Duosheng Danyuan

"Wen Guanmiao?" Upon hearing this name, the skeleton man, who had been sprawled on the ground in a ball, reacted, raising his head in surprise and staring at the direction behind me. He asked curiously, "What are you doing here?"

"I'd like to ask you that question first. What are you doing here, you loser?" With a disgusted pinch on her nose, Wen Guanmiao strode past me and walked straight up to the skeleton man, poking his back with her foot.

"Damn it! Don't use your foot!" After being poked by Wen Guanmiao, the skeleton man immediately sprang up in embarrassment and regained his footing.

"You look quite energetic. Judging from your appearance, I thought you, this good-for-nothing, were about to take the Soul Essence Pill again." Wen Guanmiao chuckled and teased.

"Soul Essence Pill? Do you have any more?" Upon hearing the words "Soul Essence Pill," the skeleton man's eyes immediately gleamed with greed, like a drug addict seeing heroin.

"..." Speechless, Wen Guanmiao curled her lips and tossed a small bottle in the man's direction with disdain. "Li Shuyan, including this bottle, you owe me five bottles of Soul Essence Pills. If you don't pay it back, I'll come and collect the interest myself."

"So many!?" Eagerly opening the bottle, Li Shuyan frantically shoved the small pills inside into her mouth and swallowed them all in one gulp. Only then did she look at Wen Guanmiao in surprise, muttering, "You didn't miscalculate, did you...?"

"What did you say?" Wen Guanmiao put her right hand on Li Shuyan's shoulder, squinted her eyes, and smiled with an indescribable kindness.

"I-I understand... Hmm!"

Before Li Shuyan could finish speaking with Wen Guanmiao, the effects of the Soul Essence Pill began to take hold. After experiencing the same process as with the adopted daughter Wen Guanmiao, he stood up again, and the skeleton in front of us had transformed into a handsome young man of about twenty years old, dressed up with a refined appearance.

"..." Faced with this completely unexpected development, Zeng Yixi and I were both at a loss for words.

"So, why did you come here? If you wanted to be lazy, Elder Jianchen would have been fine, since he doesn't care about you anyway." Seeing the change in Li Shuyan's appearance, Wen Guanmiao finally looked at him properly and asked in confusion.

"My junior brother, whom I've taken a liking to, has gotten into trouble. As his senior, it's only natural for me to discipline him, right?" Stretching his limbs, Li Shuyan barely managed to recover his broken back from using Storm Flash in a special way. He muttered, "Who knew this ghostly light would malfunction? I just can't put it out!"

"..." Hearing Li Shuyan say this, Wen Guanmiao's eyes showed not only disdain but also pity.

She gently touched Li Shuyan's head and said with concern, "Child, hang in there. The Shengdan Academy will definitely develop a medicine to cure brain damage."

"W-What are you doing?!" Li Shuyan stammered, slapping away Wen Guanmiao's hand that was stroking his head.

"Are you an idiot?" Rolling her eyes, Wen Guanmiao casually raised her right hand, and the wind that had been dormant started rustling again the next second.

However, unlike Li Shuyan's elaborate scheme, the wind summoned by Wen Guanmiao was soft and gentle, like a warm spring breeze. Yet, this very breeze directly extinguished the dim light surrounding Zeng Yixi.

"How could this be..." Li Shuyan stared at the scene before her in disbelief, turning to look at me in surprise, then at Zeng Yixi not far ahead, before finally turning back to Wen Guanmiao, her mouth twitching as she said, "I...I made a mistake?"

"Hehe..." Wen Guanmiao shook her head helplessly, her lips twitching as well, then clapped her hands at Li Shuyan. "I want to ask you, what kind of cultivation is that junior brother over there doing?"

"Isn't it 'Returning to the Origin of Bones'...?"

"The 'Embracing Bones and Returning to the Origin' technique is what this junior sister uses; that junior brother only used the 'Hundred Meridians Returning to the Origin' technique."

"Hey, isn't that the same thing?" Li Shuyan asked blankly.

"The same thing?!" Speechless, Wen Guanmiao rubbed her forehead, suppressing her anger, and said to Li Shuyan, "The 'Hundred Meridians Return to Origin' is purely a physical technique, while the 'Bone Embrace Return to Origin' is a technique that Elder Qingfeng explicitly taught us when we were in the Foundation Establishment stage, okay?!"

"Huh?" Li Shuyan's confusion deepened.

"...Sigh!" Wen Guanmiao sighed and explained through gritted teeth, "The 'Hundred Meridians Return to Origin' technique is just a method of exerting power. It doesn't require activating one's spiritual root; it can be used directly through physical strength. Therefore, that junior brother didn't violate the 'Disciple Code' established by the sect leader at all, understand?"

"How could this be..."

"Does throwing a punch out of thin air or assuming a horse stance count as cultivation? Pure physical techniques that don't involve breathing in or disturbing the surrounding spiritual energy don't fall under the category of cultivation. So, you've come to the wrong person."

"..."

After a long silence, Li Shuyan seemed to finally understand what had happened. His pale face turned bright red in an instant, and then, without saying a word, he immediately disappeared into the night, leaving the three of us completely bewildered.

"..."

For a moment, we fell silent again. Zeng Yixi, who was a little further away from me, glanced at the extinguished eerie light beside her and couldn't help but lift her toes slightly and move her body a little closer to the still-bright spot where the light was still present.

