This was the result of Xiaoyao casually repairing a book well. After this skill of his was discovered, he was immediately pulled over by the library administrator to help. Naturally, Xiaoyao wouldn't refuse this, because it allowed him to have more thorough access to all the collected books.
So Xiaoyao resigned from his temporary servant job at the Le family. If he wanted to leave now, no one could stop him, nor did anyone have the ability to stop him. In the end, Le Youran let Xiaoyao keep his name registered with the Le family. Xiaoyao didn't mind this - he still got monthly wages, so why not?
As for the battle between Guxing and Le Youran, even without Xiaoyao, they would continue, because Guxing had to fulfill this condition, she had to formally defeat Le Youran.
Now Guxing had succeeded, but Le Youran was unconvinced. She in turn wanted to challenge Guxing. Today was when she was challenging, and the location had changed. Now it wasn't Guxing coming to find her, but Le Youran going to find Guxing, so the place was at First Academy Under Heaven where Guxing was.
In First Academy Under Heaven, there were quite a few sparring grounds. They casually borrowed one, and they would probably duel and spar here in the future.
Both of them knew that continuing to compete with each other would definitely stimulate their strength to grow, so they had an unspoken understanding about this. Even without a reason, they would continue.
It was only now that Guxing discovered that Le Youran was also from First Academy Under Heaven - she just rarely appeared there before. During this period, Le Youran frequently entered and left First Academy Under Heaven to spar with Guxing and read some books in the academy's library.
Guxing understood that Le Youran was looking for a breakthrough. Her martial cultivation had reached a critical point, and she wanted to break through this critical point. There were many ways to break through this critical point - it didn't necessarily have to be in one aspect, and breaking through from any aspect would have the same effect.
...
...
Therefore, Le Youran wasn't just reading books in one area - martial arts manuals, internal cultivation methods, notes on insights from masters, and so on!
Competing with Guxing was also one method. Because of this, recently she had been finding Guxing to spar much more frequently, and Guxing welcomed all comers, because this was also beneficial to her.
At the same time, Guxing understood that she could improve to her current level so quickly largely thanks to Le Youran in front of her!
"Guxing, your servant runs around everywhere and isn't by your side for more than a few days a year. Don't you mind?"
After one sparring session, Le Youran and Guxing sat back-to-back on the ground. Le Youran asked a question she had always been curious about. She had been in contact with Xiaoyao and Guxing for almost two years now, and always felt this master-servant pair was strange. Their relationship seemed very deep, yet they weren't often together.
"I don't mind! Because... when I need him, he always appears by my side. That's enough!" Guxing looked up at the sky, smiling.
"..." Le Youran fell silent. She seemed to understand - so that's how it was...
As long as he appeared when needed, what did it matter whether he was around normally? I'd like to have such a servant too, even if just temporarily!
"During the year he was at the Le family, how much time did you see him?" Guxing asked after a while.
"This..."
Le Youran was stuck. She thought back and discovered that she basically only saw Xiaoyao when Guxing came. It was difficult to encounter Xiaoyao at other times, but she hadn't paid attention to this at the time, so she hadn't taken it to heart.
"Is he at the imperial palace now?"
"Yes! He's quite capable at various things - he knows how to do everything and can find things to do wherever he is. He definitely won't starve."
"Oh..."
...
"Achoo..."
Xiaoyao sneezed, wondering if he was catching a cold.
"Ah! Xiaoyao, how could you sneeze!"
"Come on, is it illegal for me to sneeze!"
"Your sneezing isn't the problem, the issue is you can't do it right now. The book pages flew away..."
"..., If they flew away I can pick them up..."
Only then did Xiaoyao realize he was still in the middle of repairing books. He had just removed some pages, and now with one sneeze, all the pages had flown up.
"You make it sound easy - then you pick them up. You need to finish repairing all these books today, otherwise you won't get dinner tonight," The person working with Xiaoyao snorted coldly, then left with a wave of his hand.
"Fine, I'll get it done,” Xiaoyao wasn't angry - this was originally his mistake. At the same time, he never complained about work, which was something many people liked about him.
Xiaoyao bent down to clean up. With his memory, re-organizing was very easy. This book was already in his memory, and soon he had finished binding the book and repaired the damaged pages.
After finishing his own work, he went to the side to complete what the previous person had left behind. While he was organizing, he suddenly discovered that on one book page there seemed to be some very tiny black dots like ants. This spot seemed to be within the binding area, if the book wasn't taken apart, these black dots definitely wouldn't be discovered.
