Chapter 47: The Art of Patching the Heavens

At this moment, the two cultivators from the Penglai Immortal Gate also noticed Qin Xi and his party.

"Oh? Other cultivators have arrived. Are they also guests from an immortal gate?"

Walking at the very front, Qin Xi naturally assumed the role of a diplomat.

"I am Qin Xi from the Greater Thousand Sect. May I ask..."

"Zhao Qing of the Penglai Immortal Gate."

After speaking, however, Zhao Qing did not offer Qin Xi and his group a pleasant look. Instead, he rudely glanced at them before immediately turning back to whisper to the female cultivator traveling with him.

Moreover, Qin Xi had a lingering feeling that the other man's gaze was rather strange.

Qin Xi tilted his head and asked Bu Weiwei, "What is the relationship between the Greater Thousand Sect and the Penglai Immortal Gate?"

"The Penglai Immortal Gate is not located within the borders of Great Qi, so it doesn't have much interaction with the Greater Thousand Sect. Besides, among the immortal sects in this Age of Dharma Decline... if they aren't familiar with each other, they are probably enemies," Bu Weiwei replied.

A Ling added, "The mental state required for the Dao of the Penglai Immortal Gate is 'arrogance.' To advance in cultivation, one must become extremely arrogant... They probably look down on even the Greater Thousand Sect."

Arrogance?

Only then did Qin Xi realize why the other man's gaze had been so strange. When speaking to him just now, Zhao Qing hadn't looked at Qin Xi directly at all. Instead, he had tilted his head up in an exaggerated manner and stared down at him entirely through his nostrils!

Trying to show off how big your nostrils are, huh?

"Aren't they tired of looking at each other with their nostrils all the time?" Qin Xi muttered under his breath.

"Maybe their nose hairs are longer than their eyelashes, and they just like showing off what's long," Bu Weiwei explained with a completely straight face.

"I heard that, you bunch of bastards!"

Zhao Qing could finally no longer endure it. The volume at which these people had been conversing just now was so loud that it was as if they were afraid he wouldn't hear them!

The ultimate form of arrogance was indifference, and these fellows were even more arrogant than he was!

Just as Zhao Qing was preparing to chew out the Greater Thousand Sect disciples a bit more, the female cultivator furrowed her delicate brows.

"Quiet. You're being too loud."

"Ah, right."

All of Zhao Qing's arrogance vanished in an instant. He immediately turned into a fawning lapdog, his face beaming with a humble smile.

"Still a total simp," Qin Xi said loudly in a lowered voice.

"His state of mind is unstable. What a good-for-nothing," Jiang Baiqiu conspired with Qin Xi in a booming whisper. "When it comes to arrogance, he's not even a match for me, Lord Jiang Baiqiu."

"Indeed he isn't."

Zhao Qing gritted his teeth, his jaws grinding audibly.

Yet, constrained by the face of the female cultivator he was trying to woo, he could not afford to throw a tantrum right then and there.

Thus, Zhao Qing could only forcefully suppress the fury in his heart and said with a veneer of extreme politeness, "Well, if I'm not mistaken, you folks are only at the Qi Condensation stage."

"Coming to take on a Foundation Establishment mission while still at Qi Condensation? Is the Greater Thousand Sect really so devoid of talent that no one else is left?"

The attack on their cultivation realms had begun!

However, it was obvious that this had no offensive effect on Qin Xi, who merely dug his finger into his ear.

"Yeah, we're only sixteen or seventeen, and we just joined the sect, so we're taking on beginner tasks. Who would have thought the people of the Penglai Immortal Gate would possess such extraordinary talent? To have already reached the Foundation Establishment stage so soon after entering the sect—doesn't that mean doing beginner tasks for you is as easy as snapping your fingers?"

"Ugh!"

Zhao Qing choked. Of course he hadn't just entered the sect; he had been a member for over a decade.

Naturally, he could tell that these words were a sarcastic jab at him, mocking the fact that a dignified Foundation Establishment cultivator like himself had lowered himself to take on such a simple task.

And then, Qin Xi launched a fierce assault on Zhao Qing's most vulnerable point!

Noticing that Zhao Qing was maintaining a distance of nearly ten feet between himself and the female cultivator, Qin Xi pretended not to know that they both belonged to the Penglai Immortal Gate and said, "As for us, our cultivation is low, so we can only huddle together for warmth. Unlike Brother Zhao, whose cultivation is profound, striding through tasks like a lone wolf without any companions."

