Chapter 134: Five Towers Library
Currently, Yaan's role as a teacher of the elite disciples forced him to visit the Disciple Plaza to teach his class once every five days.
With this need to teach the elite core disciples every five days, Yaan was unable to properly delve into his cultivation. However, even without this hindrance, he was still limited by his lack of resources.
Aside from cultivating, Yaan could at least assess his current state. He had been through multiple trials in quick succession near to the end of his time spent in the inheritance, and he had not properly yet had the chance to analyse his gains. Now that he had some time to do this, he was stunned by his findings.
Previously, after cultivating with the elixir on the 7th level in the 4th Trial Realm, Yaan's progressive body constitutions were as follows:
Gold Rank organs, Mythril Rank bones, Mythril Rank tendons, Mythril Rank flesh.
Now though, after going through the bloody bridge trial, his organs had also reached Mythril Rank!
Not only that, but his Vital Energy, which he had not cultivated much following his formation of his Vital Core and his ascension to the 4-Star Realm, had increased to 22%! This meant that Yaan's cultivation was very firmly at the Early 4-Star Realm and making good progress towards the mid stage. Though of course, right now, his cultivation was not making any progress at all.
The most shocking improvement of all though, was his blood essence.
Yaan increased his quantity of blood essence to over 5,000 drops during his 4-Star ascension. After cultivating with the power of the elixir, this improved to almost 6,000 drops.
Now, this number had shot up to over 15,000 drops!
Gaining blood essence this rapidly was truly shocking, there were no typical methods that could be used to rapidly improve blood essence like this. This improvement was very beneficial, as he needed to improve his blood essence to an extremely high level if he wanted to develop the Obsidian Rank Progressive Blood Constitution.
"It seems that my efforts in the final 9th pagoda trial weren't for nothing." Yaan smiled to himself, feeling a bit better about everything that had transpired.
Of course, he was still feeling bitter that he had been robbed, not only of his treasures, but also of his opportunity to continue through the 5th Trial Realm. But even more so than this, he felt depressed that his chance to learn more about his fate had been cut short by some eccentric old man.
He also felt some irritation that his schedule with the elite disciples made him unable to even properly investigate Black Peak. Yaan wanted to explore the unique properties of this mountain. This mountain was very intriguing, it actually cut off the senses increasingly as you progressed closer towards the peak of the mountain.
Yaan had developed a decent understanding of Black Peak, but to truly gain some benefits from the environment, he would need a longer period of uninterrupted time.
There were various caves situated on Black Peak, from the bottom to the top of the mountain. Near to the bottom of the mountain, the senses were suppressed and it was difficult to see past a couple dozen feet, but this was only the beginning.
Further up the mountain, any sense of the external environment was completed obstructed. This level of sensory deprivation would force a person to become wholly focussed on themselves, it was actually very useful for cultivating, but even more so for practicing things like sword arts! Even after spending just a few days practising in this environment, Yaan had already started to see some improvement to his Agile Illusion Art!
And yet, this was still far from the full extent of the mystery of Black Peak.
At the point around half-way up the mountain, it was still possible for a person to maintain their sense of their own body, but after travelling further up, this sensation would also become dulled. After moving above two thirds the way up the mountain, it became impossible to sense the physical body at all!
During his investigation, Yaan had even become stuck for a few minutes as he ascended the mountain, since he was unable to move when he had no sensation of his body. He adjusted after some time and managed to use his Psyche Power to manipulate his body, despite not being able to feel his own physical form.
Yaan felt stunned by the level of sensory deprivation further up. At the highest level that he had dared to explore, he began to feel that even his mind and thoughts were being cut off from his senses…
He didn't dare to linger at that height for long, Yaan knew that he would fall into a pitiful state if his connection to his mind was cut off entirely. How exactly was he supposed to move around if he could not even feel his own consciousness?
Still, he couldn't help but wonder, just what might he experience at the peak…?
