Despite all the encouragement everyone gave him last night, actually meeting the Sect was still nerve-wracking. He felt a small knot in his throat like he always did just before he threw up, but he powered through it anyway. Like Jin said, ‘fake it till you make it’. For Xianghua’s sake—hells, for his sake too. This was going to be a massive success! And it looked like things were already going well. Elder Bingwen looked surprised for a brief moment, before he simply smiled and started stroking his chin. The others were staring at him with wide eyes, and a bunch of the disciples had their mouths wide open. He kept his Qi as a shroud around him like Xianghua said to do. It felt weird flexing like this. Nobody back home ever did it, mostly because it didn’t matter. But here? How powerful his cultivation was meant a lot of things… and apparently he was as strong as the previous Sect Master, with Xianghua now two stages stronger. “Thank you for the warm welcome, my disciples and Elders!” Xianghua said, her voice powerful, and reverberating around the courtyard—which was an absolutely stunning place. The architecture here was beautiful. The courtyard had massive stone pillars. They were inlaid with veins of topaz, jet, and white jade that had been worked to look like koi. The flagstones themselves were arranged in a grand, swirling mosaic of water currents, mountains, and clouds, threaded through by a dragon. It was all absolutely exquisite. “Now, you already know Elder Bingwen, don’t you, my husband?” “I do. Thank you for your blessings at our wedding, Elder Bingwen,” Gou Ren said, nodding.