Am I the old man who's always by my apprentices' side?

Chapter 375 Blue Night Realm?
At the same time, Sun Ping groaned and opened his eyes with a headache.

"The real person has finally woken up!"

A crisp sound rang out, and Sun Ping stared in surprise.

She was a girl with rosy cheeks, her two braids tied in a knot and hanging behind her ears. Red ribbons hung down from her braids, swaying gently in the breeze that blew into the room, like a kitten's paws scratching back and forth.

"You are……"

"I am Alana, don't you recognize me?"

Alana excitedly repeated, "I am Alana!"

“Alan…na…”

Sun Ping had a headache so bad that he couldn't help but tap his head with his hand to regain his memory after a bout of dizziness.

He remembered that when the barrier was broken, he watched helplessly as the dark figure went inside, and without hesitation, he rushed after it, dragging Lin Fengxian out and knocking her unconscious.

However, before Lin Fengxian lost consciousness, she threw something into the cave, but she was too fast and nervous because she had destroyed the barrier herself, so she didn't see what it was.

But none of that matters anymore. In any case, after following the shadowy figure into the black hole, he arrived at a place...

A paradise on earth.

Of course, there are no peach trees here, only vast stretches of unidentified trees.

Whether it's trees or flowers, most of the plants here have blue leaves, which is quite strange.

The dark figure had long since vanished, and after walking along the woods for a while, he spotted the girl Alana gathering herbs in the forest…

"You remember now!?"

Alana asked happily.

Sun Ping nodded and said, "I'm so sorry to have bothered you so much."

He had suddenly fainted after arriving in their city with Alana. At the time, he thought he had been ambushed, but looking at Alana now, it didn't seem like that...

"Grandpa said you fainted because you were exhausted and had depleted your spiritual energy."

Alana not only answered Sun Ping's question with a single sentence, but also kept talking non-stop: "I never thought that even someone as powerful as you, Master, would have your spiritual energy depleted!"
"Although Grandpa said you're not in any serious condition and will recover after a short rest, I still brought you a Spirit Nourishing Pill. Here, don't worry about its low grade; it's the best Spirit Nourishing Pill in the city!"

As Alana spoke, she carefully stretched out her hand, opened her palm, and in her palm was a dark green pill that emitted a faint medicinal fragrance.

Sun Ping, of course, would not take pills of unknown origin, so he politely but distantly refused, saying, "No need, I can adjust my breathing for a while."

Alana's enthusiasm for herself was not without reason.

On the way to Tianning City with Alana, after learning that he was a Foundation Establishment cultivator, Alana was filled with admiration.

According to Alana, there are only three Foundation Establishment cultivators in the entire Tianning City, and they are all old men with white beards. Even the youngest city lord of Tianning City only reached Foundation Establishment at the age of forty.

"Alas, in the past, Tianning City also had powerful cultivators in the Core Formation and Nascent Soul stages. But since the road to the Upper Realm was sealed hundreds of years ago, the spiritual energy here has become increasingly thin. Grandpa said that in a few hundred years, even Foundation Establishment stage cultivators will probably find it difficult to cultivate!" Alana admired Sun Ping so much that she would tell him almost anything.

In particular, her earnest address of Foundation Establishment cultivators as "True Persons" made Sun Ping feel extremely uncomfortable.

Even if someone is called a "True Person," they should at least be a cultivator at the Core Formation stage like Senior Brother, right?
"Judging from your appearance, you don't seem to be much older than me... Ah! I don't mean to disrespect you, I just... I just want to say that you are amazing! I'm not like that, I'm already sixteen years old and I've only just started to cultivate Qi!"

"It's alright, my name is Sun Ping, you don't need to call me 'Real Person'."

As Sun Ping spoke, he sat up from the bed, then stood up and took a few steps forward. He did feel a bit unsteady on his feet, and his spiritual energy was also empty.

It seems that the sword strike he unleashed with all his might in his desperation, using Xuan Song Han Feng, still caused him too much damage.

"Master Sun, where are you going?"

Alana hurriedly went to Sun Ping's side and stammered, "Grandpa went to invite the city lord. You, why don't you wait a bit and wait for the city lord to arrive before we talk?"

Sun Ping thought for a moment and felt that he did need to ask some questions, so he sat back on the bed, looked into Alana's clear blue eyes, and asked, "What kind of place is Tianning City?"

Alana looked confused: "Tianning City is Tianning City! What... what place..."

Sun Ping had no choice but to press further: "I mean, which country does Tianning City belong to?"

Alana was even more confused: "'Country'? What is a 'country'?"

Seeing Alana's reaction, it was Sun Ping's turn to be confused: "There's no 'country' here?"

“No…” Alana shook her head, but then, as if she understood something, she added, “However, are you talking about sects? We don’t have any sects called ‘countries’ here, but there are about a dozen sects of varying sizes. For example, Tianning City is the second largest city in the Blue Night Realm, and it has three sects involved in its affairs!”

"No, no, 'nation' is not a sect... It's nothing."

Sun Ping took a deep breath to calm himself down and recalled some knowledge about the cultivation civilization he had learned in class.

It is indeed mentioned that in many cultivation civilizations, the social structure is not formed by the state, but by sects with sovereign rights. The relationship between the sects and the mortals under their rule is not like that between the Northern Xiao Kingdom and the Southern Chu Kingdom. Instead, the sects often appoint the leaders among the mortals as "city lords" to govern different areas or cities. These "city lords" are then directly responsible to the cultivation sects and provide taxes.

As for the taxes themselves, they are not in the form of grains or cloth, but rather in the form of spiritual minerals, herbs, or other spiritual materials. Even spiritual rice and spiritual wheat are rarely used, because these low-spirited grains are not very valuable and are consumed by ordinary people.

Moreover, most cultivators abstain from grains, and even if they often supplement their diet with spiritual food, it is not for the purpose of maintaining the body's essential needs, so the demand is naturally not large.

Sun Ping shook his slightly dizzy head and then asked, "You said... 'Blue Night Realm,' could it be that the place you live in is called 'Blue Night Realm'?"

"Hmph, you really aren't a cultivator from the 'Blue Night Realm'!"

Alana proudly raised her chin and began another round of rambling: "Grandpa said that after the earthquake a few days ago, the concentration of spiritual energy inexplicably increased. The city lords have discussed that they should go back to the sealed entrance to the upper realm to take a look, maybe they can get out!"

"Our little world is called 'Blue Night Realm'! It was named by the gods of the upper realm! It's said that it's because there's a lot of blue in our Blue Night Realm, and the nights are especially long, that's why it's called that..."

"Since you are not from the Blue Night Realm, you must be from the Upper Realm, right? Do you know why the True Immortals and Gods of the Upper Realm sealed away our Blue Night Realm?"

Although Sun Ping didn't know which world Alana was referring to as the "Upper Realm," he was certain it couldn't be the world he had come from. Based on his experience, unless it was in the vicinity of the White Stone Immortal Sect, the spiritual energy concentration in the world he had come from was not as high as in this so-called "Blue Night Realm," so how could it be called the "Upper Realm"?
(End of this chapter)