Spectating the Angsty Romance of the Master and Disciple from the Sect Next Door Chapter 23

Xie Huaixue turned sideways, pondering for a moment. Under the Sword Sovereign’s expectant gaze, she softly said, “Sword Sovereign is heroic and dashing. Qingxiao is utterly convinced.”
Li Jin’an was suddenly choked out of thin air, and started coughing uncontrollably, coughing until her cheeks were flushed and completely red, complementing her red robes beautifully.
She endured and endured, suppressed and suppressed.
In the end, she still resembled a cooked prawn.
“…You’d better really mean that,” Li Jin’an mumbled softly, lifting her head.
How could this be!
This person was quite good at softening her stance. And calling herself by her Daoist title was just too, too much!
How could such a plain sentence be said by Xie Huaixue in such an… incomprehensible way!
Did Yinyue Monarch specifically teach her the secret to complimenting people?
Xie Huaixue withdrew her gaze, looked into the distance, and replied, “I would not dare to deceive Sword Sovereign.”
Li Jin’an raised a hand to brush her nose, using it to hide the upturned corners of her mouth, as if nonchalant, “Oh, barely acceptable.”
A rare sight in a thousand years: the Immortal Venerable’s disciples all became pig heads.
To so brazenly, openly, and grandly beat the opposing Immortal Venerable’s disciples into pig heads, looking twice their former width… one had to admit, it was something Jijin Sword Sovereign would do.
And Jijin Sword Sovereign said it so nicely: a tit-for-tat exchange, helping the Immortal Venerable’s disciples find their flaws and weaknesses, preventing them from becoming arrogant and complacent, or thinking they could do whatever they pleased simply by relying on their status as Immortal Venerable’s disciples.
Anyone who heard that sentence automatically translated it as: If you can’t beat the big ones, bully the small ones. Beat them until their faces are bruised and swollen, and they still have to be grateful.
Very much a bandit’s logic, but very Jijin Sword Sovereign.
Those cultivators from the same generation as Li Jin’an and Xie Huaixue who were still alive had also reached the age for taking disciples. As soon as this incident occurred, the new generation of disciples were terrified, fearing that Jijin Sword Sovereign would disregard martial ethics and beat them up too.
Their masters mercilessly mocked: “Li Jijin beat everyone from her generation eight hundred years ago. She doesn’t even think much of masters, let alone disciples. Do you really think everyone is Immortal Venerable Qingxiao?”
However, everyone speculated whether the Sword Sovereign had been frustrated to the point of becoming perverse, beating disciples because she couldn’t beat their master. Even the three troublesome disciples thought so, which showed how deeply ingrained the Sword Sovereign’s image was.
…
Li Jin’an paid no mind to others’ evaluations of her. There were plenty of people who disliked her; who had the ability to spout nonsense in front of her?
Ever since she personally entered the fray and beat the troublesome disciples with branches, she had fallen in love with this invigorating after-meal exercise.
Even if Li Jin’an suppressed her cultivation realm to the early Core Formation stage, just like Lan Ci, and even let the three troublesome disciples attack together, they would still only be beaten even harder by Li Jin’an.
Jijin Sword Sovereign was forever an insurmountable mountain blocking their path. Even looking directly at the mountain would earn them a beating.
Now they truly became troublesome creatures.
The branches on Qingxiao Peak had all become single-use consumables. Li Jin’an switched to rattan whips that felt better and hurt more. These days, the troublesome disciples’ pig-heads never subsided. Because of this, Zhong Fei, who loved to say vague and ambiguous things to hurt and isolate others, was unwilling to leave Qingxiao Peak.
They were also unwilling to meet their master with such a dignified appearance. They could only express their disapproval of Jijin Sword Sovereign’s excessive interference in Qingxiao Peak’s internal affairs in veiled terms during their morning greetings, hoping their master would intervene.
Unfortunately, Xie Huaixue did not agree, merely sweeping her clear eyes over them.
Even knowing their master was cold-hearted and didn’t care for external matters, they still feared if their master was disappointed in them.
At the same time, they were all doubtful: were their master and Jijin Sword Sovereign truly in a mutually exclusive, incompatible hostile relationship?
Ning Zhufeng, who had struggled to survive in the Demon Realm before, had no time to pay attention to the great figures and major events on Lancang Continent. Yet, she also knew the great names of Immortal Venerable Qingxiao and Jijin Sword Sovereign, knowing how fiercely they opposed each other. Some high-ranking demons even dreamed of the two fighting fiercely to a mutual defeat.
