Chapter 902: Token

“Little Senior Brother! Little Senior Brother! Do you still want that token?”

This day, during the midday meal, the disciples were eating in the dining hall. Cheng Mo found Mo Hua and said as if offering a treasure.

Now, among the disciples of Taixu Gate, everyone knew that their little senior brother had a hobby of collecting “tokens.”

“A transmission book order?” Mo Hua asked.

“Um.” Cheng Mo nodded, then took out a token stained with blood, engraved with a demon beast head and fierce fangs, and handed it to Mo Hua.

Mo Hua was startled for a moment and asked, “Where did this token come from?”

Cheng Mo did not conceal anything and told Mo Hua the entire story from beginning to end:

“A few days ago, on a rest day, I, along with Situ, Hao Xuan, and Brother Yang, took on a job to catch a wanted criminal.”

“This bounty wasn't difficult. After we finished, we hurried back towards the sect. On the way, we saw a group of evil cultivators fighting with Dao Court officers.”

“You all took action to help?” Mo Hua asked.

“No,” Cheng Mo said honestly, “There were many of them, and we couldn't defeat them. Moreover, little senior brother, you taught us that matters with few benefits and high risks should be avoided as much as possible.”

Mo Hua was surprised, “Did I say that before?”

Cheng Mo affirmed, “You did.”

“Oh,” Mo Hua nodded, thinking that if he said it before, then he said it before. “What happened then?”

“Then, that group of evil cultivators was defeated. Some were captured by the Dao Court officers, and three escaped,” Cheng Mo said.

“You all went to chase them?”

“Yes,” Cheng Mo nodded, “The five of us, mimicking your appearance, little senior brother, wore concealing cloaks and quietly followed them.”

Mo Hua: “……”

“Then what? What happened?” Mo Hua asked again.

Cheng Mo said, “We followed them all the way to a remote village. They went into an old courtyard in the village and then tightly locked the door.”

“According to what you taught us, little senior brother, we pried open the outer array and entered the courtyard…”

“In the courtyard, from the outside, there was nothing unusual, but as we searched, we discovered that the soil beneath the surface was deep red. We don’t know how much blood it was soaked in. That’s when we realized that these few evil cultivators were not ordinary; they likely cultivated evil arts.”

“Deep red blood…” Mo Hua pondered thoughtfully, then said, “What happened after that? What did you all do?”

Cheng Mo said, “According to little senior brother’s rule, since the situation inside the house was unknown and the enemies were gathered, we naturally set up an array and exploded them all at once.”

Mo Hua nodded in satisfaction.

“But there was a slight accident…” Cheng Mo said.

Mo Hua took a bite of a chicken leg and listened to him continue.

Cheng Mo’s expression was a bit strange, “We set up the array, but before we could activate it, something happened inside the house. Those three evil cultivators ‘mutually gnawed’ at each other?”

“Mutually gnawed?” Mo Hua was startled and couldn’t help but ask, “What kind of gnawing?”

“The kind that makes you gnaw your elbow,” Cheng Mo said with an unbearable expression. “They were gnawing at each other’s necks, biting off skin and flesh like beasts, sucking each other’s blood…”

Sucking blood…

Mo Hua’s expression suddenly became clear. This probably determined the situation.

This group of evil cultivators were likely the “downline” disciples of that demon sect that sucks blood, who were spreading out.

Cheng Mo continued, “The three evil cultivators gnawed and bit at each other, covered in blood and with blurred flesh. We held our ground, waited for them to decide victory and defeat, and when two remained and one was injured, we detonated the array, exploding them into two dead and one remaining…”

“After the five of us moved together, we didn’t expend any effort and were unharmed. We just took down the last one!”

Cheng Mo’s expression was proud.

“Well done.” Mo Hua nodded in approval.

His little junior brothers were acting more and more steadily and did not disappoint his “cultivation” as their little senior brother.

