Chapter 35 This is outrageous! The treasure cave is actually under the bed...
During their conversation last night, Shen Qingluo, Guan Wangzhen, and Zhu Shibai took out jade tablets and asked Ji Mingran to leave his spiritual consciousness so that he could transmit messages. Only then did Ji Mingran realize that the sect's jade tablets had this function.
The four exchanged jade tokens, leaving behind a trace of their spiritual consciousness, which enabled them to communicate with each other thereafter.
Ji Mingran examined the sect's jade tablets and found three more names: Li Xiaosen, Li Sanyang, and even Jiang Xiaoyi. However, the latter's color was dim, making communication impossible.
Last night, she opened the notes left by her senior brother Sanyang, which contained information about the courses for new disciples. She wanted to listen, but it wasn't appropriate for her to go out. So she took out her jade token to contact the other three.
"When you go to the new disciple course tomorrow, could you please give me the same name?"
Guan Wangzhen replied very quickly: "What's so great about those courses? I've already listened to them all, I'm not going."
Shen Qinglu asked, "Mingran, have you successfully returned to the peak? I'm not going to class either."
Ji Mingran replied: "Yes, I've arrived. Aren't you guys going?"
Zhu Shibai replied, "Yes, all four of us can be exempted from attending classes."
At the same time, Shen Qingluo sent a telepathic message: "You want to hear it? I'll send you a telepathic message."
Ji Mingran: "But I want to listen to all the lessons."
The course for new disciples lasts for a month, with each session lasting half a day, requiring daily attendance, which is quite time-consuming.
"All of it?" Guan Wangzhen was shocked again. "What's so interesting about that basic knowledge? Didn't Venerable Hongyan teach you that?"
“He left me a notebook,” Ji Mingran said. “I’d like to hear about it.”
“This is easy to handle,” Zhu Shibai said. “The three of us can take turns attending the lectures.”
Shen Qingluo: "Okay."
Guan Wangzhen: "No problem. I'll go first tomorrow, since I live nearby. You guys prepare for the next two days."
Ji Mingran thought for a moment and then said, "If you go to listen to courses from other peak regions, can you give them to me?"
Shen Qingluo replied, "Okay, I'd like to hear it too. Please give me the same pronunciation as well."
"Okay," Zhu Shibai replied.
“No problem,” Guan Wangzhen agreed.
Within a month, the newly recruited disciples all saw the rumored young and beautiful grandmasters.
The grandmasters never appeared at the same time; they always arrived at different times. However, the disciples knew that as direct disciples, they had heavy daily cultivation tasks, so it was normal that they did not arrange to travel together and that their class times would be different.
The three of them persisted in taking turns checking in for the course, and over time, the disciple's initial amazement gradually turned into a habit.
Although Guan Wangzhen was often absent-minded or asleep during class, he always insisted on attending and even took notes a few times. As for Shen Qingluo and Zhu Shibai, they were serious, took detailed notes, and would ask questions and communicate with the lecturer from time to time.
If even the most promising students study so diligently, how much more so should they, as newly recruited disciples?
The newly recruited disciples were incredibly enthusiastic, listening to the lessons even more eagerly. Some inner disciples who had already been exempted from the course, upon hearing this, began to wonder if the course content contained hidden Taoist teachings that had attracted the attention of the direct disciples. As a result, they all joined in the learning, creating a harmonious learning atmosphere.
Unaware of the events that had transpired, Ji Mingran was in the courtyard carefully studying her notes, as well as those brought to her by Shen Qingluo, Zhu Shibai, and Guan Wangzhen. The lecturer's content frequently touched upon patterns and cryptic characters, which Shen Qingluo and Zhu Shibai meticulously recorded for her, while Guan Wangzhen, at her request, also began taking notes.
Combined, she has fully mastered the basics of spiritual practice, as well as the unique cultivation methods of the Dingsheng Sect. Due to her weak foundation, although she had partially decoded the inheritance in her mind, she had never come into contact with it before, and there were still some obstacles to understanding. But now that the obstacles have been removed, she has fully comprehended it.
After tidying up the books on the table, Ji Mingran picked up the jade token and said briefly, "See you tonight."
After speaking, she sat up cross-legged, closed her eyes and calmed her mind. She quickly chanted the array incantation, and her hands changed hand gestures. A blue-gold light spread out from the center of her body, condensed into a semi-circular shape, and firmly covered her.
The wounds to the bones and blood in the body are healing bit by bit, and the hideous scars all over the body are slowly fading away.
Soon, the blue-gold light disappeared, and the healing process stopped. Ji Mingran did not open her eyes. Her hands changed again, and she began to chant an incantation. A very faint white-gold light rose from the ground and enveloped her.
Ji Mingran waited quietly for his spiritual energy to recover.
She stayed at home for more than a month, and in addition to recuperating from her injuries, she also digested the array inheritance in her mind and prioritized the most suitable spiritual healing array at present.
