When Cheng Shanling saw that she didn't refuse, the smile on his face deepened.
"There are still several months before the hunting competition, so you don't have to rush to give me an answer right away. I'll tell you the rules first."
When the other party mentioned this, Xu Chunniang naturally had no reason to refuse, so she patiently listened to his story.
Hundreds of years ago, there was no such grand event as a hunting contest.
It can be as short as thirty or forty years, or as long as seventy or eighty years. Every once in a while, the five islands on the southern route will still encounter beast tides.
Although the frequency of beast tides encountered by the five southern islands is not as frequent as that of medium and large islands.
But every time the animal tide hits, it is an extremely serious crisis for the five southern islands.
There used to be nine small islands on the southern route, four of which have been annihilated by the tide of beasts and will sink into the sea forever.
In order to reduce the strength of these sea monsters, the five surviving islands on the southern route, led by Coral Island, organized monks from the five islands to hold a hunting competition.
Gathering the power of the five island monks, they go deep into the sea every ten years to kill the sea monsters.
Ranking will be calculated based on the number of monsters killed, and generous rewards will be given out.
This measure greatly reduced the pressure caused by the beast tide. Since the launch of the hunting competition, the five islands of Nansha have only experienced three beast tides in the past five or six hundred years.
Moreover, these three beast tides are easier to resist than before.
This also led to the Zhan family, headed by Coral Island, to pay more and more attention to the hunting competition.
Cheng Shanling said with a wry smile on his face.
"The ranking in this hunting competition is related to the distribution of sea areas among our cultivation families. Those who rank high will have the right to choose the sea area first.
The resource-rich sea areas near the coral islands are not our Cheng family’s turn at all.”
Xu Chunniang thought thoughtfully, on this Nansha Island, the Cheng family can still be ranked among the three major families.
However, Nansha Island does not stand out among the five islands. Looking at the entire five Nansha Islands, there are more than a dozen cultivation families, large and small, and a few strong casual cultivation forces. The Cheng family has become commonplace.
Therefore, it is not easy to get a good ranking in this hunting competition.
With ten foundation-building monks forming a group, the Cheng family could only send out two teams to participate in the hunting competition, and they had already lost half of the battle.
Cheng Shanling saw the hesitation on the other party's face and softened his tone.
"Don't worry, little friend, I won't make things difficult for others. As long as you agree to participate in the competition, regardless of ranking, the third floor of my Cheng family library will be permanently open to you from now on."
There was nothing Cheng Shanling could do about this move.
Excluding the old, weak, sick and disabled, all the foundation-building monks of the Cheng family plus the guest ministers could barely make up two teams.
But most of these monks are in the early and middle stages of foundation building. Only two of them have completed foundation building like Xu Chunniang.
This is also the reason why he values the other party so much.
Xu Chunniang agreed. With such generous conditions, she had no reason not to agree.
"Hahaha, I know Xu Xiaoyou will definitely agree to help me with this favor."
Cheng Shanling smiled heartily and said, "Can you get used to this Lingcha? I still have some here, so I will give it to you."
With that said, he took out a bag of spiritual tea and handed it over without hesitation.
Xu Chunniang couldn't help but had to accept, "Then from today onwards, can I go to the third floor of the library?"
Cheng Shanling nodded with a smile, immediately took out the token and said hello to the others.
Both parties were quite satisfied with the result. Xu Chunniang put away the spirit tea, said goodbye to Cheng Shanling and left the hall.
After she left, a handsome young man stepped into the hall at some point. He looked at his grandfather with a worried expression on his face.
"Grandpa, you made an exception and allowed an outsider to enter the third floor of the library. What should we do if she refuses to contribute in the hunting competition?"
Cheng Shanling smiled and took a sip of the cold tea, "I'm just taking a gamble."
"bet?"
The young man was stunned, not expecting to hear such an answer.
"Rules are dead, but people are alive. Qingjia, my Cheng family used to be famous in the nine islands on the southern front.
But now my Cheng family is getting worse and worse. If we still stick to those old rules and don't make changes, I'm afraid the five southern islands will no longer be able to accommodate my Cheng family."
The smile on Cheng Shanling's face disappeared without knowing when, and his tone was heavy.
Cheng Qingjia was silent, and suddenly understood the reason why his grandfather did this.
"It's my grandson who is incompetent."
Cheng Shanling shook his head with deep eyes.
"Three feet of ice is not a day's cold. The Cheng family has been inherited for too long and has been comfortable for too long. If the matter of Su Rong's girl hadn't come to me, I would not have known that such a vicious internal conflict had occurred in the family.
Fight...in short, changes must be made."
Cheng Qingjia was speechless, feeling the heavy burden on his body.
Outsiders look at the Cheng family as glamorous, but in fact the situation is not easy.
In the previous hunting competitions, the Cheng family had poor rankings, and the sea resources they received were also the worst.
I just hope that this time, grandpa can make the right bet.
Xu Chunniang didn't know about the conversation that took place after she left. After she returned to the library, she went straight to the third floor, and it turned out to be smooth.
After roughly scanning the collection of books on the third floor, she sighed in her heart that compared to the collection of books on the two floors below, the books here were obviously more valuable.
She found the bookshelf that was dedicated to recording anecdotes and strange things in the world of cultivation, and started looking through them one by one.
Half a month passed like this, and Xu Chunniang went through all the bone books on the bookshelf, but could not find a single word about the Dead Sea and the five northwest sects.
There is a book that mentions a giant black and white wheel that eats people, which looks a bit like the eyes of an evil-eyed beast.
Xu Chunniang put down the bone book in her hand with some regret and went to the bookshelf that recorded the formations.
The Cheng family has a rich collection of books, and there are also many bone books about formations. There are even dozens of bone books, which are related to the teleportation array.
Xu Chunniang's heart moved, she took one of them and looked through it.
However, after reading the bone book from beginning to end, she discovered that although the content recorded in it was related to the teleportation array, most of it taught people how to maintain the daily operation of the teleportation array.
She put the bone book in her hand back to its original position, and took another one next to it to take a closer look, only to see that it was all about how to repair the teleportation array.
Xu Chunniang took a few more coins and found that the contents were similar.
Or explain the precautions for using the teleportation array, or introduce the impact of various spiritual stones on the teleportation array.
In short, not a single bone book mentions the operating principles and key materials of the teleportation array.
Xu Chunniang frowned slightly. Did the Cheng family have no books on this subject, or did they hide such books?
She prefers the first possibility.
The third floor of the library was originally only open to monks of the Cheng family who were in the foundation stage and above. These people were the backbone of the Cheng family, and there was no reason for the Cheng family to hide the bone books.
If this is really the case, then who set up the teleportation array that the Cheng family currently owns?