Spiritual Roots

This was a very subtle feeling. He did not know whether this was how normal people saw the world, but he felt that he had seen everything clearly. And because he had seen it too clearly, he understood in an instant—none of this was real.

Everything in the cultivation world was real. He was still alive; that was real too.

What was real? What was false? Wen Xu had rarely distinguished between such things before. To him, the present was real, being alive was real. As for everything else, he neither cared nor concerned himself with it.

But at this moment, he suddenly gained some insight. He even... did not hate his face blindness quite so much anymore.

At least at this moment, these eyes told him what was real and what was illusion.

The moment he understood this, the pain around Wen Xu's body instantly vanished, and the wounds on him disappeared in the blink of an eye. He subconsciously reached out, only to find that the folding fan and gourd had both returned to his hands.

"Ahhh, Wen Xuxu, you're finally awake!" Bian Chunchou jumped up in delight. "Senior Brother Wang, all three of us are awake. Does that mean we're the first team to arrive?"

The Yonglu Mountain disciple addressed as Senior Brother Wang smiled and nodded. "Yes. The three of you may go inside and rest first. Once the Heart-Questioning Realm ends, you will have your spiritual roots tested and formally enter the sect."

Bian Chunchou happily patted his two good friends on the shoulders. "Wen Xuxu, Chen Zuizui, we did it!"

Chen Zui pressed his lips together slightly and gave a very cool hum. Wen Xu, meanwhile, still seemed caught up in certain emotions. Only after they entered the main hall to wait did he exhale a breath of stale air and settle all the thoughts in his heart.

But Bian Chunchou keenly sensed it. "Wen Xuxu, are you okay?"

Wen Xu had never been one to bare his heart to others, and this time was naturally no exception. "I'm fine. It was only that neither of you was by my side just now, so I was a little worried and afraid."

"Hey, now that you mention it, me too." Bian Chunchou shuddered all over as he recalled his experience in the Heart-Questioning Realm. As a fourth-year university student, his thesis had trapped him to the point of [censored]. After finally graduating and entering a major corporation, he still had to work overtime every day revising proposals. He had not earned much money, but had collected piles of medical reports. Just thinking about it made him feel—cultivation was great! Capitalists should all be hung from streetlamps!

Bian Chunchou had been scared awake, while Chen Zui... sometimes, being single-minded in the cultivation world was not necessarily a bad thing.

He had awakened the fastest of the three, and his method had been equally rough. He had seen his mother, but she could never possibly appear on Yonglu Mountain, so he woke up in an instant.

"What's there to be afraid of? You two really are timid."

Bian Chunchou clenched his fists, but quickly let them fall again. "Forget it. I'm happy today, so I won't hit you!"

Chen Zui was an honest man. "You can't beat me anyway. Even if the two of you join forces, you still can't beat me."

"Ahhh, Wen Xuxu, don't stop me! Today, I'm going to beat the life out of him!"

Wen Xu said, "...I wasn't stopping you."

Just as the three of them were speaking quietly, more people finally arrived outside the hall, several of them in succession. Among them was Xia Ying, the niece of Langyuan City's lord.

Even after the hourglass outside the hall had completely run out, Li Zishen had not appeared in the main hall. Clearly, this talented member of the Li Family was thoroughly fated to miss Yonglu Mountain.

"Dong—"

A long, resonant bell rang out, and the mountain gate outside the hall suddenly closed in response.

At the very instant it shut, a distant, deep, and generous voice rang in everyone's ears:

"Welcome, all of you, to Yonglu Mountain."

Only at this moment did Wen Xu feel a little sense of reality. He had truly stepped onto the path of cultivation. From this day onward, the changing tides of fate would lie in his own hands.

Spiritual Roots

There were thirty-five Qi Refining cultivators in total who had passed Yonglu Mountain's three entrance examinations.

This number was neither particularly large nor particularly small. According to Yonglu Mountain's rules, no matter what kind of spiritual roots these thirty-five people tested, they would all be accepted into the sect. Of course, those with exceptional spiritual roots could directly advance to become inner sect disciples.

Since Wen Xu's group had been the first team to reach the finish, they were also at the very front of the line for spiritual root testing.

"Ahhh, I'm so nervous! What do I do? My hands are shaking." The only legal gambling a university student could come into contact with was opening blind boxes; Bian Chunchou simply could not resist this kind of thrill. "Aren't you two nervous?"

Wen Xu had his own mystical mindset. "I am nervous, but I'm more expectant." He did not like this feeling of hanging in uncertainty and leaving things to Heaven's favor. If anything, he wanted to find out sooner what his spiritual root truly was.

What a ruthless man. Bian Chunchou looked at the other person beside him. "What about you?"

"What's there to be nervous about? Even if I have a Five-Element Spiritual Root, I can still fight!" Chen Zui said carelessly. "My mother said Yonglu Mountain doesn't judge people by their spiritual roots. Don't worry."

Bian Chunchou: ...Worry my ass?!

In this cheerful (?) atmosphere, Bian Chunchou became the first cultivator joining Yonglu Mountain to have his spiritual roots tested. In his words, it was better to die early and be reborn early.

"Do not be nervous. Are you ready?" the elder asked kindly.

Bian Chunchou nodded nervously. "I'm ready!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.

Even the elder in charge of testing spiritual roots could not help but laugh, thinking that this new disciple was truly full of vigor. "If you are ready, inject your spiritual energy into the Spirit-Testing Stone. There is no need for much; simply light up the stone."

"Okay, Elder!"

The elder: ...There was no need to be quite so loud. He was not yet so old that he had gone deaf.

Yet Bian Chunchou possessed no such self-awareness. Nervously, he stepped forward two paces, gathered his breath, and placed a hand on the Spirit-Testing Stone. Before long, his spiritual energy lit up the stone.

"That's enough, that's enough. Do not continue."

Only then did Bian Chunchou obediently withdraw his spiritual energy, though his eyes remained fixed unblinkingly on the Spirit-Testing Stone. When light blossomed from the stone, he heard the elder's astonished voice. "Hiss—you brat, your talent is extraordinary!"

What? His talent was extraordinary? Please, do elaborate.

"Yonglu Mountain has stood for several thousand years since its founding. Cultivators with Water-Fire Dual Spiritual Roots like yours number fewer than the fingers on one hand." Water and fire were incompatible, yet they gathered within one body. At lower cultivation levels, wielding both water- and fire-attributed spiritual energy was manageable, but if one's cultivation reached the Golden Core stage without a special cultivation method, one likely would not last long.