Foundation Establishment Part 1

Lu Guijiu was stunned for a moment when he saw Zhang Jingmo's furious appearance. He called out "Master", but saw Zhang Jingmo raising his sword and stabbing towards him again.

Lu Guijiu could only dodge, constantly shouting.

"Lu Guijiu, I, Zhang Jingmo, thought I treated you well, but you did such a thing to me." Zhang Jingmo stabbed a few times, but his aim was not very good, and he failed to injure Lu Guijiu. However, the redness on his face spread with his movements, and he began to pant faintly, his lips pursed into a tight line and his eyes revealing a hint of embarrassment.

After careful thought, Lu Guijiu finally understood the reason. Previously, when he was cultivating in this spiritual vein, he had seen some illusions related to Zhang Jingmo, each of which struck the softest part of Lu Guijiu's heart. Even with his firm will, it took him a full year to get used to these illusions. This was why he thought Zhang Jingmo was an illusion when he saw him.

Later, Lu Guijiu asked Lu Shu why this was the case. After a brief thought, Lu Shu said that there might be a spiritual beast called Mirage Beast living in this spiritual vein. This spiritual beast comes and goes without a trace, and the probability of encountering it is extremely low. Unexpectedly, Lu Guijiu encountered it by chance.

This matter was indeed quite coincidental. In the past, Zhang Jingmo had entered this spiritual vein many times, but he had never encountered it.

When Lu Guijiu first saw Zhang Jingmo, he thought Zhang Jingmo was that illusion. Later, when he discovered that Zhang Jingmo was not an illusion, he was so emotionally stirred that he forgot to tell Zhang Jingmo about this matter...

So the master and disciple drank fine wine, but unexpectedly, when Zhang Jingmo woke up after sleeping for more than ten days, he opened his eyes and saw the illusion created by the Mirage Beast.

Lu Guijiu did not know what Zhang Jingmo saw. He only stared at Zhang Jingmo's increasingly red cheeks, his face revealing a look of shame and anger, and his sharp sword slashing around even more recklessly. The only fortunate thing was that he seemed unable to see Lu Guijiu clearly in front of him.

As for what Zhang Jingmo saw, it had long become an unspeakable inner demon deep in his heart. When he woke up in a daze after being drunk, he failed to detect the existence of the Mirage Beast for a moment.

With Zhang Jingmo's Golden Core stage cultivation, he slashed his sword recklessly at this time, destroying more than half of the cave in just a moment. The rocks and soil in the cave kept falling, and it seemed that if this continued, the cave would not be far from collapsing.

At this time, Lu Guijiu's cultivation was only at the Qi Refining stage. Faced with Zhang Jingmo's attacks, he could only dodge around in a sorry state, with no power to fight back.

Zhang Jingmo, on the contrary, became more and more angry as he slashed, shouting, "Lu Guijiu, today I will cleanse the Lingxu Sect of you!" As his words fell, he directly took out his life-bound magic weapon, apparently intending to fight to the death with that non-existent enemy.

Lu Guijiu was dumbfounded. He had no idea why Zhang Jingmo hated him so much that he wanted to use his final means to kill him.

Seeing that the life-bound magic weapon was about to be unleashed and this spiritual vein was about to be destroyed, Zhang Jingmo's figure suddenly paused. Various expressions flashed across his face - embarrassment, shame, hatred... Lu Guijiu was dodging in such a sorry state that he couldn't see clearly.

"Why do you treat me like this?" After saying these words, Zhang Jingmo seemed to have lost all his strength, and his body crumpled to the ground. He lowered his head, and his expression hidden by his long hair revealed a rare look of despair.

Lu Guijiu didn't dare to go forward to check the situation at all. If Zhang Jingmo could see him at this time, he would probably directly take his life like crushing a small insect.

Zhang Jingmo lay on the ground, and after a moment of silence, he actually began to let out low, ambiguous moans.

Those moans completely stunned Lu Guijiu. If he could still imagine what had happened before, now he really couldn't grasp the situation.

Fortunately, Zhang Jingmo had the undisputed cultivation of the Golden Core stage. Being disturbed by the Mirage Beast was only a matter of a few moments. When his muddled mind regained clarity and he realized what he had done, his entire body froze.

Back then, Lu Guijiu had used all his strength and finally managed to break free from this illusion. Although Zhang Jingmo spent very little time, what he did had already made him so angry that he wished he could catch that Mirage Beast and drink it with wine.

Lu Guijiu saw that Zhang Jingmo's raised face was full of coldness, but within that coldness, there was also a hint of embarrassed anger.

Just as Lu Guijiu was about to call out, he saw Zhang Jingmo's face turn icy cold, and he heavily stomped his foot on the ground.

This stomp caused the ground to crack like a spider web. Lu Guijiu thought Zhang Jingmo did this out of anger, but unexpectedly, after stomping his foot, he grasped his long sword and, with a cold laugh, stabbed it into the ground.

A shrill scream came from under the ground. Before Lu Guijiu could react, he saw Zhang Jingmo take out the long-unseen Zhu Yan from his Sumeru ring and casually release it into the air.

