After Jing Qian agreed to take on a disciple, the two members of the Ying clan finally had no more regrets.
Freed from formality, they indulged heartily in the feast and fine wine before them.
The wine that Ying Kun brought was exceptional; each jug emptied only to be replaced with another.
This rare brew, when drunk, could strengthen the body, nourish the soul, and enhance mana, a treasure in both taste and effect.
By the end of the banquet, everyone was well-satisfied, both host and guests.
Before long, under the witness of Ying Kun and Luo Tian, a slightly tipsy Ying Hao bowed deeply to Jing Qian, formally completing the ceremony of apprenticeship.
The two young men, who had once trained together in the Zhuoling Cave-Heaven, were the same age, yet fate had driven their paths far apart, and their power and status now stood worlds apart.
With this ceremony, Ying Hao officially became entangled in the karmic thread of the Yanfu Path.
His talent was outstanding, and his foundation solid. If he could truly inherit the teachings, there was at least a twenty-percent chance
he could one day ascend to the rank of Yanfu Disciple.
Once the feast ended and the Human Emperor departed in satisfaction, only three old friends remained.
Jing Qian raised his hand and summoned five dragon corpses, their fat long since rendered away, leaving only hide and flesh.
He said, smiling:
"Old Luo, handle these dragon carcasses as you see fit.
I'll take Ying Hao through the initiation process."
With that, he took Ying Hao by the arm, and in a flash of light, the two vanished.
Using spatial arts, they descended once again into the realm's core of primordial qi,
arriving before the ancient Ghost-Origin Hall.
Jing Qian, familiar with every step, guided Ying Hao inside.
He raised his hand, summoning forth the Old Snake Skin from the great bronze cauldron,
and spoke:
"Snake Lord, I've taken a new disciple of Ying clan blood.
He's fit to be entered into the lineage of true transmission,
So I've come to register his name."
It had been years since their last meeting,
and the snake had grown noticeably plumper, clearly thriving on new reserves of spiritual energy.
"So the penniless headmaster's cultivation has improved quite a bit, eh?"
The serpent chuckled, drawing forth a bronze registry tome,
flipping to the latest blank page before asking:
"And what Dao title shall this Ying boy take?"
"No one from the 'Sheng' generation has been recorded yet; plenty of fine titles available."
Jing Qian arched an eyebrow and said casually:
"I've already decided. He shall be called Shengyu ('Birth and Nourishment'). How's that?"
Ying Hao, realizing this was a matter of personal significance,
hurriedly interjected:
"I was born in the western mountains tempered like jade through hardship!
Perhaps Shengyu ('Born as Jade') would sound better!"
Both Jing Qian and the Old Snake Skin glanced at him in silence.
This boy was clearly overthinking it.
His master was called "Penniless"
There was no chance his own Dao name would turn out normal.
On the bronze registry of the Yanfu Path, most names were ridiculous, crude, or outright embarrassing, a tradition of the sect at this point.
The snake nodded approvingly:
"Birth and breeding many children, much prosperity!
'Shengyu' is excellent. I foresee a flourishing generation for our Yanfu Path!"
With that, it gathered a thread of divine energy from Ying Hao's spirit, etched the name Shengyu into the bronze tome, and sealed it there.
The matter was done.
Shengyu's face froze, his complexion greenish-blue, eyes dull and vacant.
When he'd first heard his new master was called Penniless, he'd already had a bad feeling.
Now, with his name forever recorded as Shengyu ("Birth and Fertility"), his fears were confirmed.
He, the proud heir of the Ying clan, would never again be able to show his face in the ancestral temple before its billions of subjects.
At that moment, Jing Qian raised his hand, sending a beam of mana straight into Shengyu's forehead and divine sea.
After Shengyu received the transmission of the Dao Book of the Nether Cycle of Yanfu, he immediately entered seclusion to meditate and begin his first comprehension.
The Flame Demon Luo, perched upon his shoulder, flickered once and disappeared into his spiritual sea, preparing to undergo a complete reforging under the new secret art.
Jing Qian and the old Snake Skin watched the new disciple enter cultivation, then paid him no further attention.
The snake turned to Jing Qian and said:
"Master Penniless, when will you allow me to initiate the Yin Year cycle?
I've already delayed it for five years.
The outside world is beginning to gossip, and even some kitchen spirits I know have come to ask questions.
I can't hold it down for more than five more years."
