As for the operation with Gao Rong, we needed to make it plausible that our relationship was souring, so I basically ignored him, spending as much time as possible away from the residential district. Another thing I mainly ignored was my sect rating. I anticipated breaking through not just to the 5th, but also the 6th Spirit Realm in very short order once my bottleneck was dealt with, so other than grinding for cores in the sect's magical beast game reserve, and entering the King of the Mountain tournament one more time with the goal of gaining cores from beasts found past the 4th checkpoint, I only entered enough events and official duels to keep my hand in. I conjectured it was largely because of that that no one seemed to attempt to lure me out of the sect or otherwise attempt to harm me.