528 Two More Years

"Senior Brother Wang Lu, please review this statistic of the progress of everyone's last month's cultivation."

A petite young girl, with a delicate doll voice, appeared in front of Wang Lu and handed him a hand-written piece of paper.

Wang Lu took the paper, which listed in detail the progress of the more than seventy people. This was the result of the meticulous and conscientious work of Yang Fei, Cai Xia, and Feng Yin, which was done each month of the past twelve months. During which, no errors had been made.

"Hmm, looks like everyone have gotten the hang of it, and it's getting faster and faster." While looking at the form, Wang Lu was simulating a complex curve in his mind. The result showed that the cultivation progress of the Junior Brothers and Sisters last month had significantly accelerated.

"Yes, everyone is taking Senior Sister Wang Wu as an example and continue to work hard."

"Oh, no wonder recently, the gutter oil is almost in short supply." Wang Lu chuckled. However, inwardly, he was thinking of how fun it would be if the future Spirit Sword Sect would take Wang Lu as an example.

The Spirit Sword Sect would be headed by Non-Phase Peak, the ultimate sect cultivation method would be Non-Phase Method, and the Sect Leader would, of course, be Wang Wu. At that time, those grandsons like the Disciplinary Elder who used to chide Wang Wu for his lack of morality had to obediently bow their head. Whenever Wang Wu would go out to get drunk and gamble, and consequently creates a mess, they had to act as her lackeys...

Hahaha, if not witnessing it with one's own eyes, life would simply be in vain!

Just for this future scene alone, he had to protect this history line.

While smiling and thinking to himself, Wang Lu saw that the young Junior Sister before him seemed to be unhappy, as if she was hiding a concern. Sensing this, Wang Lu looked down at the sheet and suddenly realized that, in the progress curve, this Junior Sister He Yue was actually the most prominent. No wonder the one who brought him the sheet this time was not the usual one—she actually wanted to get credit for it.

Wang Lu nodded and stretched out his hand, wanting to stroke He Yue's head. The girl smiled and narrowed her eyes, as if she had already begun to enjoy it...

The next moment, from the hollow of Wang Lu's palm, dozens of Primordial Chaos Heaven Splitting Sword Qis burst out, which slashed the petite body of He Yue into pieces, and then crushed it into powdery mist, leaving no bones intact!

When Wang Lu made his move, Ouyang Shang was by his side. However, seeing such a scene, he merely raised one of his eyebrows. "Yo, your sword qi seems improved."

Too lazy to respond to him, Wang Lu merely sneered. A moment later, the bloody mist in front of him quickly turned black, and a trace of cold and gloomy aura began to permeate the air.

The disguise was broken, and the body was revealed.

Although the disguise in He Yue's form was indistinguishable from the original, it was actually just a black fog controlled with high precision… This trick had been seen by the cultivators of Spirit Sword Sect more than ten times in the past year.

Of course, the one who controlled the black fog was the Demon King whose body was still unknown. With such a precisely controlled black fog, he could perfectly disguise as anyone in the Dragon Palace, down to the smallest details such as frown and smile. With such a going against the heavenly disguise, the things that he could do were too many.

It was impossible for all the disciples of Spirit Sword Sect present to remain in the hall of the Dragon Palace for three years—everyone needed their private space for daily routines. If the black fog took this opportunity to sneak up on them, except for a few people, the others didn't really know how to survive this. And if they were killed and replaced with the disguised black fog, the threat would be even greater.

Fortunately, there were Wang Lu and Ouyang Shang in the Dragon Palace. Everytime the black fog penetrated in, the disguise would be immediately exposed. This time, the opposite party optimized the disguised effect and thus boldly made a move against Wang Lu. At first, Wang Lu also didn't notice this problem, until the palm of his hand touched the hair of He Yue, his heart suddenly jumped. Subsequently, he did not hesitate and immediately launched his killer move, completely leaving no opportunity for the other party to argue.

This decisiveness allowed him to maintain a clean victory record. As soon as it was broken, the black tide began to drift backward. Before it could go far, however, it was blocked by a golden barrier.

"Last time, you got away due to the defense that was not strict enough. This time, do you think I will repeat the same mistake?" Wang Lu said and then, with a thought, his Non-Phase Sword Defense rapidly shrunk, squeezing the black fog and pulling it closer.

The black fog continued to twist under the pressure of Wang Lu's Non-Phase Sword Defense, trying to struggle, but it was all in vain. Therefore, before it was absorbed into Wang Lu's body, it disbanded itself and disappeared without a trace.

"Tsk, still can't stop it."

The nearby Ouyang Shang glanced at him. "I've told you, if you meet this kind of situation, you just need to strangle it to death and be done with it. No need to further waste your energy. That's just the incarnation of the other party. If it's that easy to catch the source of the other party… with the combined strength of our more than seventy people, it would be as easy as eating a pie to kill a remnant soul. But if the other party is easily killed, wouldn't I die in vain in your timeline?"

