Chapter 9: The Immortal Venerable’s Unfortunate Disciples

Chapter 9: Immortal Venerable's Unlucky Disciples

"Man, this is great!"

On the other side, Guan Ye was hugging the library's touchscreen search terminal like his life depended on it.

He was clearly fascinated by the book search system, tapping away at it nonstop. When he saw Zhou Hui approaching, he asked, "Master, was this really made by mortals? There's seriously no spell in this thing?"

But Guan Ye didn't wait for an answer and just kept going: "Well, when this thing runs, I don't pick up any spiritual energy at all, so regular mortals should be able to use it. And honestly, some of these features could be way better if you used spells."

"But how did they pull this off?"

He muttered that last part to himself.

Once he got into research mode, Guan Ye dropped his usual gloom and started rambling to himself, which somehow made him look even gloomier.

Zhou Hui didn't interrupt him, just smiled and watched his fourth disciple.

It took Guan Ye a minute to snap out of it, and then he went bright red: "Master..."

That's when Zhou Hui finally explained: "This thing is definitely a mortal-made object, but don't sell it short. The world that built it is a mortal world. Because there's no cultivation level gap, their public goods can serve tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of people."

That's the exact opposite of how the cultivation world works.

Sure, the cultivation world has all kinds of magical artifacts with wild and miraculous abilities, but most of them are "custom-made" for one specific purpose. Once the owner doesn't need it anymore, nobody else can really use it either. At that point, it all comes down to "luck" — whether some "lucky bastard" happens to need exactly what that custom item does.

Think of it like the mobile games from that world Zhou Hui went to.

Zhou Hui had gone to a country with a huge population, where mobile games got stress-tested by tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of players during open beta. Going overseas was actually easier than staying in the domestic market. But big foreign studios that made great single-player games? If they didn't find a local publisher in that country, their servers would just completely crash.

A product that never went through stress testing? You can't even guess where the bugs are gonna show up, no matter how talented the dev is.

So after experiencing all those publicly "beta-tested" products, coming back to the cultivation world was a real shock to the system for Zhou Hui.

In the past, Zhou Hui would've just put up with anything unrelated to cultivation, but now that he'd decided to retire, he didn't mind shaking things up a bit.

The library (X) scripture pavilion, the one he cared about most, was just the first step.

Zhou Hui looked at Guan Ye and said, "I'm not asking you to copy this thing exactly — you couldn't build it anyway without learning that world's tech. But you can use its functions as a reference and tweak things as needed."

As he said this, Zhou Hui glanced over at Ran Deng, who was wandering around the bookshelves: "I'm not asking you guys to rebuild the whole scripture pavilion right now. For now, just focus on renovating the sections for Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment techniques. I'll give you the detailed plans little by little."

"Yes, Master."

Hearing their master's clear orders, Ran Deng and Guan Ye quickly dropped their laid-back attitudes and answered respectfully.

Plus, after seeing the "reference," they had zero complaints — they were actually looking forward to getting started on the renovation.

But after getting his orders, Guan Ye hesitated.

He asked Zhou Hui, a bit hesitant: "Master, I was just looking at the reference stuff you put in the system, but I didn't see... a sundial clock?"

"I haven't gotten around to adding that yet. I still haven't finished the teaching materials, and the actual renovation of Bu Yan Hall..." Zhou Hui paused, then asked, "Did Xi'er come to you about this?"

Zhou Hui never planned to put a clock tower in the scripture pavilion — that was equipment for the teaching building (X) Bu Yan Hall.

Guan Ye suddenly looked awkward.

Zhou Hui didn't push it. He opened the task system, took one look, and felt a headache coming on: "How the hell did that kid take on this many tasks? I told him to handle the exams, but all he had to do was set up the venue and notify the disciples to finish the requirements."

...Shit, Master had no idea?!

No wonder. When that kid talked Second Senior Brother into selling exam papers, I already knew something was up — and he even said it was all Master's orders.

Guan Ye grumbled to himself.

