Bai Yunfei felt his heart skipped a beat, his body preparing for battle at the arrival of the Soul King. He exhaled slowly, his mind pointing out to him that this person was most likely not an enemy, with how he spoke before coming and did not have any signs of hostility to him.
The figure touched down not too far away from Bai Yunfei’s group, and when Bai Yunfei had a good look at who the person was, he was taken aback….
This person was….quite weird.
He looked like a man in his forties and wore dirty gray robes—though Bai Yunfei would wager that the robes had once been white and was eventually turned gray with time. He wasn’t tall and was a little more on the frail side. His hair, a grizzly white, was a mess behind his head. Compared to his rather large nose and pointy chin, the man’s eyes were relatively small, though he tried his best to give everyone an angry look. The pensive light in his eyes only made him look quite strange though.
If Bai Yunfei had to describe this man’s appearance with just one word, he’d have to say the man looked….wretched.
Especially wretched.
The type of man that one could probably see tricking kids out of their tanghulu from a corner somewhere, but he was a soul King.
Even more particular to this person was the 1.7 meter dark-blue longsword tied to his back.
The sword was practically longer than the man was tall. Tied to his back with a dirty black sash, the sword hilt loomed over his head while the tip of the sword was nearly poking the ground. In fact, the sword was a little lopsided when he landed, and his hand reached up to tightened the sash as if to adjust it.
It was strange, was it not? A soul cultivator should have a s.p.a.ce ring or two, so there wasn’t a point to having this sword being out in the open aside from just one reason alone: to show off.
Clearly, this sword was a magnificent one. Just from the looks alone, Bai Yunfei knew the sword was beyond extraordinary. It was a heaven-tier soul armament for sure, possibly a mid-heaven or even….a high-heaven tier one!
A Soul King showing off such a magnificent sword like this was a little...annoying.
……
While everyone was looking at him in shock, the man in turn looked over at everyone else. His eyes first landed upon Bai Yunfei before sweeping over to the permafrost mastiff with a suspicious glint.
“Eh? This soulbeast is a cla.s.s se—”
“Uncle Wu!! What are you doing here?”
Suddenly, a surprised voice spoke out—it was Mo Wanxia who had spoken to this middle-aged man.
Tearing his eyes away from the mastiff to look at Mo Wanxia, the man looked surprised, “Oh? It’s you, little Mo?! What are you doing here?”
His eyes wandered up and down Mo Wanxia a little more, “Ah, yes. Only a year it has been, but you’ve grown a great deal prettier. And you’ve matured greatly, especially in the chest area, not bad….”
“……”
His words had brought the other people listening to him to nearly do a faceplant, their eyes staring strangely at this vulgar man.
“Uncle Wu—you!!” A streak of red flashed across Mo Wanxia’s face, “You’re supposed to be dignified as an elderly person, why can’t you act your age!?”
Scratching at his frazzled hair, the man laughed, “How am I not dignified? You’re always so uptight, little Mo. Do you not like being called pretty? I remember how mischevious you were when you were young. You’d climb up onto my neck and wet yourself! And now look at you all grown up!!”
“……”
The crowd barely held their laughters in.
Practically red like a tomato, Mo Wanxia’s eyes looked like they were about to spit fire almost. And just ever so slightly, Bai Yunfei felt a hint of murderous intent rise from her….
“Cough cough!!” Realizing that she was about to blow up with anger, Bai Yunfei decided to act like a teacher and ‘mediate’. Coughing twice, he bowed to the elderly man, “Might I ask who this senior is….?”
The man’s eyes landed on Bai Yunfei next, his eyebrows furrowed together. “Who are you? I’ve never seen you before, don’t you know who I am? I am the a.s.sistant chairman, the one who oversees the students and instructors, how do you not know me?!”
This middle-aged man spoke quite like how an old man would speak. How bizarre.
“a.s.sistant chairman?!” Bai Yunfei repeated; he remembered that Mo Huangkong had two a.s.sistant chairmen to help him govern the academy, but he just never made the connection that this man in front of him would be one of those said ‘a.s.sistant chairmen’.
Fang Yong took that moment to whisper to him, “Instructor Bai, that’s one of the two a.s.sistant chairmen, Wu Dijian….”
“Wudi Jian?!” Bai Yunfei nearly choked on his own spit—how lowly can his person get?!
TL Note: Another pun. 吴迪建 (Wu Dijian) sounds the same as 无敌贱 (Wudi Jian), or ‘Cheap/Low without equal’
“Indeed!! I am Wu Dijian!” He straightened his back to stand stall. “The one people call the handsome, elegant, confident, graceful, and without equal, the ‘Unrivalled Swordsman’, is I! Little one, are you a new student of the academy?! You’ll be scrubbing the bathrooms for three months if you don’t know me, are you prepared for that?!”
“......”
Fang Yong took the time again to ‘explain’ to Bai Yunfei. “People say that the sword on chairman Wu’s back is a high-heaven tier soul armament. It’s his most precious treasure, and even though he’s a mid-stage Soul King, he can kill a late-stage Soul King with that sword’s strength. He calls himself the ‘Unrivalled Swordsman’, but his skill with the sword is really good. I’ve never even heard of anyone beating him before….”
“Unrivalled Swordsman??” This time, the smirk on Bai Yunfei’s face was noticeable. He couldn’t help it. A nickname like that didn’t really….fit with the person….
“As long as you know me! Be sure to remember it!” Wu Dijian spoke. Taking Bai Yunfei to be the ‘leader’ of the group, he said, “Kid! You never told me who you are! And furthermore, don’t you know permission is required to enter the Back Mountain?!”
“Uh….” Bowing respectfully, Bai Yunfei said, “This junior is Bai Yunfei. Please forgive this junior for not recognizing senior Wu right away. This junior is the instructor of the new crafting cla.s.s, and these are my students. This place is a far more suitable place to learn the art of crafting.”
This man was an a.s.sistant chairman and senior to Bai Yunfei. By all rights, Bai Yunfei needed to be polite to him.
“Bai Yunfei? The crafting cla.s.s?” Wu Dijian repeated to himself, “You’re the instructor of the crafting cla.s.s? The Bai Yunfei being spoken about in the last few days?”
“I am, senior.” Bai Yunfei nodded.
“Oh ho, so it is you! I heard you were a young one, but I didn’t think you’d look like this….” Wu Dijian nodded his head as he gave Bai Yunfei a second lookover.
“....” Bai Yunfei didn’t know what to think—what was he supposed to look like?
“You’re having cla.s.ses here, you said?” Wu Dijian asked.
“Yes. The chairman said I could choose whichever place I wanted. So I decided to come here to excavate a few caves for my students to use.”
“Oh? Is that right?” Wu Dijian seemed to accepted his answer far better than the students had, hinting that he had some knowledge on how the Crafting School worked. “In that case, feel free to do so. You’re not a weak one, you should be able to handle any soulbeast that might come your way.
“Continue as you are then, I’ve matters to discuss with the chairman, so I’ll be taking my leave.”
Readjusting his longsword again, Wu Dijian folded his hands and flew into the air to fly away.
……
Wu Dijian’s interruption had been a brief interlude in Bai Yunfei’s plans. But now that he was gone, the students were free to situate themselves by the wall and carve out a cave for themselves. Explosions and dust were continuous throughout the day as the students each had their own different method of digging a hole.
As they worked, two rays of light were flying straight up the mountain from the ground below. One of the streaks was Mo Chen, and the other was seemingly the earth-type instructor Mo Chen talked before. Somehow, that instructor had actually come to help them….