Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

If Bai Ning could break through to the Saint Realm in the future, he wouldn’t lack too far behind the rest of his juniors and seniors. Not to mention, being focused on a Dao like the Dao of Blacksmithing, it was given that he should be able to close any distance between himself and the rest by relying on the different artifacts he crafted. At the very least he himself believed so.

The only potential situation where he might find himself outmatched being Mui, as even he had no idea how to comprehend the different things she created even with his current comprehension of the Dao of Blacksmithing. Everything she ended up making should be impossible but still ended up appearing somehow.

Even Gong Cheng, a Saint Realm Blacksmith, was rendered speechless and began doubting his own comprehension of the Dao of Blacksmithing when trying to understand the artifacts created by Mui. In the end, he could only give up trying to understand them like Bai Ning himself had done after a few painful months with no progress trying to understand one of Mui’s artifacts.

In the end, nobody outside of Mui herself and maybe Song Jia to some extent, could understand the inner workings of the artifacts she created. Including his master, Xuan Hao, who also had no clue how the artifacts created by Mui worked. The only exception from Gong Cheng was that he had clearly told him that Mui’s creations involved the Dao of Chaos. At least giving Bai Ning some clue as to what it was that made the creation of the strange artifacts Mui made function.

Of course, even knowing that the artifacts Mui created involved a mysterious Dao like the Dao of Chaos, it didn’t really help him much in his own progress of the Dao of Blacksmithing, causing him to ultimately give up on trying to understand the different artifacts that his junior sister ended up creating every now and then. Learning to just nod along whenever she came to him for guidance on the Dao of Blacksmithing, as no matter how hard he tried, it was clear that she worked on a completely different set of rules from himself that only she seemed to understand.

All that aside, Bai Ning continued his explorations of the twelfth floor of the tower on his own. Focusing on gathering spiritual metal while at the same time also completing repeated tasks to earn ascension coins along the way. Having already seen several things on the tenth floor of the tower or resting area, that he was interested in getting his hands on. The most prized item he had seen being a specialized furnace that would directly improve the processing of different spiritual metals.

The reason he knew this being because Gong Cheng had already managed to gather enough ascension coins for it and had given him a chance to try it out. Making him determined to get his hands on one of those furnaces himself.

In a way, it was also the existence of this furnace that made Bai Ning, someone normally adverse to fighting or leaving the comfort of his forge, spent so much time inside the ascension realm tower.

And he wasn’t alone, as most of the sect elders and disciples who had originally visited the ascension realm tower for fun to explore something new in the sect, found themselves now continuing to progress through the tower and coming back to take on repeatable tasks when they couldn’t advance any further. All with the sole goal of getting something from the tower shop or the stalls on the tenth floor.

Originally, this wasn’t a problem and could be considered a positive outcome, as those challenging the ascension realm tower would ultimately also gain a lot of combat experience in the process, but as days became weeks and the first month since the establishment of the ascension realm tower came and went, it became a problem that a large portion of the sect elders were held up in the ascension realm tower.

To mitigate this issue and ensure that the sect wouldn’t end up running into any problems due to a sudden lack of manpower, Elder Song decided to implement a more stringent requirement for entering the ascension realm tower. Requiring a set amount of contribution points for each month spent inside the tower instead of allowing what was essentially permanent access after paying a flat fee.

Although this didn’t end up affecting the younger disciples, who mostly spent a few days inside the tower or maybe a week at most, it did affect the sect elders who showed no signs of leaving even after the first month flew by.

Disappointed as the sect elders inside the ascension realm tower was with this development, they found it understandable considering that the sect needed elders around to continue running normally, something that wasn’t really possible with more than half of the sect elders currently spending every hour of the day inside the ascension realm tower without any intention of leaving in the near future.

The only reason why the sect hadn’t been affected by this sudden lack of manpower that had emerged due to the sudden lack of sect elders was because the disciples had become overly eager to take on sect missions after the emergence of the ascension realm tower. Helping to bear the burden placed on the sect due to the lack of sect elders.

As for the tasks that required someone at the Domain Lord Realm or above to handle… It could only be said Elder Song had ended up overworking the elders who hadn’t had time to visit the ascension realm tower, as it was their protests that ultimately ended up resulting in the changes to the ascension realm tower.

To be fair to those who might end up taking on a challenging floor that required more than a month to complete, it was made so that they wouldn’t have to pay extra for the extended time they spent.

Although some would exploit this to stay for longer for less, it wasn’t really optimal for those who wanted to earn a lot of ascension coins, as they would have to leave and essentially reset the floor for a new task to appear.

In the end, when the dust settled and it was time for the sect elders inside the ascension realm tower to pay to remain for another month, a majority decided to leave and consolidate their gains from the past month of fighting the demon beasts and other creatures of the ascension realm tower.

Among those deciding to leave the tower was two of Xuan Hao’s disciples, Qing Yi and Chun Hua, who had found themselves unable to make any progress in completing the thirteenth floor of the tower and ultimately decided to spend some time consolidating their gains over the past month before trying again. Leaving only Chu Yang and Bai Ning behind inside the tower among Xuan Hao’s disciples. The first had become somewhat obsessed with completing the thirteenth floor, while the other had yet to leave the twelfth floor of the tower since the recent changes and was happily searching for spiritual metal.

As for their master… he wasn’t much better than Chu Yang and was also stuck unable to advance.

However, the problem he had run into wasn’t exactly that he was weaker than his enemies, but more so that his enemies were essentially immortal in the desert… And the heart of the desert that might help him solve this problem of immortality that the demon beasts of the twenty-fifth floor had, was impossible to find.

By now, Xuan Hao had already searched through most of the twenty-fifth floor and found the edge of the desert where the floor itself came to an end. Covering an area at least half the size of the Blue Sea Empire.

But…

Still not finding the heart of the desert that he had set out to find.

If anything, he was starting to seriously doubt that this heart of the desert even existed in the first place, as he found no clues that might have led to its location across the vast desert. Even trying to fight with some of the immortal demon beasts to try and see if he could trace the origin of their power left him with nothing, as the power itself didn’t come from any specific direction, but instead seem to stem from everywhere.

This kind of situation was a first for him and it did make him feel a bit discouraged after spending weeks travelling through the desolate desert landscape without any progress.

The only thing that encouraged him to continue his search for the heart of the desert, was the fact that he had already spent weeks searching for it and didn’t want all the time he had used to search through the desert to go to waste.

Having understood from returning to past floors he had cleared that the floors subtly changed whenever one returned to a previous floor. Meaning that no two floors were ever the same.