Cheng Mo then said, “It’s a pity, these few evil cultivators were so poor they were practically rattling. There was nothing valuable on their bodies. We searched and searched, and only this token was still presentable.”

“We handed the people over to the Dao Court officers, but I secretly kept this token and brought it to you, little senior brother.”

Mo Hua looked at the blood-stained token engraved with demon patterns and fierce fangs and asked, “The appearance of this token is evil and strange. When you entered the mountain, didn’t the elders confiscate this token?”

Cheng Mo nodded, “They confiscated it, but I said this belonged to little senior brother. Elder Song hesitated a few times, then nodded and agreed.”

Now in Taixu Gate, Mo Hua’s name was even more useful than that of some elders.

After all, without him, this suddenly appearing “first in the array path,” it was hard to say whether Taixu Gate would still be one of the eight great gates now.

The three sects merging and being able to be headed by “Taixu Gate” also more or less benefited from Mo Hua.

Everyone in Taixu Gate was aware of this point.

“But there are still rules,” Cheng Mo said. “Elder Song asked you to register with him when you have free time.”

With a token containing such evil qi, the sect wanted to keep a record of who held it, just in case.

Mo Hua also could not avoid this point.

Of course, Mo Hua was not someone who didn’t follow rules. He would properly abide by such rules.

“I know.” Mo Hua nodded, then transferred two hundred points of merit to Cheng Mo, “You worked hard. You and Situ and the others divide this up.”

Cheng Mo quickly declined, “How can I do that?”

“Close brothers should still settle accounts clearly. Since you all gave me the token, I naturally cannot take it for free,” Mo Hua said.

Of course, the main reason was that his merit points were already “capped” and he couldn’t use them up anyway. Naturally, he wanted to give some benefits to these little junior brothers.

Cheng Mo was also not polite and said with a face full of smiles, “Thank you, little senior brother! Then I will respectfully obey.”

If it were other things, he would still be polite, but merit points were different.

Unlike the “big tycoon” Mo Hua, these disciples were really short of merit points.

Especially now that they were already in the late stage of foundation building, their cultivation methods had reached the last stage of the second grade. Next, they still had to forge their life treasure, prepare for core formation matters…

Merit points were spent like flowing water.

The merit points Mo Hua gave, although not too many, still made them feel much more at ease.

“Right, little senior brother…” Cheng Mo quietly asked, “When exactly can you cultivate to the late stage of foundation building?”

The group of “little junior brothers” around also looked at Mo Hua eagerly.

Mo Hua sighed.

He also wanted to!

He was just stuck at a bottleneck. These little junior brothers didn’t understand the bitterness of cultivating Tianyan Art.

“Eat your meal.” Mo Hua waved his hand.

“Oh…” The crowd then very sensibly buried their heads in their food.

After the midday meal, Mo Hua went to the mountain gate and found Elder Song. He registered the blood-stained token, engraved with demon patterns and fierce fangs, which was clearly from an evil demon cultivator, for safekeeping.

Elder Song did not make things difficult for Mo Hua. On the contrary, he was very amiable to Mo Hua.

Before, when Mo Hua asked for leave, he still had quite a bit of complaint, but now, even if Mo Hua “skipped class,” Elder Song would likely praise Mo Hua for being “unconventional,” having “his own methods of cultivation,” and “not following the crowd…”

Mo Hua’s principle was to respect those who respected him.

Elder Song treated him kindly, and he was also very polite to Elder Song.

Elder Song was even happier. After Mo Hua left, he told several elders beside him:

“Neither arrogant nor discouraged, neither proud nor negative, respecting teachers and honoring elders, polite and refined, he will surely become a great talent in the future…”

Several elders beside him nodded in agreement.

But a familiar elder teased him, “Elder Song, you didn’t say that before. I remember a few years ago, you still said this child, relying on the support of Old Mister Xun, asked for leave every few days, was naughty, a troublemaker, and would surely be difficult to become a great talent?”