That said, Guan Ye wasn't the least bit surprised by Mo Xi's little tricks.

His little junior brother had some personality issues — at best, he was desperate for attention; at worst, he was a glory hound.

Mo Xi complains all day about Second Senior Brother Qu Qianxing being a total yes-man to Zhou Hui, but give him one chance to show off in front of Master, and he'd literally try to pluck the moon out of the sky.

Taking on a few extra tasks was nothing to him.

Guan Ye had a ton of complaints in his head but kept them to himself. Instead, he stammered, trying to cover for the kid: "Little junior brother probably isn't used to the system yet. The sundial clock was more out of my own curiosity..."

"You hadn't even seen the system before you came to see me, so how could you be curious about a sundial clock in the task list?" Zhou Hui asked bluntly.

Guan Ye was completely stumped.

Zhou Hui saw the shift in his emotions and sighed.

This nature of Guan Ye's — no wonder he was the one who died the most unjustly and tragically.

In the Heavenly Dao's script, Guan Ye, due to his lower cultivation, was sent away by Qu Qianxing before the Celestial Spirit Sect was destroyed, thus escaping that calamity. But Guan Ye didn't go into hiding to live a quiet life. Instead, fueled by hatred for the protagonist, he apprenticed himself to an evil master skilled in mechanisms, allowing himself to be refined into a puppet, and devoted himself to hunting the protagonist until just before the latter's ascension — ending in his soul being scattered. His mechanism techniques manual even became the protagonist's war trophy.

For such a disciple, Zhou Hui was undoubtedly most worried.

But if someone else were trying to change Guan Ye's fate, they would keep him away from all mechanism arts and artifact refining. Zhou Hui, however, thought differently.

Zhou Hui felt that he hadn't seriously taught Guan Ye artifact refining before, yet in the Heavenly Dao's script, Guan Ye still somehow found some evil master. This showed that fate couldn't be changed — so it was better to start now, teaching Guan Ye the most orthodox artifact refining techniques, broadening his horizons, and helping him achieve things beyond what the Heavenly Dao had planned.

That way, even if the Heavenly Dao wanted to use Guan Ye as a stepping stone, it would have to see if its chosen child of fate could handle being crushed!

"I'll put the design plan for the sundial clock into the system later, along with the principles of clocks. Take a look at them," Zhou Hui instructed Guan Ye. "If you really have extra time, helping your little junior brother wouldn't hurt."

"Yes." Guan Ye breathed a sigh of relief.

Ran Deng suddenly spoke up as if she just remembered: "Master, shouldn't we also allocate some renovation funds to little junior brother? He seems to be in a tight spot financially."

Clearly, Mo Xi's "outside help" wasn't limited to Guan Ye.

Zhou Hui smiled:

"Since he has the audacity to take on so many tasks, he should be able to complete them himself. If he doesn't understand something, you can guide him, but don't give him any actual material support — let me see what he's capable of!"

"Yes." Ran Deng replied.

She exchanged a glance with Guan Ye, silently mourning for their little junior brother.

*

"Ah, Master, finally found you!"

Just as the three were about to further discuss the scripture pavilion renovation, a shout suddenly came from above.

Zhou Hui raised an eyebrow and looked toward the sky. Ripples like water appeared on the "library's" surface, and in the next instant, a door materialized on the glass ceiling that showed the blue sky. Two handsome young men and a young woman jumped down from the door.

They were Zhou Hui's remaining three disciples:

The eldest disciple was Yu Wenxuan, the fifth was Lu Shulong, and the sixth was Mo Bei.

Zhou Hui asked curiously, "Why are you all here?" He didn't remember calling for these disciples.

"Someone's here to see you," Yu Wenxuan said.

He felt around on himself and finally pulled a crumpled invitation from his sleeve: "The Heavenly Dao Alliance is planning to come see you."

"The Heavenly Dao Alliance?" Zhou Hui hesitated, then picked up the invitation with two fingers, looking disdainful. "What do they want with me?"