For now, Yaan was unable to explore this curious mountain too thoroughly. All of his explorations higher up the mountain ended up requiring at least a few days of time. Since he still needed to teach the class every five days, he directed his energies elsewhere.
In the Elder Court, there was a library called the Five Towers Library. As the name implied, there were five towers in this library, built as four corner pillars connecting to the central tower. The entire library was built from five-coloured marble. This was an extremely rare resource in the mortal world, but it was actually used to build an entire palace in the Elder Court.
Yaan had been spending a large amount of his free time in this library. The library was open to all elders in the Fragment Sect, though the books could not be taken away and there were restricted regions in each of the five towers. The restricted regions were located on the upper floors of each tower, they could only be accessed by elders with specific permission to enter.
For now, as a new elder, even though he was the Immortal Ancestor's disciple, Yaan did not have permission to enter any of the restricted sections. He did not let this bother him however, because the literature that he had access to was already enough to take up an entire lifetime with reading.
Yaan's reason for visiting this library so often was not directly related to cultivation. In fact, there were no cultivation techniques, arts or spells to be found in the Five Towers Library, since those things were all kept in the Scripture Pavilion.
He had been engrossing himself in reading during his free time because he felt the need to expand his worldly understanding.
After speaking to Keasal for some time, Yaan realised just how little he knew about this world, whilst Keasal always seemed to have an answer for his questions. However, Keasal had his own duties and cultivation needs to attend to, Yaan couldn't continue to waste his time by asking him about these things which he could easily find out for himself.
Yaan was mostly interested in learning about geography and history. Whilst the majority of his learning was focussed on the Southern Continent, he also made sure to read up on Planet Yushu as a whole, as well as the wider universe.
The records in this library contained some details about the entire universe, or at least, the part of this world that Yaan knew as the Qi Plane! As for the four planes, these were not mentioned at all, but it was possible that texts on the greater world could be found in the restricted floors of the library.
The scale of the Qi Plane truly left Yaan feeling staggered. He ended up reading some books multiple times whilst crosschecking the facts with other similar books on the topic, solely because he really struggled to believe that all of this was true.
Planet Yushu was already shockingly huge in Yaan's eyes. It was over one million miles to travel from the Northernmost point to the Southernmost point on the planet. This sort of distance was difficult to properly comprehend.
However, compared to the universe as a whole, it was merely like a single grain of sand.
Planet Yushu was one of 36 planets orbiting the sun. Yaan now knew that 'the sun' was just another star in this universe…
Planet Yushu could be considered average in terms of its size amongst the planets. Not every planet was able to support life though. Out of all the planets orbiting this star, only three were classified as 'life planets', meaning planets which were able to naturally support mortal life.
The Qi Plane was split into seven star systems, with each star system containing millions of stars. Not every star was orbited by life planets, but this number was still mind boggling to think about.
The star systems were separated by vast regions of space, far larger than the distance between stars within a star system, which was already huge enough to leave Yaan feeling dizzy.
The star systems were further split up into sectors.
Planet Yushu was located in the Nine Colour Nebula Sector, which was one of 15 sectors in the Four Divine Star System.
Now, as for the reason that all of this information was even known to the tiny cultivators on Planet Yushu, it was all thanks to a single organisation.
The Divine Court.
The Divine Court ruled the Qi Plane. According to these records, the Divine Court had control over five of the seven star systems. According to these records, the Divine Court was the strongest organisation in this universe. They were a righteous organisation with vassal organisations on countless planets, each of these organisations having the responsibility of enforcing the Divine Court's laws…
Amongst these vassal organisations, was the Xuqi Dynasty, and their tool for maintaining the Divine Court's laws - the Xuqi Sect.
The more he read, the more stunned Yaan became.
An organisation that spanned across five star systems…
An organisation that would either place or recruit a powerful immortal on each of the planets under their dominion, leaving the enforcement of their laws to that immortal and their vassal organisation…
An organisation that imposed their laws upon the entire universe.
