Standing around with his hands in his pockets, Lan Jin looks between the three objects in front of him. Of the three, he is pretty sure the only one he is fairly certain he could figure out what he’s supposed to do with it is the stone basin. And he has no intention of actually going through with it because the dagger plus the basin gives Lan Jin creepy ritual sacrifice vibes.
As for the mirror and the stone person, Lan Jin has no clue what the stone person is for but he thinks the bronze mirror might have something to do with the spirit. However, given that his guess is based on the far-more impressive stone monument in the Omega Browser’s Space having the words ‘Spirit Gate’ written on it, and that the only thing this mirror has in common with the one in the Omega Browser’s Space is the fact that it’s a bronze mirror, he feels he could be entirely wrong.
Furrowing his eyebrows, Lan Jin realizes something. “Shit! I completely forgot about the ribbon!”
“Ribbon? What ribbon?” Lulu asks after overhearing him.
“None of your business,” Lan Jin says after glancing at her.
“You!” Lulu grits her teeth and clenches her hands. Then, looking around, she becomes visibly frustrated as she looks over the mass of people present in the area. Finally, she sends Lan Jin a strange glare and remains silent.
Lan Jin also looks around and wonders if he should go into the Omega Browser’s Space to remove the silver ribbon from the stone monument’s pot, but when he sees so many people watching him, he decides it could wait.
“So what am I supposed to do exactly? What are these things for?” Lan Jin asks curiously.
“Stupid pig head,” Lulu says while glaring at him. “You don’t even know something that simple?”
Rolling his eyes at her, Lan Jin chooses not to respond.
After witnessing Lan Jin’s and Lulu’s exchange, Qiang Yu lets out a soft exhale and approaches Lulu before giving her a look and glancing back at the Martial Field. Lulu’s eyes widen in understanding and, after glaring at Lan Jin again, she turns around and walks away.
Lan Jin ignores their interaction and instead continues focusing on the three objects. Finally, someone in the crowd off to his right speaks up, “It is customary for a person to use the Bloodline Testing Basin before doing anything else. That way, anyone present can be confident that they are not facing someone related to an enemy power.”
Glancing toward the crowd of people, Lan Jin then eyes the basin and the polished dagger next to it before saying, “Nah. I’ll do a different one. What are the other two?”
“What do you mean you’ll do another one?” Someone asks him, this time from the left. “It is customary to begin with the Bloodline Testing Basin!”
“And?” Lan Jin asks. “I’m still not doing it. So what do the other two do?”
Off to this left, the young master of the Feng Clan speaks up. “Oh? Is there some reason for you to want to avoid the Bloodline Testing Basin? Perhaps there’s something you’re not willing to let out?”
Furrowing his eyebrows, Lan Jin inwardly calls the young master of the Feng Clan an idiot, but he doesn’t say anything as he walks over to the faceless statue of a person and looks at the glowing spirit stones embedded inside its hard skin. There are six spirit stones in total. The majority of them are located in the stone person’s face and go up in a line toward its forehead, but there is also one spirit stone in each of the stone person’s hands.
“Answer my question!” The young master of the Feng Clan barks, clearly agitated at being ignored. “Who are you? Why are you afraid of the Bloodline Testing Basin?”
Behind him and to the right, Qiang Yu shakes her head slightly, but in the end, she doesn’t say anything.
In the meanwhile, Lan Jin stays in front of the stone person and asks, “So, who’s going to register me after I get tested? Or am I going to have to get tested twice; once for you guys’ curiosity and another time to actually get registered?”
The crowd goes silent and several people exchange glances, but no one speaks up.
After waiting a full minute, Lan Jin says, “I’m not entirely sure because no one’s told me otherwise, but that’s a fucking dagger next to a bowl, and the whole setup is called the Bloodline Testing Basin. Now, I don’t know exactly how it works, but I’m not a complete idiot, and I can guess what I’m supposed to do. The question is, if I’m supposed to do what I think I’m supposed to do, then why the fuck would I cut myself for you guys? Especially if all of this is just so you can satisfy your curiosity and I end up having to do it again in order to get registered later? So yeah, fuck that.”
