Chapter 5 (Bug Fixing)

Qi Miao had known this day would come sooner or later and had mentally prepared herself. Yet, as the spiritual ledger kept beeping relentlessly, and one after another, friend after friend—more like creditors—flooded in with requests, their names filling the ledger’s interface like a tidal wave, she couldn’t help but fall silent for a moment.

Then, she began approving them one by one.

Her fingers nearly numb from tapping, she finally finished adding all the requests. But immediately after, a fresh wave of unread messages crashed into her eyes like a rude storm.

“...”

It was over. She just wanted to disappear for a while.

After a brief moment of despair, Qi Miao resigned herself and opened the top chat window.

It was from Qiu Tu, a disciple of the Herbal Garden. Right after his request was approved, he messaged her directly, cutting to the chase. He told her he had stored a thousand-year-old purple lotus, Nine Suns Ganoderma, Heavenly Thunder Bamboo, and the Mysterious Ice Marrow Fruit in the Treasure Pavilion and asked her to check them before discussing compensation.

While she was still approving requests one by one, Qiu Tu bombarded her with messages—

“Why aren’t you replying? Where are you?”

“Hey, where are you?”

“Don’t tell me you’re pretending to be dead. If you don’t respond soon, I’m coming to find you.”

Qi Miao replied, “Senior Brother Qiu, I’m here, I’m here.”

Qiu Tu answered immediately, “Finally, you’ve shown up.”

Qi Miao’s fingers flew over the keyboard just as fast: “Senior Brother Qiu, I will take responsibility, do my best to make amends, and compensate for your losses, but you need to wait for a while.”

Qiu Tu was not vague either: “I understand. The elders said you just started cultivation, right?”

Qi Miao read the message and felt reassured, replying honestly, “That’s one reason, and another is that there are many senior brothers and sisters I must compensate.”

“Senior Brother Qiu, I know your losses are significant, but there are sixty-three others whose losses are even worse than yours.”

Qiu Tu: “...”

Unsure of his meaning, Qi Miao continued, “But after Senior Brother Shen, there are still two hundred and forty-two people behind him.”

He was relatively early in line.

Qiu Tu was somewhat shocked: “Will you ever be able to repay it all in this lifetime?”

This time Qi Miao fell silent, “...”

Don’t, don’t underestimate me.

Her eyes glistened with tears, determined: “Senior Brother Qiu, please look forward to it, okay? If I can’t hold on, who will compensate you all?”

Qiu Tu was quiet for two seconds, then changed his tone: “Junior Sister Qi, the elder said you have exceptional talent in forging. During yesterday’s aptitude test, you awakened the Joybird, a forging prodigy rarely seen in the Cangwu Sect in a century. I believe with your strength, these debts will be nothing.”

“...” Qi Miao didn’t care how much truth was in his words; she sent Qiu Tu the repayment plan she had drafted last night.

“Senior Brother Qiu, I now offer you three compensation options. One is to return the original items; the second is to convert your losses into spirit stones; the third is to offer spirit tools as collateral. Which do you prefer?”

After sending, Qi Miao paid little attention to Qiu Tu’s choice and moved on to other chat windows, sending the same repayment options to the rest of her creditors.

The spiritual ledger had a group messaging function, but only masters and elders could use it. Qi Miao communicated individually, spending a considerable amount of time.

She laid her current situation honestly before them, so no matter how aggressive the creditors were initially, after a while, they grudgingly accepted her conditions, taking the promises she painted and receiving the creditor badges she personally issued.

After finishing with the last senior brother, Qi Miao felt a dazed relief, as if surviving a disaster.

She rested a moment, watching the sun sink lower, then suddenly remembered she hadn’t arranged the spirit beast rental.

Hurriedly, she sent a message to Jiang Ran for help; fifteen minutes later, Jiang Ran arrived riding a white crane.

***

Jiang Ran spotted Qi Miao sitting beneath the great locust tree at once. The young girl wore forging attire, clutching a book and reading intently.

“Junior Sister Qi,” Jiang Ran called softly, startled when Qi Miao looked up, “How you’ve changed in just one day! You look so haggard.”

Qi Miao touched her cheek deeply: “Maybe it’s the pressure of life catching up.”

Jiang Ran: “...”

Quickly guessing what Qi Miao was going through, she looked at her with sympathy and handed over a whistle for summoning spirit beasts. “You came to me quite late. I asked around and finally found a spirit beast for rent, but the price isn’t cheap.”

Jiang Ran named the fee. Zhao Qiong had given Qi Miao a substantial sum, enough to rent for two months.

After paying, Qi Miao examined the whistle. “I just blow this and the spirit beast comes?”

“Yes, as long as you’re within Cangwu Sect, you can summon it anytime,” Jiang Ran said, pocketing the spirit stones and handing Qi Miao a storage pouch. Smiling at Qi Miao’s puzzled look, she explained, “This is fodder for the spirit beast. While you rent it, you are responsible for feeding it. This pouch contains enough food for a week.”

Qi Miao, who barely managed to feed herself, was stunned. “I have to pay for the fodder too?”

“No,” Jiang Ran reassured her, “Herbal Garden’s spiritual energy is abundant, the land fertile. The medical cultivators’ spirit fields often grow spirit herbs, which don’t help their pill refining. If you need them, just go harvest.”

