“Greetings, your excellency!” After the flash of light blinded him indicating a successful teleportation, Leo heard an elderly voice politely saying, but the next moment the tone changed, “Who the hell are you?”
“Disciple Leo Renaud reporting back to the sect.” Leo said the sentence he prepared before.
He couldn’t recognize which elder greeted him like that, but it didn’t really matter. According to George the most important thing for him now was to get to the sect master so he could score some bonuses.
“Leo? You’re the Lost Leo? I thought you were dead!” The elder exclaimed.
When Leo’s sight adjusted he recognized one of the two elders who usually took care of the teleportation platform in the Sacred Order. He didn’t care for such welcome, but was more hit by the contrast between the teleportation hall he was just at and the one he arrived to.
Only now he understood why people from the immortal realm considered themselves being superior. The formerly grand and magnificent Sacred Order’s teleportation building now seemed like a forgotten and run down place. And if the strongest sect from the Aurora mortal world left such impression, the next strongest, the former Voodoo sect, seemed like a small jungle tribe.
“Sorry, elder Miller, I just managed to get back.” Leo said, “My bad for not reporting in earlier.”
“It’s fine … I guess …” The elder said, “Let’s go. We need to report your arrival to elder Cooper. You were from the Artisan division, right?”
When they stepped out the teleportation building, the contrast between the two realms became even more distinct. Leo even began to wonder if he was dreaming after falling asleep in the Golden city. Of course, the heavy thing on his back reminded him this was the reality.
“What exactly happened?” Was the first thing elder Cooper asked when Leo was brought to his office, “And what about the rest?”
Elder Willis, the head of the Administrative division was also present, but for Leo this seemed like a silly play. Three elderly Core formation cultivators who didn’t manage to reach the Nascent soul stage in their lives were seriously questioning him while a short while ago he laughed with a couple of Nascent soul stage experts and listened to the teachings of immortals.
Fortunately George prepared him for this, therefore he said, “Unfortunately I don’t remember much. Runemaster George Cilin explained that our camp was destroyed by a landslide along with the teleportation platform. I was washed away and it took me many months to get back, but sadly during that time I didn’t see any of my fellow disciples.”
“Runemaster?” Elder Cooper asked.
“Yes, I met two runemasters when I got back to the island. George Cilin and Fan Lia, both from the Golden Hand society. First they brought me to the Golden city and then sent me back home.” Leo explained, but the two division heads looked at each other bitterly.
Seeing the immortal realm was the dream of any cultivator, but the opportunity was given to a clueless kid and it kind of felt unfair.
“Did you bring anything back? What’s that thing you’re carrying?” Elder Willis asked.
This morning George multiple times reminded Leo this will be the crucial moment deciding if he could keep the weapon, thus he said with a downcast expression just like George taught him, “Immortal Theodore Shaw made me carry this heavy bundle for ten years.”
“You pissed off an immortal?!” Elder Willis shouted in anger.
“No, no! He said it was some kind of a test.” Leo immediately protested, “I have to carry this thing to prove something and I’m allowed to take it off only when I sleep.”
“Idiot!” Both elders mumbled at the same time.
Clearly the immortal saw something in the child and was testing his talents, but the clueless dumbo thought it was a punishment. Either of them would’ve given a hand or a leg to receive guidance from an immortal, but unfortunately it was wasted on someone so stupid.
“Elders, there is an important thing I need to report.” Leo didn’t pay attention to their inner struggle and said, “I found an unmarked Divine tribulation tree in the Oceandesert mortal realm. Runemaster George Cilin said that our Sacred Order will be rewarded for the find … and then there was something else, but I forgot, sorry, elders!”
As expected, the attention of the two elders was instantly diverted from the Cleaver.
“Report to the sect master!” Elder Cooper whispered and elder Willis immediately rushed out.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
While waiting, elder Cooper continued to ask questions, but only got dispirited by the stingy answers he could pull out from the clueless disciple. Leo was not the brightest person around thus he didn’t really need to play dumb. Following George’s instructions he simply tried to avoid telling unnecessary things about the fruits, Golden city and his gains in addition to keeping some other things to himself like Brandon’s curse and cultivation under the Divine tribulation tree.
To Leo’s great disappointment the sect master didn’t meet him right away.
Since he officially had reached the Qi gathering realm during the time of absence, he was finally promoted and officially became inner disciple. He also switched the divisions entering the Combat division that was led by elder Payne.
Of course, that didn’t prevent him from directly jogging to the Alchemy subdivision to find Jack, who as it turns out in the meantime also had stepped into the Qi gathering stage and even advanced to the middle stage at that. Luckily Leo came at the right moment when there was a break between lectures and in the crowd managed to quickly spot Jack who seemed to be few inches taller compared to when he left.
