Chapter 48: Keeping Busy

Instead of making a decision immediately regarding the treasured flame, Gu Yuan moved toward the Scripture Pavilion. He might find something more useful there.

But when he arrived, he couldn’t help but pause.

Standing at the front of the four-floor pavilion was an elder... an elder who bore an uncanny resemblance to the elder sitting in front of the Scripture Pavilion in the outer sect.

Twins? Again?

Gu Yuan instinctively felt some wariness, but he still greeted the elder respectfully and said, "I want access to the fourth floor for one month."

The elder raised an eyebrow at the request and remained silent for a few seconds before shaking his head. "The fourth floor is only accessible to Core disciples. You can only go to the third floor."

"Then, one month of access to the third floor."

"150 middle-grade spirit stones," the elder said.

Gu Yuan calmly paid.

While thinking that it was actually cheaper than he had expected, he forgot that the amount he was now calling cheap had been an unaffordable sum to him just a few years ago.

He moved to the third floor and started browsing through the information there.

Gu Yuan still didn’t find anything about the Ascension Door, the Sacred Ceremony he had gone through, or the Three Lives Covenant Array, but there was plenty of information about the tree.

Cause and Effect Tree, The Loom of Cause and Effect, or, for short, Twin Seasons Tree... these were among the few names the tree had.

It was said that the tree had not been seen in the mortal realm for thousands of years.

It was also said that the tree had sprouted from a seed dropped by an Immortal who had tried to merge the Dao of Life and Dao of Death. It split into two halves, forever embodying contradiction.

Those who meditated beneath the spring half would see visions of their past actions as seeds. Beneath the autumn half, they would witness the fruits, whether rotten or golden, of those deeds.

In conclusion, the tree was quite amazing... its traits may have been the reason it was chosen as the catalyst for the ceremony.

Gu Yuan settled on that conclusion quickly, his mind now occupied by the Treasured Flame.

After reading the records, Gu Yuan found the identity of the flame he received.

It was the Crimson Fire, the sect treasure of the Crimson Flame Sect.

If he thought about it a little, he should have been able to deduce that easily. Why had it never occurred to him before? He didn’t know.

Regardless, such a treasured flame would bring countless troubles to him if he were to refine it.

Maybe he should return the treasured flame?

The thought briefly came to him before he shook his head, deciding against it.

He still remembered the conversation he had with Yushan, and like that man had said, the Crimson Flame Sect was not that innocent either.

Now that the Crimson Fire had fallen into his hands, it belonged to him!

Gu Yuan sighed. Even the gifts given by the twins brought their own troubles with them.

"Now that I think about it, when are they coming back?" he muttered in a low voice as he returned one of the scrolls to the shelf.

Gu Yuan spent the remainder of his allotted time browsing the third floor, broadening his knowledge, before finally returning to his residence.

Luo Yunjin had still not returned when he arrived at the hall, so Gu Yuan decided to begin learning Array Formation.

He could ask Ji Yue for help, yes. But what about the next time he needed some kind of Array Formation? It would be better if he learned how to create them himself.

Having made up his mind, Gu Yuan immediately began his study.

His first step into the study of Array Formation was surprisingly mundane.

He started with the basics.

What was a formation core? What were formation nodes? How did Spirit Qi flow between them? What role did the formation eye play, and why could moving a single node by even a small distance sometimes cause the entire formation to fail?

At first, the diagrams looked like little more than complicated patterns drawn across a page.

But the more Gu Yuan studied them, the more he began to see the logic hidden within those seemingly complicated patterns.

A formation wasn’t simply a collection of strange symbols. It was a structure.

The nodes determined the flow, the lines guided it, and the core controlled the entire formation. Change one part, and the balance of the entire structure could change with it.

Only after understanding those basic principles did Gu Yuan begin attempting his first simple formation.

A Spirit Qi Gathering Array.

It took him several attempts before he finally managed to activate it.

Looking at the faint spiritual glow spreading across the formation, Gu Yuan couldn’t help but feel a little satisfied.

Time passed like that.

One year later, Gu Yuan had somehow become a Spirit-Grade Array Master.

"Am I actually more talented in Array Formation than forging?" he muttered, unsure whether he should be happy about it.

His feelings were quite complicated.

After all, he enjoyed forging more.

Regardless, although Gu Yuan had become a Spirit-Grade Array Master, his skills were still nowhere near enough to set up an array formation capable of helping him refine the Crimson Fire.

"Should I continue studying Array Formation?" Gu Yuan wondered.

After a moment, he shook his head.

It was boring. He wanted to do something else.

After thinking for a while, he decided to practice one of the techniques he had found in his dowry.

Silent Dust Art, a Top-Earth Grade concealment technique.

Gu Yuan wasn’t satisfied with relying solely on the concealment provided by his Thousand Forms Ring, after all.

Silent Dust Art allowed its user to completely conceal their aura and presence, making them nearly undetectable even to cultivators of a higher realm... or so the description claimed.

But after studying it, Gu Yuan quickly realized that this wasn’t entirely true.

Its concealment was indeed powerful, but it was not absolute.

The question was whether it could deceive the twins.

Gu Yuan preferred to keep his secrets hidden, even from the twins, after all.

His cultivation?

There was no need to hide that from them. In all honesty, he could reveal almost everything about himself to them... other than his Orb of Creation.

And that was the problem.

For the Orb of Creation itself, Gu Yuan believed it was still at a level the twins couldn’t detect. Ji Yue only noticed that something was wrong when he used his ability on her, which was evidence of that.

But what about his spiritual root?

It would continue to be enhanced and upgraded over time. Such steady, unnatural improvement was abnormal. It was best kept hidden.

There was no immediate need for such caution at present, yet Gu Yuan found himself feeling a little competitive.

Just a tiny bit.

He also wanted to surprise the twins with his cultivation.

He could already imagine it.

The twins thought he was at the second stage of the Golden Core Realm, only to discover that he was actually at the sixth stage.

He wanted to see their surprised faces.

It was a somewhat childish goal, but Gu Yuan didn’t mind.

Perhaps because of that small desire, he spent most of the following year practicing Silent Dust Art and steadily raising his mastery over it.

During that same year he did not neglect his cultivation either. He successfully broke through to the second stage of the Golden Core Realm.

Even then, he had only broken through a single stage.

It had been more than three years since he entered the Golden Core Realm, and he was now Thirty years old. Yet, he had only advanced one stage.

The next major realm was still too far away.

Once he was done, Gu Yuan checked the hall again, but his master still hadn’t returned.

The twins hadn’t changed their location either.

They were still in that secret realm.

Everyone was clearly busy...

And so, Gu Yuan decided to be busy too.

He decided to do his sect mission.

The last time, he had been late.

This time, he could be early.