“I was beaten by a girl??” Xing Wuliang’s eyes rolled back once more and he fainted dead away. He didn’t hear any part of Lu Yun and Xing Lang’s conversation, just the “senior sister” honorific and Xing Lang’s frank admittance.
“If you don’t agree, I’ll hang you up and beat you as well,” Xing Lang added when she read Lu Yun’s expression. “As the foremost senior brother of the Star Sect, I have the authority to punish any junior brother or sister. But since you’ve revealed my gender and let many junior brothers know that they were beaten by a girl all along, their dao hearts will likely suffer for it.”
“There’s no hierarchy when it comes to learning, and there’s no talk of gender either. So what if we’re beaten by a girl?” Lu Yun grinned. “Did your master never tell you that men and women are equal?”
Xing Lang looked strangely at Lu Yun. Though there was no inherent patriarchy in the fourth realm, it seemed to be tradition that women were the weaker gender. Their status was lower than men’s by default, so it was very odd to hear Lu Yun speak of these notions.
“It’s not that I’m not willing to learn from Senior Xing Chen, but that she won’t dare to accept me.” Lu Yun smiled and changed the topic.
“My master won’t dare accept you?” Xing Lang frowned and her expression took on an intently listening cast before clearing up. “Alright, I see. Mm, let it be known that my name is Xing Lan, not Xing Lang, and that I am the foremost senior sister of the Star Sect from this moment on. Anyone who does not accept this can come challenge me!”
She reverted to her regular voice and whirled around with flair after another glance at Lu Yun.
……
News of foremost senior brother Xing Lang of the Star Sect being a girl spread rapidly through the World Star, the World Plane, and several other planes around it. This was a very important personage in the Boundless Planes—to think that she was actually Xing Lan, a girl?
“So what if our senior brother’s turned into our senior sister?”
After a brief uproar in the Star Sect, nothing else came of the revelation. Xing Lan’s master Xing Chen was an unusual woman and most importantly, the Star Sovereign King—the strongest of the sect—was also a woman.
In comparison, it didn’t seem noteworthy that Xing Lan and all of the disciples on Xing Chen Mountain were all women.
However, the other female disciples of the Star Sect quickly suffered broken hearts. The male disciples of the sect came alive with roaring energy and rushed to Xing Chen Mountain to declare their affections. An entire mountain full of girls??
Xing Chen Mountain was the foremost mountain in the World Star and Xing Chen the first Nihil World Sovereign and first supplemental grandmaster of the sect. If they could become dao partners with any of her disciples, the lucky man could shave off several thousand years’ worth of effort!
Of course, none of this had anything to do with Lu Yun. He’d chosen a place on the World Star to establish his residence and began studying what Fuxi had left him.
Fuxi hadn’t taken anything from the original Hongmeng to the great wilderness. That would’ve given his enemies easy access to destroy the knowledge. After all, there were multiple parties laying out conflicting plans for the Central Hongmeng.
If the final legacy of the original Hongmeng appeared there, it would’ve been completely rooted out and erased. Since the original Hongmeng had been eliminated by accident rather than by the times, its combat arts and methods were more powerful than what was available in the new epoch.
That stemmed from the fact that the original Hongmeng could suppress order, but there was nothing that could keep order under control in the new epoch. Hence, order was slowly dissipating from the Boundless Planes.
As of now, Lu Yun could deploy the Dragonquake Scripture and its most powerful methods—the Dragonsearch Invocation, Dragonshift Method, and Dragonspike Litany. Apart from those, there were also tremendous combat arts within the scripture that were key to accessing the scripture’s most powerful attacks.
Lu Yun carefully read every line of Fuxi’s legacy, studying each character over and over again. The exact Dragonquake Scripture that’d once destroyed the original Hongmeng was also among them.
“Junior brother Feifan, junior brother Feifan!” someone called to him, shaking him out of his reverie.
“Hmm?” Lu Yun lifted his eyes to see Xing Lan outside of his nameless abode.
He’d chosen a barren location at random on the World Star for his home. It was a very remote locale that saw little foot traffic; not even Xing Wuliang knew where Lu Yun was at the moment. But somehow, Xing Lan had found him.
Lu Yun put the books away and walked out of his residence. His visitor had returned to wearing female clothing and was dressed in a long black robe. Her hair was tied up with a ribbon and she was extremely beautiful. Her looks was underscored by a certain manly grace, giving her a particularly heroic appearance.
“So you’re hiding out here, junior brother Feifan,” she giggled when she saw Lu Yun.
“Eh? What brings senior sister here?” he asked with confusion. He could clearly sense a certain emotion from Xing Lan—she was carrying out orders. She obviously wasn’t interested in him, did her master want something from him?
“My master has ordered me to be friends with you.” Xing Lan spread out her hands with resignation. “Junior brother Feifan, your soul force is ninth level, right? But your mentality seems to have reached grandmaster, so you should be focusing on how to break through with your soul force as well,” she quickly added, perhaps regretting her candor.
Lu Yun held his forehead. I think I understand why she’s here.
As a walking sack of bad luck, he could be the death of those around him at any given time. But Ah Zhi had said that his destiny had changed, that whoever came in contact with him would also see their destinies changed.
Lu Yun hadn’t told her about the endless reincarnation cycles, so she didn’t know the meaning of the destinies she saw. But as a powerhouse who’d set foot into sequence, she possessed her own judgment and intuition.
Xing Chen was the strongest Nihil World Sovereign of the sect and had the right to speak frankly with Ah Zhi, so here Xing Lan was.
“Since my mentality has reached grandmaster, it doesn’t matter what level my soul force is at.” Lu Yun shrugged carelessly.
“No, it’s very important!” Xing Lan corrected solemnly. “We Star Sect disciples all cultivate soul force. The qualifications to join us depends on one’s potential in supplemental dao and soul force. Do you know why?”
Lu Yun started, then quietly operated formula dao. It didn’t take long for his expression to turn unpleasant.
“The beings of the Boundless Planes, whether in the known or unknown expanses, cultivate the power of ‘nothing’. The peak of nothing is… well, nothing,” Xing Lan murmured. “The Star Sovereign King says that nothing is the absence of everything, including order. The more beings cultivate it, the weaker order becomes until finally, the Boundless Planes will just… poof! Disappear.
“They’ll dissolve into a place of disorder, possessing only rules and no order, a region impossible for life to survive… But soul force is a true and tangible strength that’s completely different.”
Lu Yun blinked and Mo Yi froze in the Disordered Hell.
“It seems Ah Zhi… has found the reason why order is disappearing?” Mo Yi shot to her feet as the floating Dao King drifted down to her side. Both of them were quite agitated.