But was it truly so?
They had never seen their master indulge anyone so much. Even the impure-minded Jiang Fengmian was more reserved than infatuated in front of their master.
How could one be so composed and at ease in front of a sworn enemy?
In the intervals of being beaten into pig heads, they still had the leisure and energy to think about such trivialities, treating Li Jin’an and Jiang Fengmian as imaginary enemies, attempting to investigate Xie Huaixue’s past, as their malicious thoughts bubbled up.
As beautiful as imagination was, reality was just as cruel.
Schemes and stratagems might be useful, but they paled in comparison to absolute strength. And what Li Jin’an excelled at most was crushing everything with brute force.
To frame or smear Li Jin’an, one needed that ability first.
At the same time, the three troublesome disciples realized one thing – if Jijin Sword Sovereign was already so unparalleled, then Immortal Venerable Qingxiao, who was above her and had never suffered a defeat, would only be stronger and more despair-inducing!
Once some dirty little schemes were exposed, their fate wouldn’t be good.
It was a pity that the inherent flaw of intelligent beings lay here: the more perfect and like a banished immortal Immortal Venerable Qingxiao was, and the more she disdained them, the stronger the troublesome disciples’ desire to break an immortal’s pride became.
As the troublesome disciples became increasingly twisted, Li Jin’an was also studying them, not indulging in beating pig heads… really not!
Though adding the prefix “Immortal Venerable’s disciples” before “pig heads” did indeed make it more exciting…
Amidst her busy schedule, Li Jin’an still found time to do proper business. She was observing the troublesome disciples closely. Naturally, it wasn’t some daily routine of vying for favor, since she couldn’t see Xie Huaixue and was beaten into a pig head every day anyway, so she couldn’t really vie for anything.
Not only did the troublesome disciples turn into pig heads every day, but in every beating, they were rapidly improving. Each time they became stronger than the last.
Even though it was impossible for them to cause Li Jin’an any harm, and they were far from troublesome, she still felt extremely annoyed.
Thinking about her past experiences of desperately practicing sword arts and venturing into secret realms, and then thinking about Xie Huaixue, who cultivated diligently every day even when afflicted by cold poison, never letting go of a book as if wishing to spend her entire life studying, as well as Jiang Fengmian, who was stuck at the peak of the Void Refinement stage…
It was one thing for them, these old seniors, not to be cherished by the Heavenly Dao, but did they really have to become stepping stones for these troublesome disciples?
Through Li Jin’an’s observation, the troublesome disciples’ own talents were indeed good, but only good; compared to Li Jin’an and Xie Huaixue, they were just mediocre.
The problem was their extremely strong luck and their cultivation speed, which seemed to have no bottlenecks.
Just stepping out, junior sisters from the same sect would ask for help, and the reward would conveniently be spiritual medicine that could reduce swelling and disinfect. She heard that whenever they went to secret realms, their harvests were always significantly higher than others’…
It was still a long way from getting whatever one wished for, but it was enough to show the profoundness of their luck.
As expected of the Heavenly Tome protagonists, darlings of the Heavenly Dao. Opportunities were practically growing legs and running into their arms.
It was just easy to make one suspect that when the Heavenly Dao bestowed eyes upon the life of Lancang Continent, it forgot to install eyes for itself, going blind far too early.
Li Jin’an felt she had achieved remarkable results. Due to her chaotic interference and diligent disruption of the plot, for example, Lan Ci and Zhong Fei never discovered Xie Huaixue’s unique physique from beginning to end. Even the daily vying for favor plot wasn’t spared. The three troublesome disciples’ progress rates were decreasing, and finally, they hit a bottleneck!
Indeed, one had to start with small things, undermining them bit by bit!
Jijin Sword Sovereign was not a kind person to begin with; there was no need for gentle methods when dealing with troublesome disciples.
So, she had another wild idea: since the troublesome disciples’ luck could be eroded, and this lost portion of luck was either reclaimed by the Heavenly Dao or dissipated between heaven and earth, why couldn’t it benefit the hard-working Sword Sovereign?
Was this why Immortal Venerable Qingxiao was superior to Jijin Sword Sovereign? Because Xie Huaixue had stronger luck?
If she got more luck, could she then rise to the top and defeat Xie Huaixue?
Li Jin’an felt this matter had great potential and could even be achieved in one go.