The silence in the area speaks loudly for several long moments before the young master of the Feng Clan speaks up again.
“Even if you’re not willing, it is still something you must do.”
“Uh-huh. I realize that might be true, but what I also realize is that you don’t have any authority to actually make me do it. So since this feels like a big waste of time, I think I’m just going to sit back and wait for the Pavilion Master to return so I can actually get registered.”
With that said, Lan Jin sits down, crosses his legs next to the stone person, and closes his eyes.
Almost instantly, he is shouted at again but he ignores it in favor of looking into the Omega Browser’s Space. Then, he quickly locates the stone monument and grimaces as he sees that the bronze mirror is still glowing, just as it was two nights ago when he threw Qingshui’s silver ribbon into the stone monument’s pot.
As he looks over the monument, he feels a little conflicted. On the one hand, he hopes that something happened to Qingshui that can allow him to feel less stifled about her trying to kill him. But, on the other hand, he feels bad at having spaced out and forgetting about the stone monument entirely.
True, he could forgive his lapse because it was caused by an emergency— who wouldn’t freak out if they opened their eyes and suddenly saw that green energy was crawling through their veins— but the emergency only lasted that one night. With the exception of yesterday morning when he was cutting down bamboo, he had largely been idle over the last day and a half. He had even opened up the Omega Browser’s Space numerous times in order to contact Moxian, check on the purple mist, and even to activate the Heaven and Earth Refining Spirit Jade to supplement the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame between using it to refine the Qi in his body. So he didn’t have the excuse that he hadn’t used the Omega Browser. He just hadn’t thought to look at the monument until he saw the mirror in the Martial Testing Pavilion.
Realizing his screw-up, Lan Jin doesn’t feel guilty about whatever harm he might have caused Qingshui— if he caused any at all— but he does feel a bit of trepidation when he thinks about what might happen if he lapses again in the future and it somehow affects someone he actually cares about. He had seen someone using the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame to consume entire mountains after all, and he could only imagine how shitty he would feel if he went out camping with some friends and ended up injuring them by causing a forest fire or something similar. Though, how he’d cause a forest fire with a flame that only seems to ignite flesh, he doesn’t know.
To that end, Lan Jin sighs and removes the silver ribbon from the monument’s pot and decides that, even if Qingshui deserves to be punished, he wasn’t going to be the one to punish her. He feels that he gave up that right when he completely forgot that he was screwing with her in the first place.
It only takes Lan Jin a few seconds to decide to remove the silver ribbon from the monument’s pot, but even as the monument darkens and Lan Jin reopens his eyes, the people around him glare at him furiously. Apparently, being ignored by him wasn’t too good for their egos— not that he cares— and with the exception of Qiang Yu and, surprisingly, the young master of the Feng Clan, everyone has an opinion of what he should be doing. Specifically, they all think he should be cutting himself to prove he isn’t an enemy of the people.
Shaking his head, Lan Jin ignores them while focusing on figuring out what the stone person and the bronze mirror are useful for and whether he can give himself an edge in using them. He assumes that, because this is a test, it is possible for him to fail it. He just doesn’t know if there is a grading system other than pass or fail and how good of a grade he should be aiming for. Unfortunately, Lan Jin isn’t able to figure anything out on his own so he turns to the only person he thinks might give him information without berating him.
“Hey, uh, you said to call you ‘Young Lady Qiang’, right?” Lan Jin asks Qiang Yu.
Tilting her head a little to the side, Qiang Yu sounds a little standoffish as she says, “I did not say that to you. And I do not appreciate you assuming the things I say to others apply to everyone equally. But if you must call me by anything, then you may call me that.”
