Jiang Chen's lecture put the Danqian Palace disciples on edge, making them realize that trying to coast along here, living easy lives, was simply not going to fly.
He had said what needed to be said, and Jiang Chen saw no need to keep harping on the matter.
After leaving the chamber, he called Pill King Bu and Pill King Lü Feng into the room and asked them about Taiyuan Pavilion's recent developments. Both were seasoned veterans who understood the weight of things, so there was nothing to fault them on.
Ever since Ling Hui'er had gone to the Young Lord's manor, Ling Su had rarely stayed in Glazed King City. He was a man who thrived on adventure and preferred his old trade. With his younger daughter now completely safe, he had grown restless and had departed Glazed King City years ago to roam and explore on his own.
Jiang Chen suspected that Ling Su had gone out searching for Ling Bi'er's whereabouts.
Speaking of Ling Bi'er, Jiang Chen's heart ached with concern. He recalled how, back in the Myriad Phenomena Extreme Realm, Ling Bi'er had sacrificed herself without hesitation, purely to warn him of the invaders' ambush.
Because of this, Jiang Chen always felt he owed Ling Bi'er a debt he could never fully repay.
"Sigh. After Danqian Palace was destroyed, Palace Master Danchi vanished without a trace, and the higher-ups either perished or scattered. Rebuilding the sect—I wonder if that will ever be possible?"
This matter had always been a heavy stone sitting on Jiang Chen's heart, one he could not set down.
He remembered how deeply Palace Master Danchi had valued him. After all these years, the restoration of Danqian Palace still seemed impossibly far off. That left Jiang Chen with a lingering sense of guilt.
Yet he also knew that rebuilding Danqian Palace could never be accomplished overnight. If he wanted to use the forces at his disposal to raise the banner of reconstruction, that in itself would not be difficult.
The real difficulty was that rebuilding Danqian Palace required Danqian Palace's own people. The sect's biggest problem right now was a shortage of manpower.
There needed to be at least some of Danqian Palace's senior figures to stand forward and rally the call. There also needed to be more of Danqian Palace's bloodline to make the rebuilding meaningful.
Otherwise, with just the handful of them, even if they rebuilt Danqian Palace, it would mean very little.
What was more, Jiang Chen had grown somewhat disappointed with this particular group. None of them—not even Shen Sanhuo—were the kind of people who could carry Danqian Palace's fortune on their shoulders.
To uphold Danqian Palace's destiny, at the very least one needed talent on the level of Shen Qinghong or Ling Bi'er. Of course, the ideal candidate in Jiang Chen's heart was actually Mu Gaoqi.
It was a pity that since the catastrophe, Mu Gaoqi had been tossed from place to place. He had ended up in Pill Fire City, and whether he was alive or dead, no one even knew.
"Perhaps this is an opportunity. It may be time to make a trip to Pill Fire City." The thought surged through Jiang Chen's mind.
Mu Gaoqi was as close as a brother to him. Jiang Chen had always admired Mu Gaoqi—this pure, kind-hearted, if somewhat introverted, alchemy genius.
In terms of innate talent, Mu Gaoqi's alchemy aptitude even surpassed that of Lin Yanyu, the scion of Pill Fire City's traditional noble houses.
An Innate Wood Spirit Physique—throughout the entire Upper Eight Regions, that was a top-tier, first-rate talent.
"Mu Gaoqi is like a brother to me. If I don't rescue him from his suffering, how can I rest easy? Besides, I'm in need of people right now. To let a genius like Mu Gaoqi languish out there as someone's slave—that is something I cannot bear."
Before emerging from the Glazed King Pagoda, Jiang Chen had already been thinking about going out to train in the wider world.
Of course, this journey would not be solely to rescue Mu Gaoqi. There was an even greater reason: to find his father, Jiang Feng.
Truth be told, since Mu Gaoqi's location was already known, while Jiang Chen remained concerned, he was not overly anxious. After all, Mu Gaoqi was not in immediate mortal danger.
But his father, Jiang Feng—who had ventured into the Upper Eight Regions with merely a Spirit Realm cultivation—was a far greater worry. Every time the thought crossed his mind, his head started to ache.
Yet the human territories were vast as the ocean. Even with the intelligence networks of Peacock Sacred Mountain and the Panlong Grand Clan operating covertly to search everywhere, after all these years there had still been no news whatsoever.
That only deepened Jiang Chen's anxiety.
The greatest difficulty in finding his father lay in the fact that neither his father nor his mother had left behind any useful clues.
That was the core of the problem.
Although his father had left a letter, Jiang Chen had long since committed its contents to memory. The clues that letter could provide were practically nonexistent—there was simply nothing of real value to go on.
Apart from knowing that his father was somewhere in the Upper Eight Regions, Jiang Chen had no leads at all.
As for his mother's background in this life, he was almost entirely in the dark. He had once considered traveling to the Lan Clan, the family that had originally taken his mother in, to ask about her history.
But when he later returned to the Eastern Empire, he discovered that the Lan Clan had vanished without a trace—perhaps they had already been wiped out.
In theory, the Lan Clan was nominally his maternal grandfather and uncles' family. But Jiang Chen had never had any particularly fond feelings toward the Lan Clan.
So he had not made much effort to investigate their whereabouts.
His cousin Xue Tong, on the other hand, was a true grandson of the Lan Clan, a person of actual blood relation to them. Unfortunately, Xue Tong had been no more welcomed by the Lan Clan than anyone else.
As a result, Xue Tong had no leads regarding the Lan Clan's affairs either.