I created the Bureau of Anomaly Control

"However, you don't need to worry about any of this, just knowing it exists is enough." Xiaoyao stood up and gestured for Maen to follow him deeper into the wooden house, "Although what I'm saying sounds far off, what I'm actually doing is much simpler than you might think.

"My most important task here is researching how to convert other forms of energy into spiritual energy at a low level. If my idea succeeds, spiritual energy will no longer be a limiting factor for cultivation, and this is the most crucial step in my path to enlightenment.

"This matter is somewhat related to you, but it'll have to wait until you reach the Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment stages.

"Right now, what you need to do is…

"Body Refinement."

Xiaoyao's expression was playful when he said this. The so-called Body Refinement stage involves using spiritual energy to cleanse and reshape the body. The main purpose is to allow a mortal body to adapt to cultivation and to reach the combat strength of a Rank 1 cultivator.

But neither of these things really mattered to Maen. His body was already suited for cultivation, and his physical strength surpassed that of ordinary Golden Core body cultivators, even surpassing most demons of the same realm.

Moreover, Xiaoyao's own cultivation method wasn't suited for body refinement, so the Body Refinement stage was more of a formality for Maen.

Xiaoyao led him to a wooden door and casually pushed it open:

"It's time to introduce you to your junior brothers and sisters."

Maen followed him inside.

It was an exit.

Beyond the door was a clearing, surrounded by drifting clouds and mist. The air pressure had noticeably changed. After glancing into the distance, he realized he was on the summit of a mountain range, but not an ordinary peak. The ground beneath his feet was too flat, bearing clear signs of artificial modification, unlike anything he had ever seen.

Seeing Maen's observation, Xiaoyao casually said:

"I leveled the top of this mountain, otherwise there wouldn't be space to build a training ground. Your techniques aren't suitable for cave dwellings. If you want, you can stay here to cultivate. These clouds and mist are part of my body."

Maen asked curiously:

"Your body can be separated?"

Xiaoyao replied:

"Of course. Clones and avatars are common techniques where I come from. That shadow and those gods can do similar things, but avatars are ultimately techniques that anyone can learn, unlike their innate abilities.

"However, after mastering the Xiaoyao Dao, all parts of my body and consciousness merged together. So, although they appear to be in different locations from a spatial perspective, they are actually connected to me.

"This is also one of the benefits of cultivating the Xiaoyao Dao. If you can reach my level, you can hide your body all over the world. While these seemingly separate bodies are one to us, they are different to our enemies.

"To them, these bodies are still independent, making it difficult for them to kill all of me."

This made Maen more wary. According to Xiaoyao, to kill him, he would need to know the location of all his bodies, or understand the underlying principles through "cultivation" and find a way to kill him as a whole.

However, as he learned more about Xiaoyao, his vigilance decreased. He didn't see any reason for Xiaoyao to attack him, and Xiaoyao seemed to have his own important matters to attend to.

Xiaoyao had even proactively shared a lot of important information with him.

Of course, Maen hadn't completely lowered his guard. The Xiaoyao he saw could be a carefully constructed facade. He wouldn't assume he understood Xiaoyao based on a few seemingly sincere words.

Xiaoyao led Maen to a similar open plaza, where several figures came into view.

A young man in his twenties sat cross-legged in mid-air, eyes closed. Glimmers of golden light peeked through the gaps in his eyelids, and bright, pale golden fluid floated around him.

Not far in front of him stood two three-meter-tall black monsters. They had semi-human, semi-beast faces, and their bodies were as stout as standing water buffalo. The muscles in their arms and legs defied biology, and the veins in their hands were as thick as tree roots.

But they weren't the most ferocious creatures there. They were gripping silver chains, connected to a fearsome black tiger several dozen meters away. The silver hooks at the end of the chains were firmly embedded in its shoulders, but this didn't diminish its ferocity.

Even with the chains, it strolled leisurely across the plaza. Opposite it floated a heroic young woman. Unlike his junior brother, she wasn't floating in the air, but standing on a long sword.

In front of her, three more long swords flew sharply towards the black tiger, trying to slash its throat and pierce its heart, but its swift claws batted them away. It looked like a cat playing with its owner.

However, the black tiger and the woman were moving too fast for the average person to see clearly, easily shattering hard metal, and they were constantly leaving shallow and deep scratches on the ground.

As the black tiger approached the woman, the two upright monsters pulled on the chains, restraining its movements and preventing it from actually pouncing on the cultivator standing on the long sword.

Besides them, there was a third cultivator, a girl who looked only a dozen years old. She sat cross-legged on the ground in the distance, seemingly oblivious to the fierce battle before her, reading a book and occasionally glancing at the battlefield.

Seeing Xiaoyao appear with Maen, the man who had been floating with his eyes closed suddenly opened them, two golden beams of light shining directly from his eyes onto the chains, tingeing them with a faint golden glow.

The two monsters also grabbed the chains and pulled back hard. Feeling the force, the black tiger reluctantly took a few steps back, still wanting to tear the woman in front of it to pieces, but it immediately noticed Xiaoyao and quieted down, turning its head to stare directly at him.

After tidying up, the three cultivators walked towards Xiaoyao, noticing Maen behind him, their expressions revealing curiosity and confusion.

Xiaoyao looked at them and said:

"This is Maen, a new disciple I just accepted, and your new senior brother."

As Xiaoyao's voice fell, the three of them looked surprised, as if they hadn't known that their master was going to take in a new disciple. Then, the woman in her twenties who used a sword asked in confusion:

"Is he the one who killed Du Jin?"