The Spirit Healing Array can heal injuries, but it consumes a great deal of energy. Each use lasts only a few minutes, and the spiritual power stored in one's spiritual consciousness is almost completely depleted.
Refining spiritual energy again was equally time-consuming. So she turned her attention to studying the Spirit Returning Array.
The Spirit Restoration Array can restore the consumed spiritual energy.
The power of an array is closely related to the array master's cultivation level and proficiency in the array. The array she used can only play a supporting role now and cannot directly restore the original state.
However, if she improves her proficiency and ability to maintain the formation, she can directly recover at least 10% of her damage and spiritual power each time she uses it.
So she used herself as a test subject, practicing day and night. As a result, her injuries healed slightly faster than those of ordinary cultivators, and within a month, her injuries had healed by 90%.
Blue-gold and white-gold light alternated on her body until her temples throbbed, at which point Ji Mingran stopped. Such prolonged and frequent use of spiritual power had overwhelmed her spiritual consciousness, necessitating rest.
Ji Mingran stopped practicing the formation and began to carefully collect the pile of scrolls in the courtyard, stuffing them into her brocade pouch. Since entering the Qi Refining stage, she had been able to use the inner space of the exquisite brocade pouch, significantly increasing its storage capacity.
She tucked the brocade pouch into her bosom, slowly walked into a room, picked up the rope ladder that was spiraling around the floor, and slung it over her shoulder.
Only two areas in Mingqi Hall remained clean and tidy, separated by magic from the two main rooms. Ji Mingran guessed that those were the rooms of Boss Jiang and Senior Brother Xiao Sen.
Since her senior brother Sanyang was not around, she tidied up the west wing herself and moved in.
On her second day at Mingqi Hall, she tidied up the entire courtyard from the inside out, and that's when she discovered the storeroom. The storeroom had everything: candles, lanterns, brooms, wooden buckets, rags, hammers, wooden nails, and a rope ladder on the floor.
The rope ladder spiraled around and around, its purpose unknown. Ji Mingran didn't think much of it at the time; he simply took cleaning tools and cleaned the dusty, cobweb-covered courtyard room.
Later, she discovered the usefulness of the rope ladder.
On the day she jumped from Luanfeng Peak, she inadvertently glimpsed a small cave on the steep cliff face. The entrance was hidden by a cliff cypress growing from a crack in the rock, making it difficult to spot. She was able to discover it because she sensed a subtle fluctuation of spiritual energy, and when she traced its source, she found the dark crevice behind the cliff cypress.
She didn't pay any attention until she opened the notebook that her senior brother Sanyang had given her. It recorded that Quanfeng was in charge of important sect affairs, Yaofeng was in charge of sect punishments, Kuangfeng was in charge of sect finances, Linfeng was in charge of sect routine affairs, and Luanfeng was in charge of sect inheritance.
The Luanfeng Ancestor simply and crudely crammed all the inheritances into one place and named it the Treasure Cave.
The treasure cave... My injuries have healed, now is the perfect time to explore.
Ji Mingran glanced down at the cliff below, slowly took out a rope ladder, used a hammer and wooden nails to fix one end of the rope ladder to the ground, and then threw the rope ladder down, where it fluttered and unfolded.
With one foot on the first horizontal beam, Ji Mingran then placed the other foot down, gripped the ropes on both sides tightly, and began to climb down step by step.
Entering the treasure cave was not difficult.
After climbing down the cliff for half a day, we found the cliff cypress, swung over, pounced on the branches, and squeezed through the thorns and bushes into the crevice to enter the cave.
There are no magical illusions or protective barriers set up; entering requires only physical strength, not spiritual energy.
She pushed open the three wooden doors with force, and then walked smoothly forward.
The cave was pitch black, and the candlelight could only illuminate a small space. Ji Mingran wandered leisurely through the quiet cave by the dim candlelight, from the first level down to the bottom.
The treasure cave of the Dingsheng Sect is an inverted nine-story wooden pagoda hidden in the isolated peak of Luanfeng. Each floor of the pagoda is hexagonal, and the hexagons become narrower as you go down. Each floor is filled with wooden bookshelves, which are in various states of disrepair, with chipped corners or broken pieces, and they are empty.
No wonder there was no protection; there were no treasures in the cave, so why would there be any need for protection?
Ji Mingran squatted on the ground and groped around for a while. Then, he used the candlelight to illuminate the area and carefully observed that the wooden floors of each pavilion had holes of different sizes and scratches everywhere.
With the candle held high, Ji Mingran's gaze fell upon the dilapidated bookshelf.
The nine-story tower bookshelf once collapsed and shattered, leaving marks on the ground. Someone picked up the wooden shelves one by one and pieced them back together to repair them.
The only person who would do this, and who is capable of doing it, is her taciturn senior brother Sanyang.
Ji Mingran placed his left hand on the intricate carvings on the wall, the carvings being visible in layers, connecting the entire tower body from the inside out.
The tower's patterns gradually took shape in his mind. Ji Mingran raised an eyebrow slightly; this was... an array pattern.
