"Are your father and his generation still alive?"
The yellow-crowned Daoist sat upright on a rush cushion and asked leisurely, "The art I cultivate requires avoiding the entanglements of kinship. Ideally, one's father should have died early, one's grandfather should be gone, and one should have no attachments."
At these words, Lu Xuan froze on the spot.
He hesitated a moment before answering haltingly, "To answer you, esteemed cultivator, my father is still alive, and my Grandpa—he is fairly hale as well."
The yellow-crowned Daoist shook his head slightly. "Then you have no affinity with me. You may withdraw."
Was this heaven-sent opportunity, only just within reach, about to turn to bubbles before his eyes?
Lu Xuan's heart tightened, and he kowtowed repeatedly. "Please show mercy, esteemed cultivator! Consider this junior's sincere heart devoted to the Dao-"
Anxiety consumed him. His Grandpa had exhausted every means to open doors for him, yet at most could only get him into the Yin Puppet Sect as an Inner Peaks disciple.
Now an elder of a Sect-tier Dharma Lineage had personally inquired after him. If he could become the elder's nominal disciple, he would stand on equal footing with the direct descendants of the northern ridge's noblest Dao clans, such as the Fu Clan and Kang Clan.
This was a splendid chance to bring glory to his ancestors and turn his fate around. How could he simply watch it slip away?
"Cultivation and spell refinement have always been thus; each has its ordained course.
"With your father's generation all alive, your allotted fate bears no solitary baleful influence.
"Even if I forcibly accepted you into my tutelage, gave you the nominal status of a disciple, and taught you my Method Formula, in the end it would only be drawing water with a bamboo