A stifling feeling arose in Yaan's heart. The enormity of this organisation made him feel a sense of pressure like no other…he was simply too small compared to the vast Divine Court!
As it turned out, it really was true that the Xuqi Sect had a huge backing! Keasal actually mentioned this when Yaan first arrived here, but he did not go into detail. It wasn't until now that Yaan was able to truly picture the grandiosity of this 'backing'.
The Xuqi Dynasty's laws were not their own…the Xuqi Sect was not the source of their overbearing attitude…
It was all the Divine Court!
The reason for all of this information being readily available, was because the Divine Court supposedly believed in freely spreading information amongst its territories. However, since Yaan struggled to find a single detail regarding the key members of the Divine Court, or anything relating to their overall power, or even the location of their headquarters, it was obvious that they were highly selective in the knowledge that they allowed the masses to obtain.
They wanted those residing in their territories to understand the scale of the universe and the scale of the Divine Court in order to crush all possible thoughts of resistance. At the same time, they did not want to give away specifics regarding their actual abilities and secrets, but this was understandable.
Compared to the other righteous cultivators in the South, Yaan had a more objective viewpoint on this. He was not born and raised under the flag of the Southern righteous faction, so he was not blinded by the righteous banner. Because of this, Yaan could see things more clearly than others, even compared to more experienced and wiser cultivators. This was not a matter of intelligence or even age, it was simply due to a difference in personal experiences.
'The Divine Court has spread its influence throughout the Southern Continent, and yet, they do not have the entire Planet Yushu under their control. The demonic faction is more prevalent in the North, it's obvious that the Divine Court has not put in much effort to change this…this should be to temper the righteous Foundation Step cultivators in the South, or perhaps the entire righteous path on Planet Yushu. No, maybe this setup is also designed to temper the immortals on this planet…'
Yaan was able to think like this because unlike others, he did not view the righteous path with great esteem. Aside from this, his encounter with the Spirit Plane Lord also gave him a different viewpoint.
When Yaan met the Spirit Plane Lord, their time was limited, but they discussed many things. She did not mention the Divine Court. Yaan was sure that there was a reason for this, since someone in her position would definitely know about such an organisation…but she did mention divinity.
Immortals were not all powerful.
To Foundation Step cultivators, immortals were legendary beings with an abundance of strength and freedom. They would never even consider the possibility that perhaps, even the immortals on Planet Yushu were merely seedlings being training and tempered against one another by the Divine Court.
But Yaan knew that beyond the Immortal Step, lay the Divine Step!
He did not know much about this step, only that it was the peak of all existence across the four planes. The Spirit Plane Lord was an excellent example of this; she was a powerful Divine Step being, and she basically controlled the entire Spirit Plane!
Since immortals could easily toy with countless Foundation Step cultivators, it stood to reason that divinities could do the same with immortals.
'All of this is far out of reach for me…' Yaan thought bitterly. He sighed and closed the book on these grand matters. He decided to move his attention to the situation on Planet Yushu, specifically on the Southern Continent.
'I can't even contest against a single immortal in the South, so thinking about a monstrous hegemony like the Divine Court is pointless. I should focus on what's in front of me right now, I need to expand my understanding of my current environment.'
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
SpicyDaoist
SpicyDaoist A couple of people have expressed their confusion regarding Yaan's current appearance, so let me clarify...
Yaan stopped ageing physically when he was 10 years old due to his cultivation, but since he's a body temperer, he looks closer to an 11-12 year old. He's current in his mid 20s, but he still looks young, though his demeanour and gaze is far more mature than a young child.
And just as a reminder - Yaan always wears a red robe, his eyes are red (but currently hidden in the Southern Continent, they look brown to others), his hair is long, straight and black, and his skin is pristine and slightly pale.
Hope that helps.
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