“I thought I got over my stage fright already.”

Zhang Dong was sitting in his own quarters back at the Argonaut flagship. He had specifically used his teleportation feature to show to his new allies that he was no simple cultivator. Even now they were probably wondering how he was able to escape from their teleportation blocking formations.

In reality, he wasn’t that sure either as this was a feature of the system that was above his current knowledge level. It was clear to him that the teleportation feature had to be at least immortal grade or even further beyond that. What was above the immortal level even he didn’t know as his old system store never showed him any techniques above it.

When remembering his old store he also remembered Wang Long. With the speech given he would be probably receiving a lot of false information about other demonic cultivators. Luckily there probably weren’t that many demonic cultivators at the nascent soul level which would narrow the search.

While he hoped that he would be able to flush Wang Long out he didn’t like his chances. Thus he consulted the only person that he could.

‘Bob, is there no way of tracing Wang Long?’

‘Not enough data.’

‘Isn’t there some way to track other system users? Don’t they possess some kind of unique spiritual energy signature or trail? There must be something, when the items they buy from the store, there always was a strange distortion in space, can’t we track that?’

‘Calculating… proposition is feasible but requires Qi fingerprint of the target user.’

Zhang Dong nodded as this was along the lines that he thought it would go. Bob would be used as a bloodhound to sniff out Wang Long, for this, he needed to find a place where his opponent had been. One place was his own sect where they battled with each other but he wasn’t sure if Wang Long accessed his store there or not.

“If I can’t find a traceback at home, I’ll have to go to the Soaring Dragon Sect…”

That was probably the area with the largest concentration of Wang Long’s energies. Apparently, the demonic energies that he transferred into it were still swirling around. No one below the nascent soul level could safely enter it.

Even the masters at those levels couldn’t hold out long without some kind of demonic Qi protection. Luckily Zhang Dong came equipped with a massive amount of holy energy that would just filter the environment out for him.

As he was thinking about his next few moves he heard a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

“Master.”

Zhang Liu entered through the automatic door to give a small report.

“We should be at the Sect in a couple of days, Master but...”

“But?”

Zhang Dong asked as he saw Zhang Liu fidgeting around.

“Don’t worry if you have a question you can go ahead and ask your master, I won’t bite.”

He chuckled slightly as after spending some time with his male disciple the young man seemed quite distant. This was probably due to how much time had passed since the last time the two saw each other.

“Ah… then… I think you should go ahead and up…”

“Go ahead?”

“Yes, we will be fine Master! So you can return!”

Zhang Liu started to awkwardly shout the sentences out at the end as if he wanted to get his point out at the fastest possible rate.

“Oh…”

Zhang Dong could have directly teleported back to the sect but decided to stay in the flying ship for one main reason. He was there to protect the people inside as he did not know if they would be attacked by some unruly anti-Golden Dragon faction.

While he had been introduced as a true descendant and blood brother to the Azure Emperor, this didn’t mean that everyone accepted him. He could see some loyal subjects trying to remove him out of fear of him causing a revolt. He had teleported away to safety and probably no one knew that he was inside this ship but he was still worried.

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“The other sect members also agree, I’m sure Master has more important tasks to carry out, you don’t need to worry about us, we will arrive safely!”

“Heh…”

He could only smile while standing up from his seat. There he went over to Zhang Liu and gave his awkward pupil a pat on the shoulder. He wasn’t sure what had happened for these past five years but he hoped that there would be enough time for more pleasantries later.

“You’re probably right if they wanted to attack as they missed the best chance they had…”

They were already out of the Long Clan territory that wasn’t all that large, to begin with. They clearly didn’t care about any other spot than what was around their floating city.

“Well then Liu, I’ll leave the ship to you... oh, right I almost forgot…”

He placed his finger on Liu’s forehead and injected some of his knowledge that he had gathered through the years. When parting his techniques to his students he didn’t take into account that he would be gone for that long. He didn’t like to push too many advanced arts onto them before they were ready. While he did leave many books and notes this impartation technique was far superior as always.

“Master!”

“Yes I know, you should study hard. If you continue like this you might be able to reach the nascent soul level soon.”

