Xuan jumped after her, clearly afraid she was going to splatter on the ground like a pancake.
He used Void Step to teleport toward her, and it was clear she wasn't panicking. In fact, she had her arms behind her head in a relaxed pose.
And as he was about to grab her, she suddenly vanished from his sight, reappearing 1 meter behind him with a giant smirk.
Before he knew it, she sat down on his back while falling, then messaged him victoriously.
This wasn't even a competition though?
Even so, he knew she couldn't do that twice, so he didn't move at all, letting her sit on his back as they fell through the clouds, nearing the ground.
When they were finally just a few hundred meters away from splattering on the ground, Xuan turned his body and grabbed Yuelan.
And with a single thought, he teleported twice, landing on the ground without an issue.
Yuelan escaped his grasp and glanced around, her eyes glowing in curiosity.
After all, since the size of the world increased, many things had changed.
Now there was a beautiful river running through their former city, and to the side, two giant structures that resembled pavilions.
Xuan's brows twitched.
Just how long were we inside the Myriad Spirit Pond?
But it seemed like Yuelan didn't share his worries.
"Do you think that's one of those sects Linhua mentioned?" Yuelan asked.
He nodded right away. "Could be. I think that's the only way we can get some food at the moment, so I guess we don't really have much of a choice but to visit them."
"Hmm... if you say so." Yuelan shrugged, then narrowed her eyes. "Also, you're not controlling your Qi. You keep manually activating your skills... I told you not to do that."
"I can't help it, it's way too easy doing it this way," Xuan replied, feeling guilty. "But I promise I'll try to learn it."
After all, he was able to control his Qi by replicating the sensation that passed through his body when he activated a skill. However, he couldn't do it on autopilot just yet like Yuelan was doing.
"Hmph... good," Yuelan said, turning toward the sect grounds in the distance. "Practice on your way there then. If you activate your skill, I will get your portion of the food and you'll go hungry. Okay, big brother?"
A shiver ran down his spine as a look of determination appeared on his face.
And like that, he took the lead, all the while carefully teleporting 1 meter at a time.
.
.
.
(Same time, inside the Azure Sky Sect grounds, meeting room inside the Core Pavilion.)
The room was deathly silent as five men, all dressed in blue Daoist attire, sat by a square table.
Four of them were elders, and the man named Lin Chao was the sect leader. He sat in the most decorated seat, and unlike the elders, he had a calm look on his face.
"Sect master... the Azure Sky Sect will fall at this rate!" Elder Han yelled, slamming down on the table. "We need disciples! It's been nearly a week since we came to this world, and we only had forty pathetic disciples join us. How are we supposed to show our faces to those who sent us down here!?"
"Calm down, Han," Lin Chao said, his soft voice ringing through the air.
He tapped the table in front of them, causing small cracks to appear in it.
"We are undermined by the Black Dragon Sect and the Crimson Lotus Sect. No matter what we do, we can't match their allure," Lin Chao muttered calmly. "They have three Spirit Masters each, and we have how many? One?"
He pointed at himself. "I am the only person keeping this sect together. You are using the resources dedicated to the disciples to further your cultivation, and yet, you are still stuck in the Spirit Warrior Realm. Shameful."
All the elders suddenly shot up from their seats, glaring at the sect leader, but Elder Han was the one to speak up.
"Sect master, if there is no one using the resources, why should we leave them to rot? The disciples that we accepted take a portion, and we get a bigger portion! We need it more than them!"
Lin Chao remained calm. "Do you care to guess why I called this meeting today?"
Silence descended, but a single trickle of sweat ran down one of the elders' foreheads, which didn't go unnoticed by Lin Chao, who smiled widely.
"I recently noticed our pill storage was being emptied daily, so I decided to infuse my Qi into one of the pills to see where it was going," Lin Chao said, rising from his seat and approaching Elder Han. "What do you know, the pills made their way to our rival sects."
The air grew heavy, and not even a moment later, Elder Han took a step forward and pulled out a sword, aiming it directly at Lin Chao. The other elders did the same, as it seemed like they had been found out.
Alas, Lin Chao had known all along. They were his friends in the higher realm, but they had the habit of chasing money and women. In a sense, they held no loyalty to the Azure Sky Sect, but he had held out hopes that they might have changed their ways.
But clearly, Lin Chao's generosity came back to bite him in the ass. Because of that, he was left with no choice...
"You four will die here today," Lin Chao announced as four knives suddenly manifested out of thin air, then hovered around him.
The elders all flinched in unison, and without wasting a single moment, they knocked the table over and dashed toward Lin Chao, attempting to kill him.
Lin Chao took a deep breath and then brought his hand down.