Jing Qian nodded thoughtfully.
"I must trouble you to endure a little longer, Snake Lord.
Our friends Three Poisons and Blood River have not yet returned.
I can't spoil the surprise I've prepared for them ahead of time."
The old serpent nodded, sighing.
"This old one understands."
Jing Qian then added:
"Snake Lord, I've re-established a small sect in the Hun Continent
and taken a few new disciples as well.
After the next Yin Year passes,
I intend to relocate the Ghost Origin Hall entirely."
"This old servant will fully cooperate with the Headmaster!"
With that promise, the matter was settled.
Jing Qian nodded in satisfaction and casually found a quiet spot within the hall to sit.
From his sleeve, he drew forth the Book Mountain Token, the gift presented by the Human Emperor, and, filled with anticipation, activated it.
Instantly, a thread of his divine consciousness was drawn into the token and carried to a mysterious realm.
The moment Jing Qian's soul touched the token,
countless characters like glowing motes of starlight blossomed out of the void.
Ancient scripts from the Rites, Music, Changes, and Classics wove together into a radiant celestial ladder,
lifting his spirit upward through nine layers of sky
until it shattered against a sea of stars.
Those stars then reformed into constellations and finally into the towering silhouette of Book Mountain.
The vast range was built entirely from spiraling libraries,
each pavilion's eaves dripping with cascading waterfalls of bamboo scrolls.
Within, rows of jade-bound tomes lined endless shelves,
each brimming with hidden knowledge.
Airships carrying spectral scholars and sages drifted between the pavilions,
selecting volumes at leisure.
Opening his Three-Life Eyes, Jing Qian scanned the boundless mountain before him and could not help but feel awe at the terrifying depth of the Wuji Celestial Court's heritage.
Before him stood millions of libraries,
holding billions of texts, a reservoir of wisdom so vast that even a mortal devoting ten thousand lifetimes
could never finish one ten-thousandth of it.
The token gifted by Ying Kun granted him one of the highest levels of access, a privilege reserved only for core officials of the Wuji Celestial Court.
Jing Qian's manifested form now wore a golden robe, signifying unlimited access to every collection, the equivalent of an "all-access premium membership."
By contrast, the many readers in green or blue robes were limited to "pay-per-volume subscriptions."
A quiet thrill stirred in Jing Qian's heart.
Back in the Yingfutu Realm, though he had inherited the teachings of two Dao Ancestors, he had only ever received the core scriptures, never the opportunity to immerse himself in the vast ocean of learning.
Now, this journey into Book Mountain
was his true chance to understand the world,
its history, its heroes, and its great cultivators.
He stepped onto a small Reading Boat, and with a single thought, it carried him upward toward the mountain.
"There is a path through Book Mountain, diligence is the oar!"
Within Book Mountain, three thousand Grade-Four Reading Boats, known as Qin Boats, served as the best means of travel.
They allowed readers to cruise between libraries, locate texts, and collect scrolls efficiently.
Normally, piloting a Qin Boat costs vast sums of spiritual currency, and only those seeking rare manuscripts would dare use them.
But Jing Qian's token waived all such fees, so he could sail freely as he pleased.
As Jing Qian's golden vessel rose into the air, a few scholars gathered at the entrance below, whispering in envy.
A middle-aged man with a thick scholarly aura muttered:
"Who's this now?
To arrive dressed in gold and immediately commandeer a Reading Boat?"
"I've come to Book Mountain 105,400 times,
written over 3,000 Reader's Digest essays, and my subscription tier has over 500 average readers, yet even I don't dare ride a Qin Boat so casually!"
"Truly, comparison is the death of joy…"
He turned to a green-robed youth nearby.
"Hey, Spirit-Tongue, you've got all the gossip. Can you tell which family this young lord belongs to?"
Jing Qian's golden-level token marked him as belonging to the executive rank of the Wuji Celestial Court, an echelon of officials whose authority spanned the entire Northern Empress's Heaven.
Within that hierarchy, there were fewer than two hundred High Spirit Officials titles like Chancellor, Privy Envoy, Ministers of the Ten Bureaus, or Imperial Governors.
Each was at least of Second Rank,
their cultivation immortal and undying.
Every cultivator within the celestial system knew their names, feats, and genealogies by heart; their fame rivaled that of legendary athletes in another world.
The green-robed youth puffed up proudly.