"It's no use. You broke the rules. The Ghost Light won't protect you." Wen Guanmiao noticed Zeng Yixi's thoughts, glanced back at the suspicious Zeng Yixi, and said calmly, "Wherever I want you to go, I can blow the Ghost Light out."

"...Senior sister, I didn't expect to see you again so soon?" Zeng Yixi forced a smile and laughed.

"Yes, including this time, this is the third time we've met, right? I'm also wondering why we've run into each other so many times in just two days." Spreading her hands, Wen Guanmiao shook her head and smiled helplessly.

"The third time?" Zeng Yixi asked in confusion.

"It's in the Refining Heart Hall, right?" I took a step forward, moving half a step closer to where Wen Guanmiao was, and frowned. "Senior Brother Li Shuyan is the one who skipped the class we audited in the Refining Heart Hall yesterday. Senior Sister Wen Guanmiao called him the bottom of the class. He and you should be in the same class, right?"

"Exactly." Wen Guanmiao pursed her lips, turned to me and smiled, "I was sitting in the first seat of the first row, and each of you passed by me. It's really sad that you didn't recognize me at Mingling Residence just now."

"Yesterday? How could that be? Just now at Mingling Residence, Elder Qingyue clearly said that you had been in seclusion for almost two months!?"

"Hey, didn't Elder Qingyue tell you?" Similar to Zeng Yixi's shock, Wen Guanmiao also looked puzzled. "Because of the 'Wonderful Landscape' left by the second sect leader, time at Mingling Residence fluctuates due to spiritual energy. Through years of research by the current sect leader, the unstable fluctuations generated by the 'Wonderful Landscape' have been successfully refined into a stable time flow difference."

"Difference in flow rate? But before we even entered the secluded chamber through the Mingling Residence corridor, we saw a circular sky enclosed by the circular corridor of the Mingling Residence. The changes in the sky were no different from the normal flow rate outside the Mingling Residence," Zeng Yixi said.

"This is what makes our current sect leader so great." Wen Guanmiao nodded slightly, her tone tinged with pride. "The sect leader changed the influence of 'Mountain and Water Wonderland' on the entire Mingling Residence to its influence on individual seclusion chambers. Based on the different realms of the disciples, their cultivation needs, and other more complex factors, he implemented individualized instruction and allocated resources accordingly. This allows some disciples who urgently need to achieve results to obtain a large amount of spiritual energy in a short period of time while paying the corresponding price. This is something that even ancient treasures cannot do in other sects, but in our sect, it can be easily achieved simply by going into seclusion."

"The price? What price?"

"Since it's about teaching according to aptitude, everyone is different. Wait, isn't that a bit odd? Aren't you all in seclusion too? Logically speaking, I don't need to go into so much detail, do I?" Coming back to her senses from her rambling, Wen Guanmiao looked at us with even more suspicion.

"..." Silence for a moment.

"Well, never mind." Seeing that we didn't want to say more, Wen Guanmiao was too lazy to press further. She shrugged and continued, "As your senior sister, I've done my duty to explain these things for you. Now, you can avoid this topic."

"Me?" I was clearly a little confused when someone suddenly pointed at me.

"What? You're going to stay with her?" Wen Guanmiao said, pointing to Zeng Yixi in the opposite direction. "Although I don't really care, it's a pity that even if I wanted you to stay, I couldn't. That's the rule, I can only deal with her alone."

"Deal with—?" Zeng Yixi raised her voice several decibels when she heard Wen Guanmiao say such a terrifying word so easily.

"Don't be nervous, don't be nervous. Although it's a matter of handling, it won't kill you. It'll just be a small price to pay as an apology for waking me up." Wen Guanmiao still had that warm smile on her face, as if she were talking about something ordinary.

No, not just seemingly. For these native inhabitants of the Shengdan Academy, making newcomers who break the rules pay the price is simply a normal occurrence.

"That's about it, so why aren't you leaving? I'm getting impatient waiting..." Wen Guanmiao said, a line of drool dripping from the corner of her mouth, pointing to the thatched hut not far away, signaling me to get lost.

"...Hehe..." After pausing for a while, I pondered for a moment and then chuckled softly.

"What are you laughing at?"

Looking into Wen Guanmiao's strange, slightly reddening eyes, I wiped the fine beads of sweat from my temples and grinned, "'That's the rule'? So that means the treatment you're about to give Zeng Yixi is also according to the rules, right?"

"Of course. I've been a disciple for ten years, and I know every word of the 'Disciple's Code of Conduct' written by the sect leader by heart. Naturally, my actions will not violate it in the slightest. Hehe, those fools who do violate the rules are all dead~"

"That's good," I nodded, looking directly at Wen Guanmiao, whose state was gradually becoming more human-like. I swallowed hard, and after a long while, I finally made up my mind and said, "I'm not leaving."

"ha?"

Incredibly, as if she hadn't heard me, Wen Guanmiao stared at me with a twitching mouth and a slightly furrowed brow, her eyes fixed on me as if I were a dead person.

"I said, I'm not leaving." I repeated my words, a small sliver of confidence surging through my frantic heartbeat, and I calmed down slightly. "I'm not leaving, so what can you do about it?"

"Oh."