Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Leaving the ascension secret realm alongside his disciple and the little rabbit demon beast that left shortly after briefly showing off its new strength, Xuan Hao returned home alongside Li Chi to properly get him adjusted to being his disciple while at the same time also taking the opportunity to properly inform the grand elder of the half spirit race about the situation. Feeling that he needed to do at least that much considering he had taken on a member of the half spirit race as his disciple along with the simple fact that this one member happened to be one that had been helping him look after the sect storage realm only a few weeks earlier.

Any problem that might emerge from this loss of labor might affect the operation of the sect storage realm for a bit, but given that he had already napped the little one for over three weeks by now and hadn’t exactly hidden himself within the ascension secret realm, he guessed that the grand elder should have already learnt about what had happened and take the adequate steps to ensure that the sect storage realm could continue to operate normally even in the absence of his best helper.

If anything, his brief visit informing the grand elder was more symbolic than anything else and it wasn’t like Li Chi would be vanishing from the sect, as he was free to move around. The only real difference compared to his previous life being that he had a far better cultivation location within the sect and access to far better cultivation resources alongside guidance from the strongest elder of the sect.

That and the fact that he was expected to focus on his cultivation far more seriously than what he had done in the past–or that was at least what Li Chi himself felt after he had become his sixth disciple. Throwing himself wholeheartedly into cultivation in an attempt to at least reach the Nascent Soul Realm within the next year or two, something that should be possible with him as a teacher and the vast quantity of cultivation resources available.

At the end of the day, though Li Chi wasn’t anywhere near as talented as his other five disciples, he wasn’t someone without any talent and could be considered a genius within the Star Shattering Sect. The main reason why he remained at the Fifth Stage of the Core Formation Realm was the fact that he simply hadn’t focused all his attention towards cultivation and had instead been focused on not just helping the grand elder from the side every now and again, but also on continuing to read any bit of ancient history he could get his hands on. Especially if it was related to the half spirit race or any of the other races that had vanished in the long river of time.

Overall, Xuan Hao was more than satisfied with his new little disciple that he had managed to pick up, that he had completely forgotten about the other seven potential disciple candidates during the past three or so weeks.

Only after settling down Li Chi and getting him acquainted with Qing Yi who happened to be around did he remember those seven potential disciples that he had left hanging.

Unfortunately, by the time he set out to check up on those disciple candidates, he found that four of them had already accepted another master. Not exactly surprising considering their terrifying talent. The only real surprise was that all four of them had ended up joining under the Star Shattering Sect in some way, either as part of a branch sect or the different independent sects, none of them had ended up landing within the smaller powers that existed beneath the Star Shattering Sect.

So, they would ultimately end up at the Shattered Star Peaks as part of the Star Shattering Sect at some point in the future. Meaning they would still ultimately help the prosperity of the Star Shattering Sect flourish.

”But… Out of those seven potential candidates that remain, it just so happens that the remaining three are the most troublesome…” Silently muttering this to himself as he went over the information he had managed to gather about the remaining three potential disciples who were now staring at a chance to become his seventh disciple, Xuan Hao felt that there wa a very real chance that he wouldn’t be able to take on a seventh disciple this time around.

The first of the candidates was the least troublesome and was a young lady from a mortal noble family born with a special ice-related divine physique. From what he had seen so far from the young noble lady, there was nothing for him to worry about when it came to her personality, the only thing that did worry him was the fact that her divine physique was extremely difficult to awaken and wasn’t that far below his own. At the very least, requiring her cultivation realm to reach the Profound Immortal Realm or the Celestial Immortal Realm to fully awaken her physique.

The problem with this was the fact that before awakening her divine physique, she would be tormented by the unique ice qi that would be generated by her divine physique the second she stepped onto the path of cultivation. Not just painful, but if she advanced too slowly, it would kill her.

For this young noble lady, he had to not only consider whether she was suitable as a disciple, but also whether she would be able to endure this kind of torment. After all, reaching the Profound Immortal Realm or Celestial Immortal Realm was far from simple and would undoubtedly take centuries if not thousands of years to accomplish given how it would be far more difficult to focus on cultivation with constant pain preventing deep meditation.

The second candidate did not have these kinds of considerations and even possessed a divine physique similar to Qing Yi that was relatively simple to awaken. The problem was the person’s personality was arrogant and not exactly what he was looking for in a disciple.

Still, though arrogant, the second candidate was still just a young man and could still be corrected and properly taught. The main reason for the arrogance being that he was the young master of a small royal family and had already reached the Foundation Establishment and could be considered the strongest among his peers. Shockingly, part of his divine physique had also managed to awaken on its own. Making him think of himself as heavens chosen as he far surpassed others at a similar cultivation realm thanks to this.

Of course, the world this little one had seen was still extremely limited and barely covered a fraction of the territory under the Star Shattering Sect, being in a relatively poor part of the territory where the strongest cultivators were around the Nascent Soul Realm.

Next up and maybe the most interesting one among the three potential candidates was a young master of a small cultivation clan who had once been a genius when young but had suddenly found himself stagnant after reaching the Peak of the Ninth Stage of the Qi Condensation Realm about to reach the Foundation Establish Realm.

Along with a broke engagement and a mysterious artifact he had picked up around the time his cultivation realm stagnated, Xuan Hao felt like this one, though not at the same level as the two others with dormant divine physiques, had the makings of a so-called protagonist.

Something that only became clearer after he attempted to prod the artifact that this little fallen genius had picked up, as he found that even his divine sense as someone at the Land Creation Realm was unable to penetrate the artifact. Different from a certain ring he had encountered in the past, it was clear that this artifact in the shape of a jade pendant was of far higher quality compared to any artifact he had run into in the past.

Although he might still be able to force his way into the jade pendant carried around by the little protagonist to be, he had also sensed that doing so would trigger the internal defense mechanism of the jade pendant… And although he doubted it would be able to do much to him while hidden within the Shattered Star Peaks under the protection of the chaotic qi formation, he was sure that whatever might be hidden inside would be destroyed in the process.

So, instead of poking around with the unknown artifact, he decided to leave it alone…

Out of these three potential disciples, he could choose one, all three or maybe none of them, but to determine this, he decided to make use of a Dao that he hadn’t been using much lately, the Dao of Illusion. The perfect Dao for him to test out these potential disciples and see whether they would be qualified to become his disciple without harming them in the process.