With that, Qin Xi threw one arm around Jiang Baiqiu's neck, and his other arm around the necks of Bu Weiwei and A Ling. The four of them—with eight legs in total—sidestepped into the village like a giant crab.

Zhao Qing's face turned green with rage, but because his goddess had told him to be quiet earlier, he had no way to step forward and teach these people a lesson.

What is there to even show off? Those companions of yours aren't even comparable to—

No.

Zhao Qing recalled the three figures accompanying the youth, realizing that each of them seemed even more stunning than his own goddess.

And their relationship truly looked close.

A baseless sense of competitive rivalry arose within him. His psychological balance was completely shattered to the point of distortion. At that moment, fear abandoned him entirely, and lust emboldened his cowardice!

Panting heavily, he wore a ferocious, depraved grin born of unbridled desire.

He was too daring!

He actually prepared to stealthily brush against his goddess's hand!

The moment he made contact, however, he was met with a swift slap across the hand.

"Don't touch me."

"Ugh!"

...

"Village Chief, it was you who summoned us, right?" Qin Xi checked the commission slip in his hand, which stated it was a plea for help from the village chief of Qingyuan Village.

Earlier, the villagers had warmly welcomed Qin Xi and his party, expressing immense gratitude for their impending extermination of the fiend and insisting on hosting a grand three-day banquet for them.

Yet, strangely enough, they hadn't even started fighting yet—why on earth were they already throwing a celebration banquet?

Therefore, the four of them quickly sought out the village chief to uncover the whole story.

"Eh? Cultivators, didn't you already arrive yesterday?" The village chief rubbed his eyes, his face etched with utter confusion.

"Yesterday? We were still on the road yesterday."

Qin Xi found the village chief's words rather bizarre. He distinctly remembered that yesterday Jiang Baiqiu had chugged three gourds of spiritual liquid in the carriage, leading to six separate dashes to use Qin Xi's Dantian as a restroom midway; Bu Weiwei, refusing to accept her previous failed divination, tried to cast another, only to lose her copper coins to the bumps of the carriage and spend ages searching for them; and A Ling had unbolted the Taihang Stele and placed it on the carriage seat, which promptly crushed the carriage under its weight.

All these trivial delays on the road had wasted a significant amount of time; it was mathematically impossible for them to have arrived this quickly.

"Could it be that another immortal gate preempted us and solved the problem for us?" Bu Weiwei offered her hypothesis.

Indeed, that seemed the most probable scenario. After all, they were merely at the Qi Condensation stage, and their traveling speed naturally couldn't match that of those high-level Foundation Establishment cultivators.

Yet, speaking of other immortal sects, Qin Xi had only seen the two Penglai Immortal Gate members standing at the village entrance, and those two didn't look like people who had successfully completed a mission at all. Rather, they wore expressions of utter bewilderment, as if they had no idea what they were supposed to be doing.

Qin Xi remained quite confident in his ability to read expressions.

At this moment, A Ling asked, "Then could you tell us what exactly happened yesterday?"

"Ah, last night was just like before—there were those shrill, pitiful sounds of an infant crying... But suddenly, an immortal arrived, fought with the vengeful infant for a short while, and ultimately exterminated the fiend."

The village chief seemed to recall something else, so he quickly strode over to a table and picked up a book.

"Before leaving, he told us that our village might continue to attract demons and monsters in the future, so he instructed everyone in the village to practice immortal arts to possess the means for self-preservation."

"May I take a look at that immortal art?"

The village chief handed the book to Qin Xi, who glanced at the cover.

*Mending Heaven Technique*

It sounded normal enough.

After flipping through it for a moment, Qin Xi discovered that it indeed contained methods for guiding spiritual qi into the body. Following the instructions provided, anyone with a bit of talent could theoretically achieve qi influx within a few years.

It was simply that the cultivation method differed somewhat from that of the Greater Thousand Sect, being considerably more cumbersome. Still, that was understandable; the Greater Thousand Sect's qi-guiding methods were tailored for gifted freaks with triple spiritual roots or better, omitting many tedious steps.

In the eyes of someone with poor talent, the Greater Thousand Sect's cultivation manual probably read like: *"Thus the conclusion is self-evident, modeled after the previous example. Left as an exercise for the reader, whose self-proof is straightforward. Conversely, the same principle applies, and the deduction naturally holds. Omitting the process, QED, hence the proof is complete."*

It was precisely the kind of terror a college student felt when looking at the answer key to a final exam after skipping class for a semester.

At that moment, Qin Xi looked up and asked, "Village chief, have you tried practicing it yet?"