Xing Yi felt lost.

With his breakthrough, he had now become determined to learn external techniques and martial arts. But without any teacher, he didn’t see how he could realistically make any progress.

Take the sect disciples of the Bloody Path Sect for example. Xing Yi hadn’t been out very often during his past several months of intense meditation, but he wasn’t necessarily living under a rock.

In the Bloody Path sect, there were three types of disciples. Core, inner and outer. Disciples were affiliated with one of the seven disciplines in the sect. That being the sword, talisman refining, pill refining, treasure refining, the elements, illusion arts, and blood arts.

Each discipline was assigned an entire mountain to operate under and each had a designated leader called the Hall Master. They were all masters of their discipline at the coveted stage of core formation.

However, the discipline of the blood arts and sword actually had two core formation masters. This was because these were the largest disciplines in the sect, with the school of the sword having slightly more disciples than the blood arts.

Now, being an outer court disciple meant one had to stick to a gruelling daily schedule that was set by the sect. If one didn’t do the work set by the sect, they would be immediately kicked out. They all lived in close vicinity to a massive training hall, mess hall, and courtyard at the bottom of their mountain.

Everyday, they would learn underneath a foundation establishment teacher, spar with each other, undergo intense physical training where they would be pushed to their absolute limits every day.

Then, they would retreat to their designated housing to meditate for the rest of the afternoon before finally sleeping and repeating it all over again. There was no mercy for disciples who couldn’t keep up with the workload.

Outer disciples were ranked on a monthly basis to encourage competition and force everyone to give their all or lest they end up near the bottom of the list. It was cruel but it worked.

One was an outer court disciple if they were vessel cleansing. However, if one managed to bridge the gap between themselves and foundation establishment and make a breakthrough to the next stage, they would become an inner court disciple.

The only exception being is when a genius appears in the sect. That would cause a storm to stir up in the sect and a competition to ensue between the Hall Masters as everyone would be vying to take them under their wing.

As an inner court disciple, one learned directly from the core formation master. There was a slight difference in the inner court disciples. One wasn’t truly considered an inner court disciple until they earned their Hall Master’s favour and became their official disciple.

The disciple usually needed to do something to impress the Hall Master before they were accepted as a disciple.

Fortunately, inner court disciples were given much more freedom in regard to how they trained and could gain access to secret techniques and vastly more resources to fuel their cultivation. And since they were now foundation establishment, they now had added responsibilities and regularly went on missions for the sect.

Lastly, there were core disciples. They weren’t really “disciple’s” as they were all core formation masters that were hundreds of years old but to the nascent soul ancestor, they were.

It was only up until yesterday that he learned the stages of cultivation after reading few a couple books in the library.

There were five known levels of cultivation. That being: Vessel Cleansing, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, and Celestial Transformation. Each was exponentially stronger than the next and was similarly difficult to reach.

Core disciples had complete freedom to do what they wanted and learned from the nascent soul ancestor on an irregular basis. This was because his sect’s ancestor was constantly in closed door cultivation. In fact, he had been for the past fifteen years.

No one, not even the core formation masters, had even heard a single word from him during that time. But they knew better than to disturb him.

If he was in closed door cultivation for so long, it must’ve been very important.

Xing Yi found it interesting that the ancestor had been in closed door cultivation for fifteen years as that was longer than he had been alive.

In essence, disciples of the sect had teachers and access to resources he didn’t. Without them, he wouldn’t be able to progress. He couldn’t just turn up to the training of the outer court disciples one day and ask to join in. He was still an unofficial disciple after all.

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Xing Yi was also pretty sure that not even a single disciple of the sect knew that he was in the sect apart from the librarian and a few other people. He guessed that the Stewards had kept his entrance into the sect a well-kept secret.

Whenever he walked anywhere no one said a thing to him as they assumed that he still hadn’t cleansed his first vessel. They probably thought he was some talentless member of one of the three big clans of the sect with inferior spiritual roots.

To be frank, Xing Yi couldn’t stop thinking about spiritual roots and that he didn’t have them. Everything would’ve been so much easier if he just had spiritual roots. He could do the intense training. He could endure the pain.

What made him so different form the disciples who had spiritual roots?

What made them so worthy to have spiritual roots? What gods deigned them to have spiritual roots? For what reason?

It had become so annoying that he kept telling himself to shut up about it and to focus on his own cultivation. There was a voice of resistance that was opposed to this train of thought.

But he felt that this voice was right.

If things played out the way he expected them to, by the time he dies he would at most, at the very most reach the 5th layer of meridian cleansing.

That’s why as Xing Yi sat outside and contemplated this and saw an immortal fly by high up in the sky on their flying sword, he couldn’t help but feel immense and jealousy and desire.

Without spiritual roots, all is hopeless and can never truly become an immortal.

Because of this, Xing Yi didn’t meditate for the first time since he began. He saw no point to it after all. In the time that he didn’t spend meditating, he was in the library perusing over stacks of books he had borrowed

. All were on the topic of spiritual roots.

He searched to find answers that could give him hope.

But he found none.

He continued reading and reading but to no avail.

Weeks passed…

…

Xing Yi stared at the page of a particular book with an incredulous expression. He huffed and puffed like he was running and a few drops of sweat had coalesced on his forehead. His hands shaking, he re-read a certain paragraph in the book.

“Through an unknown method, Li Xiulan acquired spiritual roots. Using his already profound strength that equalled that of a celestial transformation cultivator, he advanced his internal cultivation at incomprehensible speeds.

Within a mere one-hundred years, he became a dual-cultivated celestial-transformation existence that shocked and conquered the entire world of cultivation. During this time, he was the sole unrivalled existence.

Nothing could stop him. However he quickly ascended thereafter due to heavenly laws but speculation about how he acquired spiritual roots is still widely discussed amongst many cultivators alike.

There are many theories but the most likely and plausible way he did so was by gathering primal elemental qi and forging it within his lower dantian. Forging spiritual roots with the inner fire to become an internal cultivator is a common myth amongst the rare and sparse population of internal cultivators but it is quite plausible for this to be possible as…”

Xing Yi took in a couple deep breathes.

This was the only lead he had found after three weeks of constant reading day and night, completely ignoring everything else.

If he interpreted this text correctly, he would have to already be a celestial transformation level internal cultivator to actually acquire spiritual roots. Primal elemental energy was a type of heavenly qi that could not be handled by any mere cultivator.

They had to be at the level of celestial transformation. But in the first place, external cultivators could not manipulate heavenly qi. Then how did he acquire spiritual roots if he couldn’t manipulate heavenly qi or any sort of qi at all?

Was there a third party involved that help him?

In the end, Xing Yi felt that all of this had been for naught. He had come up completely empty-handed.

If he couldn’t acquire spiritual roots, then what else could he do?