Han Xuhan didn't particularly believe that his internal feelings were the same.

"Ah, Elder Cai, I got carried away because the pleasures of riding a sword and flying in the sky were too great. I've only recently been able to master the technique, and it's too addictive! I'm sure he loved the feeling of flying too, right? The blue sky is every man's dream!"

While passionately blabbering, the elder surreptitiously winked at Xuhan to make him comply with his words. His actions convinced Xuhan that he wasn't feeling guilty in the slightest and would jump at a chance to repeat his actions. But this wasn't the proper time to file a complaint against him. So Xuhan nodded repeatedly and tried to stand up with his feet shaking.

A couple of seconds later after standing up steadily, he threw up a bigger load right at elder Mu's feet.

"Haha, I'm sure he's just too excited. I threw up a lot too when my teacher demonstrated flying techniques for the first time. I can sympathise with him !" Elder Mu said with a nervous laugh.

"...Are you sure you haven't become a sadistic demon who gets off on destroying children's dreams of flying on a sword ?" The woman asked skeptically.

"That sounds oddly specific. Of course not."

Thumping his chest to express his honesty, elder Mu caught Han Xuhan's hand and dragged him toward the building behind her, avoiding her narrowed gaze the whole time.

Personally, Han Xuhan felt that these cultivators were a bit off from what he imagined them to be.