Chapter 981 - Lucky man

Chapter 981: 981 - Lucky man

"When are you going to advance to the Star Sovereign realm? Bai Hu Lie has already advanced, and he’d be happy to have another training partner in the Central Region," Qingyi remarked, taking a sip of wine.

His eyes left Chen Wei and settled on the cherry blossoms. They fell endlessly, drifting down in slow spirals and covering the floor of the pavilion with a pink carpet.

"Only once I reach the Central Region..." Chen Wei replied, resting the cup on his knee. "The sect leader said the higher Qi density there will be perfect for me."

"That’s right." Qingyi nodded, twirling the cup between his fingers.

Honestly, once the war against the Celestial Demon ended, the division between the Central, Northern, Eastern, and Western regions of the Orthodox World would no longer make sense.

The demonic world, for example, controlled half of the celestial sky—an area far larger than the Central Region.

The reason the Central Region was the only part of the Orthodox World with such rich Qi was quite simple. A great battle, back during the first war between the demonic and Orthodox forces, had damaged the primordial laws of the Orthodox World.

When that happened, the density of Qi in the outermost regions simply collapsed.

From that point on—millions to hundreds of thousands of years ago—all the wealth of the Orthodox World gradually concentrated, little by little, into a single region.

After slaying the Heavenly Demon, Qingyi was already planning to use his cultivation art—or, to be more specific, the Destiny Reversal, one of his most powerful abilities—to repair that crack.

Once that was done, the density of Qi in the two regions would equalize.

Creating spatial transport networks to connect them would become much easier. With the passage of time and integration—over hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years—that difference would disappear completely.

"My wedding to Ma Mingzhu is coming up soon," Qingyi remarked after a moment of silence, his eyes still fixed on the petals.

"I’d like to call you a lucky man, my friend, but honestly, I don’t know how you survive." Chen Wei sighed, leaning his back against the wooden pillar behind him.

"Ever since I married my wife’s older sister as well, I can barely sleep. Things have slowed down quite a bit since she got pregnant, but even so, sometimes I feel like I’m going to die, hahaha."

Chen Wei shook his head and took a sip of his own wine, the liquid flowing warm down his throat.

"I wonder what will happen once the two of them are satisfied with the number of children and start preventing pregnancies... I don’t know if I’ll survive dealing with both of them while staying focused on my cultivation."

"As they say," Qingyi laughed heartily, tapping his cup on the table, "while some die of thirst, others drown."

Chen Wei laughed as well.

Well, many men would judge him for complaining about having such beautiful and eager women to serve him in bed.

Still, from a cultivator’s perspective, wasting cultivation time on sex wasn’t exactly acceptable.

"Ah... looks like I’ll need to come up with some dual cultivation techniques if I want to survive, hahaha." Chen Wei stood up, shaking his head and stretching his shoulders until his bones cracked slightly.

He set the cup down on the table and shot his friend a glance. "Let’s train a little, brother. It’s been a while since I’ve faced a worthy opponent."

In fact, Chen Wei soon regretted those words.

He trained with Qingyi for just over two hours and couldn’t even come close to catching up to him, not even with Qingyi sealing his own Qi and fighting solely with physical strength.

Every strike Chen Wei threw was deflected with an almost insulting ease. A fist aimed at the ribs was brushed aside with the back of a hand; a sweeping kick met a forearm that felt like iron. And every one of Qingyi’s counterattacks, no matter how restrained, left his arms numb and his legs trembling, the petals on the floor scattering with every misstep.

In the end, Chen Wei lay exhausted on the floor, covered in petals, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. Qingyi merely smiled, patted his friend on the shoulder twice, and left, returning to the central palace.

The girls were with the sect leader’s wife, exploring the palace’s vast and beautiful gardens while chatting animatedly.

The sect leader, left behind, simply sat on a bench on a balcony, gazing at the horizon with a serene expression, a steaming cup of tea between his fingers.

"You seem happy." Qingyi’s voice sounded beside him, and the sect leader smiled without turning around.

"I am happy." He nodded, taking a sip of his tea.

Qingyi sat down beside him, the wood of the bench creaking softly, and the two gazed at the same horizon, where the sun was beginning to tint the clouds with gold.

"I’m happy to see you and Rou’er doing well. Rouxi and little Lingxi, too... I know how much Rouxi wanted a child, and I’m glad she’s found a worthy man." The sect leader’s voice was calm, filled with a tenderness he rarely let show.

Qingyi hadn’t addressed him quite properly, but he didn’t mind.

Honestly, age aside, he was the one who should be calling Qingyi "senior," since Qingyi was now far more powerful than he was.

"I’m aware that the younger generation is born to surpass the older one; I’ve always been..." the sect leader remarked, slowly swirling his cup as steam rose in thin wisps. "I already knew you’d surpass me too, and Ma Zhenwu knew it as well. We just didn’t expect it to happen this quickly, hahaha."

"You speak as if you were an old mortal on the brink of death." Qingyi shook his head, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"You are talented, Sect Master. Your cultivation was merely limited by the density of Qi in this region. Do you really think that after reaching the Central Region, you’ll remain stuck at the Star Sovereign realm? Even the Celestial Emperor realm won’t be out of your reach."

"Me, a Celestial Emperor?" the sect leader asked, emptying his cup with a final sip and setting it down on the bench with a soft clink. "Well, it would be a level worthy of making my future child proud of his father."

He turned to Qingyi, a steely gleam in his eyes. "And don’t worry. I’m a man who already has everything he wants, but I won’t give in to complacency. My journey is far from over."

"Good," Qingyi replied with a broad smile, turning his gaze back to the horizon beside him.