Qi Miao’s eyes lit up. Free! She loved free things the most!

***

After parting ways with Jiang Ran, Qi Miao returned to the study hall.

After the afternoon’s events, the weight on her shoulders felt even more tangible. Though tired, she planned to study longer.

Why not go back to the dormitory? Because the sect only allotted limited candlelight to inner disciples monthly; once used up, they had to buy more.

The study hall was different. It was equipped with spirit lamps that lit up whenever anyone was inside. For a poor student like her, it was perfect.

As night fell, Qi Miao leaned against the study hall’s light, propping her head with her hand, sorting through the book’s contents.

The first step of cultivation: drawing in Qi.

To draw in Qi, one must first become aware of its presence. Sensing the omnipresent spiritual energy meant success.

The book’s discussion on spiritual energy and cultivation was profoundly mysterious to Qi Miao; she did not know how to truly perceive Qi.

She had broken through her own mental barriers but sensed it was still not enough.

Qi Miao felt as if she had returned to childhood—fascinated by the weapons and mechas she had seen on screens, yet utterly lost when they appeared before her.

Instinctively, she reached out to grab a tool to familiarize herself with its texture and ease her frustration—but her hand found nothing.

“...”

She paused, then remembered she had left her ever-present repair kit back in the dormitory.

She looked at her empty palm in frustration, then recalled a scene from the day.

Elder Lan had said forging was about transforming matter into tools. Matter was the carrier of tools, and matter referred to all things in the world.

That iron ore Elder Lan had crushed and reshaped into various iron products proved tools relied on matter.

Qi Miao’s mind wandered: if controlling Qi could alter the structure of any metal or material, shaping it into whatever she wished, could she forge mechas with her bare hands?

Imagining herself piloting a mecha flying wildly through the cultivation world made her smile at her boundless daydreams.

Unnoticed, as she daydreamed, her breathing grew longer and steadier, and the fatigue in her body began to fade.

Better to start with something simpler.

***

Qi Miao’s gaze dropped from the air to the study hall’s table.

It was a simple material, perfect for her to imagine controlling Qi.

She touched the tabletop, feeling the wood grain under her fingertips.

Wood could be made into paper.

Without chemical agents, controlling Qi meant first crushing the wood, continuously rubbing and pounding it to separate the fibers, then heating or pressing and mixing with water to make pulp. When the pulp was spread out and dried, it became paper.

The texture beneath her fingertips changed.

Qi Miao’s eyes widened slightly. She seemed to be hallucinating from exhaustion—inside the wooden table, invisible mechanical blades appeared, grinding the wood into powder.

The mental picture she constructed in her mind materialized one by one.

A breeze outside flipped the page of a book, but Qi Miao’s eyes saw only the endlessly reconstructed wood.

Then, minutes later, a flash of red streaked before her eyes.

She froze, raised her hand to her face, and saw glaring blood beneath her nose.

Before she could comprehend what was happening, darkness swallowed her consciousness.

The book, no longer supported by the table, fell to the ground with a soft thud.

***

Morning—

Yue Huai bumped into a friend outside the forging workshop. The two walked arm in arm toward the study hall.

They exchanged thoughts about yesterday’s lessons, mostly the friend sharing with Yue Huai.

Yue Huai’s head ached as he struggled to keep up, his eyelids fighting a losing battle against sleep.

Seeing this, his friend sighed: “Yue Huai, why do you bother staying in the forging workshop? Your talent clearly isn’t there...”

“Stop, stop,” Yue Huai interrupted, shaking off his drowsiness. “There’s no rule in the sect that says if you lack forging talent, you can’t cultivate in forging.”

“But you’re the bottom of the outer forging workshop. The elders of the Martial Hall come knocking every few days, fighting with our elders, demanding the forging workshop release their martial seedlings and give you freedom. The elders are tired of the hassle and treat you poorly. You might as well comply with the Martial Hall elders’ wishes.”

Yue Huai’s face turned pale: “I don’t appreciate the Martial Hall’s way of cherishing talent. I spent two days there, and you know what? In just two days, the elders beat me so badly even my own mother wouldn’t recognize me.”

“Your constitution only grows stronger the more you get beaten,” the friend said, somewhat speechless. “You ran fast yesterday, but in the evening Elder Pang from the Martial Hall came to the study hall, threatening that if you don’t leave the forging workshop, he’ll tear this place down and forbid anyone from learning forging here.”

“Can you believe that?” Yue Huai said angrily. “The Martial Hall’s people are unreasonable. I refuse to associate with them.”

The two bantered all the way to the study hall. The friend pushed open the door, and Yue Huai kept talking: “I believe if I work hard, in the future, the forging sect will have a place for me.”

“...”

Yue Huai thought his friend was speechless, but when he looked up, he saw the friend standing still at the doorway, staring straight inside.

“What are you standing there for? Why don’t you come in?” Yue Huai asked curiously, walking beside him to glance inside.

What met his eyes was a sea of blank white sheets.

The study hall, which could hold over two hundred disciples, was inexplicably stripped of all tables and chairs overnight, leaving behind only an empty room blanketed with thick stacks of paper.

Yue Huai was dumbfounded: “...”

No way, was their study hall really torn down?