"Zhang Tieshan… Zhao Siyao… Ye Lei…"
The Golden Cloud Valley steward read out several dozen names in one breath.
Those whose names were called were overjoyed, their hearts filling with longing for the long immortal road ahead.
My name isn't on the list… did he miss it?
Lin Yi clamped his teeth on his lip, unable to believe it.
Seventeen years old, third layer of Qi Refinement, a low-grade spiritual root—by rights he should have qualified.
On the first test, the Spirit-Sensing Pillar, and the second, Nine-Bends Peak, his results had been good.
Lin Yi's name was not the only one missing.
Lu Changan and Li Ergou had failed the entrance examination too.
"Everyone else, leave the mountain gate at once!"
The steward's face was cold as he led the chosen seedlings of immortality away.
The hundred-odd youths left behind, Lin Yi and Li Ergou among them, all wore gloomy faces, unwilling to accept it.
Lu Changan's face betrayed no ripple; he had expected this.
Golden Cloud Valley's entrance examination had an age limit: no one over eighteen.
Lu Changan sat right at that ceiling.
A few months later, and he would not even have qualified to take the test.
Outstanding as his performance on the third test had been, his age and cultivation were simply too dismal.
A bone age of nearly eighteen, first-layer Qi Refinement—for a sect, his potential was truly too poor.
Even if his spiritual root had barely scraped into the mid grade, Golden Cloud Valley would never have looked twice at him.
"Brother Lu, does this mean we can't cultivate anymore?"
On the road down the mountain, Li Ergou wore a mourner's face, a man whose dreams had just been smashed.
"Don't be too down. With a spiritual root you can still cultivate—worst case, become a rogue cultivator."
So Lu Changan consoled him.
In truth he knew perfectly well that with Li Ergou's birth and aptitude, the rogue cultivator's road would be harder than climbing to heaven.
Lu Changan himself was not worried. With two lifetimes of cultivation memories to draw on, it was only that his opening moves had not gone smoothly.
Led by two Golden Cloud Valley disciples, the group descended the mountain together.
Along the way they passed a lake brimming with spirit Qi.
Lu Changan drew a deep breath and looked at the reflection of a youth on the water's surface.
This life's body showed well-proportioned, sturdy muscle, and hard calluses had formed on both palms.
His face was hard and angular, his pupils black as ink.
A powerful body, tempered by martial skill.
Not some frail, wilting sissy.
Lu Changan nodded to himself, fairly satisfied with this life's body.
"Senior Brother Yu, with the way I performed in the examination, why was I eliminated?"
On the way down, Lin Yi spoke with a young Golden Cloud Valley disciple, his words faintly complaining.
It turned out that before the entrance examination, Lin Yi had used the marquis estate's connections and resources to grease palms at Golden Cloud Valley.
"Young Marquis, you placed dead last on the third test, the Illusion Heart Platform. By the sect's rules, no one may be taken in unless their spiritual root is high grade or above."
Senior Brother Yu's lips barely moved; he spoke by voice transmission.
He sneered to himself. Golden Cloud Valley was, after all, one of the top five cultivation powers in Liang Kingdom.
Ordinary aptitude, and a mind and will that poor—how could Golden Cloud Valley think anything of him?
The Illusion Heart Platform, huh?
Seething, Lin Yi instinctively glanced at Lu Changan.
Lu Changan did that well on the third test, and even he was eliminated.
At that thought, his mood eased considerably.
He was, after all, a concubine-born son of a marquis.
With worldly power at his back, even without a sect to take him in, he would get on far better than an ordinary rogue cultivator.
That said,
But when he actually walked out through Golden Cloud Valley's mountain gate,
and looked at the peaks slowly swallowed by mist, the faint drifting spirit Qi, the spirit cranes and strange beasts gliding past…
Lin Yi was silent for a long while, then heaved a long sigh:
"One mountain gate—and from here on, immortal and mortal fates are not the same!"
He knew perfectly well that even with a marquis's power behind him, compared to the lofty disciples of an immortal sect, his fate from here on would be worlds apart.
"Zhao Siyao…"
He thought back to how he had tried to win that young lady—beautiful, refined, from a family of standing—for himself.
He had even daydreamed of the day they would stand side by side inside the immortal gates, seeking longevity together.
Yet the moment he stepped outside that gate,
Zhao Siyao became a daughter of heaven, visible but out of reach.
In a single day, the circumstances of their lives had opened into a chasm this wide.
"Brother Lu, Brother Li, my Guang'an Marquess's Estate does have a few cultivation resources. Why don't the two of you come back to the mortal world with me and make a go of it?"
Once outside the gate, Lin Yi's frame of mind shifted, and most of his arrogance drained away.
Lin Yi knew how hard a rogue cultivator's lot was; better to huddle together for warmth. So he tried to use worldly power to recruit Lu Changan and Li Ergou.
"I'll do whatever Brother Lu says." Li Ergou grinned his foolish grin, baring a mouth of yellow teeth.
He had little mind of his own, but he trusted Lu Changan.
