Chapter 192: Qingyun Sect Examination (Part 2)
"So..." Wang Bing's voice chimed softly as she turned her full attention to Su Tianhao, trusting Elder Xuan to carry them both adrift behind him. "I'm curious—it's only been a month. How did you change so much?"
Her autumn eyes fixed on Su Tianhao with focused, instinctive intensity. She genuinely wanted to know. Both of them had been the same height just one month ago—now he was nearly a head taller, and his aura was different. More dominant. More mysterious. More charismatic. Not that she minded.
Su Tianhao glanced at her with his usual indifferent calm, but the slight curve of his lips betrayed him.
"I'm not the only one who went through a transformation," he said quietly, indifference giving way to a subtle interest. "You went from the 5th level to the 7th level Martial Adept Realm in a single month. Quite the achievement."
Wang Bing's eyes widened and she pouted. "Not fair—you read through my concealment again, but I can't see through you at all."
Su Tianhao chuckled. Although they had only met a handful of times, he felt strangely comfortable around her—as though they had known each other for years.
Wang Bing puffed her cheeks. "There's nothing to hide. I worked hard, and I had assistance from one of the major items at the Drifting Cloud Auction that day. It worked wonders."
Su Tianhao noticed how she didn't name the treasure or specify its nature. But he chose not to dwell on it.
"I've told you my reason," Wang Bing said, leaning slightly closer—just enough for her pleasant, feminine scent to reach him. "Now tell me yours."
Su Tianhao's breathing quickened for a fraction of a second—then returned to its natural rhythm.
"Enough, Bing'er." Elder Xuan's voice cut through clearly. "Everyone has their secrets. If he doesn't want to share, he has his reasons."
Elder Xuan's perception as a Martial Grandmaster was no joke. He could tell immediately that Su Tianhao's transformation was anything but ordinary. Though the Shrouded Dragon Veil's Silent Pulse still blocked him from reading the exact cultivation base, the sheer change in presence, vitality, and aura told him everything he needed to know—this was a fundamentally different person from the young man he had met a month ago. And that kind of transformation was sensitive.
When Wang Bing looked at Su Tianhao again, there was apology in her eyes. Perhaps even guilt.
"I'm sorry, Brother Tian Hao. I didn't mean to pry—I let my curiosity get the better of me." Her voice was soft, measured, and most importantly genuine. Su Tianhao's golden eyes read it all like an open book.
"It's okay," he said, his smile warm and sincere.
He paused—as if making an internal decision that resolved itself within seconds.
"Actually... I'm Tianhao. Tian Hao is just an alias."
"Tianhao?" Wang Bing blinked, then her face blossomed with warmth. "So it's Brother Tianhao. Thank you for trusting me enough to say so."
"Don't overthink it," Su Tianhao shrugged. "You would have found out sooner or later. I don't plan on entering the sect under an alias."
"Tianhao," Elder Xuan said as they continued drifting forward, "if that's your name—what's your family name?"
"I used to go by the Su family name," Su Tianhao said. "Not anymore."
"The Su family?" Elder Xuan's tone carried obvious surprise. "The Su family of Oakwood City?"
"That's the one. I was an orphan—their Patriarch adopted me seven years ago." Su Tianhao's voice was unhurried, almost casual, as though he were discussing the weather rather than his severance from a Great Clan. "Last year I awakened with what everyone considered trash talent, so they cast me out like I didn't belong. Long story short—I'm no longer a member of the Su family, and I no longer owe them anything."
"I see..." Elder Xuan murmured.
He didn't press further. Instead, he turned and looked directly into Su Tianhao's eyes—his long silver braid fluttering behind him. His gaze scanning, watching, searching for any trace of emotion, any thread of information those golden depths might offer.
As the saying goes—the eyes are the windows to the soul.
But what he found was an unfathomable depth he couldn't begin to comprehend. No emotion. No wavering. No opening to exploit. Just a strange, dangerous pull that seemed to draw his own soul inward before he could stop it.
Elder Xuan coughed deliberately and averted his gaze.
"We're almost there. Let me brief you on the examination rules based on previous years."