"I have divine sight, I can perceive all things."
"Judging from his pure and fierce aura,
the killing intent running through his blood,
and that familiar spiritual resonance…
He must be a descendant of Lord Su Jin, the Celestial Privy Envoy."
"Though Lord Su perished in the War of Three Eyes, he was posthumously honored by the High Emperor, and his title was made hereditary."
Another scholar snorted.
"Utter nonsense, Little Spirit-Tongue.
Lord Su Jin was cursed by the Demoness of the Three Paths; not only did he perish utterly, but his entire male line was wiped out.
Only a few Su maidens remain to bear the name."
"If anything, this newcomer is probably some son-in-law of the Su clan."
The green-robed youth protested:
"My Spirit-Tongue Guildmaster personally helped compile the Register of Spirit Officials!
I've archived the spiritual signatures of every high-ranking official
I won't mistake them!"
"That noble definitely carries Su blood.
His mana is exceptionally refined.
Once he passes the appointment trials, he'll enter the Fifth Rank or higher within the bureaucracy."
"Mark my words, he's here at Book Mountain to study for the official selection exam.
Just watch, he'll head straight for the Seventeenth Pavilion to review past exam scrolls."
The little gossipmonger, Spirit-Tongue, declared his theory with great confidence and, as it turned out, he was absolutely right.
Jing Qian steered the Reading Boat straight toward the Seventeenth Level of Book Mountain.
"See? What did I tell you?"
"We of the Spirit-Tongue Society never miss! I've got my sources."
"Come, come these two volumes, 'A Century of Official Selections: Ten-Year Simulated Exams' and the 'Spirit Official Pioneer Gazette: Complete Edition', are worth every coin!"
Having perfectly predicted Jing Qian's path, Spirit-Tongue basked in the glory of being right
and immediately began hawking his "exclusive insider materials."
Outside Book Mountain's gates, the place was teeming with people like him, each selling their own "must-have study guides" or "secret tips,"
The competition is fierce enough to make even demons feel pressure.
The quality of their wares varied wildly, and prices ranged from cheap to outrageous, but somehow, everything found a buyer.
After all, the market was real:
Book Mountain's archives were unimaginably vast, and those who came unprepared and unwilling to pay for a Reading Boat would never find what they were looking for.
Jing Qian, however, had no such problem.
His imperial access token granted him unrestricted privileges.
Once he figured out how to use the Reading Boat to locate and fetch books, he wasted no time and flew straight toward his goal.
When he disembarked on the Seventeenth Level and stepped into its library, he saw the interior divided neatly into two massive rows of shelves.
On the left side, there were exactly one hundred thousand jade scrolls, each capable of storing over a billion characters of divine script.
That staggering sea of knowledge, one hundred thousand scrolls, was just a single book.
This book was none other than the Grand Annals of Empress E'gao,
a work compiled by the High Empress of the North E'gao Heaven herself.
It was said she spent a thousand years and exhausted the empire's full resources to create this monumental compilation, the greatest encyclopaedia of all time.
The Grand Annals encompassed everything:
The scriptures, histories, philosophies, commentaries, and teachings of over a million years of the Celestial Dynasty's civilization cover cosmology, medicine, alchemy, governance, divination, commerce, astronomy, geography, yin-yang theory, technology, and the arts.
In total: 100,400 volumes, with 400 volumes of indices alone, and roughly three trillion characters in length.
It was said that within the entire Wuji Celestial Court, fewer than two hundred beings had ever fully read and understood it.
When Jing Qian used the Reading Boat to search for texts, he entered three keywords: world, history, and essence of cultivation.
All three pointed him directly to the Grand Annals.
Without hesitation, he chose this encyclopaedia as his first destination; reading it was the perfect foundation to refine his understanding of the world, life, history, and the Dao itself.
He reached out, took the first scroll of the Grand Annals of Empress E'gao, opened his Three-Life Eyes, and began reading.
Instantly, a torrent of divine information surged into his mind, but his second-grade Divine Eye and his Life Pattern of Worldly Insight broke it down effortlessly.
Standing quietly before the shelf, Jing Qian began to read.
Since the day he awakened his Worldly Insight Life Pattern,
Jing Qian had possessed what was essentially a supercomputer bound to his soul.
Information absorption and analysis came to him as easily as breathing.
For years, he'd never needed to study seriously, not because he lacked discipline, but because there simply wasn't enough knowledge to challenge his capacity to learn.