“You bastard!” Jack exclaimed the moment he saw Leo, almost suffocating him in a bear hug, “I thought you were dead! We didn’t have any official confirmation, but since you were gone for whole two years I figured that dumb bitch led your group in some disaster!”
Right after saying the last part he glanced around panic afraid that senior sister Barbra would show up from nowhere and whispered, “Did she also come back?”
“No.” Leo shook his head, “Wait! Two years? I was away for two years?”
“Yea … duh?!” Jack flicked his forehead, “Or was the time going backwards in the Oceandesert realm?”
“I … I had no idea it was so long.” Leo rubbed his forehead and said trying to change the subject, “What’s new in the sect? I just got back, spoke to few elders and then came over here.”
“Nothing much, really.” Jack shrugged, “As you can see I became the inner sect’s disciple and actually started to practice alchemy. For now we are not allowed to make anything more than few healing pastes, but even that got me a ton of contribution points. You should definitely join the lecture as well, that is if you got to the Qi gathering stage.”
Seeing his winking, Leo smiled back and said, “Ye, I already told elders and all that’s left is to go and get my outfit. But I decided to change divisions, I’ll tell you about it later.”
The lecture was about to start and Leo left to the administrative office. On the way there he passed the stone slates at the Spirit tower with the disciple rankings, but to his disappointment didn’t find Jack in the Earth dragon rankings – after all Earth and Heaven rankings were based on combat strength, but Jack didn’t hide his intent to make himself rich through alchemy.
There was one thing that shocked Leo to the bone though. Both Earth and Heaven ranking lists were only displaying the top hundred best disciples from Qi gathering and Foundation establishment stages respectively. But for some reason there was another name at the very bottom of the Earth dragon rankings, below the number one hundred. It was not marked with the number hundred and one or any number at all – instead of a number there was a word written in capital letters ‘LAST’ and the name that came after it was ‘Lucky Leo’.
“Who the f*ck?!” Leo angrily blurted out.
Highly likely it was the work of the same person who called him ‘Lost Leo’ in the Hidden dragon rankings two years ago. Currently barely anyone knew he was back, so how could they have managed to change the rankings in such short notice?
‘Damn it! You better pray I won’t find you!’ Leo angrily said to himself.
Obviously the threat wasn’t serious since the person who managed the slates most likely was one of the elders and for now Leo was too weak to punish them.
After getting the inner sect’s disciple’s outfit in the administrative division, Leo went directly to the training grounds. He figured that the logging question will be solved by Jack later and until he got to meet the sect master there was only one thing to do – practice.
This was not the first time Leo came to the training grounds – two years ago he and Jack frequented this place in the evenings, because before the nightfall all the ‘cool guys’ of the sect were sparring here in order to compete for the rankings on the prestigious stone slates.
Now the place had grown quite a bit – instead of one there were five arenas with several hundreds spectator seats. Further at the side there were sets of training equipment Leo didn’t recognize as well as dozens of target dummies.
Of course, this place was not comparable to the practice grounds where Fan Lia brought him to, but Leo didn’t expect much to begin with. Now he was in dire need for ideas how to rapidly strengthen his body.
“Run.” Was the only advice elder Payne could give him with a shrug.
Leo was lucky and the head of the Combat division was currently giving pointers to the other disciples and when it was his turn and he explained he wished to increase his stamina, endurance and physical strength of the body, there was nothing much the elder could say.
“Continue to run with that thing on our back. It looks heavy enough.” Elder Payne elaborated, “Seems like you’re thinking in the right direction, but you don’t need to solely focus on one thing. You can practice sword with the others as well – the basic Qi techniques are available for all. There’s no harm in it – to start honing few moves from the start might prove to be useful in the future.”
“Thank you!” Leo politely said and began to jog around the training grounds.
There was no need to consider anyone’s advice regarding cultivation or skill practice after hearing opinions of the two immortal masters. One really had to be retarded to ignore advice of the people who had lived for many millennia thus the only thing Leo could do now was to train his physical body. And if the best way was to run with the Cleaver on his back, he fully intended to do it.
For the next two months apart from hanging around with Jack in the evenings, Leo practically lived in the training grounds. But to the great amusement of others ‘Lucky Leo’ only kept running. He ignored all the teasing, taunts and challenges and ran as if his life depended on it. Of course, it did, but he had no urge to share this humiliating secret with anyone, even Jack.
The weapon on Leo’s back was heavy, he quickly got tired, but kept persisting. Fortunately he had enough common sense to not torture himself to death and took regular breaks, went for a swim in the nearby river and ate as much as he could in addition to studying the Jamie’s book. And sleeping – after years of spending nights cultivating Leo began to actually go to bed after the sunset. At first it felt weird, he couldn’t fall asleep and only began to pass out after completely exhausting himself, but after half a month of practice he managed to restore the precious lost skill.