"I would appreciate that, Senior." Su Tianhao cupped his fists and offered a subtle bow.
Elder Xuan nodded in approval, but inwardly his thoughts was razor-sharp, "that was dangerous."
---
The trio descended onto the mountaintop and Elder Xuan guided them to land safely.
Su Tianhao looked around immediately. Greenery covered every available surface—but these weren't ordinary plants. Most were spiritual herbs, ranging from grade one to grade three, tended as casually as garden flowers rather than treated as the valuable cultivation resources they were.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Wang Bing said cheerfully. "Just wait until you see their actual cultivated gardens."
"You've been here before?" Su Tianhao raised an eyebrow.
"No—but I've read a great deal about it," she clarified.
His eyes moved to the gates.
The gates of the Qingyun Sect were not merely large.
They were a statement.
Twin doors of dark ironwood reinforced with spirit jade stood at least thirty metres tall, their surfaces carved with sweeping reliefs of clouds, swords, and ascending figures rendered in extraordinary detail—cultivators mid-breakthrough, beasts mid-evolution, storms mid-formation. Every carving told a story. Caught at the right angle, they seemed to move—as if the wood itself remembered the history pressed into it.
Above the gates, suspended between two pillars of pale grey stone veined with jade, hung a massive horizontal plaque carved from a single piece of spirit jade. The characters 青云宗—Qingyun Sect—had been inscribed in a hand so assured and so ancient that the brushstrokes seemed less written and more declared. A faint spiritual pressure emanated from the plaque itself, subtle but unmistakable—the residual aura of whoever had written those characters, still present after so many centuries had passed.
"Heavens..."
Su Tianhao's gaze was drawn instinctively to the calligraphy. He stared a moment longer than he intended—
And then something happened.
For a fraction of a second, the calligraphy changed. The characters remained—but behind them, or perhaps within them, a single eye opened. Ancient beyond reckoning. Pale jade at the iris, black at the pupil, the sclera threaded with deep azure. It looked directly at him—not past him, not through him. At him specifically. With recognition.
Then it closed.
The characters were only characters again.
"Hey—are you alright?"
Wang Bing's voice reached him from a distance, pulling him back.
He turned. Her amber eyes were fixed on him with undisguised concern, her hand resting gently on his shoulder.
"I'm fine," he said. He glanced toward the plaque. "Did you feel anything from those characters?"
"Oh—that!" Wang Bing's face flushed as she registered how close they were standing, and she stepped back like a startled rabbit.
She composed herself—tucked a few strands of white hair behind her ear, smoothed her expression back into the poised, dignified bearing the world was familiar with. "What you felt was most likely the residual will left behind by the founder of the Qingyun Sect. It's rumoured that he was a Martial Monarch—someone who had surpassed even the Martial King realm—and that he personally inscribed those characters when the sect was founded."
"It's no rumour—it's true," Elder Xuan said. "The founder of the Qingyun Sect was a dragon among men. He was called the Cloud Severing Monarch."
"The Cloud Severing Monarch," Su Tianhao repeated, his voice quiet.
'Could that eye belong to him? But why would I see it when Senior and Bing'er saw nothing?' he wondered inwardly.
A firm hand landed on his shoulder, pulling him from his thoughts.
"We should get moving," Elder Xuan said.
Su Tianhao snapped back to the present. Other cultivators were already approaching the gates—some had already moved ahead. He hadn't even noticed.
"Let's go," he said quietly, and the trio moved toward the gates.
On either side stood four Outer Court Disciples—eight in total—dressed in blue robes trimmed with silver, each bearing the sect's insignia on the left chest: a mountain peak wreathed in rising mist, a sword planted at its summit. They stood with the particular stillness of people who had learned discipline before they learned cultivation. Expressions neutral. Eyes sharp.
Su Tianhao scanned them in an instant. Martial Adepts—mid to late twenties, clearly several years into their tenure. Knowledgeable. Experienced. He would give them the respect they deserved.
However, that respect lost its spark when one of them walked over.
The young man approached with a wide, flattering smile plastered across his face.
"Welcome to the Qingyun Sect, esteemed guests—"
He stopped.
