The two of them just stood there, separated by that teetering "Hundred East Peak" broken wooden door frame, their eyes meeting.
Staring wide-eyed at each other.
An autumn wind, mixed with the smell of sulfur and scorched earth, blew past, sweeping up a fallen leaf between the two of them, which spun lifelessly in the air.
The atmosphere instantly solidified amidst a suffocating terror and awkwardness, as if even the flow of time had stopped.
Mo Fan stared dead at the guy who had just drilled out of the waist-high grass.
Perhaps because he was utterly exhausted, the moment he laid eyes on this mysterious youth, Mo Fan's overtaxed brain actually went completely blank for a brief second.
In that momentary daze, memories of playing video games back on Earth uncontrollably surfaced in his mind, ruthlessly overlapping with reality.
"Holy shit?"
Mo Fan issued a soul-searching question in his heart, his blurry worldview suffering an extremely violent impact.
"This cultivation world... actually has hidden NPCs?! When did the Azure Cloud Sect start a hardcore survival game server?!"
When people are extremely dumbfounded or nervous, they often act based on their most primal muscle memory and subconscious.
Facing this unknown "strange friend" radiating a pungent smell of gunpowder...
Upholding the friendly diplomatic principle of "rely on friends when away from home, and don't hit a smiling face," Mo Fan tightened his grip on the [ Pale Bone Scepter ].
He swallowed hard, and tentatively opened his mouth extremely naturally, even carrying a bit of intimacy.
A pure gamer's instinctive greeting, carrying a bit of modern internet slang, blurted out:
"Brother, are you an NPC? Do you need a medic?"
"..."
The wind suddenly stopped.
The soot-covered youth opposite him, who had been staring blankly while holding a pitch-black metal scrap still hissing with white smoke, was completely dumbfounded upon hearing this string of gibberish.
A vocabulary that completely didn't belong to this world and had an extremely bizarre meaning.
Two streaks of cold sweat flowed down his soot-caked cheeks, washing out two clear white lines.
"En-Pee-See? Me-dic?"
The whites of the youth's eyes widened even further, Mo Fan's mud-stained face reflected in his pupils.
"What incomprehensible ancient curse is this guy chanting?! These words are so weird and obscure, could it be a foreign enemy invasion?! Or some peerless millennium-old great demon buried in the back mountain mine shaft coming out in human form?!"
He shuddered all over in fright. The desire to survive deep in his bones erupted instantly.
He was just about to throw away this piece of scrap metal in his hand and pull out his natal magical artifact from his robes for a desperate self-defense.
But just as his gaze moved down, preparing to look for Mo Fan's flaws, he suddenly caught a glimpse of the crudely made, splintery "Hundred Forging Peak" wooden token swaying slightly in the wind at Mo Fan's waist.
"Aiya!"
The youth's eyes lit up abruptly.
That taut, defensive tension of facing a formidable enemy deflated completely in an instant, like a popped balloon.
He let out an extremely exaggerated sigh of relief, then split his mouth open, revealing an extremely brilliant white-toothed smile.
Set against that soot-caked face, it had exceptional visual impact and was even somewhat blinding.
"Scared me to death! So it's a newly arrived fellow disciple!"
The youth patted his thin chest and swaggered out from behind the broken door frame, muttering with lingering fear.
"I thought it was some transformed beast running out from another mountain, coming over here to chant a death curse! Brother, what jargon was that you were chanting just now? Sounds weirdly incomprehensible, but quite imposing."
"..."
The corners of Mo Fan's mouth twitched violently twice, feeling his toes curling hard enough to excavate a replica of the Azure Cloud main peak right there in his shoes.
"Ah... that's my hometown dialect, used to ask if a fellow townsman needs healing."
Mo Fan hurriedly made up a random excuse to gloss over the gamer slang, while simultaneously letting out a long sigh of relief in his heart, silently putting the scepter back.
Having confirmed the other party was a human and not a ghost, could communicate normally, and that this was indeed the territory of the Azure Cloud Sect's Hundred Forging Peak...
Mo Fan's nerves—stretched to the absolute limit from climbing the Ascension Steps for a day and a night—finally relaxed completely. What followed was an extreme exhaustion that drowned him like a tidal wave.
Thud.
His legs went soft.
Completely disregarding his image, he slumped down leaning against that broken wooden door frame, gasping heavily for air, lacking even the energy to complain about this atrocious environment.
"So we're fellow townsmen! Aiya, what a rare guest, a truly rare guest!"