What were these black dots? Xiaoyao quickly reached a conclusion, these were characters, microscopic text written on the book using a special technique.
Xiaoyao immediately took out a magnifying lens to carefully examine the text above. Although he could also use internal energy to enhance his eyesight, that was too tiring. He wasn't afraid of lacking internal energy, but his eyes couldn't handle it.
This wasn't the first time Xiaoyao had done such a thing. Many times before he had discovered other text in books. These were all very secret, some were martial arts manuals, some were mechanism diagrams, some were medical prescriptions, some were account records, some were miscellaneous notes, and so on.
However, most were martial arts manuals, and generally the manuals preserved this way were extremely profound and rare. Xiaoyao had discovered this type before, but what seemed rare when recorded had become common everywhere by now.
But Xiaoyao hadn't gained nothing, quite a few things had benefited him, and he hadn't destroyed these things. He felt they should be left for those with fate to find them. His own discovery was also due to previous people's preservation.
But previous discoveries were far inferior to this one. This text was a tome, a supreme martial arts tome, a martial arts tome that could transform an ordinary person into a peerless master.
Since it was called a tome, it must include internal cultivation methods, external martial training, movement techniques, martial skills for the eighteen types of weapons, and even some strange arts like soul manipulation and disguise techniques.
This was simply a fortuitous encounter.
It was also a fortuitous encounter triggered by a sneeze.
If Xiaoyao hadn't sneezed just now, that person wouldn't have left. If he hadn't left, Xiaoyao wouldn't have taken over his work and wouldn't have discovered the tome in this book.
So today, Xiaoyao didn't eat dinner.
"Strange, that kid really didn't come to eat. Is there that much work? That's not right, with his ability it should be easy to handle. I was just slacking off a little, the workload wasn't that big!"
The person who had left earlier, seeing that Xiaoyao didn't come to eat, felt somewhat puzzled. But he didn't go check the situation, because he wouldn't disturb his rest time just because of whether Xiaoyao ate or not.
And he didn't know what he had missed!
Xiaoyao spent the entire night memorizing all the contents of this tome, then repaired the book and put it back. He still didn't destroy this tome, continuing to feel it should be left for those with fate.
As for when this fated person would appear, or whether they would appear at all - this wasn't something he needed to concern himself with. He also wouldn't deliberately make any reminder marks for people.
Although Xiaoyao obtained this tome, he himself didn't cultivate it, because these things weren't very suitable for him. However, it could increase his knowledge base, give him new insights, and make his martial arts realm more profound. This was the effect this tome had on him.
Of course, this was only for Xiaoyao. For Guxing, the appearance of this tome was very timely, because Guxing already had a bottleneck. She had finished cultivating the Clear Jade Technique, and unless she went to Bright Jade Palace to get the later parts, she had to find something new.
Now she had the cultivation method, and it happened to be the Clear Jade Technique. This tome had several mental methods that could allow anyone to cultivate. Martial arts tomes were different from manuals - tomes were comprehensive, allowing anyone who obtained them to successfully cultivate, unless they were once-in-a-millennium supreme waste material. Otherwise, everyone would achieve something.
From this tome, it seemed that Bright Jade Palace's martial arts originated from this tome, because there were martial skills here that coordinated with the Clear Jade Technique. These seemed to be some of Bright Jade Palace's famous ultimate techniques.
But Bright Jade Palace's martial arts were much less than this tome. It was unknown whether this was due to loss over time, or whether Bright Jade Palace was originally a branch of this tome's owner.
However, these things seemed unrelated to Xiaoyao. He wouldn't care about these matters. He would only give the complete Clear Jade Technique to Guxing. As for those martial skills, he felt they were unnecessary, because Guxing had already formed her own martial skills. Her Lone Star Sword and Lone Star Palm could already match these ultimate techniques.
At the same time, having her change her own martial skills to cultivate others would take a lot of time, and the effects might not necessarily be better than the original. This was also why generally mental methods could be changed, but martial skills weren't easily changed.
A person's body had already become accustomed to one martial skill style. Changing to something else would make the body somewhat unaccustomed, preventing the display of maximum power.
Therefore, martial skills weren't better the more profound they were, but needed to be suitable for oneself. Unsuitable ones, even if they were top-level martial skills, were equally useless, or even inferior to ordinary ones that suited oneself.
(End of Chapter)