Chapter 6: Thank you, Sect Master, for helping me build my foundation

As the saying goes, if you want to win over a man, you must first win over his stomach.

Of course, this principle could also be applied to Gui Huan, who loved to eat and was a silly, naïve sweetheart.

Just like that, in only a few days, Lin Xi had successfully become Gui Huan’s meal buddy and friend.

After a short period of contact, Lin Xi realized that Gui Huan was inexperienced in worldly matters, but his academic studies were actually quite good.

He was also a genuinely nice person—loyal and righteous, and he never relied on his status to freeload.

His temper was very good, cheerful, and he loved making friends.

At the very least, he was far better than some of those beggar-like classmates Lin Xi had encountered in his previous life.

As for Lin Xi himself, he had also made good progress. Although cultivating with dual spiritual roots was much harder than for single-root geniuses, he at least had water and wood dual roots, which complemented each other. It wasn’t like water and fire roots that clashed against each other.

Because of this, he had successfully advanced from the ninth level of Qi Refining to the eleventh, and there was even a trend of further progress.

But Lin Xi deliberately began suppressing his cultivation to let it accumulate.

After all, he didn’t have a Foundation Establishment Pill at the moment. And since he wasn’t a single-root cultivator, there was a much higher chance of failure in forming his foundation.

If he failed, his cultivation might directly fall back to the seventh or eighth level, forcing him to start over. That would be a huge loss.

Foundation Establishment Pills were not cheap.

He still needed to save more spirit stones.

Otherwise, swallowing a single Foundation Pill would be like eating half a month’s worth of spirit stones.

Those “good roommates” had also mentioned that since he now knew Young Master Gui Huan, he could ask him for help.

But Lin Xi felt that Gui Huan was, after all, a dignified prince. Even if he wasn’t favored and acted lazy and carefree, his position within Bi’An Sect was still very high.

He himself was just an ordinary disciple; at most, the two of them were just meal buddies. Asking for money after knowing him for barely half a month would be far too shameless.

So, Lin Xi decided he’d earn the money himself to buy a Foundation Establishment Pill.

Leaving Lin Xi’s cultivation worries aside for now, a problem cropped up on Yue Chuyin’s side.

Although he had been so caught up in romance that his intelligence had dropped quite a bit, he was still a human being. He couldn’t possibly be so stupid as to believe that disciples who hadn’t yet mastered fasting could go an entire month without food and still be fine.

Could it be that they really starved to death?

Although he had said before that even if they starved to death, it didn’t matter, that was just talk!

He couldn’t really treat human lives as nothing.

But when a trusted subordinate reported to him that this group of disciples still looked ruddy and lively, and that they drooled and called every chicken they saw on the mountain “Kun,” he felt that something was very wrong.

Looking at the silent youth in tight-fitting robes before him, Yue Chuyin calmly stated: “Go and investigate this matter.”

Today would definitely be no ordinary day.

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“Lin Xi, did you know? A newcomer arrived in our cave residence today—a Foundation Establishment cultivator! I’ve never been this close to one before in my entire life!”

Foundation Establishment?

Lin Xi frowned, not sharing in the excitement over this news.

In the original Cold Moon Burying Souls, although those who reached the Foundation stage were mostly cannon-fodder or minor supporting characters, even so, most of them were at least mentioned by name.

As a reader who only had an extraordinary memory when reading, Lin Xi thought he might actually remember these minor characters.

“What’s his name?” he asked.

“Xu Ke,” the fellow disciple replied. “His origins aren’t very clear. I think we’d better not tell him our secret yet. Let’s observe him for a while first. What if he really is a problem?”

Xu Ke.

Lin Xi searched his memory, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t recall this character.

But when he saw the scar running from Xu Ke’s eye down to his jaw, he immediately understood.

“Avoid him in the future,” Lin Xi quietly warned his fellow disciples. “I think this person belongs to Sect Master Yue. I’ve seen him before.”

Of course, the “seen him before” part was something Lin Xi made up on the spot.

But when he had read the original novel, he remembered this minor character clearly because of that deep scar across his face.

He was someone Yue Chuyin had picked up when he first rose to fame in his youth, and he was fiercely loyal to him.

The original story barely mentioned him—he only appeared a handful of times, and in the end, his fate was left unresolved.

In any case, this was someone to be on guard against.

So Lin Xi directly moved their “canteen” to a deserted part of the back mountain, using the “staggered meal schedule” trick he’d learned in his previous life at school. It was like waging guerrilla warfare. Sure, it was troublesome, but at least it hid them well.

In this way, several more months passed.

Lin Xi even told his fellow disciples to pull up some weeds on the mountain, digging them up and gnawing them to make it look like they were eating grass.

