Thirty Difficulties

It was a rainy night.

Dark clouds pressed down upon the city as a torrential downpour cascaded from the heavens, leaving the dim streets of Zichuan Market devoid of pedestrians.

"Creak!"

The back door of a building opened. Lin Changheng, his hair and beard scorched black and his expression dazed, stumbled into the curtain of rain clutching an old cloth bundle. He walked with a staggering, solitary gait, appearing from afar like a withered, walking corpse.

He did not know how long he had walked the distance of a mile, but only when a hint of warmth returned to his soaked skin did Lin Changheng slowly regain his senses.

A crude room with sparse furnishings forced itself into his vision.

Waves of memories began to unlock in his mind. The massive influx of information felt no less than an iron shovel churning through his brain, leaving him with a splitting headache.

He clearly remembered that just moments ago, the sun had been shining. As a graduate student in agronomy, he and his senior sister had been hard at work in a sorghum field researching high-yield techniques. He had never expected that a sudden darkness would overtake his vision, leading to his abrupt death.

As a reader of web novels, he knew that transmigration and rebirth were nothing to fear; in the depths of midnight dreams, he had even imagined himself soaring through the void, challenging the high heavens with a sword.

Yet, now that it had truly happened, he could not help but feel a tremor of panic. He gritted his teeth and slapped himself across the face. The crisp sound and the stinging pain made him let out a long sigh—

"I really have transmigrated. To be precise, I have broken through the veil of the womb..."

Quickly organizing the nearly thirty years of memories from before his awakening, Lin Changheng's brow, which had just begun to smooth, furrowed deeply once more.

Over a decade ago, while he was struggling to make a living in a mortal town after losing his parents, an Immortal Master had manifested his divinity. The entire city had erupted in a frenzy, with every household emptying out to send their children for spiritual testing in hopes of an immortal destiny.

According to the Immortal Master, any child or youth between the ages of seven and eighteen could step forward to test their spiritual roots.

Regardless of wealth or status, rank or station!

In the end, out of thousands, only three possessed spiritual roots.

Fortunately, he was one of them.

Amidst the desperate pleas of the common folk and the wide-eyed envy of the nobility, the three of them were ushered by the Immortal Master onto the back of a crane. With a slight flap of its wings, they vanished into the horizon like a streak of light.

They left behind a legend of immortality that would be recounted in the city for a hundred years.

He had been full of high spirits, believing that his hardships had ended and he was one step away from immortality. But after only three days, the cruel reality struck him down from the heavens and into the dust.

"Lin Changheng, miscellaneous spiritual roots!"

This was the testing assembly where the immortal seedlings from eight counties gathered—a grand event for various factions to carve up the new talent.

Once the announcement was made, Lin Changheng's spiritual roots, combined with the fact that he was nearly eighteen, meant he could not join a major sect. Even the slightly lesser cultivation families had high thresholds he could not cross, and even Foundation Establishment families shook their heads in refusal.

Only a Qi Refining family known as the Blackwater River Xu Clan extended an olive branch.

Though he hesitated, he understood that if he refused, he would either become a rootless, drifting rogue cultivator, or return to the mortal world to enjoy sixty years of fleeting glory.

Having stepped onto the path of immortality, how could he be content with the dust of the mortal realm?

No matter what, he had to give it a try!

And so, he resolutely made the decision to join the Xu Clan.

Without attending the subsequent feasts and celebrations, the elders of the Xu Clan immediately took the seedlings down the mountain, returned to their family estate, and began the assignments.

They offered two paths at the time.

One was to marry into the Xu Clan, take a daughter of the clan as a wife, and sire children for the Xu family.

The more children with spiritual roots one produced, the greater the rewards and the higher the status. The underlying logic was "many children, many blessings," essentially treating them like stud boars tasked with sowing as much seed as possible.

The other was the path of a guest elder. For a period of twelve years, the Xu Clan would provide support according to a set standard, such as spiritual stones, spiritual rice, and spiritual tea.

They were also allowed to choose one of the hundred crafts of cultivation mastered by the Xu Clan to apprentice in. If they could reach a professional grade, they would succeed, their status would rise, and their rations would increase!

