After the excitement subsided, Xiao Yu began to ponder his future plans.
First, he needed to find a quiet, secluded place for cultivation. These rookie quarters were crowded and mixed with all sorts of people, so using the gourd here would easily expose him and spell certain death.
Second, with this gourd, he could find some medicinal herbs and brew a batch of pills to boost his cultivation. Reaching the eleventh or twelfth layer shouldn't be too difficult, and then he would need to consider the matter of Foundation Establishment.
Foundation Establishment required a Foundation Establishment Pill, and there were three ways to obtain one within the Giant Sword Sect. The first was to rank near the top of the grand sect tournament, where the sect would distribute quotas based on the number of available Foundation Establishment Pills. The second was to rely on connections and cling to a powerful backer who would fight for a Foundation Establishment Pill on one's behalf. The third was to participate in the Blood Trial jointly organized by the seven sects and bring back a certain amount of spiritual herbs from inside, for which the sect would reward a Foundation Establishment Pill.
Xiao Yu calculated in his mind that the last sect tournament was four years ago, and there were still six years until the next one. Even if he could secure a decent ranking, with his three-attribute spiritual root aptitude, the probability of successfully achieving Foundation Establishment with a single pill was not very high.
It seemed he still had to participate in the Blood Trial organized by the seven sects in three years, bring back some spiritual herb seedlings from inside, and refine his own Foundation Establishment Pills to ensure nothing went wrong.
If he wanted to survive the Blood Trial, he had to strengthen his combat power, and three years of preparation time was still somewhat tight.
Having thought it through, Xiao Yu immediately took action. He would first find an odd job and change his living quarters.
At that moment, Xiao Yu was stepping on a sword-shaped flying magical instrument, flying leisurely among the towering mountains toward the Thousand Mechanism Hall. This sword-shaped flying magical instrument was a welfare gift given by the sect upon entry, merely a low-grade magical instrument whose only virtue was flight while everything else was a flaw. Its flying speed was utterly slow, lagging behind even the running speed of an ordinary horse.
However, slow as it might be, it could still fly in the sky, could it not? Look at Xiao Yu standing with his hands behind his back, stepping on the flying sword with his robes flapping loudly in the wind; the image genuinely carried a trace of an immortal cultivator's aura.
As one of the Seven Sects of Yue Kingdom, the Giant Sword Sect had a Nascent Soul stage patriarch presiding over it, alongside a dozen Golden Core grandmasters, hundreds of Foundation Establishment Stage backbone members, and nearly ten thousand low-grade Qi Refining disciples.
With so many cultivators in the sect, Xiao Yu inevitably encountered others during his flight, and the closer he got to Emerging Clouds Peak, the more people he met.
He greeted those he knew and offered a polite, graceful smile to those he didn't. When encountering someone with a higher cultivation stage than his own, he proactively saluted; after all, courtesy costs nothing.
Although time was extremely precious to immortal cultivators, daily cultivation was nonetheless inseparable from all sorts of odd jobs, such as planting spiritual herbs, tending to spiritual beasts, and searching for items.
Meanwhile, the high-grade Foundation Establishment Stage disciples of the sect were the backbone of the organization and did not need to undertake such tasks, needing only to focus wholeheartedly on cultivation.
Consequently, a massive volume of odd jobs fell upon the shoulders of the Qi Refining disciples. The sect stipulated that all Qi Refining disciples must complete a certain amount of odd-job tasks every year; otherwise, they would not be allowed to enjoy the sect's welfare benefits.
However, these tasks could be completed all at once or divided into multiple sessions, with the choice resting entirely in the hands of the individual disciple, and the sect administrators generally did not make forced arrangements regarding this.
Half an hour later, Xiao Yu arrived at the Thousand Mechanism Hall, the place where the Giant Sword Sect managed odd jobs.
Located on the mountainside of Emerging Clouds Peak, the Thousand Mechanism Hall was a medium-sized pavilion built into the mountain itself. A small portion of the building protruded outward, featuring two storefronts with open doors and windows carved with various insects, fish, birds, and beasts, which looked exceptionally exquisite. It was said that there was a huge space inside the mountain containing various storerooms and places for the deacons to cultivate, though Xiao Yu had never been inside to see it and didn't know if it was true.
Xiao Yu walked into the right storefront, where a rectangular desk served as a counter. Sitting behind the counter was a man in his thirties with a thirteenth-layer cultivation stage. Named Fang Yuan, this man was one of the deacons of the Thousand Mechanism Hall.
"Greetings, Senior Brother Fang!" Xiao Yu stepped forward and saluted.
