Chapter 32 Eighty Days

The registry scribe did not waste time pretending to be sympathetic. He updated Lin Feng’s record, stamped the slip, and slid it back across the counter.

"Suspended from local grounds for eighty days," the scribe said. " If you try using conditional clearance inside the sect during this period, your token will be frozen."

Lin Feng read the slip and put it away. "Got it."

That was the public story, then. He had angered the Sect Master and been thrown out for eighty days. With only a hundred days on his clock to reach Qi level 8, most would decide his path had already collapsed.

He had barely stepped out of the office before the first reaction found him. Two outer disciples were waiting near the notice pillar, clearly having watched him go in. One of them brightened the moment he appeared.

"It’s true?" the disciple asked, too pleased to hide it. "Sect Master suspended you?"

Lin Feng held up the slip between two fingers. "Official enough for you?"

A deacon passing by slowed long enough to glance at Lin Feng’s marked record on the public board, where the clerk had already posted a short line under temporary disciplinary actions. The deacon’s mouth tightened in satisfaction before he moved on.So that was how it would be.Eighty days outside and twwenty days left after return.

Lin Feng walked on. Lu Cang was folding laundry when Lin Feng returned to Room The moment he saw Lin Feng’s face, one of the robes slipped out of his hands.

"What happened?"

Lin Feng dropped the suspension slip on the table. "I’m out for eighty days."

Lu Cang leaned over the paper, mouth moving as he read. "Suspended... Sect Master’s order... eighty days..." His head snapped up. "You only have a hundred days total!"

"I know."

Lu Cang grabbed the nearest cloth bag and started stuffing things into it with no clear system. "I told you. I told you your mouth was going to get us killed. And now it’s not even Enforcement or some random elder. It’s the Sect Master. What did you even say to him?"

"Nothing worth repeating."

"That is exactly the kind of answer a person gives before disappearing forever." Lu Cang shoved a spare sash into the bag, then a water flask, then one of his own socks by mistake.

Lin Feng took the bag out of his hands before it became completely useless. "I’m not dead."

"Yet!" Lu Cang pointed at him, eyes a little too shiny for pure comedy. "This is how it happens. One day you’re here causing problems. Next day you’re suspended. Then suddenly there’s a letter and everyone pretends they always thought you were talented."

Lin Feng started packing his own pouch properly.

Lu Cang hovered over him the whole time. "Where are they even sending you?"

"Outside."

"That is not a location, Lin Feng. "

"Anyways i can’t stay here, so it’s the only direction left for eighty days."

Lu Cang paced once across the small room, then stopped. "Are you coming back?"

Lin Feng tied the pouch shut. "I am."

"I will have twenty days after the suspension," Lin Feng said. "That means I have to come back.

Lu Cang did not look convinced, but some of the frantic edge dulled into something quieter.

Before they left the room, Lu Cang thrust a small paper packet into his hand. "Spirit cakes. They’re bad. Eat them anyway."

Lin Feng accepted the packet and took one last look around Room. It was a poor room in a noisy outer dorm, and it was also the only place in this world he had gotten used to coming back to. Then he opened the door.

The lower paths were more active with the news. Stuff like suspension notices always traveled faster than achievement lists. They passed the medical hall road, the edge of the dining pavilion path, and the familiar turn toward Block C’s laundry lines. Only when the outer gate finally came into view did Lu Cang go quiet for more than five breaths.

At the arch, the duty disciple checked Lin Feng’s suspension mark with visible relief and waved him through.

Lu Cang stopped at the line he could not cross.

For a moment the theatrics thinned out. He stood there with his hands clenched in his sleeves, face pale against the afternoon light.

"Just come back before the hundred days are up," he said.

Ling Feng just nodded, then he stepped past the gate.The first thing he noticed was the wind.

Inside Flowing Wind Sect, wind always felt as if the mountain had been trained to behave. Outside, it came with carrying dust, grass smell, and other things.The protective pressure of the sect formations fell away behind him by degrees until there was nothing left but open road and his own footsteps.

Lin Feng walked about a hundred meters down the slope before it fully hit him. This was the first time he had left the sect. Not Lin Feng the outer disciple after some long career of missions. Jack. For all the chaos he had caused, his entire life in this world had still been contained inside one mountain sect’s fences. Now the road ran forward without a courtyard at the end of it.

He stopped by a flat roadside stone, took out Yue Qingfeng’s route notes, and unfolded the accompanying map. The sect lands were marked in clean ink at the top. Southeast of them, the lines grew rougher. Forest ridges. A merchant road he was supposed to avoid. Then a stretch of unmarked lowlands before the ink turned into pale water patterns and a shaded region labeled only with a brief warning stroke.

Veiled Orchid Swamp. Lin Feng studied the path, then opened the system.

"Update this." he said under his breath. "Track the route, mark the destination, anything useful."

The panel pulsed.

[Map function available]

[Basic route synchronization possible]

[Current known destination: Veiled Orchid Swamp]

[System Note: Host finally left the starter compound. Congratulations on touching the actual world.]

A faint overlay settled across the paper map in his vision, tracing the southeast path with a thin line of light. It wasn’t a perfect immortal navigation tool. Whole stretches remained blank, and the swamp itself was only a broad shaded zone with poor interior detail. Still, it was better than relying on memory and stubbornness alone.

Lin Feng folded the map and kept walking.

The first hour was all descending road and thinning mountain scrub. He passed a pair of herb gatherers with pushcarts, a courier in dusty outer sect colors from some smaller sect, and a roadside shrine so old the offering bowl only held rainwater. No one recognized him. After weeks of observation status and public attention, the anonymity felt strange.

By midday, stone gave way to darker soil. The air thickened with moisture. Trees grew lower and denser, their roots tangled into the path like they had opinions about traffic. When he broke a stem of roadside weed between his fingers, the sap smelled faintly sweet.

The orchid water smell deepened as the road sank toward low black earth and standing pools half hidden by reeds. Lin Feng took one more look at the pale map line in his vision, then walked into the damp wind without slowing down.