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“How may I help you today, sir?”

“Hello, I’d like to buy information about how to join the Nine Rivers Sect.”

Her face didn’t change much, but I could tell she found something strange about my request.

“General information about joining the sect is widely known, and I would be happy to share it with you. If you are looking for more specific information, I would recommend attending classes at one of the various schools around the city.”

“Oh, right, then can you just tell me some of the basics, then? Mainly, I just want to know when the recruitment starts, what cultivation levels they are looking for, and any specific requirements they may have.”

“Of course, sir. The sect opens recruitment once a year, two months before most blessing ceremonies begin. The next recruitment will start in about eight months. However, only Martial Grandmasters on the path to becoming Lords can become disciples of the sect. If you are below this level, I would recommend joining one of the feeder sects or taking courses at a cultivation school.”

“And are there any special requirements for who the sect recruits?”

“The specifics of how people are chosen are a mystery. While the schools can prepare you for the sect’s Entrance Exam, even they do not know exactly what is involved. If you are serious about joining the sect, I would recommend joining the Yellow Orchid Academy, as they have close ties with the Nine Rivers Sect and their Grandmaster instructors are all sect members.”

“I see. What are the costs for courses at this Academy?”

She smiled, but I could feel her evaluation of me drop several notches. People with money didn’t need to ask prices. “A year at the Disciple level costs 500 gold. At the Master level, it’s 50,000, and for Grandmasters, the cost is 5,000,000. The cost is high, but it is the best learning institution on the continent.”

“Thank you,” I said, nodding my head to her.

I felt bad asking for all this information without making a purchase, so I went ahead and bought two sets of herbs for Improved Qi Gathering Pills. I didn’t need them immediately, but an early purchase didn’t hurt anything, and it made me feel better to leave the store with a purchase in hand.

Thanking the attendant for her assistance, I left the Pavilion and hurried back to my inn.

Going to an academy to study cultivation sounded interesting. Nearly everything I knew I had learned on my own, so there was certainly a lot I could learn from trained, knowledgeable teachers.

My grasp of the Disciple realm was solid enough, and I didn’t have any worries about the Master realm, but I was sure there were things I could have been doing slightly better. If schools also taught Grandmasters, I could see a lot of potential value in spending time at one.

However, I quickly put the thought of studying cultivation at a fancy institute out of my mind. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested. It was the cost. As a Martial Disciple, gathering enough money to pay for tuition would take time, and there wouldn’t necessarily be any payoff for that investment. Better to use this life to accrue resources and learn about the situation in the sect. I could look at studying how to be a better Disciple in my next life.

Using most of my meager savings, I paid for five more days in the inn along with meal deliveries so that I could seclude myself for long enough to make a breakthrough to Martial Disciple 2.

Sitting in the middle of my room, I opened my mental library and began reviewing the Writ of True Earth once more. It was complex, but it was within my capabilities.

The upper arms and upper legs had the fewest acupoints, so as usual, I decided to start with my upper right arm.

Each upper arm had a dozen different acupoints. With other techniques I’d studied, every acupoint would use the same qi filter, just placed slightly differently. The Writ of True Earth, though, used a total of four different filters. It didn’t explain the reasoning behind why different acupoints needed different filters, so all I could do was follow its instructions and see for myself.

Normally, I would use the limited natural qi in my system to completely set up the filters I needed as a Martial Disciple 1, but there wasn’t nearly enough energy in my body to form a dozen qi filters simultaneously. Instead, I had to use what energy I did have to create the first filter and then use the qi I drew from it to form the others.

This process consumed a whole day on its own, but the result was far more stable than I had expected. I thought I would have to fight to keep all the filters in place at the same time, but once they were all complete, everything locked into place, requiring only a minimum amount of concentration from then on.

With the filters positioned correctly, I next had to create a ‘vortex.’ In the past, this had always been a simple whirlpool pattern. When I used a Profound-Rank technique, I had created several whirlpools to draw in qi through multiple acupoints independently, but the fundamental design remained the same.

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This Earth-Rank technique, however, used a single complex qi flow throughout my entire arm that worked to simultaneously draw in energy through every acupoint at the same time.

It took time to master, but once I had it nearly correct, the complicated ‘vortex’ locked into place, relieving me of the need for extreme concentration.

I began to pull in qi, but as I did, I noticed a serious problem. Only one of the filter designs was letting qi through at high speeds. Two of the designs were only letting it in at about half that speed, and the final design wasn’t letting any through at all. In total, this meant that I was cultivating at about 60% of the rate I otherwise could have been.

I carefully examined the failed filters, trying to figure out what I did wrong, but every detail matched the technique manual perfectly. Had I made a mistake when transcribing it?

I carefully examined the filters, and the more I did, the more confused I became. The ones that were operating at half-speed had two paths for energy to flow into the body. One was allowing earth qi through, but the other was blocking it completely. The filters that weren’t allowing any energy through seemed to have a similar design as the blocked paths on the other filters.

