Chapter 94 — Early to Bed, Early to Rise

"So where am I, right now?" Wei Zhao had ruled out the possibility that he was dreaming, but that left him puzzled. Where was he, exactly? One moment he had been lying in the bed at Gu Mengyao's villa, and the next he had arrived in this baffling place.

"This is the four-dimensional space inside the jade pendant." Jiao Yazi gave a cold snort. "I never imagined the world could hold anyone as stupid as you. You kept me waiting inside this pendant for all these years, and now you have finally come in..."

"What? I'm inside the jade pendant?" Wei Zhao was no coward, but at these words of Jiao Yazi's, even his face could not help but show a look of alarm.

"Yes." Jiao Yazi frowned. This was the person of destiny? This person of destiny was a little too pathetic...

"Then how did I get in?" A very important question suddenly occurred to Wei Zhao. And Jiao Yazi had said earlier that he had waited inside the pendant for him for years, yet he had only just entered...

"The moment you fall asleep, you naturally come in," Jiao Yazi said flatly.

"Huh?" Wei Zhao was dumbstruck. "It's that simple?"

"And how difficult did you think it was?" Jiao Yazi rolled his eyes. "But I have nothing left to say to you. All these years, and you have never once actually slept. You... you... you... To borrow a saying from my martial granduncle, you are just too formidable—formidable enough to make your name shine."

Wei Zhao was somewhat speechless. At the same time he had obtained this jade pendant, he had also received a training manual called *The Xuanyuan Dragon-Slaying Art*. Ever since, he had cultivated according to its methods, using cultivation in place of sleep—and in the blink of an eye, several years had passed...

"I... I've been cultivating *The Xuanyuan Dragon-Slaying Art* the whole time..." Wei Zhao scratched his head, a little embarrassed.

"Of course I know you have been cultivating *The Xuanyuan Dragon-Slaying Art*. I can see it from inside the pendant." Jiao Yazi gave another cold snort. "But I truly admire you. You spent all those years on wasted effort, and still you managed to keep at it. You are more formidable than the Foolish Old Man who moved the mountains."

"Uh... I wouldn't exactly call it wasted effort... I've already cultivated to the late stage of the first layer..." Wei Zhao said with a wry smile.

"Oh?" This time it was Jiao Yazi's turn to look puzzled. He suddenly reached out a hand and laid it on Wei Zhao's arm. Wei Zhao tried to dodge, but Jiao Yazi was faster than he had imagined—all but instant. What puzzled Wei Zhao, though, was that although Jiao Yazi seemed to touch him, he felt nothing at all, as if a phantom had brushed against him.

"Even in that harsh environment out there, you actually managed to break through to the late stage of the first layer? You are quite a talent," Jiao Yazi said, somewhat surprised.

"Heh—" Hearing Jiao Yazi's praise, Wei Zhao finally let a trace of a smile show on his face. Since they had met, this Jiao Yazi had done nothing but call him a fool or mock him with sarcastic talk of how "formidable" he was, when the words were really criticisms... This time, at last, he had actually praised him.

"But... what a pity." Jiao Yazi shook his head in regret. "A matter of a few months was all it should have taken to reach this level, yet you spent nearly ten years on it, and it's all for nothing anyway. You have squandered the best years for cultivation..."

"Uh..." Wei Zhao had not expected Jiao Yazi's final words to be a blow to him as well, and for a moment he was speechless. Jiao Yazi's words did leave him somewhat disappointed—was he doomed never to break through? He could not help feeling dejected. "You mean I can't break through the first layer and advance to the second?"

"Break through the first layer? Your goal is only to break through the first layer?" Jiao Yazi was taken aback. He had not expected this fellow's ambitions to be so small.

"You mean I can keep breaking through?" Wei Zhao was startled too.

"If you had come in here ten years ago, and I'm not making any grand claims, but by conservative estimate you would already have broken through the third layer by now," Jiao Yazi said with a face full of regret. "As it is, at your current age, breaking through the third layer is still no great difficulty, but the older you get, the greater the obstacle grows."

"..." Wei Zhao was on the verge of tears. To think that back then his own diligence had betrayed him! After receiving *The Xuanyuan Dragon-Slaying Art*, he had set straight to cultivating with all his might, and just look where that had landed him. Had he known, he might as well have just gone to sleep!

"Ah, but don't lose heart. You won't be able to become a fearsome figure like my martial granduncle, roaming across outer space, but breaking through three layers is formidable enough," Jiao Yazi said, consoling Wei Zhao when he saw his disappointment. "Who knows, maybe you'll undergo some genetic mutation and become top-tier formidable in the blink of an eye. You never can tell."

Hearing Jiao Yazi's words, Wei Zhao did feel a little better. If things were as Jiao Yazi said, that would not be bad at all. He thought: this *Xuanyuan Dragon-Slaying Art*, cultivated only to the late stage of the first layer, had already brought him endless benefits. Then if he broke through the third layer, would he not be even more formidable? At that thought, Wei Zhao felt he need not be so greedy after all.

"You mean I have a chance to break through the first layer right now?" Now that he had talked himself around, Wei Zhao was naturally somewhat delighted.

"Naturally." Jiao Yazi nodded. "The energy contained in this space is several times, even several dozen times, that of the outside world. The speed at which you cultivate in here will also be several times that of the outside. Especially at the critical moment of a breakthrough—because the outside environment is so harsh and the energy so thin, it cannot possibly supply the immense energy needed for the instant of breakthrough. That is also an important reason why you have failed to break through time and again."

"What?" This was the first time Wei Zhao had heard of "energy." Originally, when he cultivated, he had indeed absorbed something resembling true qi from the natural world, though he had no idea what it was. Perhaps in some wuxia novel it would be called true qi, but what Jiao Yazi called it was "energy."

"Still, I'd advise you to drop the 'I' this and 'you' that and get on with your cultivation. The mechanism on that stone gate was set up by my master's uncle himself back in the day. Never mind that I'm only an illusion now—even if my true self were here, I couldn't force it open." Jiao Yazi glanced at Wei Zhao and said flatly, "If you don't want to miss this five-year deadline, then cut the idle talk."

Wei Zhao was startled. That was true—the five-year deadline was almost upon him. He had never expected that by sheer chance he would discover such a heaven-shaking secret within this jade pendant.

He had assumed the jade pendant was merely some mysterious object capable of foretelling fortune and misfortune. Who would have thought it was actually a cultivation space—and that inside it, a man named Jiao Yazi was waiting for him?

From Jiao Yazi's earlier words, Wei Zhao had roughly pieced it together: the *Xuanyuan Dragon-Slaying Art* and the jade pendant had been left behind by a master's uncle of Jiao Yazi's. Just what sort of formidable figure this master's uncle was, Wei Zhao had no idea. The only thing he knew for certain was that he had stumbled into an enormous stroke of luck.