When the young cultivator woke up, he saw Zhang Sheng’s face staring back at him. Excited, he tried to sit up only to discover that he was hurting from head to toe, not to mention the bone deep exhaustion that robbed him of his strength. He slumped back down.

It was at this moment Wei Yuan’s face entered his vision. He said, “Don’t move. I’m not done with your wounds yet.”

The young cultivator looked around and found Ji Liuli, Bao Yun and Xiao Yu. Surprised, he asked, “Why is everyone here?”

“What happened to you, Senior Brother Sun? The ones who injured you are humans. Who were they?” Zhang Sheng asked.

The young cultivator was one other than Sun Yu. Wei Yuan first met him during the immortal sect unified exam. Little did he think that they would meet again while the man was fleeing for his life and gravely wounded.

Zhang Sheng’s question caused those nightmarish memories to rise back to the surface. Trembling slightly, he answered, “Master was taking us on a secret journey to the west. She said that she was tasked with escorting a certain item, and that she thought that it would make an excellent training opportunity. However, we were ambushed at the border of the western regions, and three Avatars attacked Master. Right before she sent me away with a secret art, I saw her destroying her own Avatar with my own eyes....”

Both Zhang Sheng and Ji Liuli were stunned to hear this. Trueman Ning Xi was a veteran Trueman who was renowned for her kindness and well-liked by everyone. Back then, she had gifted Zhang Sheng some Li Spring Powder[1] so that he would regain his Dao energy. No one could have imagined that she would meet such a tragic end.

“Someone betrayed the sect and leaked shifu’s whereabouts!” Sun Yu clenched his fists so tightly that his fingers were white. He growled through clenched teeth, “The traitor could only be one of us! When I return to the sect....”

Sun Yu did not finish his sentence. In fact,he visibly calmed down and said nothing more. A grudge at this scale only needed to be remembered, not vented. The calmer he acted, the deeper the hatred.

Wei Yuan replied, “I managed to capture two of your pursuers. We should be able to figure out their identities after a thorough interrogation.”

Sun Yu nodded and looked down on his wounded body. He was covered in countless major and minor injuries, and the most serious one was easily a saber wound that stretched across his abdomen. Not only did it break a few ribs, it had even cut through parts of his internal organs.

Sun Yu only sealed the wound simply because he was busy fleeing for his life back then. The wound had reopened some time during his escape, and Wei Yuan was currently busy treating the dead flesh.

Sun Yu hailed from the Xuanming Hall. He could clearly sense a vast amount of vitality flowing into his body and rejuvenating many near dead pieces of flesh. He exclaimed in surprise, “Is this Life Nurturing energy? No, that can’t be right. Life Nurturing energy isn’t this potent.”

“It’s Jia Wood Nurtures Life, a special property of this domain,” Wei Yuan replied.

“No wonder... What the heck is that cut? You damaged the underlying muscle!” Suddenly, Sun Yu grew distracted and started critiquing Wei Yuan’s medical technique. The cut had been off by the width of two strands of hair—simply unacceptable! If Sun Yu had made that cut, and Trueman Ning Xi was still around, he would have been scolded for days on end.

Embarrassment immediately colored Wei Yuan’s face. And here he thought that his healing skill was pretty good.

He made another cut, and Sun Yu could not bear it any longer. He took the knife from Wei Yuan, pulled open his own stomach with one hand, and pointed the tip of the blade with the other. “There’s a tiny blood vessel here with several tendons behind it. If you cut it like this, you could easily break it in half. Do you see it?”

In Xu Wenwu’s world, what Sun Yu called a tendon was a nerve.

Watching Sun Yu cutting open an intact organ, picking out a tiny blood vessel, and showing him the nerves that were thinner than a strand of hair, Wei Yuan could not help but feel a crawling sensation in his scalp. He really wanted to say, “This organ is fine, Senior Uncle. It hasn’t been damaged.”

Next, Sun Yu stabbed himself in the liver. Panicking, Wei Yuan hurriedly spoke up, “Senior Uncle! We can learn about the art of healing another day!”

The young cultivator ignored him and pushed until half of the blade was inside his liver. Then, he gave it two twists and slowly pulled out what looked like a tiny pearl. His complexion grew a tad paler, and he said, “This is the Palace Lord’s gift to Wei Yuan and the item Master was protecting. She passed it to me prior to her death. I hid it deeper than normal because I was afraid of losing it.”

