“Look at your 3 o’clock. The young man in white robes fighting in the public area under the transparent film of the dome is one of the protection squad’s scouts. He has trained in Discerning pupils, even from a distance he would have been able to accurately gauge your combat prowess.

“Next, the young woman in pink tracksuits battling a young man in green shirt at 7 o’clock are both members of the protection squad. Their fight is extremely fake to the trained eyes of an expert. All their attention is on us.”

Drith patted his shoulder and said. “You need to work up your skills in order to not get trailed. The protection squad would’ve already known about me choosing you by now. Beware of them from now on, and don’t back off alright? You agreed to this and you are getting paid.”

Spencer gave a nod of confirmation before parting ways after both of them deposited their tokens back at the reception booth.

Fuck man, my body hurts. Spencer knew he wasn't critically injured, but it pained nonetheless. It was a good thing he frequently got into street brawls, it toughened him up for now.

He had his meal almost 3 hours ago but since the coupon was eligible for all 24 hours since it was issued, he decided to have a meal again. It was evening and the sun would be setting in soon. He quickly had a meal and returned to his cave.

As soon as he was inside, Spencer took off his shoes and began cultivating to increase the amount of qi in his storage. It was embarrassing that he had no qi to even practice his cultivation art.

For the next few hours, Spencer kept circulating qi to refine his 27th meridian while also filling the qi in his dantian. At one point, he noticed that he could take both refined qi and plain qi to circulate through the route together. But it was mentally draining as he would have to control refined qi and plain qi as two separate entities.

Spencer went for another meal when it was night time, then one more at midnight, and the last one a few hours before his coupon’s validity expired. He slept around 5 in the morning after taking a bath and refining 2 more meridians throughout the night. Considering he only needed 4 hours to have a nice sleep and the mission was about to start at 11, he had plenty of time to reach the venue.

He had already asked around, and found out that for larger distances like to head towards Grand Elder Lyra’s personal training hall from the main peak, there existed several transports to choose from. With even the slowest of them taking a maximum of one hour.

At 9:30 in the morning, Spencer left his cave and locked the door behind him. He walked through the rocky terrain till he reached the wide area filled with numerous vehicles. All vehicles had glowing lines etched atop their surface, floating above the ground to combat the largely uneven surface of the mountain.

He quickly booked one to head towards his location, and it turns out there were more who were like him.

Of course there would be. The mission requirements were only for Qi gathering stage cultivators, and all of them are outer sect disciples, who all live on this main peak. Some might be personal disciples but would they need to scramble for resources like us outer sect disciples?

Spencer boarded the caravan and was surprised to find a familiar face.

Noella, the talent who was introduced alongside him. Beside her was another female disciple, opposite to them sat a male disciple who had his attention on the ladies in front of him.

Spencer seated himself beside the man and watched the caravan float even higher before moving in a particular direction. There were no horses or any animal moving it, the driver sat in the front with a wall between him and passengers.

Does this move simply by arrays? Or whatever it was that was engraved on it? It’s basically a fancy box to sit in.

But Spencer had to admit, he quite liked it. It was extremely comfortable despite the ups and downs he witnessed the caravan going through.

“Hello, my name is Ralph. What are your names may I ask?”

Ralph didn’t glance at Spencer even once during the speech. The latter wasn’t inclined to invite himself either since the former only had eyes for the ladies.

The lady beside Noella took the job of introducing herself and Noella. “I am Eva, and this is my friend Noella, also a talent scouted by Grand Elder Lyra herself.”

Noella shot a look in Spencer’s direction and said, “Aren’t you a talent too?”

Ralph didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Why don’t we talk about ourselves? I am already at Qi gathering 3rd stage, one of the highest ranked among the latest batch. I am also trying to learn about alchemy, what about you guys?”

Noella gave up when she saw Spencer wasn't answering. Her personality wanted to include Spencer in their talks but her friend was already hinting at her to talk after she was done talking about herself, Noella had trouble clicking with Eva.

She wasn't bad, she had simply clung herself onto her from the first time they met at the Announcement hall. Eva never glanced at her in her days of living here before being formally introduced by Elder Sky, despite their caves being close by.

Yes, Noella was here around 15 days before Spencer, but her formal introduction was held off because instructions were passed on that Lord Lysander found a talent too. There were already disciples dispatched from the sect to invite the recently found talent, so it would be better if the introduction was done together.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The sect refrained from disturbing the outer sect disciples too much. They established a set of rules, plenty of halls where the disciples could go for various different reasons and withdrew themselves from their lives. They preferred letting them do their own thing.

Noella reluctantly talked about herself. “I am a talent scouted by Grand Elder Lyra. I am only at 1st stage of Qi gathering. I didn’t have time to look at anything other than cultivating.”

Ralph’s eyes shined as he looked at the young woman. Eva and Noella were both above average in looks, but he felt drawn to Noella because of her origin. Being from Earth gave her an extra layer of exquisiteness in his opinion.

