Chapter 319: A pot of wine for a good friend, waiting for a hundred years of spring

Master Tongming really couldn't understand it.

It’s okay for Madam Xuanhua. After all, the Xuanwei Realm is in turmoil, and it’s normal for her to want to find a place to stay in the Jiushan Sect.

But the money starts...

A foundation building that he had never heard of and would never take seriously.

How could he have such great abilities after entering the Nine Mountains Realm? As for cultivating new spiritual plants, even if he was not good at spiritual farming, he could still understand the value of this matter... There were many sects in the Hundred Immortals Alliance that were good at spiritual farming, but in the past 20,000 years, not many new varieties had been seen.

In other words, every successful new spiritual plant can support a small sect.

The doubt in his mind probably translated into - is someone playing me? He looked at the dishes in front of him, then raised his head and looked at the people around him.

Master Yu seemed to be still in doubt, but he couldn't wait to pick up the chopsticks and try the dishes on the plate.

Even Master Chengkong was eating with great interest, nodding as he ate, and no one knew what he was thinking about.

Master Tongming also tasted a few bites.

Sect Master Yu spoke first: "The spiritual energy is weak, but it has some novel ideas. I think many disciples will like it."

Master Chengkong pointed to a plate. It was a plate of stir-fried vegetables, but he pointed at the green pepper inside. He smiled and said, "I think this is the most interesting. It's not just spicy, but also a little bit numb."

Master Tongming also nodded.

The rest is okay, just edible, but not very delicious. At least for them, who are in the Nascent Soul stage, it is just so-so.

Only the green pepper is quite interesting - it's spicy and numbing, and gives a strange sense of refreshment when eaten.

Sun Daoyu also smiled and said, "This was planted recently. We call it thunder pepper. Not only is it spicy, but it also contains the power of thunder and lightning. People's mouths will feel numb when they eat it. I can't get used to it, but many of my fellow disciples in the sect can't live without it now."

Master Tongming also knew that the power of thunder and lightning was just right in strength and had a unique flavor.

Many people probably like it very much, especially as a side dish, the market is huge.

Sect Master Yu shook his head slightly and sighed, "Just from these Qianhe Valley and Thunder Pepper, we can see that Jiushan's attainments in spiritual agriculture are truly extraordinary."

His face was full of admiration.

Sun Daoyu chuckled, a proud smile on his face.

"Is this also cultivated with that money?"

Master Yu asked curiously.

"It should be because the headmaster taught well," Sun Daoyu thought for a moment and said, "But Master Qian is very hardworking."

Sect Master Yu nodded slightly, and suddenly sighed, "This Zheng Fa should join our Baicao Sect."

The smile on Sun Daoyu's face froze. No, Zheng Fa has become the head of the sect, and there are still people coming to snatch it?

Then Sect Master Yu said, "The Jiushan Sect probably didn't have much accumulation in spiritual farming in the past, and the Qianhe Sect is no different...but how long have you entered the Jiushan Realm..."

"A glimpse of the whole picture is a glimpse of the whole picture." Master Yu sighed, "Master Zheng, you must have amazing skills in spiritual farming."

After hearing this, Master Chengkong slowly put down his chopsticks, and became more thoughtful.

…

On the second day, Zheng Fa did not come to entertain them, but Uncle Pang came instead.

Master Chengkong didn't see Zheng Fa, so he asked directly, "Where is Zheng Fa?"

Uncle Pang answered cheerfully, "I hope you will forgive me, Master. Zheng Fa has been quite busy these past two days."

"busy?"

"Exactly. He is busy sending people to take the exam."

A group of people were even more confused.

"You may not know that the students on the Paradise Island in my Jiushan Realm are going to take entrance exams in the next two days, and Zheng Fa's sister is among them."

These two days were the entrance exam that Zheng Shan had been worrying about.

There are actually three reasons why the date was set at this time: the first is that Zheng Shan and her classmates have been in school for almost a year. Of course, a year is a bit short, but there are actually many people on Le Tu Island who have studied at Xuanwei. In a year, some of them have almost met the entry requirements of Jiushan Sect.

The second reason is that the Hundred Immortals Alliance will hold a Hundred Immortals Dharma Assembly. There will be Dharma competitions to watch, and the Economic Development Island will also start doing business, so it will probably be quite lively, and he also wants to let these students relax.

The third reason is actually the most important:

The rice fields on Paradise Island are ripe and need to be harvested. These students have all practiced martial arts and can help their families.

Zheng Fa also didn't want them to be lazy and ignorant...