At the same time, her slowly moving left hand finally touched what she had been searching for. She closed her five fingers and pulled a piece of wood out from the crack in the wooden wall.
It was the source of that faint spiritual energy fluctuation that had caught his attention.
Ji Mingran raised the candle and brought it close to the wood chip. The palm-sized piece of broken wood had only a few twisted strokes.
Found it. The only missing piece of the 100,000-fold inheritance in my mind was here.
Your unworthy descendants dare to dream that I will protect you for all eternity?
The countdown to the millennium begins today!
Several sighs followed.
The immense power of the ancestral array, containing the essence of the formation, surged through Ji Mingran's sea of consciousness. His head throbbed with pain, and he fell to the ground, curling up in a ball.
This array inheritance is far beyond what she can handle at her current stage. Perhaps it was the contact with the actual array that allowed her to complete the inheritance and directly skip several levels to comprehend this ancient array inheritance. Her sea of consciousness was impacted, and her spiritual consciousness collapsed.
The candle fell and went out; silence followed.
After an unknown amount of time, Ji Mingran gradually adapted to the excruciating pain brought about by the deciphering of the inheritance. He struggled to get up, trembling as he relit the candle and stuffed the wooden piece into the brocade pouch.
He reached out and grabbed the red rope around his neck; a jet-black jade ring dangled before his eyes.
This is the jade ring that Yu Tianxing gave her. It was the ring that stabilized her almost collapsing spiritual consciousness and bought time for her sea of consciousness to contain the power of inheritance.
After carefully hiding the jade ring in the innermost layer of his clothes, Ji Mingran got up and returned to the center of the first floor.
She took out a brush and ink from her brocade pouch and lay down on the smashed ground, focusing intently on her drawing. As she finished the last stroke, warm light emanated from the tower, instantly illuminating the dark and cold treasure cave as if it were daytime.
Simply restoring the ancient array patterns is enough to illuminate the entire tower with the radiance emanating from its inherent array power.
It is not only the protective array of the treasure cave, but also the core of the sect's protective array. The ancestor who set up the array deliberately left a restriction on his own protective array that could only be maintained for a thousand years. This restriction would only be discovered when the array was about to perish.
Ji Mingran put away his pen and ink, and couldn't help but shake his head, sighing heavily like the previous leaders of Luanfeng Peak.
The progenitor was truly insane.
The array patterns on the tower in their minds showed signs of being reconnected several times, likely the work of successive peak masters of Luanfeng. When they noticed the anomaly in the array and discovered their ancestor's foolish actions, the helpless sighs left behind when reconnecting the array were also stored in the array's intent.
It was a once-in-a-millennium event. Judging by the timeline, it should have been Boss Jiang who continued it this time, but presumably, something unexpected happened before she could finish. As a result, many of the patterns on the tower that were maintaining the array were broken or missing, greatly reducing its effectiveness. The treasure cave's protection, along with the sect's protective array, completely failed.
Ji Mingran took out a jade token and sent a message to Li Sanyang: "Senior brother, are there any other array cultivators in the sect?"
Li Sanyang quickly replied: "No."
The answer was as expected. Within the Dingsheng Sect, the four peaks of Quan, Yao, Kuang, and Lin specialize in one art, while Luan Peak, due to its generational inheritance, has a diverse range of styles, producing practitioners of array formations, talismans, magic, artifacts, body techniques, medicine, and more.
For example, her master Jiang Xiaoyi is a formation cultivator, but her eldest brother Li Xiaosen is a talisman cultivator and her second brother is a magic cultivator. Only she inherited her master's training in formations.
There are no other array masters in Luanfeng, and there are none else.
Ji Mingran sat on the ground and took out all the copies of the inheritance she had made from the brocade pouch. She placed the inheritance books one by one on the bookshelf.
After she carefully placed the inheritance she had brought with her and stepped out of the cave, the stars were low in the sky, and night had fallen. The sect's jade tablet transmitted Guan Wangzhen's urgent message: "You're the only one missing. Where is she?"
Ji Mingran retreated backward out of the cave, falling backward with the wind whistling in her ears. Her eyes were fixed on the cypress crevice that was getting further and further away from her.
She finally understood why the sect was so determined to keep the news of the inheritance she brought back.
She brought back the treasured legacy, and the treasure cave that preserved the legacy was right under her residence, even directly under the direction of her room!
The protective array for the sect has now become ineffective, and everyone in the spiritual cultivation world can come and go freely.
Luanfeng only had her.
She's like a turtle in a jar; she's in great danger.
Ji Mingran's gaze was serious and calm.
In the apocalypse, her dwelling was fortified with copper and iron walls.
In the mortal world, her little house was fortified and made very secure.
She now lives in Dingshengzong, which is her home.
Her home should have been well-defended enough to withstand a thousand attacks.
Therefore, she must repair the patterns on the tower one by one and reawaken the protective array that guards the five peaks and two rivers.
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