Zhang Sheng accepted the pearl and said, “You have delivered your item, so rest well and focus on healing. One cannot resist an enemy or take revenge without a healthy body, right?”

Sun Yu nodded and lay down on his back once more, slowly closing his eyes. After struggling between life and death for many days, he ultimately managed to fulfill his master’s dying wish. Letting out a sigh of relief, the young cultivator prepared to take a small nap. He should be healed when next he awoke.

Just a few seconds after he closed his eyes, Sun Yu opened them again. “... Hey, that cut is half a fen[2] too deep. There are three blood vessels below it, you know?”

Moments later.

“... Three cuts, and you still couldn’t remove a piece of dead flesh? Did you know that you could’ve done it in one? With your knife technique, we’ll still be here by tomorrow dawn....”

Later still.

“Boy, you’ve severed a total of eleven tendons[3] at this point. Has your shifu never taught you how to cut a human? Oh right, you’re not from the Xuanming Hall. Forget what I said then....”

Finally.

“Give me the knife. I’ll do it myself!”

......

After Sun Yu had fallen into a deep slumber, Wei Yuan carefully put a blanket over his body and left the room. He was still maintaining a high concentration of Jia Wood Nurtures Life in the young cultivator.

The others were waiting outside. Zhang Sheng said when Wei Yuan walked up to him, “All cultivators of the Xuanming Hall are like this. You’ll get used to it. Senior Brother Sun and Trueman Ning Xi are great people right until the point they start talking about the art of healing. It’s as if they had transformed into completely different people. If there is a next time, knock him out first and treat him later.”

Zhang Sheng then held out a hand and showed him the pearl Trueman Ning Xi had died to deliver. It was transparent, and a mini hall could be seen floating in it. He explained, “This is the Palace’s gift to you. Feel free to place it wherever you like. I’m surprised that the Palace chose to bestow this, to be honest. It makes sense now why those people had hunted down Trueman Ning Xi.”

“What is it?” Wei Yan asked.

“The merit hall. Or more accurately, a subsidiary hall of the merit hall,” Zhang Sheng replied.

Wei Yuan accepted the pearl and checked it with his perception. He quickly figured out how to use it.

The merit hall of the Palace of Absolute Beginning had seven subsidiary halls in total. Together, they formed a set of mystic treasures. There was no doubt that the merit hall was an immortal creation. A subsidiary hall allowed someone to perform merit exchanges even if they were thousands and thousands of li away from the main hall. Although one could only exchange for a small amount of items every once in a while, and they couldn’t exchange any item exceeding a certain grade, it was still an unbelievable boon.

The subsidiary hall currently in Wei Yuan’s possession was the weakest one of them all. Thus, it could only exchange for an early-stage Avatar-level treasure at best.

With this subsidiary hall, he no longer had to worry about supplies. Even if the amount of items he could exchange at a time was extremely limited, it was still a game changer. It was like the main hall transcending space itself to deliver the goods he had requested into his hands. Only an immortal possessed the power to replicate this feat.

Wei Yuan asked carefully, “This must be very expensive, right shifu?”

Zhang Sheng confirmed, “It’s probably slightly more expensive than Qingming.”

That was as far as Wei Yuan dared to ask. After deliberating over the matter, he went over to the main chamber and activated the pearl. A two square meter wide hall appeared right where the main chamber was and covered up the realm stone below perfectly.

Wei Yuan slowly pushed the door open and stepped inside the merit hall. It wasn’t big. At the end of the hall stood a white Bay Laurel Immortal Tree with white gold leaves. To the left of the hall was a jade table with a jade tablet on it. It looked exactly identical to the ones in the main hall, though there were hundreds of jade tables in the main hall, and only one in this subsidiary hall.

To the right of the hall stood an incense burner table. It had a pair of candlesticks flanking a four-legged tray. Above the table hung a portrait of the founder.

The Bay Laurel Immortal Tree was the heart of the merit hall. It bore a fruit once every three days. For example, if Wei Yuan exchanged for a mystic artifact, then the fruit would transform into the item.

The jade tablet on the left side of the hall was connected to the main hall. It could be used to search for all exchangeable items. The incense burner table on the right side of the hall was for making offerings. The offerings were anything containing worldly origin qi or fortune.

Ji Liuli and the others also stepped inside the hall. It felt cramped as it was a small space.

It was at this moment everyone sensed a change in their merit booklet. The booklets were updating in real time thanks to the establishment of the subsidiary hall.