He might as well take a long vacation and take a big test before the vacation. He planned to make this a precedent in the future.

…

Uncle Pang naturally would not give such an explanation, he just explained what the entrance exam was.

Unexpectedly, Master Tongming and the others were quite interested when they heard it.

"Then can I go and have a look?"

Master Tongming asked.

"This..." Uncle Pang looked puzzled, "They are just mortals."

“Anyway, I have nothing to do. Before the Hundred Immortals Dharma Assembly, let me first admire the talents and beautiful jades of your sect…” Master Tongming laughed.

The Jiushan Sect will not participate in the Hundred Immortals Dharma Assembly this time. After all, they are no longer a member of the Hundred Immortals Alliance.

"How can this be compared?" Uncle Pang waved his hand and said, "Those who came to the Hundred Immortals Dharma Assembly are all elite disciples from various sects."

This isn't really a level comparison:

The Hundred Immortals Alliance is much larger than the Nine Mountains Sect.

Not to mention, the Hundred Immortals Assembly is a competition for outstanding disciples. Compared with the entrance examination, the quality of the disciples is naturally much higher.

In comparison, it's just bullying.

"No comparison, no comparison, just take a look."

Master Tongming insisted on the Tao.

Uncle Pang had no choice but to agree after discussing it with Zheng Fa.

…

Zheng Fa didn't care that they wanted to watch the entrance exam. He was at home, entertaining the seventh young master Zhao Jingfan and his sister Zhao Jinglan.

The Seventh Young Master's temperament has changed a lot, and he actually seems a little silent.

Zheng Shan rummaged through the drawers and cabinets in her room, and finally found a bag of broken candies from her clothes pocket, and held them in front of the two distant guests.

Seeing her looking at him with sparkling eyes, the Seventh Young Master couldn't help but laugh. He touched Zheng Shan's little head and asked her, "Are you afraid of the exam?"

Zheng Shan twitched her face and said nothing, obviously feeling that the question was hurtful.

“Hahahaha, I was so scary when I was little!” The Seventh Young Master raised his head and laughed, “Every time the teacher wanted to test me, it was like the sky was falling.”

"But I'm a young master, so it doesn't matter if I do poorly on the exam."

"Your brother is the head of the sect...there's no need to be afraid!"

Zheng Shan wrinkled her nose and finally spoke: "Brother is the leader, I'm afraid of him!"

"Um?"

Now, the three people at the table were staring at her, and Zheng Shan said very seriously: "If I do poorly on the test, my brother will be embarrassed."

The Seventh Young Master was stunned for a moment, then burst into laughter again, saying over and over again, "That's great...that's great!"

He looked at Zheng Fa, sighed suddenly, and said to Zheng Fa: "Your sister is so nice, and she was... so nice before."

Zheng Fa looked at him deeply and felt that the Seventh Young Master was full of worries.

…

After all, Zheng's mother is a mortal. In her opinion, when guests come, they have to eat.

They also ate those spiritual plants, including thunder pepper.

When the meal was almost over, the Seventh Young Master suddenly asked, "Do you have any wine?"

Zheng Fa glanced at him and looked at his mother.

Mother Zheng said, "We don't have any at home. I'll go borrow some from next door."

When she walked out the door, Zheng Fa looked at the Seventh Young Master - he remembered that the Seventh Young Master was not fond of drinking.

I don't know why, but I took the initiative to drink today.

When Zheng's mother came back, she was holding a wine pot in her hand, and she was a little embarrassed: "They brewed it themselves, I don't know if the young master is used to drinking it."

“Very good!”

The Seventh Young Master nodded and asked with a smile, "Do you have a wine glass?"

"Yes, yes, how many do you want?"

Mother Zheng also looked a little worried.

"Three."

Zhao Jinglan seemed to understand something. He gently pulled Zheng's mother and Zheng Shan and led them out.

There were only the Seventh Young Master and Zheng Fa in the room.

The Seventh Young Master did not say anything, but just lowered his head and placed three wine glasses on the dining table and filled them.

Zheng Fa felt something in his heart: "The plateau..."

"Dead."

The Seventh Young Master drank the wine in front of him in one gulp.

Zheng Fa was silent for a moment, then he also picked up the wine glass and drank it all.

The wine tastes a bit turbid and bitter.

The Seventh Young Master poured another glass of wine onto the floor and then three more glasses of wine.

The two drank three cups each and poured three more. The Seventh Young Master said slowly, "It's just a clerk... why risk your life!"

"Are you a fool?"

