Chapter Ninety-Two: Another Chapter?

After leaving the cellar, Liu Pan returned to the side hall where he lived, yet he did not withdraw his spiritual sense. Instead, he continued watching the situation below.

He was truly concerned about Xiao Han. After all, this world had been born from his own pen. Since such an outstanding person as Xiao Han existed here, how could the protagonist, Liu Kuang, have risen all the way to the summit without noticing him at all?

Perhaps the world he had written really was that ruthless, so ruthless that even someone as exceptional as Xiao Han had perished young. But now that he had found and met him, Liu Pan felt he ought to pay more attention to him.

In the cellar, Elder Zhao glanced at Xiao Han and then curved his lips into a smile. “So many elders to choose from, and yet you had to come running to my Cloud-Gathering Peak. I wonder what those old fellows are thinking now.”

Regarding the elders of the Cloudflow Gate, Elder Zhao could call them old fellows. But as a disciple, Xiao Han had no standing to speak of the elders.

So Xiao Han merely smiled faintly and did not take up the elder’s words.

Seeing that Xiao Han did not answer, Elder Zhao did not dwell on the matter. After a moment’s thought, he turned his gaze to the bookshelves in the cellar.

“Spend the next few days reading the books here first,” he said. As he spoke, there was also a trace of an unfathomable look in his eyes. “You’ve already awakened spiritual power. It won’t take you long to finish the books here. Once you’ve learned these basics, I’ll announce to the outside world that I am taking you in as my direct disciple, and then I’ll begin teaching you alchemy.”

“Yes, Master.” Xiao Han bowed respectfully, though his tone held little emotion.

Clearly, Xiao Han knew very well how exceptional his talent was, so Elder Zhao’s willingness to accept him as a direct disciple did not surprise him much.

“Mm.” Elder Zhao nodded, then let his gaze fall on the alchemy cauldron. “Every alchemist must learn to clean his own cauldron. After all, you can’t always have an assistant boy at your side. So whether you are one now or not, if you wish to learn alchemy, you must learn to clean the cauldron. Go and wash it now.”

“Yes.” Xiao Han bowed once more and said nothing else. He immediately stepped toward the cauldron.

Compared with Liu Pan’s first time cleaning the medicine cauldron, Xiao Han was faster. Or rather, the main reason was still the difference in their cultivation.

After all, when Liu Pan first did it, he had only been at the eighth stage of the martial apprentice realm, whereas Xiao Han was already in the middle stage of the martial master realm. In terms of sheer depth of vital energy alone, Xiao Han had already left Liu Pan far behind.

Yet as Liu Pan’s spiritual sense swept over Xiao Han cleaning the cauldron, he noticed something that made him stunned the moment Xiao Han began to use his vital energy. Xiao Han also possessed an ice-attribute spirit root, and the main cultivation art he practiced was the same as Liu Pan’s: the Mysterious Ice Art!

Such a coincidence?

Though back in the cultivation library of the Sunlit Heaven Sect, Liu Pan had heard the old man say that the Mysterious Ice Art was a common cultivation art, and though he had once considered that he might one day encounter another cultivator who practiced the same art as himself, he had never imagined he would meet one so soon.

To Liu Pan, the Mysterious Ice Art had never been a simple technique. And Xiao Han, he likewise did not think of him as a simple person.

An extraordinary man cultivating an extraordinary art. In Liu Pan’s eyes, such a person was destined to become someone who could contend with the protagonist.

Yet the problem now was that in the story, the protagonist Liu Kuang had risen to the top all the way to the end without ever encountering a person like Xiao Han.

What on earth was going on? Where had Xiao Han gone in the end? Had he truly perished young?

After thinking for a long time and finding no clue at all, Liu Pan could only set the matter aside.

Still, he felt that Xiao Han’s existence could not possibly be as insignificant as a background extra. Thinking of the ending he had written, and of whether it had ever actually been successfully uploaded, Liu Pan truly felt that he would need to pay more attention to Xiao Han in the future.

Since his transmigration into the novel, this world had already presented too many situations even he, its author, could not make sense of.

At first, it had merely been a matter of his body and background. Later, after uncovering the truth of his origins, those questions had faintly expanded to involve the powers of the entire Heaven Peak Continent.

Liu Pan could not understand the key to these mysteries, but since they were all somehow connected to him, and since his very existence had itself been an “accident,” he could still accept them no matter how many there were.

However, now that he saw Xiao Han, Liu Pan could not for the life of him figure out what connection this had to him. For that reason, he felt somewhat lost.

He felt that this world had changed too much, so much that it no longer seemed to be the world he had set in his novel. And now he also had a vague certainty that the ending of the book had not been successfully uploaded.

Yet even so, Liu Pan still had doubts about the novel’s conclusion. Even if the final chapter had failed to upload, most of the early setup had already become fixed fact. So why were so many situations arising now in the early stages that even he could not understand?

Could it be that the ending chapter which had failed to upload had instead given rise to another thread of this world? Wasn’t that a little too outrageous?

Liu Pan truly felt it was highly unlikely that, within the storyline he had arranged, there could be another hidden thread running through the entire work that had nothing to do with his original plot, did not conflict with it, and yet remained completely separate.

And yet the current developments seemed to really be telling of another chapter unrelated to the plot he had written. For the moment, he simply could not fully accept that.

After all, for an author to transmigrate into his own novel at the very moment he finished writing it, only to discover that the story he had written covered merely half of this world—how could one possibly face that calmly and without a trace of strain?

In the cellar, Xiao Han felt somewhat puzzled.

Earlier, after he had frankly declared before the many elders that he wished to learn water-method alchemy, he had gone to the mission hall and accepted the task of being an assistant boy.

And after hearing the disciple in charge of the assignment explain the details of the assistant-boy task, he had truly felt that he should soon be able to ascend Cloud-Gathering Peak.

Yet after waiting seven days, not only had he not gone up to Cloud-Gathering Peak, the assistant-boy task had even been revoked, which he found hard to accept.

Had someone beaten him to it?

From that moment on, Xiao Han had been curious about who had taken the assistant-boy task.

In his view, even if that person was not some heaven-defying genius, he should not have been far off.

But the greater the curiosity, the greater the strangeness that followed upon receiving the answer.

After discovering that the assistant-boy who had beaten him to it was merely a disciple at the ninth stage of the martial apprentice realm, Xiao Han truly could not understand it at all.

What merit did this person have...

And what left Xiao Han even more unable to understand was Elder Zhao’s attitude toward Liu Pan.

After listening to Elder Zhao speak with Liu Pan, Xiao Han finally understood why Cloud-Gathering Peak had once again issued a task to recruit an assistant boy.

It was not that the previous assistant boy had been driven away. Rather, the previous assistant boy’s cultivation had nearly reached the completion of the martial apprentice realm, and he was preparing to break through into the martial master realm, which was why another assistant boy had to be recruited.

In simple terms, if that assistant boy had not been on the verge of a major breakthrough, Elder Zhao likely would not have issued the recruitment task again.

And if not for his own talent, then after taking on the assistant-boy task, the only thing he would probably have been asked to do was clean the alchemy cauldron.