Looking at her, Lan Jin wonders if he should forget about asking anything, but when he thinks that this test might affect his future, he decides that he should at least learn what the other two things do even if he has no intention to use the Bloodline Testing Basin right now.
“O~kay. So, how do I use these things? Is there some trick? And what exactly do they test?”
Qiang Yu looks at him and, after a moment, walks over to the stone person.
“This is known as a Stone Prophet. Its use is to discover the grade of a person’s spirit root. To use it, you place your hands over each of the Stone Prophet’s palms and run your cultivation method.”
With that said, she stands next to the Stone Prophet and watches Lan Jin closely, not bothering to explain the purpose of the mirror.
Lan Jin looks at the Stone Prophet and scoots closer to it before casually putting his hands on it. But, almost immediately, he runs into a problem as he realizes he doesn’t have any loose Qi inside of his body to make rotate. Right now, everything inside of his body had already been purified, turned into the purple Qi, and absorbed by the three purple clouds in his Dantian.
Not knowing what else to do, Lan Jin just tries making the clouds rotate within his Dantian. But, even as he easily succeeds, nothing seems to happen with the Stone Prophet.
“Is something supposed to happen?” Lan Jin asks, confused.
“This… Are you running your cultivation method?” Qiang Yu asks him, also confused. She can’t feel Lan Jin running his cultivation method, which is odd since she is so near to him, but she can feel that there is some sort of disturbance in his Qi which doesn’t make sense because she should either feel both, or neither, but definitely not one without the other.
“Yeah.” All three of the clouds in Lan Jin’s Dantian are revolving right now, but there still isn’t a response from the Stone Prophet.
“That’s… strange. Move over.” She urges and Lan Jin scoots to the side to give Qiang Yu access to the Stone Prophet.
Qiang Yu then takes Lan Jin’s spot in front of the Stone Prophet and places her hands on its palms. From the side, Lan Jin watches her closely to figure out if there’s anything he’s supposed to be doing but not doing. In the end, Lan Jin immediately figures out that he wasn’t doing it right at all as after several seconds of waiting, a stream of clear Qi enters Qiang Yu’s right hand from the Stone Prophet’s left hand. After that, the Qi disappears from Lan Jin’s sight, but nearly a minute later, a much smaller, even clearer stream of Qi exits Qiang Yu’s left hand and enters the Stone Prophet’s right hand before traveling up through its arm toward its head. Once it arrives, it filters into the spirit stones in the Stone Prophet’s face and begins making each of them glow in turn.
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From the bottom of its face, the first spirit stone to light up shines a pale, earthy color. But, an instant later, a bronze color comes from the spirit stone right above it. Five seconds after that, a bright silver color comes from the third spirit stone. Finally, after waiting several more seconds, the last spirit stone lights up in a bright, golden color. However, Lan Jin notices that there’s still a lot of Qi left in the Stone Prophet’s head that goes nowhere, and, as Qiang Yu removes her hands from the Stone Prophet’s palms, it gradually fades away without doing anything.
After watching her example, Lan Jin pretty much understands what he’s supposed to do. He just hasn’t thought of a way to replicate her feat yet since his only method of absorbing Qi was to eat things.
“So, is it better to light up more of them or just the ones higher on the Stone Prophet’s face? Or does it really matter?” Lan Jin asks her.
“You think you have the qualifications to worry about things like that?” Someone from the crowd rudely asks Lan Jin. “You are so old but have only reached the third level of Qi Gathering. You should be happy if you can even manage to light up the lowest spirit stone.”
With a thoughtful expression on her face, Qiang Yu ignores the voice coming from the crowd and says, “It matters. But, you should take things step by step and only do what you are capable of doing. This is not a test of ability, but a test of talent. The Stone Prophet relies on multiple facets of your cultivation to accurately determine the quality of your spirit root. The most important of these is your speed at absorbing Qi. Next is how pure the Qi becomes when you refine it within your body. Finally, the Stone Prophet relies on you returning the Qi you absorbed to it so it can accurately grade your spirit root. So if you have any thoughts of absorbing the Qi for your own immediate benefit, you should forget about it. All you will do is harm your future for a momentary gain.”