Elder Song’s face sank, and he drew a line, “That was the past me, it has nothing to do with the present me.”

The crowd smiled at his words.

After Mo Hua registered at Elder Song’s place, he brought the demon patterned token back to his disciple residence and planned to disassemble it and restore the words inside, according to his habit.

At first, Mo Hua was just doing it as a routine and didn’t pay too much attention.

But just when he lifted the cover of this token with his “skilled” disassembly method, Mo Hua’s face changed.

Beneath the demon patterned token, with white bone as the framework, were inherently constructed extremely complex yuan magnetic array patterns, and a token structure he had never seen before.

“This… isn’t a transmission book order?”

Mo Hua was stunned for a moment, then his pupils suddenly shrank.

“This is… a sect order?!”

Mo Hua inhaled a cool breath.

Sect order…

If he guessed correctly, those few evil cultivators who were mutually gnawing and biting and sucking blood were branch disciples of the demon sect currently being surrounded by Dao Court officers.

That also meant that this sect order was a token of the demon sect?

The sect order that Cheng Mo and the other little junior brothers brought back for him was a genuine “demon sect order”?

Mo Hua was shocked in his heart, for a moment finding it hard to believe.

Subsequently, he couldn’t help but be overjoyed in his heart.

Demon sect order!

This was truly a good thing, hard to come by in a thousand years.

The most symbolic and important token of each sect was the sect order.

Qianxue State was still relatively okay because, after all, it was a sect that “transmitted the Dao and taught,” and some rules were not too strict.

But Mo Hua heard that many other types of sects, such as “hidden world sects,” “family sects,” “spirit business sects,” “industry sects,” and “outside law sects,” had very strict rules regarding the possession of sect orders.

Some sects even genuinely said, “the order is with the person, the order perishes, the person perishes.”

If a sect disciple lost their sect order, it was equivalent to losing their identity as a “sect disciple” and they would receive severe punishment from the sect.

In extreme cases, their cultivation would be abolished, and they would be expelled from the sect.

Not to mention the token of a demon sect.

If a demon sect order was lost, the disciple holding the order would probably find it hard to even die quickly.

This sect order carried significant meaning…

Mo Hua’s heart was pounding, and he began to carefully and cautiously disassemble this demon sect order…

This demon sect order was somewhat similar to the Taixu Order.

A part of the “yuan magnetic transmission” function was integrated in the middle of the token. From the surface, it indeed looked like an ordinary transmission book order.

But besides the “transmission book” function, a whole set of systems was necessarily built inside, including sect maintenance, organizational structure, upper and lower conveyance, and possibly even a task assignment and sect reward and punishment system similar to Taixu Gate’s “merit record.”

Although the token was small, it contained everything.

From the grade perspective, this demon sect order was necessarily far inferior to the Taixu Order.

But from the structure perspective, this demon sect order was again more complex than the Taixu Order.

The Taixu Order was too high-end.

Its inherent yuan magnetic array system was very likely a fifth-grade array, and it was very likely based on a set of yuan magnetic grand arrays.

The core part was either built deep in Taixu Mountain or sealed inside the Taixu Order.

The Taixu Order that Mo Hua could see was just the appearance.

While this demon sect order’s construction was actually much lower-end than the Taixu Order, it was precisely because it was low-end that its inherent array could not be sealed, so it appeared more complex.

Mo Hua carefully and cautiously split the structure of the demon sect order, separated the fixed and unfixed two layers of magnetic patterns, and began to parse the fixed magnetic patterns.

But he researched for a long time and found that he still couldn’t understand it.

This structure was more complex, the unfixed magnetic patterns were more variable, and as for the fixed magnetic patterns, a large part of them was fundamentally beyond his comprehension.

The biggest problem was that he couldn’t understand the core principle of the sect order and couldn’t distinguish the biggest difference between “sect order” and “transmission book order” in terms of underlying logic.

