Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Having decided to leave the matter regarding the beast tamers for Elder Song to deal with, Xuan Hao found himself quietly enjoying a few peaceful days wandering through the sect while ignoring the upheaval caused by Elder Song after he got his letter and set out to personally deal with the sect’s beast tamers and ensure that nothing similar happened again in the future. The few bits and pieces he did manage to hear from the elders and disciples passing by was that Elder Song had decided to directly dismantle the beast taming hall and rebuild it with a more… Orderly approach to the relatively free-spirited beast tamers who essentially spent all their time happily serving- helping demon beasts.

To ensure that the order of the newly established beast taming hall remained intact in the future, Elder Song made sure to have one of his trusted people take charge of the beast taming hall for the foreseeable future.

Outside of that, he didn’t learn much about what kind of punishment the beast taming elders ended up being subjected to after Elder Song had learnt about just how many spirit stones, they had ended up wasting. Although… It wasn’t difficult to guess that it was far from pleasant after seeing the depressed and painful looks of the few beast taming elders wandering around the sect in a seemingly lifeless manner. The only punishment that was somewhat known being that they had been forced to take on some sect missions that other elders had avoided taking on because of how troublesome they were.

Together with Elder Song being who he was, Xuan Hao could see the old man forcing these elders to repay every single spirt stone that had been wasted by them over the past few years. Even if not every single one because they had been unaware to some extent that they were wasting spirit stone, they should at least be in the process of repaying a large portion of the wasted spirit stones…

”Hm? The… The sect quest is completed!?”

As he watched a distraught beast taming elder who looked like his first love had broken up with him rushing out of the Grand Mission Pavilion, Xuan Hao suddenly froze on the spot as he realized that the main sect quest that he originally believed would take at least another few months to complete had suddenly ended up being completed only a few days after her had lectured the Domain Lord Realm Elders currently in the sect close to reaching the Soul Ascension Realm.

10:48

As he watched a distraught beast taming elder who looked like his first love had broken up with him rushing out of the Grand Mission Pavilion, Xuan Hao suddenly froze on the spot as he realized that the main sect quest that he originally believed would take at least another few months to complete had suddenly ended up being completed only a few days after her had lectured the Domain Lord Realm Elders currently in the sect close to reaching the Soul Ascension Realm.

One of them, being lucky and managing to break through the bottleneck and ascending to the Soul Ascension Realm successfully without dying to the tribulation would be one thing, but three successfully ascending to the Soul Ascension Realm in only a few days was never something he had expected to be possible.

Whoosh~

And so, before even checking the completed main sect quest, the first thing he did was to use his divine sense to check up on the elders he had lectured a few days earlier to see who among them had broken through to the Soul Ascension Realm-

”Only one of them broke through to the Soul Ascension Realm!?”

However, after a quick sweep with his divine sense, it became clear that only one of the elders he had taken his time to lecture had managed to break through to the Soul Ascension Realm, something that was within his expectations as he had felt that person breaking through two days earlier, but still didn’t explain where the other two Soul Ascension Realm cultivators had suddenly popped up from.

Did two of the sect’s elders perhaps find some kind of fortuitous opportunity outside the sect and manage to break through to the Soul Ascension Realm over these past few days…? Feeling somewhat taken aback by the turn of events, Xuan Hao could only guess that two of the sect’s elders had somehow chanced upon an opportunity to break through to the Soul Ascension Realm and also successfully survived the tribulation while outside the sect, something that was a bit surprising considering they should have returned to the sect when breaking through to the Soul Ascension Realm under normal circumstances, as it was far safter to break through within the Shattered Star Peaks where they would be protected and could avoid anyone interfering with their breakthrough.

In a way, it was also because these two had not returned to the sect for their breakthrough to the Soul Ascension Realm that he guessed that they had managed to obtain some kind of fortuitous opportunity that prevented them from returning to sect for their breakthrough.

Still… Xuan Hao was curious about who it was that had broken through to the Soul Ascension Realm…

Rumble~

And so, he decided to expand his divine sense far beyond the boundaries of the Shattered Star Peak and instead directed it outwards to cover the entirety of the sect’s territory. An act that he wouldn’t do under normal circumstances. Not because it was particularly draining on his strength, but more so because his divine sense being used in this kind of manner to directly search for someone meant that it would be all encompassing. Taking in everything that was happening inside the territory of the Star Shattering Sect.

His soul was strong enough to process the endless stream of information being fed to it through his divine sense, but he stopped a few seconds later after he found what he was looking for, while also once again understanding why most powerful cultivators never kept their divine sense at full strength all the time. Not only would the endless stream of information being fed through one’s divine sense interfere with cultivation, but it would also carry the risk of potentially seeing something one would best hope to forget…

Shaking his head as a few unsavory things that he happened to accidentally see in a mortal town at the edge of the old Azure Sky Kingdom flashed through his mind, Xuan Hao turned his focus towards a single specific presence at the border between the Star Shattering Sect and the Frozen Wastelands.

One of the elders who had broken through to the Soul Ascension Realm outside the sect wasn’t someone who had encountered some kind of fortuitous opportunity and had thus been prevented from returning to the sect to break through to the Soul Ascension Realm, but was instead someone who had decided to break through to the Soul Ascension Realm in the middle of a battle with a powerful demonic cultivator. Taking the other party down with the help of his improved strength after the breakthrough before proceeding to take on the tribulation in an already injured state and somehow successfully passing the tribulation before retreating under the combined assault of three True Demon Realm demonic cultivators who had been waiting for the tribulation to end.

As inspiring and heroic this battle and breakthrough to the Soul Asension Realm was in the eyes of all the elders and disciples who had witnessed it from afar, the only thin Xuan Hao could think after learning about it was that his little demon beast in charge of guarding the sect’s borders was slacking off.

After all, it shouldn’t have allowed one of the sect’s elders to enter such a deadly situation where they had been forced to break through to the Soul Ascension Realm in the first place. Everything had worked out wonderfully this time around, but what if it didn’t? Wouldn’t the sect end up losing an elder for no reason?

Because of this, Xuan Hao wanted to find the little winged lion demon beast and figure out what it had been doing, but when his divine sense reached the little fellow, he was shocked to discover that the reason why it hadn’t moved to help the now Soul Ascension Realm Elder was because it was in the process of breaking through to the Late Stage of the Dao Seed Realm.

Shocking as this turn of events was, he couldn’t exactly blame the winged lion demon beast, as it was clear from a glance that this breakthrough had happened before it could prepare. Having been caught completely off guard and forced into secluded meditation to not end up going into qi deviation.

Normally, it wouldn’t matter much, as the stronger demonic cultivators didn’t dare get anywhere close to the Star Shattering Sect’s territory, it just so happened that they saw the extremely weakened elder that had just broken through to the Soul Ascension Realm and gone through his tribulation and couldn’t stop themselves.

However, in end, everything had worked out well, as the new Soul Ascension Realm Elder had managed to successfully escape from the three True Demon Realm demonic cultivators, while at the same time also awing his peers with his performance of seemingly easily escaping from the three True Demon Realm demonic cultivators.

Not just that, but after observing this new Soul Ascension Realm Elder of the sect, Xuan Hao also discovered that the other party was far stronger than someone who should have just broken through to the Soul Ascension Realm. Looking like he would soon be able to undergo he second tribulation…