Chapter 95: The Sketch of the Immortal Village

“Damn it! What secret trick does that lowborn wretch Ye Mo have, that makes his people so utterly loyal no one can pry them away?” Zheng Yiqing roared in fury, clutching a list of assistant students in his hand.

This was the list he had intended to poach under Wu Yunfei’s name.

But his plan to strike at Ye Mo’s foundations had failed. Not a single person from Ye Mo’s side had been lured away.

Zheng Yiqing could not help glancing at the people around him: Steward Cao, He An, Master Hou, and three or four martial guards who had followed him here from the Zheng Kingdom.

His eyes fell on the slightly stooped Steward Cao, and he could not help sighing inwardly. On his side, the only one truly devoted to him, no doubt, was this old steward of more than sixty years.

He An had long been his most capable aide, but he was a free man, having remained at his side only to repay the old marquis’s kindness. He could leave at any time.

As for Master Hou, he was full of schemes and plots, but when it came to loyalty, he was probably the least loyal of them all. If some cultivator of higher standing were to recruit him, this Master Hou would likely be the first to depart in search of greater prospects.

Zheng Yiqing felt quite helpless. Among his subordinates, only Master Hou was indispensable for planning and advice. Without him, many things would go awry.

“Young Lord, this humble one’s stratagem has failed. I beg to be punished!” Master Hou bowed and asked for blame.

It was he who had proposed that Zheng Yiqing make contact with Wu Yunfei of the Immortal Academy and use that leverage to dismantle Ye Mo’s faction.

Yet who could have imagined that this plan, which should have succeeded, would strangely end in utter failure?

“This is not the master’s fault! It is all because of that lowborn Ye Mo. Who knows what kind of trickery he used, what sort of bewitching nonsense he fed them? Even Wu Yunfei, ranked seventh in the Immortal Academy, could not pry away the people at his side!” Zheng Yiqing waved a hand and cursed bitterly.

Master Hou lowered his head, though inwardly he was a little contemptuous of Zheng Yiqing.

If Zheng Yiqing had not been born into the Marquis Zheng household, if he had not had the support of several cultivators of the Zheng clan, he would have been utterly worthless, not even as good as Ye Mo, that common-born rogue cultivator.

Following Zheng Yiqing, one could see no future at all.

Still, Master Hou had no better path for the moment, so he could only remain with Zheng Yiqing for now. He still wanted to see whether Zheng Yiqing could establish an immortal village of his own and whether there might yet be a better road ahead.

Seeing that, Master Hou wisely fell silent and stepped aside, saying no more.

Lately, Zheng Yiqing had grown irritable and anxious, his temper unpredictable.

His position at Azure Cloud Immortal Academy was far from favorable.

Although he had gained entry to Azure Cloud Immortal Academy with the financial support of several Zheng family cultivators and become a city lord student, that little wealth was nowhere near enough. The academy was full of sons and daughters of powerful clans and noble houses, each one far beyond him.

The lofty confidence and ambition he had carried when leaving Eastsea Immortal Village had long since been worn down within Azure Cloud Immortal Academy.

If not for Master Hou’s constant advice, Zheng Yiqing would not even have known where to begin.

“Master Hou, is there any way left to deal with Ye Mo?” Zheng Yiqing vented his rage, then called Master Hou by name once more.

“Young Lord! This humble one believes that dealing with Ye Mo is merely a side matter. The Zheng family’s true goal is to establish an immortal village of our own. Everything should still serve that end! Make friends with more students, build up connections, and prepare early for the graduation assessment. Even if there is only one chance in ten, among ten places, it may not be impossible to seize one!” Master Hou thought for a moment and said with resignation.

“Establish an immortal village of our own?”

Those words grated harshly on Zheng Yiqing’s ears.

He thought of how much Zheng Hongjun had labored for the Zheng clan to have an immortal village of their own, and how hard he had struggled to gather that thousand spirit stones, and he could not help feeling a trace of shame.

Yet establishing an immortal village was no easy matter.

Among the more than a hundred city lord students at Azure Cloud Immortal Academy, which one did not have a stronger foundation than he did? He had been pushed straight down to the nineties and could only look on in bitter admiration.

“Compared with building an immortal village, dealing with Ye Mo is easier,” Zheng Yiqing muttered after hearing Master Hou’s advice, his thoughts drifting elsewhere once again.

Time passed in a flash, and more than ten days went by. Before long, it was the end-of-month required class for city lord students. City lord students only had two classes each month, but each one was of immense importance.

Inside the Greenstone Hall, Kuang Zhen sat cross-legged on the lecture dais, reviewing with divine sense the students’ submitted Immortal Village Design Charts. This time, most of the students had learned their lesson and submitted charts in hopes of earning a favorable evaluation.

Below him, the city lord students watched Kuang Zhen nervously.

Every evaluation he gave would cause them to rise or fall on the potential ranking of city lord students. Even for the sake of appearances, none of them wanted to lag too far behind and end up at the very bottom among the students.

Kuang Zhen, however, frowned deeply.

Designing an immortal village was an extremely difficult task, touching on nearly every detail: terrain, materials, village functions, city wall defenses, towers, immortal guard arrangements, functional buildings, commerce and trade, and more. Every detail was a vast and intricate undertaking.