“Got it,” Lan Jin says while nodding his head. “But lighting the higher spirit stones is better, right?”
Qiang Yu’s eyes widen and she opens her mouth twice before any sound comes out. “Yes,” she finally says.
“Okay, cool!” Lan Jin says and then turns his attention back to the Stone Prophet.
***
Though Lan Jin doesn’t notice it with his back turned away from the Martial Testing Pavilion’s entrance, more people enter the area as he tries to figure out a way to use the Stone Prophet. There are five of them in total, including the girl Lulu who had just left and is now carrying the piece of ribbon Qiang Yu had slipped on, Hu Qiuping who had abandoned him over an hour ago, and Hu Shentian and Hu Gongniu who had left to sell the natural treasures multiple hours ago.
But, alongside the four of them, there is also an older man with salt-and-pepper hair tied up in a bun on top of his head. He is wearing a dark-brown robe and has one arm held behind his back while the other is holding a plain wooden cane that is planted firmly on the stone surface of the pavilion. Though, why he needs it is uncertain as he walks with a straight back and each step he takes looks smooth and easy.
When the older man looks around the Martial Testing Pavilion, he shows an amused expression on his face as he sees the number of people present. Looking at the crowd, he easily spots Lan Jin, partly due to his hair and partly due to how strange his jeans, t-shirt, and hoodie backpack look compared to Qiang Yu’s green dress and everyone else’s expensive robes.
“That the brat you want me to help?” The older man asks Hu Qiuping who immediately nods.
“Yes, Great Physician!” Hu Qiuping quickly responds, his voice low but firm despite the nervousness clearly present on his face. “He was implicated because of me, so, at the very least, I would like to see if there’s anything you can do to help him. All of the natural treasures he ate were fairly low-quality ones, but I’m sure if it comes down to it, he will be willing to save up the money to buy whatever natural treasures you need to purge the toxins inside of him.”
The man Hu Qiuping called the Great Physician eyes him before turning his gaze back to Lan Jin.
“There’s no point.” The Great Physician says calmly.
“But… Great Physician—“
“Brat, I already told you there’s no point.”
Hu Qiuping clamps his mouth shut and feels stifled. He and Hu Gongniu ran into the Great Physician while selling all of the natural treasures. Originally, they hadn’t even approached him as it was just a chance encounter inside one of the many shops in the Inner City catering to cultivators. What’s more, they didn’t even know who he was. But, when the Great Physician noticed all of the natural treasures they were trying to sell, he immediately had them take out all of the boxes and lay them out on the shop’s counter.
Hu Qiuping had originally planned on refusing, but when the store owner quickly ordered them to obey ‘the Great Physician’, they didn’t hesitate any further as they’d both heard of him before.
The Great Physician was someone who lived in the Eastern District of the city and ran a small clinic. He never got into any trouble, only cured some small common illnesses and injuries, and never participated in any of the city’s affairs. No one knew if he was a cultivator or not, but it was said that he was a knowledgeable person and even sometimes gave out pointers and helped some low-level cultivators if he was inclined to do so.
But the curious thing about him was that, in the area around his clinic, there was never any crime, no one fought there, and it was rare to even hear of someone from the Inner City traveling anywhere nearby. Nobody knew why, or at least nobody who knew was willing to say anything, but just the mysteries surrounding his clinic were enough to warn off anyone who might disrespect him.
To that end, it was common knowledge within the outer regions of the city that the Great Physician wasn’t someone who could be offended. Even though nobody knew why they had to be careful around him, nobody really cared as the Great Physician rarely left his home and business with the exception of occasionally traveling to the Inner City to buy herbs and natural treasures. He didn’t even go out to buy food as people would just deliver it to him. So it was easy enough not to offend him as someone would have to go out of their way in order to do so in the first place.
