*Ding* *Ding*

Bell tolls rang through the air as the Immortal landed at the bottom of one of the mountain sides. Wu Ming saw a few houses and facilities all over the place while he was in the air and mentally prepared himself to do some unwilling and troublesome work.

"Sect Uncle Ji, welcome back! Who are these that you brought?" A sweet voice sounded out. " Are they new juniors of mine?"

It was a lovely lady who wore a pair of light blue robes. She let out a little giggle at the end which caused little Wang Qi to blush slightly. A few hours after the battle had ended, Wang Qi seemed to have turned back into an innocent boy again. Wu Ming's spine shivered whenever he recalled that chilling sight of a little boy smiling amidst the blood and gore.

Thankfully, all of their injuries had been healed through some medicine that the Immortal had brought with him while they were flying. Magically, it had even cured them of their fatigue. Such wonders left Wu Ming feeling more curious about this strange world.

"Nn, these three will serve in the Servants' Quarters from now on," the Immortal said, his previous overbearingness revealing itself once more. "Bring this one to the Disciplinary Committee and toss the other two to suitable facilities."

He made quick gestures towards the three to indicate his plans more precisely. When Jun Yi heard that he was going to be in the Disciplinary Committee, his eyes lit up and a bit of haughty pride leaked out in a smile.

"Of course, Sect Elder Ji. Please take care. I, Li Fu, will take care of this personally."

The lady bowed to the Immortal respectfully without failing to mention her name. Satisfied, the Immortal finally flew towards the higher areas on the mountain.

Li Fu then led the three youngsters up a winding pathway until they happened upon a large building. It was a wide structure that boasted an extravagant and unnecessarily large door. A mere glance at it and one would recognize it to be made out of wood that was taken from the vicinity.

Once inside, Li Fu turned to face them with a stern yet friendly smile. "Wait here for a while and we'll get your things ready. Oh, anything that you brought with you will be considered useless here."

Right after she left them, the atmosphere immediately felt stifled. Jun Yi and Wang Qi both looked disheartened about their free entry to a sect. After all, they all just survived a traumatizing encounter with fierce pillagers. They witnessed their close friends and family perish by the edge of the blades or the fires that trapped them in their houses.

Jun Yi especially looked depressed about the village that would be his in the future. What kind of man would he be if he didn't feel anything when his things were taken away from him?

However, his personality didn't allow him to feel sad without venting it immediately. He raised his head to look straight at Wu Ming. "Why didn't you help us fend them off? I saw you play around with 5 of them at a time! My father died! And yet, right after fighting them off without a single scratch..."

Wu Ming was the only one of the three that didn't feel like their world had toppled down over their heads. Instead, he looked oddly calm about his current situation and seemed to be taking everything from the people and surroundings in stride.

But upon hearing that condescending and criticizing tone, Wu Ming sized up the man in front of him. Tall, sharp jawline, skinny and fair. The only unattractive point about him would be his personality. For years, he would occasionally check up on Wu Ming and mock him from a distance, somehow coming up with different things to call him everytime. One time, he even broke Wu Ming's shack apart.

After a few moments, Wu Ming just lazily looked at Jun Yi like he was a bother. "I already did my best..."

With that, Jun Yi's fiery rage rose further but was soon extinguished by Wu Ming's continued response.

"Your men didn't die by my hands. If you want to blame someone, blame the incompetent men you had under your thumb. Better yet, thank them for keeping you alive. We should be thankful for the lives we were given. For a man like you, that might be hard but at least try..."

Jun Yi was at a lost for words. Although he wanted to erupt at Wu Ming again, the words Wu Ming had spoken threw his thoughts into turmoil as well as the silently crying Wang Qi beside them. Jun Yi's expression changed every now and then as his complicated emotions filled his mind.

Li Fu came back shortly after this short exchange between the two while bringing three bags in her hands, one of which was somewhat larger than the other two. Pushing two bags towards Wu Ming and Wang Qi, she introduced its contents without noticing the sombre air around them.

"In these bags are your Servants' attire and the first chapter of the Sect's qi condensation cultivation technique. There should also be a wooden slip carrying information on your accommodations. As for your duties, both of you will start mining in the caverns."

Without even waiting for the two to inspect the mentioned items, she passed the larger bag to Jun Yi and explained its contents cheerfully.

"In this one, your can find the same things like in those other two bags. But you get extra spirit stones from your seniors here. They can be used for cultivation or as currency to exchange for the Sect's resources. For now, it's better to use it for your cultivation."

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Jun Yi took out a crystal the size of his hand from the bag. It shone with a dull azure blue that seemed to shift about in the crystal. The expression of the three new servants immediately turned into ones of wonderment.

After Li Fu explained a few of the Sect's rules in the Servants' Quarters, she led them out of the building and brought them to their new homes. All accommodations were built out of stone in the outer parts of the Servants' Quarters and could house up to four people in them. Here, different districts served to separate the servants from the rest depending on their allocated work.

"This district will be your new home. Just enter any house that isn't occupied," Li Fu casually said, her arm pointing up at a shoddy sign above her.

"The blue miner's district?" Wang Qi quietly read the sign, his seemingly innocent eyes worrying over how the sign was held up by two worn out strings.

Li Fu then elaborated further on the topic, "Since we have two mountain sides, naturally there would be two Servants' Quarters. The one here is called the Blue Servants' Quarters while the other is Red."