They also stripped bark from a few fallen spiritual trees and chewed on it for show.

And so, months later, Yue Chuyin received the report that half the mountain’s weeds had been gnawed away, and much of the tree bark had been chewed off as well…

Yue Chuyin: Silence is today’s Silver Moon Sect.

He never expected these disciples to go so far.

Had he known, he wouldn’t have done such a thing in the first place.

What was going on? For the first time, the “love-brained fool” version of Yue Chuyin actually felt a tiny flicker of guilt.

From that day on, the cafeteria prices began to plummet.

It dropped directly from fifty spirit stones down to thirty, then from thirty down to the original fifteen.

But those disciples continued to seriously gnaw on grass and bark.

After countless struggles, plus their repeated suggestion that “the cafeteria’s raw ingredients are better to eat than the cooked ones,” they finally ushered in their springtime.

What did this show?

Lin Xi seemed to hear his history teacher’s impassioned voice ringing in his mind: This is the great victory of the Chinese people against oppression and invasion!

When word spread that on “Opening Day”, ingredients would be distributed for free, disciples began flocking to the cafeteria.

Yue Chuyin felt gratified: “Good.”

But when he heard that on this single day of free distribution, all the raw ingredients had been snatched up by the disciples, leaving the cafeteria with catastrophic losses, his reaction was: “Damn it.”

As the saying goes, a tiger descending the mountain is unstoppable.

Wave after wave of Silver Moon Sect disciples stormed the cafeteria, stripping away the remaining ingredients and dumping them all in Lin Xi’s hands for processing.

By now, Lin Xi had already reached the twelfth level of Qi Refining, and his suppressed cultivation was on the verge of breaking through.

But without the aid of a Foundation Establishment Pill, and with his body’s weak spiritual roots, it would be very difficult to succeed in building his foundation.

At that moment, a strange thought suddenly flashed in his mind.

A Foundation Pill contained a vast, overwhelming surge of spiritual energy. That energy was like a push, stimulating the cultivator’s dantian to release their own spiritual power, greatly increasing the success rate of Foundation Establishment.

But in this world with so few pill cultivators, a single pill cost at least several hundred, even thousands of top-grade spirit stones—an astronomical price.

So… if he used the spiritual energy from a Foundation-stage cultivator’s attack as bait to draw out his own dantian’s power, would that not work like a Foundation Pill?

Thinking of this, Lin Xi quickly turned to a fellow disciple at the seventh level of Qi Refining and said: “Hey, try attacking me once.”

“Huh?” The other was clearly stunned, “Wait… you’re at the twelfth level, and you want me, a seventh-level, to fight you?”

“Not fight. Just attack me,” Lin Xi explained, “I want to test a theory I have.”

“…” His fellow disciple was speechless.

But his trust in Lin Xi outweighed his doubts. He pulled out a dark sword from his storage pouch, infused it with spiritual power, and slashed towards Lin Xi.

Lin Xi dodged at the last moment, just before the strike reached him.

The spiritual energy grazed past him. The attack itself was avoided, but the residual aura was absorbed into Lin Xi’s body.

In that instant, Lin Xi felt his own spiritual energy stir violently for a moment, though when he probed again, it had gone still and silent.

It was probably because his fellow disciple’s cultivation was too low, so the effect wasn’t strong enough.

If it had been a Foundation Establishment attack, though… the result might be much more pronounced.

Although Lin Xi had read many cultivation settings and xianxia power-fantasy novels in his previous life, none of them ever had used a method like this to raise one’s spiritual power. But at this moment, he could.

The exact reason was unknown, but at any rate, it wasn’t a bad thing.

“That Xu Ke—what spiritual root did he have again?”

“Metal root, the same as Sect Master Yue. But it’s a mid-grade one, one tier lower than the Sect Master.”

Within the Five Elements, metal gave birth to water but restrains wood. And Lin Xi just happened to have dual roots of water and wood.

Even though metal both gives birth to water and suppresses wood, having just one advantage was enough.

Today, he made two decisions: move the “canteen” back to his cave residence, and leak the news to Gui Huan.

The reason he was making such a fuss was because today marked the first time since coming to this world that he was about to break through to a higher realm.

Of course, he and Xu Ke alone couldn’t put on this play alone. They still needed Yue Chuyin and Gui Huan to make guest appearances.

Although Lin Xi didn’t know whether Yue Chuyin wanted to see him reach Foundation Establishment, he believed that, given Yue Chuyin’s mind was already nearly eaten away by the gu worm, he would definitely come to “participate” in this performance.