"Haha, if it isn't Junior Brother Xiao! Oh, you've broken through to the tenth layer! You truly are a cultivation prodigy. Come, come, sit here for a while. Junior Brother, you really are diligent with your tasks. Didn't you already finish this month's odd jobs? How is it, do you want to finish the entire year's quota at once?" Seeing that Xiao Yu had arrived, Senior Brother Fang warmly invited him inside, and their relationship seemed quite good.
"Senior Brother Fang, please don't tease your junior brother. I'm just restless and want to find something to do, and besides, my purse is light, so I want to find a job to earn some spirit stones for cultivation," Xiao Yu said with a hint of helplessness. By this time, he had been pulled by the other man to sit at a set of reception table and chairs behind the counter.
"Indeed, which of us low-grade disciples isn't running around bustling for spirit stones every day? The stipends distributed by the sect are far from enough for our cultivation needs!" Senior Brother Fang sighed, then asked:
"Has Junior Brother decided what type of odd job you want to take this time?"
"Do you have any planting-related ones recently? Preferably the kind with high freedom," Xiao Yu asked while covering his palm with his sleeve to slip a spirit stone over to Senior Brother Fang.
Senior Brother Fang's eyes lit up, his hand effortlessly pocketed the spirit stone, and then he cheerfully said to Xiao Yu:
"Wait a moment, Junior Brother, I'll go to the back and help you look."
With that, Senior Brother Fang went into the deeper interior area of the Thousand Mechanism Hall.
A moment later, Senior Brother Fang walked out from inside. "The planting-related odd jobs assigned from above are all right here. Junior Brother, take a good look!" he said, handing several bundles of cyan-jade bamboo slips to Xiao Yu.
Xiao Yu expressed his thanks, picked up a bundle of bamboo slips, and began reading earnestly.
"Tend to thirteen spirit peach trees, and submit two hundred fruits annually."
"Meticulously care for a three-hundred-year-old firecloud ginseng to ensure its spiritual nature is not lost."
"Plant one mu of moon-gazing grass, and submit one hundred catties of dried grass per season."
"Tend to a Yellow Jade Bamboo Grove,..."
The planting jobs on the bamboo slips were all-inclusive, and the quantity was truly substantial! Yet the preceding ones failed to catch Xiao Yu's eye. When he flipped to the middle of the bamboo slips, his eyes lit up.
"Take charge of a Hundred Herbs Mountain medicinal garden, and submit a prescribed quantity of rare medicinal herbs annually."
Upon seeing this line of golden-lacquered characters on the bamboo slip, Xiao Yu felt secretly overjoyed; this one seemed rather good. Hence, pointing at the bamboo slip, he raised his head and said to Senior Brother Fang, "I'm quite fond of this task. Could Senior Brother introduce it to me?"
Hearing Xiao Yu's words, Senior Brother Fang leaned in with a smile. Yet when he clearly saw the task Xiao Yu had chosen, his face revealed an expression that seemed to say he had struck gold, and he said:
"Junior Brother Xiao, you are truly lucky. This job was just assigned a few days ago. This medicinal garden grows over a hundred kinds of spiritual herbs suitable for Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment cultivators, making it one of the dozen important medicinal gardens in the sect. Although tending to them well carries a certain degree of difficulty, the reward is quite generous, amounting to four to five spirit stones per month."
"If it weren't for the fact that I value my deep friendship with Junior Brother Xiao, I would absolutely not pull out this job for anyone else who came along."
Xiao Yu twitched the corner of his mouth. Friendship my foot, it was purely because of the spirit stone tribute. Naturally, he wouldn't expose that, so he quickly expressed his stance, "Many thanks to Senior Brother for looking after your junior brother; from now on, Senior Brother's benefits will never fall short!"
Senior Brother Fang nodded in satisfaction, then continued:
"The disciple who originally did this job was a secular distant relative of an uncle-master in the sect. I heard he recently wants to go into seclusion to break through to the Foundation Establishment stage, which is why he gave up the job. Otherwise, who would be willing to give up such a lucrative post?" Having said this, he revealed an envious expression, though it was unclear whether he envied the other's breakthrough to Foundation Establishment or the job itself.
"Then many thanks, Senior Brother. This junior brother shall take on this task, and I will occasionally come here to seek your guidance in the future." Xiao Yu thanked Senior Brother Fang once again, hinting that he would send him benefits later.
Sure enough, upon hearing this, Senior Brother Fang's face broke into a happy expression. "Junior Brother Xiao is truly a tactful person. Then I wish your cultivation to rise to even greater heights."
"Likewise, Senior Brother..."
Finally, amidst a wave of mutual commercial flattery, Xiao Yu left the Thousand Mechanism Hall.
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