Ideas clicked into place in my mind. These weren’t earth qi filters. They were preventing earth qi from passing through by design. They were for something else, but I didn’t know what.

My appraisal ability returned only limited information, and if I wanted to know more, I would have to purchase it from the System. I considered doing that, but after finding out the ridiculous cost of the information, I passed. I could learn what I needed on my own.

With my current cultivation speed, I expected I could reach Disciple 2 after another week. Sadly, I didn’t have enough money to pay for a hotel room for that long. I needed to earn some quick cash, and to do that, I needed a higher cultivation base, so I began taking pills.

After only two days, I advanced to Martial Disciple 2, and the qi filters and vortex of my upper right arm locked into place.

Next, I looked at the seed of the Cold Mountain Fire in my storage space.

It was only glowing faintly. My fire seed mastery told me that it was lacking energy and that if it remained in this state for too long, there was a chance that it could disperse entirely. This reminded me of when I stored a pill openly in the space without putting it in a jade bottle. Something about the storage space sucked energy out of anything I put inside.

It might be possible to halt the decay by placing the seed into a large jade box, but if I wanted to use its fire in the future, I needed to find a way to transfer energy to the seed while it was in my storage space. The first idea that came to mind was simply feeding it spirit stones, but I didn’t have any access to them at the moment.

This wasn’t an issue I could deal with immediately since I had neither spirit stones nor sufficient room for a proper jade container, but I noted it down in my journal as an urgent task.

Sighing with a bit of regret, I drew out a portion of spirit fire from the seed and filled my body with it. This damaged the seed further, but it was the best option I had in the current situation. Without the spirit fire, doing high-level alchemy would be significantly more difficult, and I needed alchemy to fund everything else.

At that point, I stood up and left my room. I wanted to advance further, but I didn’t have the resources.

I returned to the Pavilion and was happy to be greeted by the same attendant as the first time I came here.

“Hello again, sir. How may I help you today?”

“I need an alchemy room,” I said, handing over almost all of my remaining funds. “Just two hours to start with, but I plan to stay the entire day.”

Nodding, she led me back downstairs.

Before entering, I turned back to her. “By the way, what should I call you?”

“My name is Meng LuYao,” she said, giving a slight smile.

I could feel a little tension in her demeanor, so I decided to quickly end the conversation.

“Thank you, Miss Meng. I should be ready to make my next exchange in an hour.”

Giving a slight bow, I turned and entered the room.

After the fallout from my last few lives, I had committed myself to aim for a more balanced approach to life.

From the moment I stepped into that alchemy room, I broke that commitment in its entirety, but I told myself it was okay. I had to build up a nest egg for future lives, and focusing heavily on doing that in this one would let me have more freedom to aim for balance later.

That first day, I converted four peonies and two astragalus roots into one gold and five silver. From there, I could focus on only making Superior Qi Gathering Pills which had a much higher markup. I left the Pavilion that day with a little over three gold and four Perfect Superior Qi Gathering Pills in my pocket.

Using these meager funds as a starting point, I rushed as quickly as I could through the Martial Disciple realm. Completing my upper arms and legs wasn’t too difficult, but the lower arms and legs had over twice as many acupoints. Completing the torso was the most difficult, though, since it had nearly double the number of acupoints as the rest of the body combined.

Maintaining all the qi filters throughout my torso was possible not only because I had access to a large quantity of qi, but also because of the way the technique was designed. Instead of the torso being a single unit, it was broken up into several smaller sections, allowing each of the component parts to snap into place, requiring significantly less attention thereafter. It wasn’t easy, but it was manageable.

After a full year of dedicated cultivation mixed with alchemy to fuel it, I reached Peak Disciple.

I tried to test my body, but it didn’t feel overly different from any other time I had reached this state. I seemed to have access to slightly more qi, but that was it. I had no idea what advantages this Earth-Rank technique was supposed to provide that made it worth the insane complexity.

I didn’t linger on the topic. I kept pushing forward. I wanted to reach as far as I could as soon as I could, to push the bounds of what was possible, and to have time at the end to build a small fortune that I could use in the future.

The Rank 2 part of the cultivation technique wasn’t too dissimilar from what I had used in the past. It had a different braiding pattern and countless small capillary meridians, but what set it apart from those I had practiced previously was that it added eight extra meridians throughout the torso and head.

Again, I didn’t know what purpose these complications served, and I didn’t have the theoretical knowledge to figure it out beforehand, so I just started cultivating.

The Pavilion had abundant herb supplies, and with the pills I made, I was able to reach Peak Master after three more years. That was a little longer than I had hoped, and I wanted to get that number down, but the extra complications from the Earth-Rank technique slowed me.

Finally, the last thing I did before I allowed myself to relax was advance to Grandmaster. The technique called for a dantian that reminded me of a soccer ball made from several small patches.

The need for all the patches and the care with which they needed to be sewn together made the process incredibly slow, but since I only needed to create a single dantian this time, it didn’t pose too much of a challenge.

A few months after I turned 20, I ascended to Martial Grandmaster 1.