But if they failed, they would be required to fulfill the duties of a Xu Clan member by participating in the dangerous, barbaric frontier reclamation.

Hearing this, Lin Changheng could not help but marvel that they were indeed a righteous family; the pros and cons were clearly laid out for one to choose, without any coercion or deception.

Eighty percent of the seedlings chose to "marry in" after much deliberation, while only twenty percent chose the "apprentice" path—his former self among them.

He was unwilling to give up; he wanted to fight for more.

Because his fire-type spiritual root [Spirit Rhyme] was the highest at eight strands, he was advised to study alchemy.

Thus, he became an alchemy apprentice, watching the furnace and tending the fires at the "Xu Family Alchemy Shop" opened in Zichuan Market. He had stayed there for eleven years.

He had first touched the path of immortality at eighteen, and eleven years had passed in the blink of an eye; he was now approaching thirty.

He had never reached a professional grade to become an alchemist.

His cultivation was currently stuck at the second level of Qi Refining, and for some reason, it was difficult to advance further.

The Xu Clan's twelve-year contract was looming, and in one year, the "Great Reclamation" of the Endless Wilderness, which occurred every twenty years, would mobilize once again...

If he could not become a ranked alchemist by then, he would be sent to the front lines of the reclamation to fight fierce, man-eating demonic beasts day and night, risking his life amidst poisonous insects and miasma. He was not skilled in combat; he would surely die.

Furthermore, with the reclamation approaching, various factions were retracting their influence, making the area outside the market even more chaotic and dangerous. There was nowhere else to run, and he was clearly a prime target in the eyes of rogue cultivators.

All these factors had driven him to the brink of anxiety. During his forced attempt to refine pills just now, the furnace had exploded, leaving him physically and mentally exhausted until he finally lost consciousness.

As the saying goes, one must break in order to build; it was precisely because of this that he had awakened overnight!

After sorting through the memories prior to his awakening, Lin Changheng could not help but draw a deep breath.

The situation was truly dire.

It was a scenario where failure to become an alchemist of the entry-level rank was practically a death sentence.

Yet, he quickly forced himself to calm down, beginning to ponder the crux of the matter and seek a way to break the deadlock.

Soon, his eyes lit up as he discovered something amiss, and he began to think deeply:

"Generally speaking, the second level of Qi Refining rarely has a bottleneck; bottlenecks only exist in the middle and late stages of Qi Refining. Why would my cultivation be stuck at the second level..."

"Could it be... related to the loss of vital essence over these years?"

"And that this has further led to my weak control in alchemy and insufficient sustained mana?"

Lin Changheng considered a possibility: ever since he was born, he had suffered from a deficiency of blood and Qi. It was very mild and did not affect his daily life, so he had never paid it any mind.

Once he began cultivation, however, it became more frequent and severe!

Every single month, without fail, there would be a collapse of vital essence, as if some ghost or monster were secretly siphoning it away, leaving him listless and drained of mana for a period of time.

He had consumed blood-nourishing tonics and applied protective talismans, but nothing had worked.

"That must be it!"

Lin Changheng slapped the table. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. Just as he was about to continue pondering, a sense of weakness from the netherworld suddenly washed over him again. "Damn it, it's happening again!"

This familiar sensation of his vital essence being drawn away caused Lin Changheng's expression to change drastically, yet he was powerless to stop it.

He could only endure it as it took its toll.

He did not know how much time had passed before Lin Changheng, exhausted, leaned against the edge of the table, his eyes filled with coldness and a profound sense of helplessness.

Just then, a mysterious and vast aura descended from the void, piercing straight into Lin Changheng's mind, instantly sweeping away his fatigue and dispelling his gloom.

"What is this?"

Once the strange sensation faded, Lin Changheng closed his eyes and shook his head. When he opened them again, he saw the world change in a flash.

His perspective pierced through the void and landed within his sea of consciousness.

Right in the center of his vision, a mysterious, uniquely shaped small bronze tripod suddenly appeared.