"What else could it be? They just want to check how your Heavenly Tribulation went!" Yu Wenxuan said.

That was a bit blunt, but it was true.

The so-called Heavenly Dao Alliance didn't have much to do with the "Heavenly Dao" itself (probably). It was an alliance formed by the largest sects in the cultivation world, responsible for mediating sect disputes, organizing cultivators to resist demon invasions, and coordinating relations between humans and non-humans—these "major affairs." It was basically the United Nations of the cultivation world, and in the popular novels of another world, it was the "righteous faction" that seemed righteous but hid dark secrets, and didn't get along well with the protagonist.

Zhou Hui didn't get along with them either.

After all, the Tireless Immortal Venerable wasn't from any prestigious sect and had no background, so he had no connections to the Heavenly Dao Alliance. Precisely because of this, Zhou Hui—a Tribulation Transcendence Stage powerhouse at the top of the cultivation world with "no karmic bonds"—was viewed with suspicion by outsiders. Even though Zhou Hui had no ambition to conquer the world, the fact that he accidentally wrecked plants and animals during his Tribulation Transcendence was troublesome enough.

So given how spectacular the last tribulation was, it was entirely reasonable for the Heavenly Dao Alliance to want to come check things out.

The only thing Zhou Hui was confused about was that he didn't seem to have experienced this in his previous lives.

But after reading the invitation in his hand, Zhou Hui figured this was a "predetermined matter." It was just that in previous lives, he had been in seclusion, so the invitation never reached him—it must have been Qu Qianxing who received them in his place.

—Speaking of which, in previous lives after Zhou Hui went into seclusion, Qu Qianxing turned the Celestial Spirit Sect into a regional power. Even in the Heavenly Dao's grand plan, the Celestial Spirit Sect became an ally of the Heavenly Dao Alliance's branch, allowing it to expand, and eventually even managed to "recruit" a child of destiny. Who knows if this visit had anything to do with that.

In any case, when the Celestial Spirit Sect was destroyed, the Heavenly Dao Alliance, which should have come to the rescue, never showed up.

Zhou Hui frowned slightly at the thought.

But Yu Wenxuan, completely not reading the room, asked, "Master, since guests are coming, what about the sect exam—"

Hearing this, Zhou Hui put down the invitation and said with a smirk, "Just a few busybodies. Do we really need to cancel our sect's important matters for them?"

"Ha..." Yu Wenxuan let out a disappointed sound and "quietly" muttered, "Tests don't count as important matters."

"But we still need to give the Heavenly Dao Alliance some face," Zhou Hui ignored him and looked at his fifth and sixth disciples. "Shulong, Bei'er, your other senior brothers and sisters all have tasks. You two handle the preparations for the reception!"

"Yes," the two disciples replied.

But Yu Wenxuan almost jumped out of his seat: "Master! That's unfair! Banquets are so fun... I mean, important—it should be given to me! And you've assigned tasks to all your junior disciples—have you forgotten your first disciple?! Master, you can't play favorites!"

As he said this, he shamelessly edged closer to Zhou Hui.

Zhou Hui frowned at him: "Have you finished writing your punishment lines?"

Yu Wenxuan's "punishment copying" was the heaviest among all disciples, because this guy's grades were basically zero.

But Yu Wenxuan replied without batting an eye: "Finished."

"Hmph," Zhou Hui said, straightening Yu Wenxuan's collar. "You're faster than I expected!"

Yu Wenxuan immediately puffed out his chest: "Of course! Whatever task Master assigns, I'll definitely complete it faster than anyone else."

"Indeed. With all those outer sect disciples you hired, you'd have to be fast." Zhou Hui's hands moved down to Yu Wenxuan's throat.

Feeling the warm, jade-like fingertips on his neck, Yu Wenxuan finally realized something was terribly wrong:

"Master, let me explain! It was Mo Xi who—gulp!"

The next moment, Yu Wenxuan heard a sharp "crack."

That was the sound of his neck snapping.