And indeed—Yue Chuyin was already bristling, practically itching to overturn the whole table.

Xu Ke stood at the side and couldn’t hide the twitching at the corner of his mouth.

When Yue Chuyin discovered he had been played for several months by his own disciples, he completely lost it.

He never expected that just because he had been in a short-term (yeah right) romance with Xuan Hou, he’d neglected his disciples, leading to this outcome.

A total humiliation!

He immediately flew by sword straight towards the noisy cave dwelling.

Lin Xi propped his chin on one hand, watching the person approach.

It was his first time observing Yue Chuyin up close, and he remembered how the original novel had described him:

“His face was handsome and refined, with a faint chill between his brows. He wore a crimson brocade robe, embroidered faintly with swaying red spider lilies. His long hair hung loose, trailing all the way to the ground, black intertwined with red. In his hand he carried a lantern exuding wisps of cold air, glowing with a strange red light.”

In the novel, aside from his sword, Yue Chuyin’s other weapon was the artifact Youhai, a lantern that could bind souls.

But right now, he wasn’t holding it.

As for that chill, Lin Xi honestly didn’t see much of it. Instead, what he saw between Yue Chuyin’s brows was more like… idiocy.

His looks, however, were outrageously high—comparable to the male leads of some novels.

What a pity, that such a godly face had to come paired with such an idiot.

Lin Xi raised his hand and waved: “Hi!”

Yue Chuyin: Hi your mother (smiling).

(The above greeting is voided.)

“Master Yue,” Lin Xi said with a serious face.

Although Yue Chuyin was an idiot, his strength was undeniably real. Lin Xi still cared a lot about his own little life.

Yue Chuyin scanned the “crime scene”, the muscles in his face twitching uncontrollably.

What the hell was that weird round thing? And that long strip-shaped thing?

And that pile of grass mixed with some bizarre sauce—was it really not poisonous?

He casually pointed at a round flatbread stuffed with all sorts of strange fillings and asked, “What’s this?”

Lin Xi looked innocent: “A jianbing guozi (savory Chinese crepe).”

Yue Chuyin glanced at Xu Ke beside him and said, “This disciple has concocted poison to harm his sect brothers. His crime is unpardonable. Take him down.”

He had originally been thinking about how to frame—

Ahem, how to punish this disciple, but never expected to find such a suspicious crime scene filled with so many weird things.

“…”

And then, Yue Chuyin saw all the disciples suddenly start muttering under their breaths, before collectively turning to stare at him with looks of pure panic.

Then Yue Chuyin saw a group of disciples suddenly start mumbling and then, in unison, turn towards him with panicked eyes.

“Sect Master, Lin Xi is a good person. You absolutely must not kill him.”

The group of disciples looked terrified, but the words coming out of their mouths were incomparably shocking. Sonorous, forceful, perfectly aligned, without the slightest discord.

Yue Chuyin felt like using his Nascent Soul pressure to crush this entire mountain.

It had only been a few months, and this Lin-something disciple already had such high prestige?! If this went on, wouldn’t he himself end up getting played to death by them?

“Xu Ke.” Yue Chuyin simply ignored the disciples. “Capture him.”

On the surface, Lin Xi looked extremely flustered, but inside he was overjoyed.

He had long known that Yue Chuyin, holding himself above others, would absolutely never personally make a move against him. He would definitely send his follower Xu Ke to do the fighting.

Although Xu Ke was one stage higher than him, he was only at early-stages Foundation Establishment. With the reflexes Lin Xi had honed in his past life dodging chalk and rags thrown by his teachers, holding out until his breakthrough shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Once he broke through Foundation Establishment, things would be much easier. Xu Ke might look like he had a pure Metal spiritual root, but in reality he only cultivated his Metal spiritual root. His three spiritual roots Earth, Fire, and Metal weren’t easy to suppress.

Otherwise, why would he be breaking through so slowly even under Yue Chuyin’s wing?

Thus began the extreme tug-of-war chase between Lin Xi and Xu Ke.

At first, Xu Ke was full of confidence.

Growing up by Sect Master Yue’s side and having studied the secret manuals of Bi’An Sect, of course he was stronger than ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivators.

So he didn’t take this mere Qi Refining disciple who was slightly below him in cultivation seriously at all. His sword qi flew out with sharp whooshes except… it didn’t seem to do much?

Watching Lin Xi run like a rabbit with its life on the line, Xu Ke nearly coughed in frustration.

What the hell was this? Wasn’t he only at the twelfth level of Qi Refining? Why was he running faster than any Foundation Establishment cultivator he’d ever seen?!

Xu Ke teetered on the brink of madness, and finally let out a despairing roar: “You forced me into this!”