Without this, he had no way to start parsing the functional structure of the sect order.

Mo Hua had long since experienced the feeling that his own array attainments were still far from sufficient…

Learning had no end.

Mo Hua pondered for a bit and decided to go ask.

If he didn’t know, he would learn. If he didn’t understand, he would ask.

Even if he was now the first in array discussion in Qianxue and the leader of the array path, it didn’t mean he knew everything.

Arrays were vast and profound, and he still had a long way to go.

As for who to ask, Mo Hua had already planned.

He took the time to find Zheng Fang and asked Zheng Fang to help ask if Elder Zheng had free time recently so he could visit him.

Soon, Elder Zheng replied, saying he had free time.

Thus, several days later, in a private room of the teahouse in Taixu City.

Mo Hua and Elder Zheng drank tea together.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, Mo Hua got straight to the point and asked about the “sect order.”

Elder Zheng was a bit surprised.

This matter was no longer a problem of being beyond the scope or not.

Elder Zheng said with a serious expression, “Let me first remind you of one sentence. Sect orders concern sect secrets. If you disassemble another person’s sect order and are discovered, you are very likely to be chased to the ends of the earth and will not stop until you die…”

Mo Hua’s expression faltered, “Just disassembling it once is so serious?”

He only knew that if a sect order was lost, the sect disciple would be in big trouble.

But he didn’t realize that an outsider disassembling a sect order once would also commit such a serious crime.

Elder Zheng said, “Disassembling it once is at most just destroying the sect order, but… is what you did simple ‘disassembly’?”

Elder Zheng looked at Mo Hua, his eyebrows slightly raised.

Mo Hua smiled awkwardly and didn’t speak.

Elder Zheng thought for a moment and first asked, “Has Old Mister Xun taught you this?”

Mo Hua shook his head.

Old Mister Xun only taught some yuan magnetic arrays and didn’t teach other things too deeply.

Moreover, he estimated that Old Mister Xun wouldn’t teach him, so he directly went to ask Elder Zheng.

Elder Zheng thought for a moment and nodded slightly, “This is indeed a bit beyond the scope. It’s reasonable that Old Mister Xun didn’t teach it. Moreover, strictly speaking, this should not be the array path that Old Mister Xun is good at…”

Mo Hua was doubtful, “Old Mister Xun is a fifth-grade array master. He isn’t good at yuan magnetic arrays?”

Elder Zheng shook his head, “Each field has its specialization. Arrays are vast and profound. Even a master of arrays with deep attainments cannot be proficient in everything.”

“What’s more, what sect orders involve are more complex, more special array principles, and the meaning is significant.”

“This problem is even more serious than you think. Old Mister Xun didn’t teach it, probably also afraid that you would cause trouble.”

Mo Hua seemed to understand and nodded.

Elder Zheng looked deeply at Mo Hua, flicked his fingers, and several array flags flew out, arranging themselves around. Then he lowered his voice and said to Mo Hua:

“If you want to learn this array, I can teach you, but you have to think clearly. Once you learn it, you must absolutely not tell anyone, and even more so, you must not let anyone know.”

“Otherwise, if this matter is leaked, you are very likely to be pulled into the taboo ‘blacklist’ by most sects. You will be guarded against wherever you go, you will be remembered by unscrupulous people, and some people will wish to kill you and then quickly…”

Mo Hua’s heart tightened, and his expression became much more serious.

“Do you still want to learn?” Elder Zheng confirmed once.

Mo Hua thought for a moment and nodded seriously, “I want to learn.”

The more taboo, the more hidden, the more others are prevented from learning, that precisely indicates that this array is more powerful.

Since it is a powerful array, there is no reason not to learn it.

Moreover, he still had many inheritances that couldn’t see the light, and he didn’t lack this one or two.

Elder Zheng nodded, “Good.”