"I told him to come to Tongming Mountain earlier, but he insisted on waiting...waiting to die!"

Zheng Fa listened to the seventh young master's complaints.

This person used to look down on Gao Yuan and kept scolding him.

Now Gao Yuan is dead, and he still curses...

I guess Gao Yuan won’t be angry.

After a moment, he asked, "Where is the senior manager?"

"…I received the letter. I am sick and lying down."

"Who killed him?"

Zheng Fa asked again.

"I don't know. It's a mess and I can't find out clearly. I just know that he died in Chen County. That place is now full of people from the Great Freedom Demon Sect."

Zheng Fa nodded and took note of this place.

"I used to think I could do anything..." The Seventh Young Master added, "But after becoming the head of the family, I realized how difficult it is."

"There are more than 400 members of the Zhao family and more than a thousand servants who followed my mother to Qingmu Sect."

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"Now, there are more than 400 people who died on the road and were abducted and killed by the Great Freedom Demon Sect in recent days."

Zheng Fa didn't say anything, and he knew that the Seventh Young Master didn't need him to speak.

"If it weren't for you...I might not even be able to protect these people."

...The Seventh Young Master is a man with a mind as clear as a mirror.

"When I was little, I felt like the sky was falling when the teacher was testing me," the Seventh Young Master seemed to have a lot to say, but his words were incoherent. "But now the sky has really fallen and I have to hold it up. I realize how good it was to be a kid..."

"At that time, there was you and Gao Yuan..."

Having said that, he stopped talking and just lowered his head.

After a long time, the Seventh Young Master raised his head and looked at Zheng Fa. He sniffed, his eyes red, and pointed at the almost finished thunder pepper and said, "This thing is not good..."

“Too spicy!”

…

After seeing off the Seventh Young Master, Zheng Fa returned to his room.

He took out a storage bag with an envelope in it. When he opened the envelope, he found a letter Gao Yuan had left for him before he left.

As he touched the letter paper, he couldn't help but think of the figure standing at the door of Zhao's house, carrying a book box on his back and grinning at him.

Zheng Fa didn't need to read the last two sentences Gao Yuan wrote on the letter paper to know what they were -

"So I want to go to the academy, continue my studies, become a minor official, and see if there is anything I can do for the world."

"If you really become a big shot in the immortal sect, and still can't change the world, I will laugh at you when I see you in the future."

He read the letter over and over again until dawn.

…

The second day was the entrance examination for the Jiushan Sect.

Not only Master Tongming, but also many disciples who participated in the Hundred Immortals Dharma Assembly came over.

"In the morning, we will take grammar and math, and in the afternoon, we will take martial arts and spiritual roots?"

Master Tongming asked Zheng Fa, and it was obvious that he was genuinely curious - in fact, what Zheng Fa didn't know was that Master Tongming had a lot of doubts in his mind, and he wanted to understand why Qian Qi had all these changes.

He came here to see what Zheng Fa was doing and how he recruited disciples.

"So how many people took the exam in total?"

"Forty thousand, less than fifty thousand."

The people taking the exam on Paradise Island this time were young and old. The youngest was probably three years younger than Zheng Shan, and the oldest was already fifteen or sixteen years old. Because it was the first time, there were actually many over-age candidates, and the situation was special, so there were relatively many more candidates.

There were so many candidates that one test site could not accommodate them all, so Zheng Fa set up more than a dozen test sites on Le Tu Island.

Zheng Fa was standing outside his younger sister's examination center.

Master Tongming and his companions are also here.

“What is the standard?”

"Total score: spiritual roots and mathematics account for the majority, while martial arts and grammar account for the minority."

Zheng Fa explained.

No matter how much he values ​​knowledge, he cannot avoid the issue of spiritual roots.

Mathematics is the foundation of all sciences and is naturally important.

Martial arts and grammar... can actually only be considered as additional points. Zheng Fakao gave these two points mainly to prepare teachers for the common people in the Nine Mountains Realm.

Master Tongming understood it in his own way - this number is equivalent to the miscellaneous items such as the elixir, talisman, formation and weapon of their Ascension Meeting?

I just don’t know why Zheng Fa attached so much importance to mathematics.

Compared with modern times, this method is not fair, but compared with the mysterious world, it provides a way out for people who are capable in scientific research.

Another loophole is that the good deeds system is not restricted to the inside and outside of Jiushan Sect: that is to say, even if you cannot join Jiushan Sect, you can still accumulate good deeds, resources and even skills to use for self-study or to train younger generations - you just can't go to the University Island to attend classes or participate in experiments.

