On a mountain path flanking the far side of Green Bamboo Peak, Zhou Ziling stood with his hands clasped behind his back. His face was dark with suppressed rage as he watched Shen Xian and his companion depart into the distance.

The outer sect disciples who had failed earlier stood dejectedly behind him, not daring to make a sound.

“Useless,” Zhou Ziling spat, his voice cold and sharp.

He had personally orchestrated the challenge from the outer sect disciples, hoping to humiliate Shen Xian and vent his own bitterness. Instead, the plan had backfired spectacularly.

Liu Xu wiped beads of sweat from his forehead, stammering a defense. “Senior Brother Zhou, it was truly unexpected. We did not anticipate that Wang Yu would suddenly intervene…”

“Enough!” Zhou Ziling cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand. A wisp of icy blue spiritual power gathered at his fingertips, swirling slowly in his palm. “I should have known. How could a direct descendant of the Shen Family not have a few bootlickers scurrying around him?”

“Young Master… Hah! What an embarrassment to the Divine Wood Sect!”

He looked at his followers, a glint of calculating malice in his eyes. “Since the direct approach failed, we shall go covert. Starting today, I want the entire sect to know one thing.”

He paused for effect. “The esteemed heir of the Shen Family lacks the courage to accept a simple challenge from an outer sect disciple.”

Liu Xu’s eyes lit up as the realization dawned on him. “Senior Brother is brilliant! I will arrange for people to spread the word in the dining halls and lecture rooms immediately.”

“I will handle the inner sect,” another trusted follower added, nodding firmly.

“Remember,” Zhou Ziling said, tapping his finger in the air. An ice crystal condensed into a shimmering likeness of Shen Xian. “Make it sound plausible. Leave no concrete evidence. Simply say that Shen Xian relies on his family’s influence to act arrogantly, yet cowers at the thought of a basic sparring match.”

“Understood!” Liu Xu replied with a sinister grin. “I know several menial disciples in the kitchens who are experts at crafting such gossip.”

Zhou Ziling tossed a bottle of pills to them as a reward. “Be discreet. I want this news to saturate the outer sect within three days.”

Once he was alone at the cliff’s edge, Zhou Ziling pulled a talisman plaque from his robes. The character “Wei” was elegantly carved upon it. It was a token given to him as encouragement when he first joined the Talisman Hall—a piece of his past that fueled his current obsession.

“Senior Sister…” He rubbed the plaque with his thumb, his eyes clouded with resentment. “You will understand eventually that such trash is unworthy of you. Shen Xian… we have plenty of time ahead of us.”

Back at Green Bamboo Peak, Shen Xian and Wang Yu prepared to take the Black Mystic Spirit-Seeking Tortoise for registration. When Wang Yu saw the massive creature, which was nearly as large as a millstone, he froze in shock.

“Young Master, this one… its background isn’t any smaller than that cat’s, is it?” he asked, his voice trembling slightly.

He couldn’t sense a single ripple of spiritual power from the beast, which unsettled him. In the cultivation world, if you couldn’t sense a creature’s depth, it was either a mundane animal or something terrifyingly ancient.

The tortoise slowly turned its head. Its bean-like eyes caught the sunlight with a strange, knowing luster. Wang Yu felt a shiver run down his spine, as if he were being judged by a primordial existence.

“What are you thinking? It is just a mutated Mystic Water Turtle,” Shen Xian explained, keeping his tone light. He had no intention of revealing its true identity.

To emphasize his point, he casually tossed a Jade Marrow Crystal toward the beast. The tortoise stretched its neck with surprising speed, snapping the crystal out of the air. For a fleeting second, the intricate patterns on its shell glowed with a dull light.

Wang Yu caught the detail but knew better than to pry. A great clan like the Shen Family owning a mutated beast wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility.

“Well then, let’s get it registered,” Wang Yu said.

Shen Xian placed the tortoise into a spirit beast pouch, and the two set off across the second white jade rainbow bridge toward Orchid Grass Peak. This peak housed the Spirit Beast Hall as well as the Talisman Hall where Wei Zhaoli cultivated.

The attendant at the registration office jumped to attention when he saw Shen Xian. While many in the sect envied him, his status as a Shen Family heir still commanded a high degree of outward respect.

“Junior Brother Shen, has the beast undergone bloodline testing?” the disciple asked politely.

“No,” Shen Xian replied, looking bored as he leaned against a nearby pillar.

“Species and cultivation realm?”

“A first-tier Mystic Water Turtle,” Shen Xian lied smoothly.

The disciple recorded the data on a jade slip and performed a cursory inspection. Confirming the “low” energy readings, he produced an identification collar.

“Registration is complete. This collar serves as the official identification tag,” the attendant explained.

Shen Xian took the collar, realizing that if he ever brought Xiao Bai here, the cat would likely claw his eyes out before wearing another identification tag. Forget it, he thought. She isn’t really my ‘pet’ anyway.

As they left, the attendant sighed. “I wonder why a Young Master of the Shen Family would raise such a low-level turtle.”

“Young Master of the Shen Family?” Another attendant passing by overheard the remark and stopped. He listened intently as his colleague described the registration of the first-tier turtle.

The second attendant’s eyes lit up. He hurried to a secluded corner and pulled out a voice transmission jade slip.

“Senior Brother Zhou, Shen Xian has a turtle. It is the perfect material for our narrative…”

This attendant was the very man Zhou Ziling had tasked with swaying opinion in the inner sect. He realized that portraying Shen Xian as a “trash” cultivator who raised “trash” spirit beasts would perfectly fuel the public’s disdain.

Zhou Ziling’s voice soon crackled through the slip. “Excellent. Act quickly. I want that waste’s reputation ruined by morning.”

The attendant smirked and pulled out a fresh jade slip used for sect-wide news updates. He began crafting a narrative that would turn Shen Xian into a laughingstock.

“Shen Xian… by tomorrow, you will be the target of the entire sect’s ridicule.”