His gaze had landed on Wang Bing. His eyes widened and moved across her figure in a way that had nothing to do with courtesy and everything to do with lust.
Before he could look further, a chill descended on him—sharp, sudden, like twin blades pressed to his throat.
He turned.
Su Tianhao and Elder Xuan were staring daggers at him. No raised voices. No movement. Just a look—the kind that required no elaboration.
He was only a 5th level Martial Adept. The combined pressure from the three of them hit him like a physical weight. His knees buckled. He barely stayed upright.
"I—I'm sorry, Esteemed Guests—I-I got carried away—" he stammered, words stumbling over each other.
Hmph.
Wang Bing's sharp snort cut through the air like a whip, her aura leaking subconsciously. But inwardly she was delighted Su Tianhao had stood up for her.
The outer court disciple turned to her and his face went pale. "7th level Martial Adept!"
'What have I gotten myself into,' he cried inwardly. He had come over with the simple aim of offering guidance in exchange for tips and perhaps a useful connection. Now he would be grateful to walk away intact.
Fortunately, the group wasn't petty.
"Take us to the waiting ground," Elder Xuan said coldly.
"R-Right away!"
The young man nodded frantically and led them through the gates with his head lowered, not daring to look up.
Just before they passed through entirely, Elder Xuan slowed.
His eyes lifted toward the distant sky—sharp and piercing.
There, half-obscured by drifting clouds, a beautiful young woman in pristine white robes sat astride a massive eagle with a wingspan spanning nearly five metres. The eagle's feathers shimmered with a soft emerald sheen, like polished jade, and its eyes held the kind of quiet, cutting intelligence that spoke more than words could.
The young woman's gaze was fixed on their group—or more precisely, on Su Tianhao. Her crystalline blue eyes didn't bother to acknowledge Elder Xuan even as she felt him looking at her.
"What is it, Uncle Xuan?" Wang Bing asked.
"Nothing," Elder Xuan said, shaking his head.
And the group walked through the gates.
---
The moment they crossed the threshold, the world changed.
Not gradually. All at once.
The spiritual energy hit first—so dense and concentrated it pressed against the skin like warm water, seeping into the meridians with every breath. Simply standing within the sect's walls felt like passive cultivation. Su Tianhao had trained in the Verdant Mist Forest's inner region, where spiritual energy ran thick and wild—but this was different. This was refined. Deliberate. The spiritual energy here had been accumulating for centuries, shaped by generations of cultivators until it had taken on a character of its own—settled, deep, and almost sentient in the way it moved.
Then the sight registered.
The Qingyun Sect was not built on a mountain. It was built into one.
The entire face of Qingyun Peak had been transformed across centuries into a vertical civilisation. Terraced levels rose one above the other like the floors of a colossal palace, each one carved directly from the mountain's rock face and reinforced with spirit jade and pale grey stone. Broad stone stairways and bridges connected the levels, wide enough for twenty men to walk abreast. At each level, clusters of buildings spread outward—training halls, cultivation chambers, alchemy pavilions, weapon forges—all constructed in the same aged spirit wood and pale stone, each structure sitting naturally within the mountain rather than imposed upon it.
Waterfalls ran between the levels—not decorative, but functional—their water laced with spiritual energy that sparkled with faint blue-white light as it fell. The mist that had obscured the mountain from below was, from within, a presence—it drifted between buildings and across open courtyards in slow, deliberate currents, parting around moving figures before closing silently behind them.
Disciples moved on every level. Mostly Outer Court Disciples in blue robes trimmed with silver, alongside Outer Sect Elders in robes of their own choosing—but every single one bore the Qingyun Sect insignia.
The sect was alive in the way that only something genuinely, deeply powerful could afford to be—without urgency, without performance. Simply existing, as it had existed for three thousand years, and would continue to exist long after every person currently within its walls was gone.
Su Tianhao's composure cracked.
His eyes widened—not dramatically, not with the open-mouthed shock of someone overwhelmed—but with the particular expression of a person whose expectations, already high, had been quietly and completely exceeded.
'So this is the Qingyun Sect.'
His grip tightened at his side.
'I was right to come here.'