"Even a mixed spiritual root would've been reasonable!" Chun Xiaobai questioned his entire existence.
Most importantly, if he failed to reach that whatever-it-was Golden Core Stage within ten years, that crazy woman would squeeze him to death!
"You... did you just say you have a mixed spiritual root?"
Suddenly, a lively young girl stopped beside him, blinking her large eyes as she asked curiously.
Chun Xiaobai was still fuming and answered offhandedly, "Yeah. What about it?"
The girl looked Chun Xiaobai up and down. Dressed in coarse hemp clothes, his hair a tangled bird's nest, he was clearly a child from a poor family, so she said,
"My sect happens to need a batch of disciples with mixed spiritual roots to do chores. Want to join?"
Upon hearing this, Chun Xiaobai turned his head and grabbed her. "Yes!"
Heaven truly never barred every path! Beyond the dark willows and bright blossoms, another village awaited!
"All right, then come with me." The girl rubbed her arm where his grip had hurt, rolled her eyes at him, and continued walking.
After making a circuit and picking through the candidates, she found a dozen or so disciples with mixed spiritual roots whom everyone else had passed over.
Once she had enough people, she led them to her sect's recruitment station.
Chun Xiaobai looked up at the large banner fluttering in the wind. Three bold characters danced across it like dragons and soaring phoenixes-"Azure Cloud Sect."
People crowded around the banner, packed three layers deep and then three more. This sect seemed pretty sizable!
The bigger the sect, the better!
As long as the sect was big enough, its scripture pavilion was bound to hold plenty of cultivation manuals.
Given a chance to find a cultivation method he could practice, and with his extraordinary innate [Treasure-Seeing Divine Eye], he would soar one day.
They waited less than two hours.
The white-haired old man beneath the "Azure Cloud Sect" banner suddenly waved his hand, putting away the testing stele, and announced in a ringing voice,
"Thank you for your support, young friends. Our Azure Cloud Sect has filled all its places for this intake of elite outer disciples. Please return in ten years!"
"What?!"
His words immediately stirred an uproar in the long, snaking queue.
"Elder! Please, give us another chance!"
"That's right, Elder! I traveled for three months to get here!"
Pleading voices rang out without end, but the old man did not spare them so much as a glance.
"Isn't this old fellow worried about missing some peerless genius who hasn't had a chance to be tested?"
Chun Xiaobai looked baffled.
"Brother, that's where you're missing the point." A young man beside him with an unmistakably noble bearing picked up the conversation.
"Spiritual root aptitude has a great deal to do with bloodline inheritance."
"If you have a powerful immortal cultivator among your ancestors, your spiritual root won't be all that bad."
"And if your family is full of immortal cultivators, would you need to come here and fight tooth and nail with the rest of us for a chance at the assessment?"
"Exactly, exactly!" another simple-looking fellow chimed in.
"Those truly peerless geniuses are born with extraordinary signs-rosy light filling the sky, spiritual energy pouring down, things like that. The major sects snatch them up within three days. Why would they ever need to queue here?"
"Uh!!!"
Chun Xiaobai was utterly dumbfounded.
Was I really just mediocre?
He tried hard to remember. The year he was born, the area around the Black Wind Stronghold had enjoyed favorable winds and timely rains, and the villagers below the mountain had even reaped a bumper harvest.
There had been no fragrance drifting for a hundred miles, no auspicious signs descending from heaven at all!
He scratched his scalp in frustration.
If there had been anything, it was that his birth had cursed his father to death!
"Everyone, board the Flying Boat!"
Just then, the white-haired elder gave the command.
Chun Xiaobai looked up to see the elder wave his hand and toss a palm-sized model boat into the air. It swelled rapidly in the wind, soon becoming an enormous Bronze Warship a thousand feet long.
Having already experienced half a day of high-speed flight, Chun Xiaobai no longer found this sort of magical treasure quite so novel.
At that moment, all his thoughts were on his "lack of a spiritual root," and he followed the crowd aboard the Flying Boat in low spirits.
The enormous Flying Boat slowly rose into the air, cut across the sky, and flew toward the horizon.
But compared with that woman in red, this Flying Boat practically crawled like a snail.
In his mind, Chun Xiaobai raised his estimate of that woman's cultivation by another level.
The Flying Boat swayed along for three straight days before slowly descending among mountains wreathed in spiritual mist.
After being cooped up aboard for three days, Chun Xiaobai stood at the bow, letting the mountain's spiritual breeze wash away his earlier dejection.
Damn it, even if I don't believe in my own fate, I've got to trust that crazy woman's judgment!
If I really were a completely worthless piece of trash, why would she go to all that trouble to bring me here herself?
And set that ten-year deadline for reaching Golden Core?
There had to be something behind this!
The Flying Boat landed in an enormous mountain plaza.
The girl who had recruited him earlier found Chun Xiaobai looking around after disembarking from the Flying Boat and planted her hands on her hips.
"You, don't wander off. Follow me!"
Only then did Chun Xiaobai turn his head and look her up and down.
He had been too preoccupied to get a good look at her before, but now that he did,
he had to admit this little chick was quite a looker.
Big, sparkling eyes, a pert little nose, a slender waist, and a pretty little face that looked lovely whether smiling or scowling. Tsk, tsk. She was much better than that cold-faced woman!
The young girl, Bai Jin'er, blushed under his gaze and immediately snapped,
"What are you staring at? Keep staring and I'll gouge your eyes out! Hurry up and follow me!"
Putting on a fierce expression, Bai Jin'er led Chun Xiaobai and over a hundred other newly recruited Odd-Job Disciples around the Giant Stone in the plaza, carved with the three flowing characters for "Azure Cloud Sect," and toward a secluded path to the west.
Damn, Odd-Job Disciples aren't even allowed through the main gate?
Muttering inwardly, Chun Xiaobai hurried after Bai Jin'er, pushed through the people ahead, and sidled up on her right to ask shamelessly,
"Little girl, where are we going?"
"What do you mean, little girl? Call me Senior Sister!" Bai Jin'er pulled a bronze token from her waist and waved it before his eyes, declaring proudly,
"I'm an Outer Sect Disciple!"
"Senior Sister?" Chun Xiaobai eyed her. She was shorter than him and did not even look as old as he was, yet she wanted him to call her Senior Sister?
Where would that leave my dignity as the mighty bandit king?
He cleared his throat and asked evasively, "Ahem! Where are we going?"
"To the back mountain," Bai Jin'er answered. "That's where the Odd-Job Disciples live and do their daily work."
The moment she mentioned "work," Chun Xiaobai felt a faint sense of foreboding and hurried to ask,
"Then... apart from working, where do we Odd-Job Disciples usually go to cultivate?"
Bai Jin'er stopped and looked back, only to find over a hundred people behind her staring at her with the same expectant gaze.
She sighed inwardly. Thinking about it, how many of those who came here weren't seeking a chance at immortality?
With a complicated expression, she said,
"Odd-Job Disciples must complete three years of chores before they can receive our sect's Beginner Qi Refining Formula."
"Huh?! Three years?!"
Chun Xiaobai cried out in shock.
God-fucking-damn it, why did it feel like this little woman had lured me aboard her pirate ship?
Before you continue