Lin Xi: “?” What did I do? I’m so innocent? I’m clearly the one being chased here, right?

You cultivators have terrible physical fitness. I suggest you enroll in our school’s track field for advanced training!

Calmly watching Xu Ke finally use the Heaven-Dust Sword Technique, he smiled.

So this guy finally couldn’t hold back and used his big move?

As expected of the sword technique Yue Chuyin had invented in his youth. Even though Xu Ke’s version had lost much of its power, at least it didn’t carry that ridiculous air of idiocy.

After blocking three strikes, Lin Xi’s clothes had already been slashed open in several places, his arms covered in bloody marks, but he barely felt anything.

In a cultivation world like this, these little wounds were nothing at all. His self-healing was faster than the rate he was being injured.

Xu Ke was baffled.

By all rights, this disciple Lin Xi should have gone down in a few blows, shouldn’t he?

So why was he still dodging so fast?

If he knew that not only was Lin Xi dodging, but also successfully absorbing most of the spiritual energy from his sword qi, he would probably be depressed out of his mind.

Yet, on the other hand, Yue Chuyin thought Xu Ke was holding back and wanted to urge him to hurry up.

Xu Ke collapsed.

He didn’t want to keep dragging this out either, but there was no way he could end it in just a short while.

Why wasn’t this guy getting tired running so fast?

Were all disciples in the sect like this nowadays?

Lin Xi: Never underestimate the intensity of school track runs. They’ll forge you into steel.

By now, the scene below had already devolved into chaos. A crowd of disciples—especially those who shared a cave-dwelling with Lin Xi—were shouting, roaring, and even cracking sunflower seeds while watching.

It felt both like watching a play, and at the same time like watching cavemen around a fire.

Yue Chuyin felt something was off. What was missing?

What, what? Oh right—his face.

He couldn’t help but send a voice transmission to Xu Ke: What are you doing? Take this seriously. Doesn’t matter what state you leave him in.

He won’t die. I can save him back.

In the distance, Lin Xi tilted his head: “What did Sect Master Yue just tell you?”

Xu Ke: “He said I can beat you up however I like.”

Lin Xi: “There’s a kind of spirit snake called a Purple Sand Snake. I suggest your sect master raise one.”

Xu Ke frowned, then suddenly realized and immediately slashed forward with his sword.

That sword light shone brilliantly, dazzling like a bright full moon. Truly the embodiment of the verse: ‘The river and sky stretch as one, unstained by dust; in the void hangs a solitary, radiant moon.’

Lin Xi’s heart trembled.

To have self-created such a fierce sword technique—Yue Chuyin really must have been high IQ in his youth!

What a pity that now, at twenty-five years old, this fine young man had grown into… an idiot.

Reacting quickly, Lin Xi flicked a thread of spiritual power.

The spiritual plants in front of him suddenly shot upward, shielding him from the strike.

Even so, he was brushed by the sword’s edge, a metallic taste blooming in his throat.

Swallowing it down, he guided his qi into his dantian. His core greedily absorbed the surrounding spiritual energy. Since Xu Ke had poured nearly his full strength into that strike, the energy was especially abundant. His cultivation at the twelfth layer of Qi Refining stirred violently, as though ready to break through.

Xu Ke, seeing Lin Xi unmoving, followed up with another sword strike. This time, Lin Xi finally failed to dodge, his chest slashed open as blood soaked his robes. If he hadn’t stepped back in time, that blow could very well have ended his life. The blood he’d been holding back finally sprayed out.

Just a little more—really, just a little more… Lin Xi silently prayed.

Seeing his bloodstained robe, Xu Ke narrowed his eyes, raising his sword again without hesitation.

Truly, Foundation Establishment and Qi Refining were worlds apart. No matter how Lin Xi dodged or countered, he couldn’t hold out for long.

The moment the sword light fell, nearly every disciple of Silver Moon Sect shut their eyes, unable to watch such a bloody scene.

Yet nothing happened.

The air was still. So still that it was eerie.

Xu Ke stood frozen in place, seemingly uncomprehending, the skin between his thumb and forefinger split and bleeding. Lin Xi rose slowly to his feet, and the wound on his chest had stopped bleeding.

To withstand Xu Ke’s full-power strike while gravely injured—and even injure him in return without lifting a hand—there was only one explanation:

In that instant, the immense force from Lin Xi’s breakthrough had blasted apart Xu Ke’s attack!

Lin Xi smiled faintly, bowed in Yue Chuyin’s direction, and said: “Many thanks to the Sect Master for sending someone to help me form my foundation.”

Everyone present couldn’t help but widen their eyes in shock.