Within a couple hours of cultivation, the sun went behind the horizon. The road quickly turned dark, and in less than an hour, the leader of the caravan had found a suitable place to camp and the caravan started unpacking. The small group was quickly woken up from their cultivation, and they emerged from the cart. Ye Jian's parents went and chose a place to set up their tent, but Meng Li signalled Ye Jian to stay behind.

"What's the matter, brother Meng?" Ye Jian asked. As they spent all day cultivating, this was the first time they talked since Ye Jian woke him up.

"Brother Ye, I recently started learning the sword, would you mind helping me a bit?" Meng Li asked. He shamelessly described his practice of the sword as started 'recently', even though he had only practiced for a couple hours at most.

Ye Jian showed a surprised expression on his face. However, he looked hesitatingly on his parents, who were setting up their tent in the distance. He seemed to be thinking, and he turned to Meng Li after a few seconds.

"Alright, but we'll go after my parents fall asleep. And we need to stay close to the camp." he said. Meng Li's face appeared troubled - if they stayed close to the camp, he worried that they would alert the guards. He knew why Ye Jian was worried, however - his parents, even though they were cultivators of the third layer, had no experience in fighting, and they could probably be defeated even by a first layer cultivator who had some battle experience. In a few seconds, Meng Li came up with an idea. He quickly went to the summoning tab and summoned a small disc. It appeared in his palm, looking like a rough disc carved from a rock - which it in fact was. However, what made it special were the runes carved on top of it.

"This formation disc's function is to create an invisible barrier with the strength of a peak Qi Sea cultivator. Only a Qi Foundation Realm cultivator would be able to break through, and it would still take them a bit. Here, bind it to yourself by blood." Meng Li explained the disc's function and threw it to Ye Jian. Ye Jian revealed a strange expression on his face and didn't immediately bind the disc.

"Aren't formation created by using formation flags?" he asked doubtfully. He had never seen a formation disc in all his years of roaming the cultivation world.

"The way of formations is vast, and there are many ways of creating formations." Meng Li explained. Although Ye Jian had a far higher cultivation base than him, how could he know better than Meng Li's master? After all, in different worlds, the research of formations went differently. For example, in Ye Jian's world, cultivators used formation flags as they were far more versatile and with one set, one could set up many different formations, provided they knew a bit about formations. On the other hand, formation discs were superior in that the user didn't require any knowledge about formations in order to use them - they simply had to bind them with a drop of blood, and they would be able to easily use its' functions.

Ye Jian, with a face full of doubt, used a bit of Qi as a sword and cut open his finger. He put the small wound over the disc, let a few drops of blood fall on it, and closed the wound up with his Qi. It was so small it would heal within a day at most. However, his face quickly changed, from doubt, to shock. The disc, after being bound to him, transmitted the method of using it to his mind. He could easily control the barrier produced and would be able to keep it up practically infinitely since the formation fed off the Qi in the surroundings to maintain function, and unless a Qi Sea Realm cultivator attacked it, wouldn't require any Qi from him.

He looked at Meng Li thankfully and placed the disc in his bag of holding. After all, he had to wait until his parents went to sleep to set it up, but with such a tool, they would be able to head out further from the camp, since the disc would notify him if it was attacked.

Time passed by quickly, and in less than an hour, Ye Jian's parents bid him farewell and went to sleep. Or cultivate - it didn't really matter. Without stalling for time, Ye Jian quickly used the formation disc to create a barrier before heading into his own tent with Meng Li, where both of them teleported away to the small valley he practiced in previously. He wanted to show Ye Jian the chasm he had unknowingly created and ask him of his opinion.

"Brother Meng, what is this place?" Ye Jian asked confusedly. He hadn't yet noticed the chasm, but he was already charmed by the small valley basked in moonlight.

"It's just a valley I found randomly to train in. It's hidden deep in the mountains, very far away from civilization. I trained here yesterday, and I wanted to show you this." Meng Li explained and pointed at the chasm he had accidentally created.

Ye Jian approached it, but he quickly jumped back when he came too close. Meng Li looked at him with confusion, since Ye Jian never displayed such behaviour before.

"What happened?" Meng Li asked.

"I don't know. I felt an incredibly sharp sword intent from there, I feel like it cut into my soul." Ye Jian answered with a pale face. "Brother Meng, what is that? Did some expert leave it here? How could such a sharp sword intent exist in this world since the strongest person is only at Qi Foundation Realm??" Ye Jian barraged Meng Li with questions. Meng Li could see that he was agitated and confused.

"This wasn't left behind by some expert. It was... me. I accidentally created it yesterday... I don't know what happened either." Meng Li answered embarrassedly. It was hard to admit he created something like this accidentally...

Ye Jian couldn't help but show a dumbfounded stare as he looked at Meng Li directly in the eye. Meng Li, embarrassed, avoided eye contact.

Ye Jian stared at him for a couple seconds before he sighed and stopped glaring. Meng Li confirmed that he stopped with a quick glance and turned his head towards him.

Meng Li didn't explain to him what he knew about the Dao, since it would reveal the system's existence to him. It wasn't that he was scared that Ye Jian would do something to him, but he would prefer to keep the system hidden from others. It might just be the one straw which would break the camel's back, after all.