Previously, Zhang Jingmo had been worried that Zhu Yan would be seen by the people of Kuchan Valley and bring trouble upon himself, so he had kept it in the Sumeru ring. It had been locked up for several decades. Zhu Yan, having been locked up for so long, was naturally extremely excited to gain freedom.

Zhang Jingmo's face remained cold. He only said to Zhu Yan, "Go!"

Hearing the command, Zhu Yan let out a cheerful cry, turned into a ball of flame, and pounced into the cracks along the ground.

The screaming from the ground became even more miserable. A moment later, a ball of flame bounced out from the cracks, trapping a thumb-sized white furball within the flames.

After returning to the ground, Zhu Yan resumed the shape of a small bird, holding the furball in its mouth and landing on Zhang Jingmo's shoulder.

Zhang Jingmo took the furball and casually fed Zhu Yan a few pills. After eating them, Zhu Yan cried out a few times and then spread its wings and flew away.

Zhang Jingmo didn't bother with Zhu Yan and just coldly glared at the little furball trembling in his palm.

Upon closer inspection, the furball looked like a small kitten with extremely large eyes. Its pure black eyes revealed a pitiful look. Being glared at by Zhang Jingmo like this, it whimpered a few times, put its paw in its mouth, and didn't dare to move.

Thinking about what he had done after being bewitched by this little thing, Zhang Jingmo was filled with anger. He said, "Why are you pretending to be pitiful?"

The furball made a few chirping sounds and flatteringly grabbed one of Zhang Jingmo's fingers, rubbing its cheek against it while spitting out a deep blue bead from its mouth.

Upon seeing this bead, Zhang Jingmo's expression finally relaxed a little. He took the bead with his other hand and threw it to Lu Guijiu.

Lu Guijiu watched in confusion as he caught the bead thrown by Zhang Jingmo.

Zhang Jingmo said, "This creature is called a Mirage Beast, a type of small spiritual beast."

Lu Guijiu had already known about this long ago. He grunted in acknowledgment but turned his gaze to the blue bead in his hand.

Zhang Jingmo continued, "When a Mirage Beast reaches five hundred years old, it will produce something called a Mirage Beast Pearl inside its body. If you obtain it, you become the master of that Mirage Beast."

Lu Guijiu nodded and thanked Zhang Jingmo.

The Mirage Beast could also understand human speech. Seeing that Zhang Jingmo had no intention of killing it, it happily chirped a couple of times. Then, noticing Zhang Jingmo handing its life-bound pearl to Lu Guijiu, it very considerately jumped from Zhang Jingmo's hand onto Lu Guijiu's shoulder in a few steps.

Although he had spared the Mirage Beast's life, Zhang Jingmo's mood was still not very good. With a gloomy expression, he recalled what had just happened and asked in a low voice, "Guijiu, do you have anything you want to ask your master?"

Upon hearing this, Lu Guijiu thought to himself that there were many things he wanted to ask, but his intuition told him it was better not to. So he simply gave Zhang Jingmo a way out, saying, "Master, did you see me betraying you in that illusion?"

At the word "betray," Zhang Jingmo's already unpleasant face turned even gloomier. He responded with a low voice, seemingly unwilling to discuss it further.

Lu Guijiu said, "Master, Guijiu has been able to come this far all thanks to your help. No matter what happens in the future, Guijiu will never do anything to harm you."

Hearing these words, Zhang Jingmo didn't feel much relief in his heart. Instead, he thought that even without his help, Lu Guijiu would still be able to reach his current position.

The fluffy Mirage Beast squatted on Lu Guijiu's shoulder. Seeing the strange atmosphere between the two, it was smart enough not to make a sound. After all, it knew that the culprit behind all this was none other than itself...

After a moment of silence, Zhang Jingmo didn't want to dwell on this matter any further. He surveyed the now badly damaged cave and sighed, "I originally wanted you to build your foundation at the source of the spiritual vein, but now that these unexpected events have occurred, let's change to another location."

Lu Guijiu nodded.

Zhang Jingmo asked, "How confident are you in building your foundation?"

Lu Guijiu thought for a moment and said, "Your disciple is confident in building a ninth-grade spiritual platform." Coming from anyone else, this would be considered boastful and exaggerated.

In this world, anyone who had built a ninth-grade spiritual platform had, without exception, cultivated into a transcendent powerhouse.

However, upon hearing this, Zhang Jingmo just smiled and asked, "What about a tenth-grade one?"

Lu Guijiu replied, "For a tenth-grade spiritual platform... at most a thirty percent chance."

Although there was only a one-grade difference between the tenth and ninth grade spiritual platforms, they were worlds apart. In the entire cultivation world nowadays, there were no more than three people who had cultivated a tenth-grade spiritual platform in the past thousand years. The closest tenth-grade cultivator had ascended to the immortal realm a thousand years ago.

Zhang Jingmo calmly said, "A thirty percent chance is enough." He had originally thought Lu Guijiu would just shake his head without saying anything.

Lu Guijiu had already sensed his master's ambition from his words. He didn't speak, but his eyes became much more solemn.