Before this, Lin Yi had shown him no respect at all, letting slip a faint contempt as though it were nothing; he might be an uneducated farmer, but that did not mean he had no thoughts of his own.
Lu Changan, by contrast, was a man of the jianghu, down to earth; he had spun tall tales all along the road and looked after Li Ergou a little, which easily won his trust.
"Does the Guang'an Marquess's Estate have a first-rank spirit vein?"
Lu Changan asked mildly, just the one question.
"That… no, it doesn't."
Lin Yi's expression changed.
He realized at once that Lu Changan was not so easily taken in.
A first-rank spirit vein could support Qi Refinement cultivation and speed one's progress.
Compared with the mortal world's spirit-poor regions, that was the difference between heaven and earth.
"Then forget it."
Lu Changan was a thoroughly practical man.
He simply waved a hand, cutting off the pitch Lin Yi was preparing.
Without a first-rank spirit vein, the Guang'an Marquess's Estate could offer at most some incomplete cultivation manuals, or mortal gold and silver and rare medicinal herbs.
None of that meant anything to Lu Changan.
"Haha! Young friend Lu wants a first-rank spirit vein? My Mu family has a second-rank one—might we recruit the two of you?"
A hearty man's voice came from the direction of the mountain foot.
The newcomer was a middle-aged man in blue-green robes, fair of complexion, with an air of easy dignity.
Eighth layer of Qi Refinement?
Lu Changan's soul was powerful; he sensed the fluctuation of mana on the man and grew wary.
Still, beneath Golden Cloud Valley's mountain gate, no outsider would dare get fresh.
A second-rank spirit vein—the Mu family?
Lu Changan's eyes flickered slightly; he had a guess at the newcomer's identity.
"How should I address you, Senior?"
"This humble one, unworthy as he is, is Mu Maode, head of the cultivation Mu family of Feiyue Lake. We are looking to take in a batch of young cultivators."
The middle-aged man in blue-green kept a kindly face as he explained his errand.
"So it is Senior Mu."
Lu Changan cupped his hands in salute—yet he noticed that the Mu family head's gaze on him held a faint gleam.
"As far as I know, cultivation families generally don't raise outside blood, do they?"
Someone in the crowd voiced the doubt.
Few of the youths sitting the sect examination came from the bottom of society; most were sons of the powerful and the wealthy, offspring of rogue cultivators, and some even scions of cultivation families.
"In recent years my Mu family has lost a good many kin and needs fresh blood, which is why we have made this exception. Naturally, the sons of nobles and of cultivation families are not what we are after."
The Mu family head, who had been waiting here, had already sounded out the backgrounds of the examination candidates.
He looked at Lu Changan, the only one with a mid-grade spiritual root, then swept his eyes over the rest of the youths.
He raised his voice: "My Mu family has ten places! We take in young cultivators and provide a spirit-vein training ground, cultivation manuals…"
At those words, the youths with no backing behind them felt their hearts stir.
Cultivating with a family would still be far better than life as a rogue.
"I won't take a reward I haven't earned. Senior Mu may as well be plain with us: to get your family's resources, what must we give?"
Lu Changan said, without beating around the bush.
The Mu family head looked at him, faintly surprised, and laughed under his breath:
"I did not expect one so young to see things so clearly. Then this Mu will speak bluntly."
"I see that young friend Lu is a fine figure of a man with an uncommon destiny. My family has no shortage of lovely young women, well-read and well-mannered; you may pick one, or several, to take as wives and concubines."
At that, Li Ergou's eyes bulged, and his cracked lips worked.
There's a deal like this in the world?!
Born a farmer, he had known hunger and cold; in this life, marrying even a plain-faced woman had been a luxury beyond him.
Never mind a beautiful woman of good breeding and manners.
Faced with the Mu family head's eager recruitment,
Lu Changan, with two lifetimes of memory, showed no ripple on his face, but inwardly he sneered.
You'd think the Mu family is after spiritual root and aptitude?
No!
They've simply got their eyes on your kidneys.
Sure enough, the Mu family head's true aim came out.
"Our terms are these: the children born to a young cultivator who joins the Mu family and a woman of our clan must bear the surname Mu—especially any child with a spiritual root!"
"Isn't this… marrying in?"
Li Ergou blinked and blurted it out.
The Mu family head paid it no mind and said, smiling:
"A joiner must leave ten children behind. Alternatively, one child of mid-grade spiritual root, or two of low grade, also counts as fulfilling the terms. In return, the Mu family provides you a cultivation ground, cultivation methods, and a fixed amount of spirit rice and pills each year."
Having heard the terms, Lu Changan shook his head to himself.
What kind of marrying-in is this?
Even "live-in son-in-law" would be putting a shine on it.
They are plainly just tools for breeding.
"Brother Lu, do you reckon this is reliable?"
Li Ergou looked at Lu Changan with eager eyes, clearly tempted.
"Marrying in—you don't mind?"
"My family's got a few brothers anyway."
Li Ergou scratched his head, looking embarrassed.
Then he lowered his voice, a little excited:
"Brother Lu! Somewhere to cultivate, and a wife and children into the bargain… this deal is a steal!"