The next few minutes were spent in total silence. Meng Li didn't want to interrupt Ye Jian, who seemed to be in deep thought.

After about half an hour, Ye Jian moved. He shook his head slightly, as if in defeat, and asked Meng Li.

"Alright, brother Meng, I don't know what you did. How would you like to practice?"

"Look at this, I was learning the sword from this booklet." Meng Li handed the booklet he made from the stack of papers to Ye Jian. Ye Jian took a few minutes to read it from cover to cover and gave his opinion.

"It's a solid description of the basics of the sword, and the techniques described at the end are low level, but quite profound. There is nothing wrong with it." he handed the booklet back to Meng Li, who put it away.

"Alright, so could you help me a bit with it? I was training and didn't understand some things." Meng Li wasn't embarrassed to ask for help - after all, Ye Jian was the expert in this situation, and his pointers would be extremely helpful to Meng Li.

"No problem. But when you don't need my help, I will be training by myself using that sword chasm. The sword intent there gives me a feeling that if I'm able to comprehend it, I will profit immensely." Ye Jian replied. After he said so, he asked Meng Li to show him what the problem he had was.

The next few hours, Meng Li practically buried Ye Jian in questions. Due to his talent, even though he had some wrong assumptions, with a little guidance, he could assimilate them in minutes, and then he was back to asking Ye Jian questions. Due to this, Ye Jian didn't get much time to study the sword chasm, leaving him a bit unhappy, but since he gave his word, he didn't complain.

Meng Li was the one who profited the most from the exchange, with his proficiency increasing by leaps and bounds. It didn't mean much, however - previously, he was at the level of a complete beginner, and now, he could be considered a... Beginner. However, if he were to compare with other people who only trained for two days, he would be at a much higher level - a day of training for him was akin to several weeks of training for a person with normal talent. This was both due to his high cultivation realm and due to his great talent, but Meng Li didn't bother to think much about it and was simply happy that he progressed so much.

With the night ending, they returned to the camp by teleporting into their tent. There was about an hour before the caravan would pack up and leave, so going to sleep wasn't a good idea. Ye Jian deactivated the formation disc and continued cultivating. Meng Li chose to cultivate as well, but he was cultivating his soul, not Qi.

The previous day, he managed to accumulate about ten strands of pure soul power - his refining speed had increased with practice. He absorbed the soul power all at once - experimentation he carried out on the previous day revealed to him that the soul power had an effect of healing mental fatigue. If he was tired of thinking, he could absorb a bit of soul power and he would be back to his peak condition, or even higher than his previous peak.

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The next few days continued on like that. Meng Li cultivated his soul during the day and trained the sword with Ye Jian during the night. He teleported to the valley with the sword chasm every day - after all, why not? He could cross that distance in an instant, so why bother choosing a different location.

After a few days of training, the questions he asked of Ye Jian grew more complicated, and thus, he needed more time to comprehend the answers. That meant that Ye Jian had more time to try and comprehend the sword intent in the chasm, but despite that, he didn't manage to make much progress.

Within a blink of an eye, a month had passed. Ye Jian reached the peak of the Qi Gathering Realm and just had to go into seclusion to break through to the Qi Sea Realm. However, since doing so would take much more than a single night, he postponed it until they reached the nearest city.

Meng Li had also made progress - his skill with the sword could be compared to a decently trained soldier, with the difference being that his swordsmanship was practically flawless - under Ye Jian's care, Meng Li didn't get any bad habits or bad ideas, and thus, his sword skills were flawless - at least at his level. After all, he was far from being a master of the sword.

In the month, Meng Li's skills grew to a level where he could actually fight with Ye Jian. Using wooden sticks, of course. Without surprise, he lost every single time, and his biggest achievement in the month was touching Ye Jian's robe once. As they fought with their cultivation sealed to the ninth layer of Qi Gathering, they competed purely using skills.

Other than purely learning to fight with the sword, Meng Li also started to comprehend the sword techniques in the small booklet, but he had no luck yet. His skills with using the sword weren't enough, and even his talent wasn't enough to bridge the gap.

Time passed by, and after the month, the city could already be seen in the distance. Ye Jian and Meng Li were lucky - the trade caravan actually made stops in many other cities with the Zu Family's branch, and Qingshui town happened to be the last stop. The city in front of them was called the Jiang city, and was a small city on the continent, with the strongest person being merely a first layer Qi Sea cultivator. There were three cultivators, actually - two from the two large families in the city, and the mayor.

Both of the families specialised in alchemy. These families were the Zu family and the Jiang family. This city was actually a small hub for alchemy in the surrounding area, with cultivators from many different places gathering here to buy pills. The city was actually originally created by the Jiang family, but a few hundred years ago, there was an internal strife in the Jiang family, which allowed or a small family, the Zu family, to rise to power and be at the same level as the Jiang family. As such, there was intense rivalry between the families, with the Jiang family feeling that the Zu family had taken their righteous position from them, and the Zu family being angry at the Jiang family for being tyrants.

When they arrived before the gates of the city, they departed from the caravan. After asking some of the workers, Ye Jian learned that all caravans had to go through a strict check of their cargo as well as their workers, and since the group weren't workers, they would have to go in themselves.