Mo Hua thought for a moment and suddenly realized a problem: “Senior Zheng, you said that once you learn this array, you can’t let people know. Haven’t you also learned it? Aren’t you afraid that others will know?”

Elder Zheng said calmly, “Others don’t know.”

Mo Hua was surprised.

Elder Zheng said, “In this world, the number of people who truly know my thunder magnetic arrays does not exceed the number of fingers on one hand.”

Mo Hua was shocked.

He didn’t think that the thick-browed, big-eyed Elder Zheng could hide secrets so deeply.

Mo Hua hesitated, “You are telling me such confidential matters, is it okay?”

Elder Zheng nodded, “Believe and don’t doubt, doubt and don’t believe. Since I am telling you, I naturally know what I am doing.”

Mo Hua felt a sense of being trusted and was also a little moved.

“Don’t worry, I will definitely not tell anyone.” Mo Hua nodded seriously.

Seeing this, Elder Zheng nodded:

“You understand well. I will now teach you the underlying principle of this sect order. You can research it first, but before forming a golden core, there is no need to spend too much thought on this.”

Then Elder Zheng paused, drank a mouthful of tea, organized his thoughts, and began to explain:

“My Zheng family inherits ancient thunder arrays and researches the path of the eight trigrams thunder law.”

“The word ‘thunder’ truly permeates heaven and earth. The knowledge is too profound. My Zheng family has researched the path of thunder for so many years and has roughly divided it into two sources: one for thunderclap, and one for thunder magnetic.”

“Above the nine heavens, thunderclap is born, with boundless power, having the might to wipe out all things and destroy heaven and earth.”

“Between heaven and earth, thunder magnetic is everywhere, reaching everywhere and nowhere to be found, capable of transmitting books a thousand miles away and transmitting sound in a thought.”

“The people of the world only know that my Zheng family researches the path of ‘thunderclap.’”

“But this path of thunder is extremely rigid and positive, with extremely heavy killing intent. Those who cultivate it must have a fearless Dao heart, be upright and honest. Few people have ever been able to cultivate it. Even if cultivated, it cannot be easily used.”

“While my Zheng family’s livelihood foundation for the majority of array masters is actually still ‘thunder magnetic array.’”

“Thunder magnetic array is also a derivative of the path of thunder, with wide applications, and most Zheng family disciples can learn it…”

Mo Hua nodded.

Zheng Fang initially didn’t accept him as his little senior brother and just gave him a set of basic thunder magnetic array diagrams passed down from his family to test him.

“But,” Elder Zheng’s gaze deepened, “the majority of cultivators in this world, including the majority of array masters, have misunderstandings about thunder magnetic array.”

“Different trades are like different mountains, and this is even more so in arrays. Separated by one array category, you are very likely separated by a mountain range…”

“Basic five elements and eight trigrams are still okay, they have common ground, but the eight trigrams of odd doors, such as Qian array, Kun array, thunder array, the knowledge is very profound and you fundamentally don’t understand it without research.”

“As for others, such as yin yang, three talents, four symbols, seven stars, etc. arrays, let alone.”

“Those who learn arrays are all called array masters, but the difference between array masters is so great, and the knowledge barriers are so high, it is even comparable to the distinction between humans and dogs.”

“The eight trigrams thunder array system, especially thunder magnetic, is also like this.”

“Ordinary array masters are not proficient in this way and often mix up yuan magnetic and thunder magnetic, but they fundamentally don’t understand that yuan magnetic and thunder magnetic are actually two completely different frameworks.”

“‘Yuan magnetic’ is at most things at the application level, while the words ‘thunder magnetic’ involve true array secrets that cannot be told to others…”

Mo Hua’s eyes were bright, listening extremely seriously.

Elder Zheng also taught extremely seriously.

Just at this time, Elder Zheng still didn’t realize that he was opening a door for Mo Hua, a door to perceive heaven and earth, control thunder magnetic, and see through origins…