For several months, I followed the plan I had set up. Concoct pills from the bounty list for the sect, make a significant number of extra pills in my spare time for the elder, observe the other disciples in the sect, and cultivate enough to advance once a year.


    After a few months of this, I broke through to Martial Master 5. When I did, I felt my mental state shift again. The pathways I had initially begun to feel when I reached Martial Master 4 had become stronger, and my thoughts flowed along them more naturally. I was still in complete control of the situation, though. If I wanted to, I could cut them off, but I allowed myself to use them to try and develop new perspectives.


    The big question was, what should I do now? The strategy Deacon Liu had laid out for me was to ascend one step every year until I reached Martial Grandmaster. That would mean I reached Martial Master Peak at age 35, and I would have a maximum of five years to learn how to break through to Martial Grandmaster. Was five years enough time? It should be, but I had never attempted it before and knew nothing about that breakthrough. Shouldn’t I be giving myself more time?


    Also, Elder Mu had stressed the importance of breaking through before reaching thirty, but under the deacon’s care, I would only be Martial Master 7 at that point. Was that acceptable? Even if it meant my mental state was slightly unstable, achieving the elder’s goal of Grandmaster by thirty should be a priority, but the deacon seemed to completely ignore it.


    I cut off those thoughts and tried to return to my natural thought patterns. I felt a slight resistance when doing so, but I quickly got myself under control.


    There was good reason to delay my cultivation to only advancing once a year, and I had agreed with the deacon when he proposed it. Rushing could easily lead to a weak foundation and poor mental state, but I was privy to information the deacon didn’t have.


    I had several lifetimes worth of practice in cultivating as a Martial Master. Even if I continuously raised my cultivation base, I had little to worry about as far as creating a weak foundation. I knew how to create meridians well enough to push forward confidently. I wouldn’t need to rush at all to raise my level two or three times a year.


    Also, my soul had been strengthened significantly over the years. I could easily handle mental pressure that would cripple most of the other disciples. If I was careful, and I assessed my mental state after each advancement, I should be able to cultivate more quickly than Deacon Liu believed I could.


    Was it worth it to push for Grandmaster before thirty? Not if it damaged me in any way. Was it worth testing to see what my actual limits were? It should be.


    <hr>


    Martial Master Peak by thirty may have been a dream of golden millet, but that would be my goal. To accomplish it, I needed to advance three steps every year, so that is what I changed my cultivation pace to. After four months, I advanced to Martial Master 6. After eight, I reached Martial Master 7, and a year after I began this push I was at Martial Master 8.


    The entire time I was cultivating, I paid close attention to my qi and ensured that my meridians were as perfect as possible. After each advancement, I did my best to perform a mental balance test to ensure I remained mentally stable. Martial Master 8 was halfway to the goal, and one more year of this schedule would get me to the peak, but I held back. I wanted to spend time at Master 8 to explore my cultivation and mental state.


    The main reason for this was that after my most recent advancement, I began to feel a powerful mental pull. My thoughts wanted to follow the paths of the cultivation technique. I could still control it, but it had begun to require effort.


    <hr>


    Having decided to take a break from cultivation, I decided to visit the pill hall. Over the past couple of years, I had begun using it as a resting spot of sorts, and I wasn’t the only one. Several disciples came here to spend time. Since we were all alchemists, it was a natural gathering spot.


    When I walked in, I saw someone I was hoping to see. “Senior Sister Jiao!” I said smiling. “How are you doing today?”


    Senior Sister Jiao, or Jiao XinYan, was an older inner sect disciple I had met my first year completing missions in the sect’s pill hall. She had been in the sect long enough to learn a lot about the inner workings, so she was one of the best fonts of information. Since she was in the inner sect, she had access to gossip from the Martial Peak, and she shared it freely.


    “Junior Brother Su, nice to see you. Have you eaten yet?”


    “No,” I said, “I just took a break and came to visit. Has anything interesting happened?”


    “It’s been quiet all day,” she sighed. “The deacon posted a few new competitive missions, so I was hoping for some entertainment, but no one has been willing to step forward and sign up for them.”


    “Oh? Anything special?”


    “One is Rank 3, so it’s only for the inner sect, and those always take more time. The other is for the self-proclaimed genius of the Martial Peak. Some guy named TianHuo. He’s a Tiger, so there aren’t too many people fighting to take his contract.”


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    The ‘Tigers’ were one of the factions I had noticed in the past. They were led by Elder Hu and were mainly composed of disciples from wealthier families around the Wastes, though the Su clan was notably absent from their ranks. That wasn’t a surprise though, since no official members of the Su clan ever joined the sect.


    The Tigers were the smallest of the three factions, and they didn’t have too good of a relationship with the other two. They tended to see themselves as half-noble and above the common sect members. This attitude led to fewer people being willing to step forward and help them, and it was mainly their secular wealth and influence that sustained them. Those things couldn’t be felt in the lower rungs of the sect, but they seemed much more important at higher levels.


    “TianHuo…” I said, “I think that’s the guy I was making pills for when I was challenged by Wen Hao a while back.”


