Qi Yan spent three days cultivating in seclusion in his cave abode.
Compared with twenty days aboard the ship without breaking through to the fourth layer, three days here had already brought him to the threshold of the fifth. By his reckoning, a little more effort would get him through-or perhaps circulating his cultivation while exercising would work even better.
Qi Yan stretched. Thinking he should balance work and rest, he left his cave abode to find Jiang Jinyue and have a meal together.
When he arrived, he found the garden open, and even the rooms inside had their doors left open... Jiang Jinyue's residence stood higher than the sect's main hall. No one except Mu Xunzhen ever came here, so she had practically no notion of shutting doors.
Qi Yan had no idea Jiang Jinyue had left. Seeing the open doors, he assumed she was home and eagerly trotted inside to find her. "Senior Sister, Senior Sister~"
There was not a sound inside. Puzzled, Qi Yan headed farther in, winding his way into a large room. He took one look and turned straight around.
An embroidered bed stood there, its bedding a tangled mess, with a dudou carelessly tossed on top.
Why didn't this young lady even shut her bedroom door...?
And her dudou was pure white... Beneath that grinning enchantress exterior, this girl had a purity that was its complete opposite.
Even after he beat a flustered retreat from Jiang Jinyue's garden, Qi Yan's heart was still pounding. He felt as though the fragrance in her room still lingered around him, and that dudou kept floating through his mind, impossible to shake off.
Such was life as a virgin across two lifetimes...
Speaking of which, that vague feeling that the Heavenly Evolution Sect held something incredibly important-could it really have meant Jiang Jinyue...? Otherwise, why had I inexplicably used her name to come up with Yue Jinjiang back then? And I really have grown close to her these past few days...
Mulling this over, Qi Yan went up to the summit to pay his respects to his master, only to find her absent too. He went down to the main hall and found the elderly woman he had seen during the assessment sitting there instead. "Oh, Qi Yan, you're out of seclusion?"
"Uh, greetings, Martial Aunt. Where's my master?"
"The sect master has gone out on business. I'm overseeing things in her place for a few days." The female elder sighed. "Actually, you and I belong to the same generation. I can hardly accept being called your martial aunt."
"..." Qi Yan gave a couple of dry coughs and asked, "Then where's my senior sister?"
"Jinyue has gone out on a mission." The female elder looked him over. "Now that you're out of seclusion, go have a look around. You aren't familiar with any part of the sect. Shutting yourself away all day isn't good either. Young people should interact more."
Master and Senior Sister are both away? Qi Yan thought for a moment. "Does the sect have a department that hands out missions or something? I'd like to try taking some missions and gain a little experience."
"Of course." The female elder chuckled. "But inner disciples rarely take those sect missions. Most only need to complete the tasks their masters assign them... Especially those of the main peak. Those from the other peaks do some missions here and there to supplement their cultivation resources, but Jinyue alone has probably never done one in her life. As a main peak disciple, are you sure you want to?"
"Would it embarrass my master?"
"That I wouldn't know. There's no precedent, after all. Why don't you set one and see?"
Qi Yan figured there was nothing embarrassing about being self-reliant... His master had only given him pills so far, and his enormous cave abode was empty. Since he was settling down, surely he ought to decorate it-plant some spirit herbs, for example. Reading xianxia novels in his previous life, he could happily spend an entire chapter just watching someone furnish a cave abode. Now that it was his turn, he had to do something with it.
If only his senior sister were here. Where to get spirit herb seeds, where to get decorations, where to find spirit-gathering formations and the like-with Jiang Jinyue's temperament, she would definitely have enthusiastically taken him around to get everything. With her away, he could only look around himself.
"Then may I ask, Martial Aunt... Oh, Senior Sister, how do I get to the External Affairs Hall?"
That "Senior Sister" finally made the female elder's mouth twitch. Extremely unaccustomed to it, she nevertheless managed an answer. "Your life token contains a map of the sect. Look it up yourself. Also, you're at the Qi Refining Stage right now. Never mind flying-you probably can't even control a flying artifact steadily. Getting to the outer peaks on your own two legs isn't realistic. You'll need to use the teleportation formation below. Your life token will activate it."
Qi Yan thanked her and made his way down to the foot of the mountain. Sure enough, he found a small platform with a glowing teleportation formation on it.
Honestly, only at this moment did Qi Yan truly feel that he had come from the countryside to a top-tier sect. He stepped onto it with considerable curiosity and noticed a pillar beside the formation, with a sensing area precisely the size of a life token. He tried pressing his token against it. With a beep, the teleportation formation immediately lit up. It even offered a choice of destinations.
Amused, Qi Yan selected "External Affairs Peak."
He felt space and time twist, the world spinning around him. When he opened his eyes again, a large plaza lay ahead, bustling with people and a boiling hubbub of voices.
Qi Yan stared blankly for a moment. What was this, a vegetable market?
The plaza was huge. Countless people had set up stalls around its edges, displaying pills, incomplete cultivation manuals, fragments of magical treasures, spirit pet eggs, and the like, exchanging them for spirit stones or bartering with others. The "customers" were disciples too, browsing stall after stall and haggling.
The auras of the vast majority were about the same as his own. They were mostly Qi Refinement disciples, with only a very few who seemed to have reached Foundation Establishment.
So this External Affairs Peak was the hub of the outer sect?