Xiaoyao nodded slightly:

"Yes, Maen is a good person who eliminated a wicked disciple for me. He has a cultivation talent that is rare to see in a thousand years and is an excellent candidate to cultivate my Xiaoyao Zizai Gong, so he is now your senior brother.

"Although he is your senior brother, you are all his seniors in the path of cultivation. You should guide him more in the future."

The disciples, though still somewhat unable to accept the situation, could only nod slightly.

Xiaoyao then said to Maen:

"These are your junior brothers and sisters. The one who was fighting the black tiger with a sword is your second junior sister, Zhong Ruixue. She is skilled in swordsmanship and has the deepest understanding of combat among my disciples. Therefore, she has a deep understanding of battles between cultivators.

"If you have any questions about this, you can ask Ruixue at any time."

The sword-wielding woman looked at Maen expressionlessly and said:

"I'm always willing to spar if you want to practice."

She didn't have a good impression of this new senior brother who had just killed Du Jin and didn't understand why her master would accept him as a disciple. All three of them were born in the cultivation world, while those from the desolate world could only become outer disciples.

It wasn't that she looked down on mortals from the desolate world. Some of them had talents comparable to theirs, but without exception, none of them had broken through to the Golden Core realm. Those talented mortals from the desolate world always encountered various obstacles in many other areas besides their aptitude. Many of them even had difficulty truly understanding what the cultivation methods were about and often had various misunderstandings about the essence of cultivation.

At that time, she realized how many important foundations she hadn't noticed before on her cultivation path. Her experience growing up in the cultivation world naturally made her more suitable for cultivation than mortals from the desolate world, so she didn't expect any fresh blood to become her master's true disciples.

But now, this person who killed Du Jin had become their senior brother out of nowhere, making her wonder what Maen's abilities were.

So Zhong Ruixue was quite looking forward to sparring with Maen. She had heard that Maen was considered top-notch among the Golden Core cultivators in the desolate world, and she wanted to see how much of a gap there was between such a top cultivator from the desolate world and herself.

"This is your third junior brother, Yu Weijie," Xiaoyao continued, introducing the young man who had been meditating in mid-air. "He is extremely skilled in various spells. After entering the Golden Core stage, he devoted himself to researching all kinds of messy spells. Although this delayed his cultivation speed, it gave him considerable versatility.

"If you have any questions about spells, you can ask him. Seven-tenths of the spells you can learn from me, Yu Weijie has already mastered."

Yu Weijie first humbly said to his master:

"Even if I didn't focus on other spells, I wouldn't be able to keep up with Senior Brother Du's wholehearted cultivation. And if I don't study spells properly, I might be killed in a duel one day."

After saying this, he turned to look at Maen, his expression much warmer than Zhong Ruixue's:

"Senior Brother Maen, you can ask me anything you want. As your junior brother, I will tell you everything I know."

Maen nodded slightly to him, saying politely:

"Thank you."

As he spoke, Yu Weijie was also observing the person who killed Du Jin.

He didn't see anything special. Yu Weijie didn't feel anything about Maen killing his senior brother, because Du Jin was no match for him and Zhong Ruixue in a real duel. It's just that he had gone further on the path of cultivation.

Although Du Jin's approach was the right one, he and Zhong Ruixue didn't cultivate because they weren't as talented as him. Even if they cultivated wholeheartedly, they wouldn't be able to see the opportunity to break through to the Nascent Soul stage as quickly as Du Jin. In this case, cultivation was more likely to result in mental demons, so he and Zhong Ruixue initially chose to focus on their strengths.

But now it seemed that they had stumbled upon the right path. Although Du Jin did see the opportunity to reach the Nascent Soul stage, that was why his master sent him to compete with Maen for the opportunity to face the challenge, because his master wanted to push him forward another half step.

With his Golden Core cultivation so complete that it couldn't be more complete, a little stimulation might have been enough to break through to the Nascent Soul stage, but unfortunately, he didn't seize the opportunity because he still held the same thoughts he had before coming to the desolate world, underestimating techniques and methods, and only thinking about the great path.

In the cultivation world, this idea was fine. There weren't many real life-and-death battles there, and they weren't in the bloody storms like their master was when he was young. Instead, they were geniuses with the inheritance of Nascent Soul masters. When the disciples of famous sects dueled with them, they wouldn't really try to kill them. Unfortunately, this was no longer the cultivation world.

The longer Yu Weijie stayed in the desolate world, the more he realized the importance of combat ability. This was a chaotic place where they didn't compete on whose Dao was closer to the Great Dao, but on whose power was stronger.

This made him study his master's techniques like crazy, just to be able to resist in desperate situations. After all, their situation was quite awkward now, and no one knew what would happen in the future.

But although he was smiling, he was still somewhat dissatisfied with Maen's "airdrop," after all, this position actually meant the next cultivator to break through to the Nascent Soul stage. The master chose this way because he felt that Maen would break through to the Nascent Soul stage before them and planned to invest all the resources in him.

But now was not the time for him to express his thoughts.

"This is your youngest junior sister, Guan Yi," Xiaoyao finally introduced. "She is skilled in alchemy, artifact refining, formations, and other relatively unpopular Daos, but her attainments are already quite high, and she is only lacking cultivation to take it to the next level.

"If you want to cultivate these things, you can also ask her for advice."

Guan Yi looked at Maen with a somewhat timid expression, seemingly afraid of this desolate world barbarian who had just killed Du Jin:

"Hello, Senior Brother."