But Hu Qiuping and Hu Gongniu had the fortune or misfortune to run into him while they were hurriedly trying to sell their natural treasures and return to Hu Shentian and Lan Jin who they had left earlier. But, in front of Hu Qiuping, Hu Gongniu, and even the shop’s owner, the Great Physician looked through all of the boxes and picked out the things he wanted before storing them away. He paid for everything, and he had even paid them slightly more than what the store would have, but after that, the Great Physician told Hu Qiuping and Hu Gongniu that, from then on, he wanted to see everything they brought back before they tried selling it to anyone else.
They had been paid a good price for everything and wanted to agree immediately as it would allow them to cut out the middleman and earn more from then on, but both of them understood that the reason why the Great Physician had taken an interest in them was due to Lan Jin’s aid. However, even knowing that, Hu Qiuping ultimately decided to agree to the Great Physician’s instruction. He figured that Lan Jin would definitely need a way to make money now that he arrived in the city and, with his incredible ability to sense Qi, collecting herbs would be the fastest way to do just that.
However, Hu Qiuping remembered that Lan Jin had consumed many natural treasures out in the wild and their toxins were still likely in his body. After having implicated Lan Jin and still receiving benefits from his cooperation with him, he felt a little guilty so he asked the Great Physician if he would be willing to look at one of his friends and see if the toxins in his body could be removed.
The Great Physician agreed to take a look and, after selling the rest of their natural treasures to the very same shop the Great Physician had robbed of its business, they prepared to head to the Martial Testing Arena.
On their way back, Hu Shentian appeared without Lan Jin and Hu Qiuping asked him if something had happened. Learning that the Martial Testing Pavilion wasn’t open, Hu Qiuping was shocked and even pitied Lan Jin a bit because it was clear that he had no choice but to wait near the Martial Testing Pavilion for it to open again. But, after Hu Qiuping and Hu Gongniu had taken so long selling the natural treasures, largely due to the Great Physician picking through each of the boxes to examine their contents closely, Hu Shentian was worried that something had happened so he felt that he had to leave Lan Jin behind so he could search for them.
In the end, the four of them returned to the Martial Field and saw that everyone had already left, including Lan Jin. The only exception was Hong Lulu, the young handmaiden of the Qiang Estate’s only daughter, Qiang Yu, who was standing alone on one of the arenas with a piece of green ribbon in her hand.
Noticing the Great Physician, she immediately approached and bowed her head to pay her respects to him before attempting to turn toward the Martial Testing Pavilion.
Noticing the green ribbon in Hong Lulu’s hand, the Great Physician stopped her and asked if something had happened. Hong Lulu clearly hesitated, but in the end, she described how there had been an accident between Qiang Yu and an unknown person named Lan Jin and how, even now, many people were in the Martial Testing Pavilion to see what his qualifications are.
After that, they all hurried toward the Martial Testing Pavilion to check on the situation. Ultimately, they arrived just in time to see Lan Jin sitting in front of the Stone Prophet with his hands resting on its palms.
***
Lan Jin focuses the entirety of his attention on the Stone Prophet in front of him. He now knows exactly what he’s supposed to do, the only problem is that he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to do it. His knowledge of his cultivation technique is limited to making the energy in his body rotate and even that depends entirely on him using his spirit to connect with his energy.
With his hands on the Stone Prophet’s palms, Lan Jin is able to feel the Qi within the spirit stones he is touching and he is sure he would be able to purify it using the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame if it enters his body. From there, it would be relatively simple for him to rotate the purified Qi and send it up through his arm and back into the Stone Prophet.
“The only problem I’m having is the first step,” Lan Jin thinks to himself. “Everything else should be easy, I just need to absorb the Qi.”