    “Makes sense,” said Jiao, “Brother Wen is a Tiger too, so I doubt he was keen on letting money leave the family.”


    “Why do you say he is a self-proclaimed genius?”


    Jiao laughed. “When he joined the sect, he kept talking about how he was the number one disciple. To be fair, he wasn’t too wrong. From what I hear he has an incredibly powerful blessing that can turn a large area into a fiery hellscape. He just isn’t very good at cultivation, so he’s taking a long time to advance, and he burns through resources like crazy. For him, the Tigers are willing to afford it, though.”


    As we talked about TianHuo, the suspicion circuits in my mind started tingling. I allowed my thoughts to travel down those paths, and I tried to understand what my mind was telling me.


    Hazy memories began to flit through my mind. I first encountered someone who called himself ‘TianLei.’ That name meant ‘Heavenly Lightning,’ and the very first time I entered the sect, someone launched a powerful lightning attack around the fighter’s gate.


    Next, I encountered ‘TianBing.’ He looked exactly like ‘TianLei,’ his name meant ‘Heavenly Ice,’ and he attacked me with a powerful ice attack.


    Now there was ‘TianHuo.’ This life, when I entered the sect, there was no lightning attack in front of the fighter’s gate. It was a fire attack, and ‘TianHuo’ meant ‘Heavenly Fire.’


    Was this all the same person? Did his blessing keep changing? If he was given an unusually powerful fire blessing, I could understand why he might name himself ‘TianHuo,’ but why did his blessing change to fire?


    Was Jiao’s information accurate? Maybe she was trying to trick me.


    When I had that thought, I forcibly yanked my mind away from the suspicion pathways.


    I looked at Jiao. I couldn’t trust everything she told me since she would have her own agenda in this, but it would be silly to lie about public knowledge.


    But… Why was I questioning Jiao’s trustworthiness now? She had shared a lot of information with me over the years, and I never knew it to be wrong. She had her reasons for sharing it, and I could consider why she would do so, but the information should be true.


    I stopped myself again.


    I felt my mind. The suspicion circuits were not engaged, so why did I keep drifting to that train of thought? I considered a worrying possibility.


    “Senior Sister,” I said, “I want to test something. Can you tell me a few things about a random disciple?”


    “Huh? Okay. How about Wang Shun? Do you know him? He entered the outer sect as part of the Snakes during the last competition. He didn’t do too well as a nominal disciple, but he was able to do enough to help the Snakes win a few of those competitions in the city. They probably felt he should be given a shot, so they got him promoted to the outer sect, but he didn’t get a spirit fire. Right now, he’s doing some hard work in the pill hall to try and earn a shot at getting one, but it doesn’t look too promising.”


    I thought about what Jiao told me for a few moments, and then I took out a notebook and started writing my thoughts:


    The ‘Snakes’ are a faction focused on personal improvement. Their core motivation is to find ways to push forward and ascend further. They want to help anyone who seems capable and has the drive to improve.  Based on the Snakes recruiting him, Wang Shun sounds like a traditional example of someone who is not too talented but is willing to work hard. Even though he wasn’t the best, he still fought for prizes in the competitions and is still fighting to try to become a Master Alchemist.


    After I noted this down, I flipped on my suspicion circuits and considered the situation again. I thought about why he was recruited, and what more could be at play. After a few moments of thinking, I jerked my thoughts away from that line of reasoning and disabled those pathways again.


    I gave myself a few moments to relax, then I turned the notebook to a new page and wrote down my thoughts:


    Wang Shun seems to be a hidden factor for the Snakes. He successfully hid himself in the city and only appeared when he was needed to secure a victory. Likely, he already has a spirit flame and is hiding it so other factions will remain unaware. If he appears to challenge me or is part of my Inner Sect Challenge, I need to be extremely careful.


    After writing that down, I flipped back and reread my original note. It seemed extremely na?ve. There was no chance that Wang Shun was just some regular hard-working disciple. He was definitely a hidden dragon.


    While I was writing, Jiao watched on curiously, but she didn’t stop me or ask what I was doing. After I finished, I looked back up at her.


    “Hey, thanks for the help,” I said, “I got to go head back to my room.”


    <hr>


    I thought hard about Wang Shun, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a hidden trump card for the Snakes, but why did I think that? I looked back at what I wrote after Jiao told me about him, and nothing I wrote hinted at this possibility. This told me something very important about how the cultivation technique was affecting me.


    I had noticed before that, with the Rank 1 technique, when I was made more susceptible to suggestion, those suggestions still carried weight in my mind and informed my decisions even after I reset. They altered my perceptions of my memories even after the cultivation technique was removed.


    The same thing seemed to hold true with these suspicions. If my mind determined that someone or something was suspicious while I was allowing myself to be influenced, the belief that they were suspicious remained even after I removed the influence.


    I wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad thing. Wang Shun could, indeed, be a plant for the Snakes, and all my new suspicions could be true. No matter what, though, I needed to be exceedingly careful with allowing myself to fall into that mindset.