Now, within Book Mountain, stood endless volumes of knowledge and data, a terrifying labyrinth for the ignorant, but a dreamlike paradise for a prodigy like him.
Before his eyes, he could almost see a vast progress bar, moving forward little by little with every scroll he read.
The knowledge didn't directly strengthen his cultivation or power, but he knew that the truth of the Dao was hidden within the infinite sea of information.
If he couldn't make full use of Book Mountain with the help of the Worldly Insight Life Pattern, then he truly would be a fool.
Within a single day,
Jing Qian had already absorbed the entire index—all 800 volumes—of the Grand Annals.
At that pace, finishing all 100,000 scrolls would take only about three months, a timeframe he could easily afford.
For the first time, he realized the Worldly Insight Life Pattern's potential had never been fully unleashed.
This Life Pattern, an apex talent for learning, research, and insight, was utterly wasted on a battle maniac like him.
In the hands of a great scholar from the Chongxuan Palace, it could've advanced all of humanity's knowledge of cultivation by centuries.
But since he had it, he would use it well.
Outside Book Mountain, his disciple Ying Hao was still immersed in his first attempt at understanding the Nether Cycle of Yanfu Scripture, a process that would take him at least half a year.
Jing Qian thus had plenty of time to read to his heart's content.
After finishing the index, he already had a complete overview of the Grand Annals' structure.
He began with the 30,000th scroll, where the section titled "The Geography of the Realms" began.
Empress E'gao's record of the heavens and worlds.
For the first time since crossing into this universe,
Jing Qian would gain a clear understanding of the world he lived in.
Three days later, his inner vision expanded.
In his mind, the universe began to take shape centered on the Yingfutu Realm, branching outward to the countless Feather Realms, Tree Realms, Mountain Realms, and Sea Realms, together forming the vast entity known as the Northern Empress Wuji Heaven.
This heaven, ruled by the Wuji Celestial Court, contained countless planes and civilizations spanning the infinite void.
And because of the Celestial Court's dominance and the might of its ruler, the High Empress E'gao, a true Rank-One Immortal, this Northern Heaven stood as the foremost of all divine realms.
In Jing Qian's mind, the Northern Heaven stretched and elongated, becoming spindle-shaped, wide in the middle, narrow at both ends.
And adjoining it were three other heavens of equal standing.
To the west lay the Western Vast Dragon Heaven, a realm Jing Qian was already somewhat familiar with.
It was ruled by two beings of Rank-One power:
The Celestial Ancestral Dragon and the Eternal Dragon Mother.
At its heart lay the Primordial Dragon Plain, a world of bloodline cultivation, home to every imaginable draconic and beast lineage, from celestial dragons and phoenixes down to worms, insects, and protozoa.
To the east stretched a realm Jing Qian had never even heard of, the Eastern Extreme Yuyu Heaven of Eternal Life.
According to the Grand Annals, it was this heaven that held the purest lineage of Daoist transmission, the true cradle of the Way.
Within it are innumerable lineages of law-cultivators, sword-cultivators, body-refiners, talismanists, formation adepts, and beast tamers, each pursuing the Dao in concert and in tension.
Among them, the three Dao-Ancestor lineages of Shangqing, Shenxiao, and Xiaoyao are the pillars of the East, each guarded by a great cultivator. In sheer depth and heritage, the Eastern Extreme Yuyu Heaven of Eternal Life far surpasses both the Northern and Western heavens.
Bordering the Eastern Heaven to the south lies another realm of equal rank: the Southern Heaven of Demonic Resonance and Tathāgata. Half-demon, half-Buddha, each mingled with the other, it is at once supremely exalted and profoundly heretical, the most chaotic of all the heavens.
Within this Heaven of Demonic Resonance and Tathāgata, three Dao-Ancestor traditions hold sway: Heavenly Demons, Spirit Mountain (Buddhism), and Xuanyuan. One is the source of the demonic path, one the ancestral seat of Buddhism, and between them stands the ambivalently orthodox-and-heterodox Xuanyuan Sword Sect, a textbook demonstration of triangular stability.
The three top sects contend fiercely and consume one another's strength; yet none can overcome the others, and so a peculiar balance of coexistence has formed. Taken individually, Heavenly Demons, Spirit Mountain, and Xuanyuan are among the strongest of all Dao-Ancestor lineages, but taken together after all their mutual attrition, the Southern Heaven of Demonic Resonance and Tathāgata ranks last overall.