He chuckled lightly. “Noella, do you want to go out with me for dinner? Don’t rush to reject me, if you happen to have any missions which you’ll be doing, I am happy to give you more than the mission reward so you don’t fall behind in gathering resources.”

Without waiting for Noella’s response, Eva jumped in first. Holding Noella’s hands, she prodded. “Agree with him, girl. This is the best chance to get acquainted with him. Gentlemen like him who’ll even reimburse the loss of mission rewards to spend time with you are rare. C’mon, I agree on her behalf, okay?”

“No!”

Noella abruptly yelled. Then she quickly returned to her shy, nervous demeanor. She said without thinking much, but they were her true thoughts. Noella’s cautious nature coupled with the unfamiliar environment simply didn’t allow her to even attempt dating. Not to mention she was here to cultivate, not to focus on other things.

Ralph’s expression faltered but he quickly returned to smiling. Eva had an awkward smile on her face as she silently tried to convince Noella. It was a drama in the caravan as they talked about an assortment of topics. Ralph repeatedly tried to gain Noella’s attention, or entice her with various things to get her on a date but Noella had closed up after the first offer.

She didn’t say a single word as long as his topics wandered off to dating her. Ralph had a pleasant smile on his face, but his fists clenched inside his long sleeves, which Spencer got a look at due to sitting beside him.

Spencer had no intention of getting himself into more trouble, the protection squad was already big enough.

Approximately thirty minutes later, they reached the Grand Elder Lyra’s training hall. Spencer had to admit, if there was one thing this sect was good at, it was at building big things.

Or maybe all sects had it?

On second thought, that could be true as well. Sects had a large number of disciples, unlike universities and schools. The buildings had to be big enough to accommodate them.

Spencer disembarked from the caravan and headed towards the large training hall. Since he had already paid for the fare and didn’t want to hang around them, he didn’t wait for the trio to catch up. Inwardly, he felt sorry about Noella but this wasn’t the time to think about it. No one was coming to save him from the protection squad, simultaneously, Noella should think about how to get out of her current situation too.

Judging from how the guy was able to advance till stage 3 of Qi gathering and also had enough to pay Noella, it was clear he wasn’t poor.

Connections to the sect? Rich family? Or some of his older brothers or sisters are in the sect sponsoring his early cultivation?

Spencer shook his head to remove the thoughts and entered the training hall after registering his name at the reception. The lady at the booth verified his name, checking if he was one of the people who had accepted the mission, since Grand Elder Lyra had instructed her to allow no one else entry.

Spencer slowly walked forward, taking in the sight of the huge training hall. The main door on the outside led to the reception hall which was approximately big enough to fit 10 SUVs. Between the two reception booths was a door which led to a corridor almost ten meters long, filled with doors on both sides.

At the end of the corridor was a huge circular hall, with a dome shaped ceiling. Spencer couldn’t spot any kind of pillars anywhere, the entire structure was built and was standing purely on materials of its walls.

Or maybe another kind of array?

Spencer noticed long ago that there was already a group of disciples standing not too far away, in the center of the hall, with some scattered around the space. They were like him, inspecting the structure, or probably thinking about other things. Or maybe it was that the males among them were thinking of nothing.

Spencer may not be sure about a lot of things but he was absolutely sure about the thinking habits of men. He himself was one.

Men had these little boxes in their mind which corresponded to a topic. When they took out a box, they didn’t mix it up with another. If you were talking about a topic, they would accompany you to talk about it. But if you abruptly switched the topic, they had difficulty with it. You see, it takes time to pack away the current box and open another. Men didn’t mix boxes.

Now there was one box which was the favorite of the majority of men. The nothing box. If they wanted to open anything, it would be the nothing box they’ll end up opening.

Spencer sat down in a corner of the hall, and thought. Nothing.

He was giving his mind a rest.

He watched Ralph enter from the corner of his eye after a good 5 minutes. The man immediately approached a certain group of people and began talking with them.

Hmm, he did say he was from the latest batch. That means they were admitted into the sect in groups.

It was easy to make friends if you had things in common, especially a significant event like entering the strongest sect together.

Noella and Eva came in a bit later, with Eva seemingly telling Noella about something. From her expression, it certainly didn’t seem like she was simply telling but Spencer wasn’t one to judge.

Eva broke off with her a few seconds later after throwing down her hands with a frustrated expression, and approached a group of female disciples. Spencer noticed her frequently glancing at Ralph from the corner of her eyes.

Noella stood there for a few seconds, fiddling with her hands before she looked around and spotted Spencer. But judging from his previous expression and behavior, he seemed like a pretty cold person to her, so she walked up behind him and sat down without greeting him. She didn’t know if he would give her another cold shoulder like he did on the caravan.

If Spencer had heard her thought process, he would have surely blamed the heavens for such misunderstanding by Noella. After around 45 minutes, Grand Elder Lyra finally entered the training hall, and as soon as she entered, she commanded the guards.

“Close the gate to the training hall. Anyone who arrives late has missed the chance.”