"Ha! A pirate hunter, you say?"
After Koby finished telling Luffy about Zoro, Luffy's face lit up with a strange excitement.
"Sounds like a good guy!" He rubbed his chin and made a decision.
"All right — next stop, we go find this pirate hunter. If he's cool, we'll invite him to join!"
"Since the captain's decided, we set sail tomorrow," Bai Ye agreed. Zoro had once been thought of as a de-facto vice-captain of the Straw Hats in the old stories — a big sign of his importance — and Bai Ye didn't want to disrupt the flow of the original plot too much. After all, preserving the storyline as a guide made his spoiler advantage far more useful.
That night passed quietly.
The next morning, Bai Ye fixed a smile that could charm thousands of sea-going fans… and also made the pirates who'd been beaten the day before feel horribly uneasy. That same smile had flattened them into tears not long ago — the memory alone crushed their courage.
"Don't be nervous. I've got a favor to ask," Bai Ye said without pressure. "My captain needs to get to the nearest Marine base. Could you sail us there?"
Bai Ye's grin looked so radiant that the tied-and-gagged pirates felt as if they'd plunged into an ice well. Hands groped for the decks; they bowed and promised in a panic. Bai Ye's fingers flicked a strand of golden light and the ropes binding them slipped loose. He turned and left. Then, as they began to breathe, Bai Ye's voice floated back like a knife:
"Oh — one more thing. When we reach the Marine base, could you turn yourselves in to the Marines with Koby?"
Pirates: ???
Bai Ye must be a demon.
"Eh? Bai Ye, you're gonna sleep again?" Luffy cocked his head in surprise. Bai Ye had just asked him to stand guard while he did the same thing as before.
"Not exactly sleeping — cultivating." Bai Ye sighed and tried to explain patiently. "My spirit goes to another place where I can train faster. The golden light you saw came from that place."
"Whoa! There's a place like that?" Luffy didn't care about the difference between worldly training systems — he was hungry for the exotic. "Can I go too?"
"Not yet. Maybe in the future." Bai Ye chose his words carefully. "It's a place that can change according to my will."
Luffy's eyes turned into two shining stars. "I really want to go!"
Amidst the chaos of Luffy jumping and grabbing him, Bai Ye calmed the boy down and promised: "If I can bring you in, you'll be the first."
After arranging a few things with Koby and smoothing relations with the ship's crew, Bai Ye returned to his room and entered the Daoist Codex's inner landscape for a second session.
In Daoist terminology, the inner landscape is a space independent yet tied to the real world — an internal realm every practitioner of the Qimen arts might access. The stronger your understanding of the art, the deeper your control over that space. Bai Ye didn't own the landscape, but the Codex granted him sufficient permission.
First, timeflow: from his prior visit, Bai Ye estimated a ten-to-one ratio. Ten days inside the inner landscape equaled one day outside. For someone trying to level up fast, that was priceless. Daoist arts demanded comprehension more than brute effort — a slow, precise polishing of understanding. The inner landscape was the perfect grinder.
Second, space storage: Bai Ye sensed a pocket in the landscape where inert objects could be stored. Judging by feel, he could fit a whole Marine warship inside. As a transmigrator, a pocket like that was practical — essentially a pocket dimension for loot and gear.
Third, cultivation conditions: after forming Innate Qi, one needed to absorb the world's spirit-energy to raise qi reserves. Inside the inner landscape, the density of spiritual energy was at least ten times that of the outside — a cultivation heaven.
Finally, the best part: comprehension buff. In the inner landscape his insight was amplified — as if he'd been granted maxed-out. That meant he could break through bottlenecks far faster and condense years of progress into shorter spans.
If such a realm existed in the novels of Bai Ye's old life, armies of powerhouses would have bled over it. And for the first time since arriving, Bai Ye felt proud in his transmigrator chest. If he couldn't "clear" this world now, he might as well toss himself off a cliff.
He composed himself and chose what to cultivate next. He'd only just become a fledgling qi practitioner; getting deeper required work.
Bai Ye listed his weaknesses:
1) Insufficient Qi amount.
Innate Qi was the foundation of any qi practitioner. To grow faster, he needed a supreme cultivation method. He'd already made his choice: Pure Yang Limitless Art — the classic internal method founded by the legendary Zhang Sanfeng. Zhang was the only one historically called a cultivator; his heart-method was naturally perfect for raising qi. As Bai Ye already possessed Wudang martial foundations, learning Pure Yang would be doubly efficient.
2) Lack of top-tier Daoist spells.
Though Bai Ye had practiced Wudang martial arts for years and had been hailed by his sect master as a genius, martial skill alone wouldn't cut it for a cultivator in this world. The Daoist Codex detailed higher-tier arts — five-element techniques and the like — that could manipulate heaven and earth. Bai Ye needed a few signature spells.
After scanning the Codex, he settled on his initial choices.
Advance Chapters available on Patreon
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