Wang Lu, of course, understood this reasoning. However, as the supplier of the gutter oil, there was already too much of his strength that was squandered away, so it was not a bad thing to waste some of it to try to capture the original demon king.

"This pessimistic thinking of yours is really shameful. As the Big Brother, is this how you give them the example? I think it is necessary to do the rectification campaign of anti-right movement—the great leap forward of seventy-three golden cores in three years has been done, so we might as well wrap it with the rectification campaign1."

Ouyang Shang unceremoniously fished out dozens of blank yellow talisman papers.

"Rectification? I think you're being a pain in the ass because you have too much idle time. Why don't you help me draw these talismans instead? The Dragon Palace array had already been worn off after a year, and now, it is getting easier for it to be penetrated… Initially, the black fog could only infiltrate once a month, but now it has become more regular, causing a great disturbance. According to my calculation, we need to post at least 253 diamond sutra talismans in one day in order to maintain the effectiveness of the main array. I will be responsible for posting one hundred copies, while you will handle the rest."

Wang Lu sneered at this. "Drawing talisman to patch the array? This is just a masturbating method. The source of that black fog might not necessarily come from from the outside, so even if you post three layers of talismans outside and inside of Dragon Palace, they might not be useful. Moreover, don't forget that when the main array was still intact, while you kept watching in the middle with all your might, the other side could turn your golden core into a vibrating ball and draw a few small yellow figures with a fart."

Ouyang Shang nodded. "Okay, you have found a good excuse for your laziness. Unfortunately, before you get a better solution, I still have to trouble you to finish drawing the talisman."

"... My study is not good enough, so I don't know how to draw talismans."

"I remember that you once boasted that one hundred years in the future, you're the top student of Spirit Sword Sect."

"I'm sorry, I have high scores but low ability, so I can't do it."

"It's okay. With your peerless qualification, you still have the time to learn now, you just need to practice more. I think it's better for you to draw more than two hundred."

"You've gotta be kidding me." At the end of the day, Wang Lu still picked up the brush and began to draw the talismans one by one. Drawing talisman was indeed not his forte, but relatively speaking, as one of the two Daoist Masters of middle-level Jindan Stage, no matter how unskilled Wang Lu was, the result of his drawing was also good.

More importantly, even if this was a boring affair, he was still duty bound. Who made him one of the two leaders in the Dragon Palace?

Just as he was in halfway through his drawing, Wang Lu's heart was suddenly moved. "Ouyang, the two of us is just too few, why don't we mobilize the masses?"

"Mobilize the masses? Apart from you and me, only Liu Sandao is good at drawing talismans. Unfortunately, even if it's him, drawing three talismans in one breath is his limit, an utterly inadequate measure… Hey, that's really worthy of his name2."

In a place desolate of spiritual energy, energy was the most precious resource. Except for those who had already achieved Jindan Stage, which could produce their own magical power, the other cultivators of Spirit Sword Sect had to be conscientious and carefully plan their energy use. If they consumed too much, the gutter oil alone might not be able to make up for it.

Wang Lu said, "I don't expect them to draw a talisman, but rather to link them with the main array. As part of the array, each of them will be responsible for a key node. In this way, any blows of wind and movement of grass that are directed at them, we can immediately detect it and then at the same time, through the array, we can give them our help. With this protection network, we don't need to waste our energy to patch the leak in the main array day after day. It would be good for Yang Fei and the others to be responsible for repairing their own respective part, which would save time and effort."

"... You want to link that many people to this one array?"

Wang Lu said, "From the start, this is already a one-grasshopper-on-one-rope situation. Before they succeed in their cultivation, if the array is breached, except for the two of us, how could anyone survive?"

"But if you want to integrate them all with the array…"

"It's not that hard. In the past one year, everyone has shared the gutter oil together, so they're already like a family."

"Well, the gutter oil does help the unity."

"Moreover, recently, many people began to learn from Wang Wu to modify their own method. Although the results are not as effective as that of Wang Wu, some of this modification have things in common after all. Coupled with everyone having their roots in Spirit Sword Sect, now is the time when everyone's resonance is the deepest, meaning this is the easiest time to establish a link with the array."

At this point, Ouyang Shang put down his brush and pondered for a bit. He then said, "This is feasible. I have previously linked Yang Fei and Zhang Sheng to the main array, and the resulting repulsion force is actually smaller than expected. If the rest are also this smooth, then our three years target would be realized. The only problem is…"

"If that guy has new tricks, right? Humph, no matter how varied his approaches are, the fact is, his main body could never be restored. Therefore, I could probably guess his move. As long as in the next two years we pay close attention to this, we would likely be able to pass through this crisis more scared than hurt. And by that time…"

By that time, the more than seventy Jindan Stage cultivators would really reverse the historical line, ushering the final scene of his journey here!

They just needed two years...

...Mao's anti-rightist purges in 1950-1957Liu Sandao means Liu Three Blades