Outer disciples were essentially left to grow on their own. They had no individual masters, only public lectures for everyone. Their accommodations probably crammed several people into a single room as well, making it closer to the modern schools Qi Yan knew.
With this hands-off approach, they naturally had to earn resources through missions, or obtain things on their own adventures outside and bring them back to trade with fellow disciples. The best gathering place was naturally the large plaza outside the External Affairs Hall, where they collected missions. It was the fairest and safest location.
The annual outer sect selection was their best stepping stone to joining an inner peak and becoming a master's disciple.
Having sorted this out, Qi Yan looked at his "schoolmates" with a sigh... Originally, all he had hoped for was to become one of them and slowly climb toward the inner sect. Where had he ended up instead...?
He had to thank both his foodie senior sister for her help and recommendation, and his master for her broad-mindedness, discriminating against neither his mixed spiritual root nor his witchcraft. Had any one of those things been missing, he really would have been stuck struggling in the outer sect. At best, he could have become the disciple of some junior inner disciple, scraped together an official post, and spent his life that way.
Sighing, Qi Yan slowly browsed the stalls, hoping to find some suitable spirit herbs and flowers to plant back home.
As he looked around, he heard whispers nearby. "Have you heard? The main peak took in a new direct disciple."
"I heard." The reply was tightly restrained, the resentment audibly bottled up. "Apparently he's already an adult, but he's only at early Qi Refinement, and he has a mixed spiritual root. Who knows how he caught the sect master's eye?"
"He's probably some important figure in the sect's relative-or even an illegitimate son. Maybe the sect master was doing them a favor?"
"What I heard was that Junior Great-Martial-Aunt Jiang was there at the time. Do you think maybe...?"
"Shh! Do you have a death wish? You dare say that?"
The speakers immediately shut their mouths, but their attitudes were clear. Many leaned toward that explanation.
Jiang Jinyue's lover.
What new disciple of the sect master? The sect master was merely elevating the status of the man her darling disciple had taken a fancy to, making it easier for them to get together in the future. It was an easy line of thought to understand.
Qi Yan clenched his fists.
Being seen as someone with connections did not matter much to him... But this would have a serious impact on Jiang Jinyue's reputation.
Pulling strings for her lover... Once that reputation spread, what would people see her as?
And was there something more behind this...? Why did these rumors completely omit his outstanding performance in the assessment, spreading a version with its head and tail chopped off? On the surface, rumors becoming distorted as they spread seemed perfectly normal. But what if this was not natural distortion, and someone had guided them from the source?
The Heavenly Evolution Sect did indeed test prospective disciples for mutual support and friendship, but that did not mean it was a utopia where everyone loved one another.
He would probably need to report all this properly when his master returned. There might really be some major problem behind it. As for what he could do right now...
Dragging someone out and beating them up was probably the worst possible approach. If someone really was fanning the flames behind the scenes, it would only make it easier to paint him as an arrogant, overbearing beneficiary of connections...
After considering it for a moment, Qi Yan abandoned the idea of shopping and strode into the External Affairs Hall.
A row of long counters stood inside. Several attendants sat behind them, apparently handling registration and distributing rewards, with quite a few disciples lining up before them.
The wall behind them shimmered with light, displaying the missions available to each cultivation level and the corresponding rewards. The Qi Refining Stage alone had many service windows, since outer disciples were mostly at that level and there were vast numbers of them. There were very few Foundation Establishment Stage windows, and only one for the Golden Core Stage.
After all, most cultivators at Foundation Establishment and above had entered the inner sect. Very few still lingered in the outer sect. The Foundation Establishment and Golden Core windows were only kept for the rare inner disciples who occasionally wanted experience and extra resources. Right now, only two or three Foundation Establishment disciples stood there cheerfully chatting with the attendants, completely unlike the solemn lines of Qi Refinement disciples.
After watching for a while, Qi Yan chose one of the Qi Refining Stage windows and quietly joined the queue. Before long, his turn came.
The attendant did not even lift his eyelids. "Which mission?"
Qi Yan said, "Number twenty-three. The Ye Clan, an affiliated clan in Changshui City, is being harassed by a spirit creature and requests the sect's assistance."
The attendant paused, finally looking up at him. "The Ye Clan specified that the spirit creature is suspected to be at the sixth layer of Qi Refinement, with some possibility of being at the seventh. So this mission requires at least the sixth layer of Qi Refinement, preferably late-stage. Can't you see that?"
"I saw it."
"If you aren't carrying a treasure that conceals your cultivation, you're only at the fourth layer of Qi Refinement, a full two layers short. Are you sure?"
At those words, quite a few people queuing in the hall turned to look. Even the Foundation Establishment disciples chatting with the attendants glanced over.
The sect did not forbid taking missions above one's cultivation level for higher rewards. It could also train disciples' ability or ingenuity in challenging those above their level. But it explicitly stated that they bore the consequences themselves. Very few actually chose to do it. Their lives mattered, after all.
How long had it been since they had last seen a reckless greenhorn like this?
Qi Yan answered calmly, "I'm sure."
The attendant nodded. "Life token."
Qi Yan handed over his life token for registration. The attendant took one look and nearly leaped to his feet, crying out involuntarily, "You're Qi Yan!"
The noisy hall instantly fell silent. Then that silence spread out into the plaza, and in the blink of an eye, the entire crowd was soundless.