Everyone cultivating immortality... is not realistic now, and may not be realistic for a long time.

Zheng Fa still felt that it was not enough, but Master Tongming was horrified.

There are too many people!

The number of disciples that the Ascension Association recruits at a time is only around a thousand! How could so many people come to take the exam on a small paradise island in the Nine Mountains Realm?

Can the Nine Mountain Realm… afford it? He couldn't help but doubt it.

Looking back at the examination room, he was even more shocked.

Not to mention other examination rooms, all the candidates in this examination room can actually read and write.

The difficulty of the questions on the math test paper varied greatly, and he didn't even know how to answer some of them, but many students were able to answer them in one go.

By the afternoon, not only Master Tongming, but also the disciples of the Hundred Immortals Alliance who came to participate in the Hundred Immortals Dharma Assembly were a little confused.

In the entire examination room, everyone knew at least one set of martial arts! This... was a privilege that those of them who were at the foundation building stage or even the golden elixir stage did not have.

Entering the martial arts world has always been exclusive to disciples of large families.

Who would have thought that in the Nine Mountains Realm, everyone could learn and practice it? As for testing spiritual roots, there was nothing much to say.

…

The entrance exam was over and the results came out very quickly: only three hundred people could enter the Jiushan Sect this time - an admission rate of less than one percent.

The entry threshold is roughly:

If you have only spiritual roots, you can enter freely.

If one has dual spiritual roots, then the number should at least be good.

To have three spiritual roots, one needs to be excellent, which means one must answer at least eight out of ten questions.

If you have three spiritual roots or below, you should get almost full marks...

There are not many people with single spiritual roots this time. Including my younger sister, there are only two of them. Even if we include those with double spiritual roots, there are only dozens of people.

But there are quite a few who are excellent - even more than Zheng Fa expected. But after thinking about it, he understood: these people in the Nine Mountains Realm may not have any other qualities, but those who have experienced separation and chaos will always work harder.

Only then did we get together more than two hundred people.

My younger sister Zheng Shan naturally entered the Jiushan Sect easily.

After the exam, Master Tongming asked Zheng Fa in confusion, "Your Majesty, are you recruiting too many disciples?"

You know, the Jiushan Sect has only a thousand disciples in its 20,000 years, and this move will have three hundred...

The threshold is lower than before.

And they recruit once a year? Zheng Fa thought about it and said with a smile: "Master Tongming, the cultivators of my Jiushan Sect are probably different from the cultivators of Xuanwei Realm..."

"different?"

Master Tongming was stunned and didn't understand.

Zheng Fa did not say anything. There were some things that even his master and the others did not understand at first: if we look at it from the perspective of the cultivators in the Xuanwei Realm, it is true that the fewer cultivators there are, the better...

Because the most important task for those monks is to fight. The stronger they are, the more resources they occupy and the higher they are.

To use a less accurate description, they are end producers: they consume resources, feed themselves, and give almost nothing in return to the world.

In battle, ten thousand low-level monks are no match for one high-level monk.

Therefore, the mysterious world needs geniuses even more.

But the Nine Mountains Realm does not want this kind of cultivator:

Zheng Fa saw this from "The Golden Elixir Project" - if a cultivator is the producer, the conversion ratio will be different.

Through cooperation, simplification of methods and exploration of principles, dozens of cultivators below the Golden Core stage can produce an external elixir that only a Nascent Soul cultivator can make!

The resources needed to train dozens of foundation-building disciples are far less than those for a Nascent Soul, and the time required for training is also much faster than that for a Nascent Soul.

Very cost-effective...

Not to mention, Zheng Fa's brain-borrowing plan will bring more benefits when there are more people.

The only problem for Zheng Fa has always been the decline of his spiritual energy. But in other words, the weaker his spiritual energy is, the more advantageous this set is:

With less spiritual energy, it is more difficult for high-level cultivators to produce, but low-level cultivators are less affected.

Even various simplified projects and explorations of various principles will ultimately lead to more resource-saving and more efficient production.

It was also because of this that Master, Uncle Pang and others were convinced by him and almost opened the mountain gate.

Seeing him like this, Master Tongming didn't ask any more questions, but there was deep confusion in his eyes.

Of course he didn't understand.

Zheng Fa looked at the new disciples who had just joined the sect, but thought of Gao Yuan's letter in his heart, and said silently in his heart: What I want is a world where cultivators are not only respected, but also appreciated.

It is right in front of us, in the future.

…

(End of this chapter)