The situation was not encouraging. In just fifteen days, most of the students could not possibly handle such a complex immortal village design and had submitted only very rough sketches.

A sketch was naturally worlds apart from a truly usable Immortal City Design Chart.

A real Immortal City Design Chart had to be detailed down to the last point, specifying city wall materials, the power of all kinds of arrow towers and cannon towers, and every restriction. It would even include detailed construction plans for all manner of important mechanisms.

Simply put, with an Immortal City Design Chart in hand, all that remained was to find the proper materials and craftsmen, and such an immortal city could be built directly.

A sketch, by contrast, served only for analysis. It was merely a simplified drawing, with little detail. No immortal city could be built from a sketch alone.

Still, from such sketches, Kuang Zhen could discern the city lord students’ broader vision and analytical ability.

What the academy was now cultivating was the strategic level of the city lord students, the grand perspective. Fine details would only be gradually encountered as their studies deepened.

“Forty-seven fail, twenty pass, four good, three excellent,” Kuang Zhen said, shaking his head as he announced the results.

Perhaps because this assignment had been too difficult, a large number of students had failed, and very few had obtained good or excellent ratings.

“Sixth place, Zhang Zhigao...”

“Fifth place, Ren Haiping...”

“Fourth place, Wu Yunfei, good! His immortal village sketch chooses the site well and has a rigorous structure. However, it still has shortcomings; the defenses are not strict enough and leave blind spots.”

The jade slip Kuang Zhen was currently evaluating belonged to Wu Yunfei. He had been seventh in the ranking, and now, with a good rating at fourth place, it was considered quite decent.

Wu Yunfei’s expression, however, was not very good. What he aimed for was excellent, and a place in the top three. Good was not bad, but compared with excellent, it still fell short by a whole level.

Kuang Zhen did not care what he thought.

“Next are the three excellent design sketches. They belong to Bai Xijun, Lou Jiejun, and Ye Mo. Each of the three has its own strengths and weaknesses,” Kuang Zhen said.

Inside the Greenstone Hall, many of the students’ faces changed. Last time, Ye Mo had been rated outstanding; this time, although he was not outstanding, he still made it into the top three.

“Third place, Ye Mo’s design... extremely efficient. With the least material consumption, it realizes the immortal village’s various functions to the greatest extent. If an immortal village were built according to Ye Mo’s approach, none of its functions would be reduced, yet the cost would be only one third that of a normal immortal village. His sketch has the lowest construction cost of anyone here!”

“Second place, Bai Xijun’s design is meticulous and attentive to detail. This design considers almost every aspect. If it were further refined in detail, it could even be used directly to establish an immortal city.”

“First place, Lou Jiejun’s design is extremely bold and full of grandeur. This is something the others cannot match. The site is well chosen, and it also takes into account the harsh environment and potential threats around it, making preventive arrangements from the very beginning of construction. That is exceedingly rare.

“To realize this design would require a great deal of high-grade materials, and the cost would be more than three times that of an ordinary immortal village. However, with the Lou family’s foundations, even this design would not be difficult to achieve.”

Kuang Zhen evaluated the three sketches one by one.

The hall erupted in an uproar.

“Because Ye Mo’s cost is the lowest, he gets rated excellent? That works too?”

One city lord student blurted it out.

“Teacher Kuang, I protest! Just because the cost is low, he gets rated excellent? If I had known, I would have made mine even cheaper. Wouldn’t I have gone straight into the top three for excellence?”

Another picked up the thread and shouted.

“Very well. If you can achieve the basic functions of an immortal village at a lower cost, then this old man can place you third for this lesson. Ye Mo’s cost is one third. Can you do it with one quarter?”

Kuang Zhen said indifferently.

The student froze, pondered for a long while, and then honestly shrank back.

The fact that Ye Mo’s immortal village design could be built at such a low cost was already an astonishing feat. If one wanted to make it even cheaper, the effort required would not be just one or two months, and even then it might not be possible. It would certainly delay the biweekly assessment.

The students in the hall were all talking at once.

Among those least able to accept this result, aside from certain proud and haughty scions of the most distinguished clans, Zheng Yiqing stood foremost.

“Impossible. Ye Mo must have cheated! He used spirit stones to hire someone to draw this sketch for him—yes, that must be it! I’m going to catch him on it!” Zheng Yiqing’s face twisted with malice as he stared resentfully at Ye Mo in the distance. His sketch had been rated as failing, placing him in the eighties, far, far below Ye Mo.

Nearby, Wu Yunfei and some of the noble-clan students, after their brief shock, looked at Zheng Yiqing with a measure of pity. Had this fellow gone mad with thoughts of revenge?

To cheat, one would certainly need a cultivator at the city lord level. Immortal city design charts were drawn by city lords themselves.

Which city lord, full and idle, would bother helping a common rogue cultivator like Ye Mo cheat?

If Ye Mo really had that kind of ability and could invite a true city lord to draw a sketch for him, then he would not be an ordinary rogue cultivator in the first place, nor would he have been dead last, second from the bottom, on the initial potential ranking for city lord students.

With the immense strength of Azure Cloud Immortal Academy, there was no way it would be unable to uncover the background of a city lord student within its own institution.