The soot-covered youth was clearly afflicted with an extremely severe case of aggressive extroversion.
He completely ignored Mo Fan's tattered refugee outfit and his expression devoid of the will to live. Holding that bizarre black basin, he circled Mo Fan excitedly twice.
His eyes looked Mo Fan up and down, clicking his tongue in wonder, as if looking at some rare animal.
"My name is Zhao Ziwei! 'Zi' as in Purple Qi from the East, 'Wei' as in the Crape Myrtle flower! You can just call me Ziwei!"
Zhao Ziwei introduced himself enthusiastically, his eyes full of undisguised curiosity.
"At our Hundred Forging Peak, you won't even see a ghost's shadow all year round; normally, no one ever comes. Everyone living here is a massive sucker who committed some offense at the inner sect main peaks and got 'exiled' here."
"I heard there was a fierce guy named Lu Xiaoqi in this Outer Court Grand Tournament who brute-forced his way into the Top 8. Could that be you?"
Saying this, he widened his eyes in disbelief: "You fought your way into the Top 8 with hard strength, how could you be assigned to this place where birds don't even shit?"
Leaning against the door frame, Mo Fan was so tired he didn't even have the energy to roll his eyes.
What could he say?
Say that to avoid scrutiny from the higher-ups, to find a deserted treasure land of feng shui to peacefully raise his skeleton army in peace, he actively performed a tearful drama on the award stage, signed an indenture contract, and jumped into this roofless deep pit himself?
If he said that out loud, he'd feel like a peerless, massive idiot himself.
"It's a long story. It's all fate." Mo Fan sighed helplessly. Holding the door frame and supporting his trembling knees, he stood up with difficulty.
"Senior Brother Zhao, this Hundred Forging Peak... do people usually just live on this bare dirt clearing? Not even a thatched hut?"
"How is that possible! This clearing doesn't even have a roof; if there's a thunderstorm, wouldn't we be struck by lightning or drown from the rain!"
Zhao Ziwei familiarly grabbed Mo Fan's arm, pointing at the rolling, desolate abandoned mine veins in the back mountain, which were covered in pits and holes of all sizes.
"We all find an abandoned mine shaft in the back mountain ourselves, dig around casually, and use it as a cave dwelling."
"Let's go, let's go, stop blowing in the cold wind here. I'll take you in to familiarize yourself, and incidentally help you pick a good pit with good feng shui!"
Mo Fan, carrying his heavy bags large and small, resignedly followed behind this overly enthusiastic Senior Brother Zhao.
Along a small path overgrown with weeds and littered with crushed stones and scorched marks, they stumbled deep into the back mountain.
On the way, holding that basin of bizarre black paste, Zhao Ziwei began a torrential flow of words, acting as an extremely dedicated tour guide.
"The stuff in this basin is good stuff. I risked my life to dig this 'Pyroblast Mud' out from a dead vein deep in the abandoned mine pit. Just refine it a bit with spiritual energy, and when it explodes, the power is fiercer than a late-stage Qi Condensation fireball! It's absolutely top-tier for blasting mountains and opening caves!"
While showing off his dangerous explosives, Zhao Ziwei educated him on the ecology and organizational structure of Hundred Forging Peak.
"Brother Xiaoqi, don't look at our mountain gate being so broken that even beggars wouldn't come. Actually, nominally, we are also a proper department of the Azure Cloud Sect, and we even have that tiny, pitiful fixed monthly quota."
"The Peak Master of this department, which is our nominal immediate superior, is that Elder Lin Dong who locks himself in a cave deep in the back mountain doing experiments every day..."
Step.
Mo Fan's footsteps halted abruptly.
It was as if his feet had suddenly taken root, or as if he had been hit by an advanced immobilize spell, nailed dead onto the rugged mountain path.
The expression on his face instantly solidified in this moment.
"You said... who is the Peak Master?"
Mo Fan's voice suddenly became incomparably dry, as if a large handful of coarse sand had been forcibly stuffed down his throat, his vocal cords even trembling slightly.
"Elder Lin Dong."
Zhao Ziwei didn't even turn his head. While carefully protecting the mud in his basin, he replied casually, "You know, that famous mad scientist who's crazy and paranoid all day. Didn't you hear of him in the outer court before?"
BUZZ—
Mo Fan's brain felt like it had been viciously, mercilessly smashed by a ten-thousand-pound iron hammer.
A piercing tinnitus instantly rang in his ears, and the vision before his eyes even produced a momentary double exposure.