There were all sorts of strange cultivation techniques and jade slips in the cultivation world. There were even arts of “luck exchange” and “luck borrowing.” However, these were generally only used by rogue cultivators, as such unorthodox methods were not tolerated by heaven and earth, and righteous immortal sects would also cleanse these evil techniques and rogue cultivators.
However, Li Jin’an was unrestrained. She would do what she thought of, not caring if the troublesome disciples would be sucked dry into corpses. If they could die on the spot, that would be a good thing.
Previously, Li Jin’an had not encountered arts of luck exchange or luck borrowing. She only liked to read sword techniques when it came to proper things. But they weren’t hard to find. She rummaged through Xie Huaixue’s bookshelf and quickly found the jade slip she wanted.
This was the arrogance of the righteous immortal sects: things not allowed to be kept by ordinary people could be openly displayed on an Immortal Venerable’s bookshelf.
Li Jin’an paid no mind to these trivial matters. With great cunning, she placed a new jade slip on the bookshelf to replace the original one, lest Xie Huaixue discover it.
The old-fashioned and dogmatic ones valued these overt rules the most.
Although Li Jin’an wasn’t afraid of Xie Huaixue finding out, she still wanted less trouble.
Then, she excitedly went to experiment with the newly acquired luck exchange art.
By reading the jade slip with her spiritual consciousness, she could understand how to exchange and borrow luck. She finally experienced the joy of learning.
Both luck exchange and luck borrowing required a medium. The former was too heaven-defying, directly swapping the luck of two people, and required quite a bit of heart blood as a medium.
Just as well, Li Jin’an never intended to exchange luck with the troublesome disciples. She disdained the troublesome disciples’ fate, fearing to taint herself with bad luck. Her own luck was very good.
What she planned to perform was luck borrowing. This method was quite difficult. It not only required personal items intimately related to the fate of the person whose luck was being borrowed, but also required the borrower’s cultivation realm to far surpass the borrowed person’s, as well as extremely precious formation materials. Finally, it would take forty-nine hours to inscribe the formation, during which one had to be fully focused, not breaking a single stroke, only then could it succeed.
Honestly, even if a cultivator could do it, they wouldn’t undertake such a losing business. The effort and reward were completely mismatched. Only Li Jin’an, this idle person with nothing to do, would just want to harm others without benefiting herself.
Even if she kept complaining about being poor, Li Jin’an was still a peak master of the Sword Sect, and her family’s foundation was quite substantial. Plus, when she was young, to win against Xie Huaixue, she really did learn formations for a period.
Although the elders of the Divine Mechanism Sect had cursed her as “rotten wood that cannot be carved,” she could still replicate the formation by imprinting it in her sea of consciousness.
As for items intimately related to fate, Li Jin’an also had a plan. Zhong Fei and Ning Zhufeng’s cultivation levels were not high enough, but Lan Ci, who took Xie Huaixue as a role model, also had a life-bound sword, which would come in handy.
Qingxiao Peak’s guest courtyard and disciple residences were on opposite sides of the mountainside. For Li Jin’an, it was but a blink of an eye, so she could place it at the last second.
For the next four or five days, Li Jin’an did not leave her courtyard. Lan Ci and the other two eagerly ran to the immortal cave to pay respects to their master, while also speculating whether Jijin Sword Sovereign was thinking of new ways to torment them.
In the deep night of the fourth day, when Qingxiao Peak was utterly silent, at the moment the formation was about to take shape, Li Jin’an split off a wisp of her spiritual consciousness and snuck into the disciple residences. She took Lan Ci’s life-bound sword, which was placed by the bed and nourished by a spiritual gathering formation, and just barely, at the last second, placed it into the center of the formation.
In an instant, the dark night sky became brightly lit, as if the sun had suddenly risen, illuminating only Qingxiao Peak.
Li Jin’an’s hair stood on end. The intuition she had developed from countless times walking on the edge of life and death made her unable to draw her Blazing Radiance Sword in time. She quickly snatched Lan Ci’s sword and instantly teleported out of the guest courtyard.
A thought flashed through her mind, and she threw the sword, tainted with the formation’s aura, back into the disciple residences.
In an instant, heavenly lightning descended.
A violent heavenly lightning bolt struck straight down, ferociously striking towards the disciple residences.
The courtyard, which had stood for a thousand years, instantly turned to ashes.
However, the heavenly lightning’s main target was still Li Jin’an outside; the disciple residences were just a side effect.
Just as the heavenly lightning charged towards Li Jin’an, a white-robed figure suddenly appeared, forcefully taking Li Jin’an away.