She would use what time remained tonight to discuss things with her partners and adjust their plans accordingly.
Gu Ningyun's mind raced, yet her heart remained calm.
When unfavorable situations arose, the only thing they could do was face them rationally, adapt on the fly, and make timely adjustments.
However, things were going unexpectedly smoothly now; there was no need to change the plan, saving them some trouble.
This gave them more time to regulate their states and prepare for the ten-day secret realm team competition ahead.
After checking the new leaderboard, the five members of Ruiyu Pavilion returned to Qixia Peak. Each of them packed enough food from the dining hall to last twenty days.
Both storage bags and food boxes had the function of preserving food; it would still be fresh even if eaten a year later.
To be safe, they prepared ten extra days of food.
As for why they didn't prepare even more...
It wasn't that they didn't want to. Just as Gu Ningyun was preparing to pack the twenty-first day's worth of food, the spirit bird guarding the food suddenly popped out and stared at her like a hawk.
That gaze was absolutely filled with condemnation.
Gu Ningyun was terrified that it would suddenly fly over the dining hall and start repeating on a loop: “Gu Ningyun, a disciple of Ruiyu Pavilion on Qixia Peak, is packing twenty days of food for a ten-day competition! Wasting food! Reward: a ten-day mandatory service package in the dining hall!”
At that thought, a shiver ran down Gu Ningyun's spine.
She quickly pulled back her hand and gave the spirit bird a respectful bow. “Senior, we are about to enter a secret realm for a ten-day team competition. Preparing extra food is just to be safe. If we don't finish it, we will eat it after leaving the secret realm. We won't let it go to waste.”
“Is twenty days' worth not enough?”
The spirit bird tilted its head and glanced at them, the tip of its wing pointing toward the door. “If you don't want to stay and work...”
“Understood, Senior. We're leaving right now.”
Gu Ningyun stowed the packed food and pulled her friends outside.
After exiting the dining hall, Gu Ningyun spotted the shaded path not far away.
This was the road they had walked every day when they were taking the Introduction to Food Cultivation class; they were already extremely familiar with it.
Her eyes lit up, and she said to her friends, “Come on, let's go to the back kitchen and pack some seasonings. There are so many demon beasts in the secret realm—they're all ingredients!”
Mu Chenze was somewhat puzzled. “Ningyun, why do you care so much about food?”
“Think about it. Once we enter the secret realm, coming and going won't be under our control. If some accident really happens and we little Qi Refining cultivators who haven't reached fasting are trapped inside for a year or six months, wouldn't we starve to death?”
“Fine, you've always been cautious.” Mu Chenze was convinced by her.
“Previously, Martial Aunt Yang told us to eat the dining hall's spirit food as much as possible, so I never learned to refine fasting pills. Thinking about it now, fasting pills are still very important for going out on trials.”
Wen Xuan thought for a moment. “I know a senior sister at Alchemy Peak. I'll go find her later and trade for five bottles of top-grade fasting pills. One bottle each, just in case. However, since I didn't refine these myself, even if they're top-grade, they'll have a tiny bit of pill toxicity.”
“It's fine. As long as we don't take them constantly, a small amount of pill toxicity will be expelled from the body over time through cultivation.”
Mu Chenze added, “Wen Xuan, your constitution is rare. Pills with toxicity are actually the norm.”
Gu Ningyun agreed. “We'll leave the fasting pills to you then, Wen Xuan. We'll transfer the points for the pills to you later. Er, I don't mean competition points; I mean sect currency points.”
“Hehe, I know, I know. Leave it to me.”
Back at Cloud Residence, Gu Ningyun first went to the kitchen and stowed all the cookware into her storage bag.
Having solved the food problem, she then soaked in her daily body-refining spirit herbs.
Afterward, she spent half the night in the study drawing Fireball Talismans and Swift-Walk Talismans.
Including what she had drawn during the nights of the competition, she now had over a hundred top-grade Fireball Talismans and Swift-Walk Talismans in her possession.
By the time she finished putting away the talismans, it was already the early hours of the next morning.
They had to assemble at six o'clock to enter the secret realm, and she didn't know if there would be any free time once they were inside.
Gu Ningyun simply stepped out into the courtyard under the cover of night and completed her thirty thousand sword swings for the day in advance.
As the first ray of morning sunlight appeared, Gu Ningyun put away her peach wood sword and cast several Cleaning Techniques on herself.
Just as she finished meditating to adjust her spirit energy and state, she heard a knock on the door.
It was Wen Xuan and the others.
...
At six o'clock, the scene of the competition at Fighting Peak was as bustling as ever.
The new disciples stood on the ten arenas in the center of the field according to their groups.
About ten groups stood on each arena.
Perfected Person Ye formed a hand seal. Along with a massive surge of spirit energy, a rumbling sound suddenly echoed from the side of the field near the mountain.
Gu Ningyun's eyes went wide as she stared unblinkingly at the cliff face in front of her.
At the foot of the towering cliff, an area about six zhang high and three zhang wide suddenly rippled with spirit energy.
The lush vegetation that had originally covered the cliff face shattered like a bubble and vanished, revealing the smooth, vertical mountain wall behind it.
“The illusion array that originally concealed the cliff face was at least earth-rank mid-grade,” Mu Chenze noted.
The mountain wall was as black as ink and as smooth as a mirror, looking as neat as if it had been sliced by a single sword stroke.
No, wait. Gu Ningyun narrowed her eyes. The material of this mountain wall looked remarkably like the recording stone described in the minerals chapter of the 《Almanac of Heavenly Wonders》.
She looked closely at the edge of the cliff face.
Sure enough, the black stone was about half a zhang thick. Behind the black stone was the earthy yellow rock of the mountain.
Faint light shimmered between the cliff and the black stone, suggesting the presence of some kind of array.
Recording stones were expensive. She didn't know where Xiaoyao had found such a large piece and used an array to embed it into the cliff side of Fighting Peak.
An inner sect martial uncle walked over, carrying two wooden boxes in his hands.
Gu Ningyun looked closely; one box was filled neatly with wooden tokens.
The other held storage bags that looked plain and grey. Their craftsmanship was much coarser than the storage bag assigned by the sect when she first joined, likely meant specifically for storing demon beast corpses.
The inner sect martial uncle said, “When your group is called, send someone over to collect your wooden tokens and storage bag.”
...
“Zezhi Pavilion of Luoyue Peak.”
“Shuoyu Pavilion of Qixia Peak.”
“Zhuoyu Pavilion of Qixia Peak.”
“Ruiyu Pavilion of Qixia Peak.”
...
The wooden token was only about the size of a palm. Gu Ningyun looked at it and saw that the front read: Qixia Peak | Ruiyu Pavilion.
Flipping it over, her name was written on the back.
There was a small hole at the top of the wooden token, through which a rope woven from silver-thread grass was threaded.
Following the inner sect martial uncle's instructions, Gu Ningyun bound the wooden token with a drop of blood. After leaving her spiritual aura on it, she tied it to her belt, letting it hang next to her disciple identity jade token.
She swept her divine sense into the wooden token to take a look; her score for the secret realm team competition was still a big fat zero.
Jiang Yao held his jade token, glancing at the mountain wall from time to time with a thoughtful expression.
Wen Xuan nudged him with her elbow. “What's wrong? Is something off?”
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