There remains one more heaven adjoining the Northern Empress Wuji Heaven: the Central Heaven of the Abyssal Dao-Fount, encircled by the four directional heavens east, south, west, and north.
This was once the realm where Pure Yang and Yanfu resided; in its day, it was the mightiest of the five heavens. But a calamity many years ago transformed the Central Heaven; it sealed itself off. Top-tier lineages that had suppressed it were scoured away in the tribulation, and there were even terrifying instances of Rank-One great beings falling.
Thus, the Central Heaven long ago severed ties with the other four. Even so, the five east, south, west, north, and center remain tightly joined, inseparable, fused into a spindle-shaped cosmos known as the Abyssal Dao-Fount Spindle Universe.
In this spindle universe, the two ends are tips where the five heavens merge; the middle is the broad belly where they are widest.
Reading this far, Jing Qian finally assembled a fairly complete cosmology and worldview. Yet as he read on, the cosmos he had just constructed promptly shattered.
The Abyssal Dao-Fount Spindle Universe is not a lone cosmos, fixed and unmoving in the void. On the contrary, it maintains a constant, stable speed, voyaging through the void toward a particular direction.
In a sense, the Spindle Universe is more like a great ship wandering the void, only this ship is vast beyond measure.
The Grand Annals hold a hazy record: over the span of a million years, the Spindle has crossed distances beyond reckoning. Along the way, at intervals, it brushes past other heavens or even universes, sometimes making direct contact and punching straight through them.
Each such encounter brings either gain or loss to the heavens riding the spindle. If the contacted realm is weaker, the eastern, southern, western, and northern heavens will jointly invade, devouring it and turning it into nourishment. If the realm is stronger, there have been occasions when the directional heavens could not withstand it and were themselves plundered.
That the Abyssal Dao-Fount Spindle Universe contains so many diverse cultivation civilizations and that they can "seek common ground while reserving differences" and maintain stability amid competition—has everything to do with this wandering way of existence.
At present, at least half of the Dao-Ancestor lineages aboard the spindle rose from realms the Spindle encountered: they stood out, boarded the spindle, earned merit, and thus survived.
The Grand Annals of Empress E'gao also records in detail all the external realms the Northern Empress Wuji Heaven has encountered since she assumed power, most of which were suppressed and consumed by the Northern Heaven.
Even so, Jing Qian felt much enlightened after a careful reading. His fingertip glided over the jade scroll, and the star map swirling within his Three-Life Eyes trembled violently. In volume 49,871 of the Grand Annals, the seal script twisted like living things, rearranging to project a mottled star-route within his consciousness.
It was the High Empress E'gao's predicted three-thousand-year flight path of the Spindle, a projection wrought at immense cost of her power. For every cultivator within the Northern Empress Wuji Heaven, this predicted course is of the highest strategic value: the realms their heaven will graze in three millennia are their future greatest foes and their richest sources of resources.
For Jing Qian himself, once he established this worldview of the Spindle Universe, a new insight naturally arose. Unlike most cultivators who had only just awakened to the world's true nature, he had already gone fishing in the void back at the Eighth Grade, Dragon-Elephant stage. Seen through the lens of that experience, he recognized something new:
The ultimate form of "angling the void" must be to sit within the Spindle Universe and cast one's line into the endless outer void, reeling in the resources of realms along the Spindle's flight path and feeding them back to the Spindle's growth.
With that, he suddenly gained a fresh understanding of cultivation at and beyond the Second Rank. Perhaps the reason one attains true deathless status at Second Rank, transitioning from long life to everlasting life, is precisely because only at that point does a cultivator become a qualified fisherman, capable of hauling "fish" from the extra-cosmic ponds into the Abyssal Dao-Fount Spindle Universe.
Before that, the vast majority of cultivators contribute nothing to the Spindle's growth; therefore, they have no value for eternal preservation.
Jing Qian's own views on cultivation began to reshape. And at this moment, he had read less than a tenth of the Grand Annals.
Carrying his questions and nascent insights, he started reading the tome from the beginning, hoping that in the High Empress's patient exposition, he might glean even more.
For Jing Qian, this journey to Book Mountain could not have been more exhilarating.
-support me in Patreon for more chapter, 55+ chapters in there
patreon.com/LordoftheReader