She laughed and quietly muttered something before shoving Wu Ming and Wang Qi into the district. As for Jun Yi, she brought him away to a different district.

But before she got out of sight, she shouted out, "You start working tomorrow morning!"

While not minding Li Fu's forceful treatment, Wu Ming quickly made his way towards each house to check for any vacancies with Wang Qi following behind him. All of the houses were fully packed except for a few empty ones at the back of the district. Once he entered one of the empty houses however, Wang Qi didn't follow him through the door and scratched his head awkwardly.

"Big bro Wu, I don't think we should stay in the same house..."

Wu Ming was confused at first but didn't think much about Wang Qi's opinion. After all, it was his own choice and Wu Ming didn't feel any need to even try to persuade him. He had long grown used to a certain degree of isolation...

"Alright, there's still many houses you can choose from."

Wang Qi beamed a smile to Wu Ming and hurriedly left to find a house. Wu Ming shut the door behind him and inspected the insides of the house. It was separate into 4 sections at the corners and a large pillar at its center supporting the house. Each section only had a bed and one cabinet. After settling down one of the beds, he threw out the contents of his bag.

Out came a set of brown clothing and a small book. On the cover of the book were the words 'Expansive Sky Cloud Art'. Flipping open the book, he found instructions on how to absorb the spiritual energy of the world. There were also pictures depicting the various hidden pathways within the body.

Wu Ming read through each word eagerly, trying hard to memorize these words by heart. Much to the In his hands currently were the secrets to becoming an Immortal!

"To walk the path of Immortality, you must first absorb spiritual energy of the world and condense it to form qi in the dantian. Interesting..."

The book talked about the various stages of Qi Condensation, from 1 to 9, and the methods to advance from one stage to the next. But to his surprise, the book only described the path to the 4th stage of Qi Condensation along with descriptions of a magical technique. "Where's the rest?"

After he flipped past the last page of the book and looked at its back, he immediately noticed a short note written in blue. "To cultivate further on the path, the outer sect welcomes you..."

Wu Ming flipped back to the previous pages and started pondering on its contents. He stayed like this for a few minutes trying to fully understand the concepts that were thrown at him before shrugging his shoulders in defeat.

"Spiritual energy, qi, the meridian system..." He muttered. "All of it sounds so unrealistic so how did the first Cultivator discover this path..."

He shook his head to avoid thinking of random things and tried to absorb spiritual energy as described in the manual.

He sat down on the bed cross-legged and focused on sensing the world and an invisible energy flowing around him. To him, this wasn't very hard as he's often done this back in his village. The only difference this time was the direction of his focus.

He sat there until the sun went down trying to accomplish this but to no avail. His stomach had grumbled so he finally went out to search for some food.

Thinking that food would be provided to the servants, he went out fantasizing about wondrous foods harvested in the skies. However, to his dismay, he was told by a fellow miner that food was only provided to those who did their job. At that moment, he furrowed his eyebrows and thought, "Doesn't this mean I only get fed tomorrow?"

Unsatisfied with his current situation, he went back to his new stone home and waited for the next day to come. However, he couldn't sleep as the familiar silence caused him to start pondering on anything that came to mind.

He tried to recall the battle that had occurred back in the village of Jun but only a muddled mess came to mind. There was this blank piece in his memory that disturbed him...

He also started to think of his new position in the world as a servant in the Valiant Sky Sect. With how everything looked like, he deemed it impossible to have peaceful times currently and that he would have to adapt to the new lifestyle here. However, he would occasionally recall sitting down on his rock and watching the seasons flow by as if he was unconsciously denying change...

~~

"Hey, Wu Ming! Wake up, it's already morning!"

Wu Ming slowly opened his eyes as he felt the bed beneath him shaking vigorously. He sat upright on the bed then wiped the crust off his eyes. While shooting a cold glare towards Wang Qi, he snorted and quickly got up. Nobody had ever bothered waking him up so it naturally felt very uncomfortable for him at the moment. However, he knew that he had work to be done so he didn't bother much with Wang Qi's action.

Right after he followed Wang Qi out, he was greeted with odd looks by other servants nearby. Every single one of them looked annoyed with him. Some tried to hide it by turning away immediately when Wu Ming looked in their direction but some outright stared him down with tired eyes.

Puzzled, Wu Ming quietly questioned Wang Qi about the weird behavior of the other servants. To that, Wang Qi simply flashed a helpless smile and without even mumbling a single word about it. Instead, he bragged about the new roommates he had in his new house were nice enough to give him a heads up on the way of life in the Servants' Quarters.

And soon enough, they arrived in front of a huge cavern digging into the base of the mountain after following behind other a group of other miners. While keeping a distance, the both of them copied the actions of the group in front quietly. After having picked up their pickaxes, they examined the area around them as they proceeded to enter the cave.

The cavern's huge and eerie entrance caused an unfamiliar feeling of dread to surface in Wu Ming. It would have already made him turn back and search for another cavern to mine in if not for the presence of Wang Qi by his side.

His eyes jumped back and forth between the cave walls and the teeth-like protrusions above and around him. Wu Ming's thoughts ran wild with his new surroundings and his caution soon caused him to fidget restlessly.

Then, an odd question popped into his overactive mind. "Surely I'm not in some land of ghosts right?"