Wei Yuan produced his merit booklet and gave it a look. As it turned out, he had accumulated a little over fifteen thousand merits. The Palace of Absolute Beginning currently had over 9,900 Dao Foundation stage cultivators, and Wei Yuan was ranked 8,900th.

It looked like Wei Yuan’s standing was poor, but it really wasn’t. This was the overall ranking, and some of the Dao Foundation stage cultivators on it had been accumulating merits for over two centuries.

On the other hand, Wei Yuan had been cultivating for ten years straight. It wasn’t until the recent major examination that he officially “graduated”. Despite this, he had racked up a large number of merits and surpassed over one thousand people in an insanely short amount of time.

Since the merit ranking had been updated, Wei Yuan decided that he might as well check out everyone else’s rank. Xiao Yu was sitting on 23,000 merits and ranked 6,300th. Bao Yun was sitting on 29,000 merits and ranked 4,400th.

Xiao Yu was also checking out the merit booklet, and the first thing he searched for wasn’t his own ranking, but Wei Yuan’s. After confirming his sect fellow’s placement, he said in a reserved voice, “Now that we have the merit hall, exchanging items is much more convenient than before. However, it’s only one exchange every three days, and this isn’t going to improve until we’ve upgraded the subsidiary hall. With that in mind, how about we redeem our items based on the order of our merit rankings?”

“It is only right.” Wei Yuan nodded in agreement. The merit hall wasn’t reserved for him alone. It was available to all disciples of Palace of Absolute Beginning within the realm of Qingming.

Bao Yun looked toward the exit and pretended that she didn’t know Xiao Yu.

Wei Yuan was flipping through the pages and trying to search for his shifu and Big Senior Senior’s rank. Suddenly, a purple glow surrounded every merit booklet, and the list of names and merits blurred. The next second, Wei Yuan’s name disappeared from its original position.

When Xiao Yu saw the purple glow, he was immediately struck by a terrible premonition. He stared fixatedly at the merit booklet and, sure enough, Wei Yuan’s name was nowhere to be found. So, he flipped through the pages. The further he went, the heavier his heart felt.

Meanwhile, Wei yuan’s name had reappeared in the merit booklet once more. However, the text was now colored light purple.

Wei Yuan, 1,170 Heaven Merits, 150th.

At the same time, Wei Yuan finally found Zhang Sheng and Ji Liuli’s name. They were both in the top 100, and Ji Liuli was the higher between the two.

According to the rules, slaying the weakest Avatar was worth 500 Heaven Merits. It was also stated that ordinary merits were excluded from one’s tally once their total amount of Heaven Merits had exceeded 500.

Previously, Wei Yuan had slain an Avatar and a Great Warlock. Although he only succeeded thanks to Immortal Lord level trump cards, the merit hall still awarded him over half the Heaven Merits. After all, another cultivator wielding the same trump cards would have failed to put an end to Xu Guanwen or the Great Warlock.

As for the killing of the second Great Warlock, the large majority of the Heaven Merits went to Zhang Sheng. Again, this was reasonable. If the lizard Great Warlock had ten lives, then nine and half were destroyed by Zhang Sheng. Wei Yuan was the one who landed the last hit, so he was awarded the same amount of Heaven Merits as Ji Liuli and Bao Yun.

Wei Yuan proceeded to check Bao Yun’s rank next and discovered that she had earned a little over three hundred Heaven Merits as well. He, Ji Liuli, and Bao Yun had earned fifty Heaven Merits each when they slew the lizard Great Warlock. So, where did the other two hundred and fifty come from? Bao Yun didn’t mention it, but she must have screwed over many Avatars behind their backs.

Xiao Yu played a role in the death of the Great Warlock as well. That was why he was sitting on ten Heaven Merits.

It was at this moment Xiao Yu closed the merit booklet and said casually, “Now that I think about it, I have a sword that I need to finish. I’ll be taking my leave.”

Wei Yuan called out to him from behind, “Is there anything you urgently need to exchange? You can go first if you want to.”

Xiao Yu ignored him and walked faster.

1. Refer to chapter 5. ☜

2. One fen is 0.33 cm, so half is 0.165 cm. Normally I just fudge this but as you can tell Sun Yu is as strict as he is precise. ☜

3. A reminder that tendon really means nerve. This is a dialogue so I can’t just change it to nerve like I did for one instance in the above paragraphs. ☜