After a second of thought, Lan Jin realizes something, “Using my spirit to rotate the Qi inside of me should have nothing to do with gathering more of it. All it does is help me get rid of impurities, and even that I do with the help of the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame. So the main thing I should be focusing on, or rather the only thing, isn’t rotating the Qi. Instead, I need to focus on using my spirit to pull more Qi inside of my body through my right hand. I’ve had a bit of practice over the last two days at controlling my spirit, so it shouldn’t be too hard, but after I absorb it, I also need to send it through the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame and up through my left arm and back into the statue.”
“Alone, none of those things should be that difficult, but one after the other, I don’t think my spirit is strong enough yet.”
After hesitating for several seconds, Lan Jin opens the Omega Browser’s Space while everyone behind stares at him impatiently. He then gathers several dozen strands of purple mist and shoves them toward his little purple star before making the Omega Browser’s Space churn around them and fuse them together.
It only takes a moment, but in the meanwhile, everyone present in the Martial Testing Pavilion watches Lan Jin as he begins shaking for some unknown reason. Qiang Yu even considers stopping him from trying to use the Stone Prophet as she believes he is trying to force out his potential in order to perform better.
However, seconds later, Lan Jin stops shaking and he focuses his attention anew on his task. First, as a test, he moves the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame from the Omega Browser’s Space to the inside of his right arm. When it works, Lan Jin takes a deep breath and tries to capture the feeling of making the purple Qi rotate and then applies it toward pulling the Qi touching his right hand into his body.
It takes a great deal of effort, and projecting his spirit even the infinitesimally small distance outside of his body to touch the spirit stone makes him nauseous, but he forces himself to grasp as much of the Qi within the spirit stone as he can and yanks it into his body with a single, rough tug of his spirit.
Instantly, the Qi flies into his arm and through the awaiting flame that quickly purifies it into a stream of purple mist. It’s enough that Lan Jin trembles from the ecstasy of it passing through him, only managing to stay upright as he tightly holds onto the palms of the Stone Prophet. But in the end, he succeeds at making the stream of purple mist rotate down his right arm, through his torso, and up through his left arm where he forces it back into the Stone Prophet.
At that point, many things happen one after the other. First, the spirit stone embedded into the Stone Prophet’s left palm cracks after having had Qi ripped away from it with a good deal of force. Then, as the purple mist enters the spirit stone on the Stone Prophet’s right hand, it begins glowing bright purple as most of the mist begins stagnating there. After that, a small amount of the purple mist travels up through the Stone Prophet’s right arm and into its head where it dyes all of the spirit stones in its face purple. None of them are glowing brightly, especially compared to the spirit stone in its right palm, but each has the same dull purple coloration.
Lan Jin immediately realizes that, whatever is happening, it’s nothing like what happened during Qiang Yu’s demonstration. With her, only the spirit stones in the Stone Prophet’s face were affected by her Qi and the Stone Prophet didn’t sustain any damage. What’s more, the glow of the spirit stones faded away after several seconds as her Qi dissipated.
But as everyone in the Martial Testing Pavilion watches Lan Jin and the Stone Prophet with wide eyes and open mouths, they all see that the spirit stone in the left palm of the Stone Prophet simply doesn’t fade away and the spirit stones in its face now seem to be permanently dyed purple.
Realizing that he most likely messed up, Lan Jin quickly turns to Qiang Yu and says, “Hey, uh, just curious, but, uh, do you know how much these things cost?”
Qiang Yu looks at him with a dumbfounded expression on her face. Then, as she turns back to look at the Stone Prophet’s appearance, her tanned face pales and beads of sweat form on her brow.
In the end, nobody learns anything about Lan Jin’s qualifications, but everyone present quickly realizes that someone is going to have to take the blame for this event. Furthermore, though two people could claim the blame for deciding to have Lan Jin tested despite the Pavilion Master’s absence, only one person communicated with the guards and had the Martial Testing Pavilion reopened. And that same person even explained the process of the Stone Prophet’s test to Lan Jin.