The New Official Takes Office

The Imperial Horse Immortal Division stood on a riverbank several dozen miles outside Lingyang Prefecture.

Unlike the solemn, imposing Merit Evaluation Immortal Office, this place possessed a grandeur of vast, open expanses.

Rolling pastures stretched far and wide, covered in immortal grass imbued with pure spiritual energy. It swayed in the wind, rippling in waves of verdant green.

Across the pastures, hundreds upon thousands of rare birds and exotic beasts, dragon steeds and phoenix fledglings, either galloped and cried out or lay resting with their hooves tucked beneath them.

All were mounts belonging to various immortal gods.

Their bloodlines were extraordinary, their foundations profound.

Several menial immortal clerks dressed in coarse grey tunics labored over a fodder cutter, chopping towering piles of immortal grass into lengths.

Nearby, others carried wooden buckets to draw spiritual water from the river and pour it into an enormous trough carved from white jade.

"This sort of crude labor really grinds a man down."

A younger Grey-Robed Immortal Clerk wiped the sweat from his forehead, set down his heavy wooden bucket, and grumbled aloud.

"We're Chess-Player Realm cultivators, at least. Yet after entering the Heavenly Court, we've been reduced to chopping grass and fetching water for these beasts. We don't even get a proper glance."

An older immortal clerk beside him sneered, never stopping his fodder cutter. "Count your blessings."

"Do you think the Imperial Horse Immortal Division is easy to get into? Who knows how many rogue cultivators outside are battering their heads bloody trying to squeeze in?"

"We might only be unranked immortal servants, unable even to touch the edge of the immortal register, and we don't count as official Heavenly Court personnel. But as long as we stick it out here, it's still better than scrambling through the mud on our own."