Chapter Ninety-Nine: Outwitting Them at Their Own Game, Part Two

“Oh, I see. Then it seems I simply was not paying close enough attention. I had no idea the outer hall under the Third Elder was so complicated.”

Bai Qi felt enlightened as well. His words sounded half to himself, half to the girl before him.

He lifted his gaze and looked around. Most of the disciples moving about were dressed in red or orange. Their cultivation was low; some had not even opened their spiritual veins, and lived in the sect’s outer hall as laborers.

Back then, he too had been unable to open the spiritual veins that linked him to this world. For nearly the first three years, Kun had relied on his own alchemy arts to soak him repeatedly in medicinal baths made from refined herbs. Like a long immersion bath, the medicine had loosened his sinews, invigorated his blood, and used elixir power to awaken his spiritual veins, untying the knots within them. Because of that, he was deeply grateful to have become a cultivator.

The opening of the spiritual veins was the lock that admitted one into the path of cultivation. Once opened, a small dantian the size of a pigeon egg could be formed, allowing spiritual energy to be stored and transformed into spiritual power. From there came advancement into the Yellow Rank, step by step, each level raising one’s cultivation.

Bai Qi looked at A Jiao before him. Her strength was only at the fourth layer of the Yellow Rank. And through his mental perception, it seemed something had been sealed within her body, slowing her progress to a crawl, as if the passage leading into her dantian had been narrowed. Bai Qi was about to ask about the situation in detail when a shout came from not far away.

“A Jiao, what are you doing over there? Hurry up, let’s go to the Alchemy Hall, or this month’s allotment will be gone!”

Hearing someone call to her from behind, A Jiao hurriedly replied, “Senior Brother Bai, I still have something to do. I’m leaving now.”

With that, she turned and left in a rush.

Bai Qi raised his head and looked off into the distance. The one calling A Jiao away was also dressed in a pale green long dress and carrying a stack of boxes. From Bai Qi’s mental perception, the aura fluctuating inside those boxes was clearly that of medicinal ingredients. So the women stationed in the outer hall branches were specialized herb gatherers, delivering medicinal materials to the Alchemy Hall at set intervals.

Bai Qi mused to himself: could it be that the Alchemy Hall had a dedicated place for harvesting herbs? If so, then the sect must have its own medicinal garden.

His guess was indeed correct. Aside from refining pills every day, the alchemists of the Alchemy Hall also had to personally go to the Quicksand Mountain Range to gather herbs. Some seeds were carefully preserved, and through artificial cultivation, pills were planted in great batches. Although their medicinal potency could not compare to naturally grown herbs, and the effects were rather ordinary, quantity made up for quality when quality was not the priority.

Bai Qi walked unhurriedly toward the Alchemy Hall on the Eastern Peak. The mountain was not high, yet under Bai Qi’s footsteps it seemed endlessly long.

Along the winding path up the mountain, disciples descending from the Alchemy Hall, as well as others, all greeted him with, “Greetings, Uncle-Master!”

That form of address, compared with how A Jiao had addressed him earlier, made Bai Qi somewhat unable to adjust at first. He could not quite believe he had acquired such a lofty status.

What Bai Qi did not know was that he was wearing the sect’s azure robes, embroidered over the chest with the totem of the sect: the black crow with a red head. The color alone marked his rank, placing him among the sect’s upper echelons. As for why A Jiao had called him that, it was because she had only just arrived at the outer hall. Though she understood the hierarchy of generations and status within the sect, the rules were strict, and not the slightest offense could be committed. The reason she had addressed him so intimately was that, in the flush of a girl’s budding feelings, she had unconsciously drawn close in speech to the person she fancied.

Only now did Bai Qi realize that there had been that sort of relationship between them, and he could not help but grin foolishly to himself for a while.

The azure color signified Bai Qi’s special status, one determined by the Grand Elder when he was recruited. Generally speaking, if a sect elder or an outside disciple entered a particular lineage, or was taken in as a disciple by some powerful and influential elder of the sect, there would be corresponding assignments. Some were perhaps a little better off, becoming yellow-robed disciples, like Liu Xiao-jie, while the ordinary ones were orange-robed disciples. That Bai Qi could be so fortunate was no different from the demands set at the competition: at least Earth Rank cultivation, and no older than twenty-five.

Thinking about it, aside from the descendants of noble clans or those with extraordinary natural talent, anyone who could step into the Earth Rank at that age was undoubtedly a cut above the rest in both cultivation and talent. Bai Qi had obtained such an accomplishment only through all that Kun had bestowed upon him.

Within the sect, the Grand Elder’s cultivation was at the Earth Rank, while the sect master had to be at the Heaven Rank. Of course, Bai Qi had never even met the master of the Usha Sect, so he could not make any judgment about that.

Along the way, apart from greeting the thin stream of people coming and going, everyone hurried off to attend to their own duties. Otherwise, with such a vast sect supporting so many cultivators, the consumption would be enormous, and each person would need task points to exchange for what they required. As Bai Qi had learned during the competition, the Grand Elder had announced that month’s reduction of the disciples’ task points by twenty, leaving only one hundred in total. Even a reduction of one-fifth had made those disciples frantic and excited, enough to show how difficult task points were to earn.

Through the Grand Elder’s explanations and Liu Xiao-jie’s additional clarification, Bai Qi also came to understand the immense usefulness of the token previously given to him. Each month, the task points assigned by the sect amounted to one hundred, and “amounted to” here meant the minimum. These points could be exchanged for daily necessities and expenses. But if a disciple were injured, or needed something specific such as pills, more points would be required for the exchange. If one wished to borrow a cultivation art for a few days, corresponding task points were also necessary.

As a result, the sect’s arena had come into being. There, matches were decided before matters went too far; if one wanted to quickly earn task points, this was the place to do it. As long as one had the strength, one could win points. Naturally, corresponding cultivation levels were also required, or the whole system would descend into chaos.

Bai Qi kept rubbing the token he had taken from his storage pouch, feeling that this thing was even more powerful than the handphone he had once owned in his former world. It seemed that if he had not come to this world to search for clues about returning home, he might already be tempted to stay here for good.

He put the token away again, then looked up at the mountain peak shrouded in mist and cloud. He gazed at it for a long while, his eyes seeming to reveal a bright glimmer, a light of calculation and control.

After a long time, on the broad expanse of the Eastern Peak, Bai Qi’s figure appeared outside the gates of the Alchemy Hall. The walls and gate were black and red in alternating bands, and before the entrance lay a spacious courtyard. There were no enclosing walls or forests around it, only a simple, open emptiness.

A place without noise or clamor such as this was peaceful and tranquil, a realm of stillness, the realm one pursued on the path of alchemy.

Bai Qi closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then slowly opened them again. He looked toward the buildings behind the gate, where the alchemy pavilions rose prominently. The fragrance of pills drifted across the vast Eastern Peak. Bai Qi could tell that some alchemist had just refined at least a third-grade superior pill. Even from such a distance, the medicinal fragrance carried a subtle, refreshing scent that lifted the spirit.

Straightening his back, Bai Qi gathered spiritual power and shouted toward the Eastern Peak, “Bai Qi of the Western Peak has come to visit the Eastern Peak!”

That shout seemed to break the mountain’s original serenity. The entire Eastern Peak fell suddenly silent. After a brief pause, a voice came from within the gate.

“So it is a disciple of the Grand Elder. What brings you to my Alchemy Hall?”

The voice was deep and resonant, and the mental force accompanying it carried the sound even farther.