It was kind of funny how little time it took for a person to reach this fabled realm. With the help of high-quality techniques, it was not hard to do it before reaching the age of forty. This only showed him that there was something wrong here.

If a person could progress this fast, why weren’t there any immortal level masters around? It seemed that going past the nascent soul level was impossible for the regular people of this world. It didn’t seem that anyone would get anywhere if they didn’t have the system's help.

Even with it around it would require an astonishing amount of spirit points to achieve the breakthrough.

‘This war scenario is looking more and more like just a scripted spirit point farm…’

To him that had a whole sect and family to worry about this wasn’t such a good thing. On the other hand to someone like Wang Long that didn’t care about anything else by himself, it would be free points left and right. He could attack each of the fighting empires until he got powerful enough to face Zhang Dong.

‘I really need to find this maniac before this can happen… the other option is to get my faction stronger…’

How far Wang Long could go by farming spirit points from this war was unknown to him. From what he remembered the cost of immortal grade techniques and cultivation boosts was quite staggering. It was to the point of killing hundreds of nascent soul masters for one of those store-bought items.

“I will make you proud Master!”

“Oh right and one more thing…”

Before leaving Zhang Dong looked at his disciple with a somewhat scolding look.

“You should really stop letting Nuana walk all over you…”

After returning to this world he noticed that his disciple was still somewhat at the mercy of his wife’s younger sister. She acted all cutesy with him but he had Liena to keep her in check. In Liu’s situation, there was no one, he needed to man up and not let her walk all over him.

“Nuana? W-we are doing fine…”

“Didn’t look that way to me… she didn’t have trouble knocking you out before…”

Liu slumped his shoulders while flopping his head down. Because of his mishap, Nuana was put in danger.

“Here, you can use this mirror to train.”

Zhang Dong pointed to the mirror that was in these private quarters.

“The mirror, Master?”

“Yes, I want you to look at it and imagine that you are talking with Nuana.”

Zhang Liu wasn’t sure what this was about but not like he could refuse a direct command from his master. Even less after he had imparted some new knowledge to him. Thus he moved in front of the mirror and tried imagining that he was looking at Nuana.

“Okay, now Imagine that she is trying to get you to do something that you dislike.”

“Something I dislike?”

“Yes anything, does she give you some unreasonable requests?”

“Well… she does like to travel a lot… to the point of me not being able to cultivate…”

Zhang Liu gave out a sigh as he remembered a couple of the conversations. All of them he capitulated which pushed his progress back. The only way he dealt with Nuana’s approaches was by hiding himself in hard-to-access locations with the hopes that she wouldn’t be able to find him before he was done with his training.

“That will do… Now repeat after me… I will not go with you, I must train, now leave!”

Zhang Liu rubbed his head while staring at the mirror as he felt somewhat silly saying these words. But as this was just him looking at the mirror, it didn't pose much of a problem even for him.

“Louder! Put some heart into it!”

“I will not go with you! Now leave me be!”

Zhang Dong was a bit surprised as his disciple started out right shouting at the mirror as if it was a true enemy. He could see some pent up frustration in Liu’s motions as he had his fist clenched tightly.

“Oh hey Nuana, when did you arrive?”

“Liu, how could you say something like that!”

Zhang Liu looked to the side and saw Feng Nuana just standing there with tears in her eyes. The moment he saw her his anger subsided and he quickly started apologizing. This caused him to get smacked in the back of the head by Zhang Dong as he had failed the test.

“Huh? Master.”

The moment he got clobbered the Nuana he was apologizing to dissolved into the scenery.

“Can’t tell the difference between an illusion and the real Nuana? You still have much to learn…”

Zhang Dong chuckled as he saw his disciple drop his head in defeat yet again. But now after his little prank had gone through he seemed to have reached an epiphany.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it. You need to clear out demons like this or the demonic cultivators could use illusions like this to get to you.”

“Yes, Master!”

“Good, then I’ll see you back at the sect, there is much I must discuss with the elders.”

Thus he clicked the system's teleportation option to get back home. There he just wanted to flop into his wife’s ample bosom and sleep. REgretfully being the Patriarch he had his obligations that needed to be fulfilled first.