The servant led me out of the residential complex and back to the ornate building I had just left. After entering, I walked directly toward the testing orb. As I approached, the elder behind the orb folded his arms across his chest, and I noticed a ring inset with a small shard of white stone on the middle finger of his right hand.


    Was that white gem a truth stone? Was that how they were verifying everyone’s statements? If so, I couldn’t imagine that such a small shard would yield great results. The System had claimed that the size of the stone was irrelevant, but how easy would it be to see gradations of gray on a stone less than two millimeters in diameter? A complete falsehood might be easily detected, but skirting the truth shouldn’t be much of an issue.


    I stopped in front of the elder, and he gave me a pleasant smile, but I could see falseness in it. He was only waiting to figure out if there was any value in being respectful toward me.


    “What is your name?”


    “Su Fang.”


    The sound of the scribe noting this down came from my left.


    “Place your hand on the orb and channel your qi into it.”


    I casually lifted my right hand and placed it on the orb. Then, concentrating as much as I ever had during one of the tests, I sent what little qi my energy body contained into the orb.


    At first, there was just a faint glow in a rainbow of colors, but almost immediately, a dull brown rock appeared in the center of the orb. It brightened once, but that was all.


    “Earth affinity. Mid nine-star.”


    The elder’s voice was neutral, but I sensed that most of my potential value had just disappeared.


    Having studied the other new Disciples, I understood that this affinity placed me near the bottom of the pack. However, the elder still kept things cordial.


    “What can you tell us about the blessing you have received?”


    “It has allowed me to gain a basic understanding of fighting techniques.”


    The elder’s eyes flicked to the ring on his finger as I spoke. After confirming the ‘truth’ of my words, he looked back at me.


    “Hmm, that works well with an earth affinity.” He glanced at the servant who was standing behind me. “Give him the Earth Heart Mantra and send him back.”


    After bowing to the elder, I followed the servant to the side room and collected my ‘new’ cultivation technique. Then, I was taken back to my small house and discarded.


    <hr>


    While I could have shown affinities high enough to shame everyone in the clan, that wasn’t my goal. I was here to suborn the clan’s Disciples and make them my own, so I needed to be in a position where I could learn who was salvageable, and I needed to be able to interact freely with these disciples to bring them over to my cause.


    Also, there was a part of me that couldn’t help but wonder how far I could go in this clan with all the skills I now possessed. In the past, I had never been able to survive longer than a single month. Having shown the same affinity as I had back then, what would I now be able to achieve?


    Back in my tiny house, I had a couple more decisions to make. What cultivation technique should I use? How quickly should I increase my level?


    I did my best to remember back to my early days. There was a competition at the end of the first month. Had the normal disciples not advanced and the elite disciples advanced once? Or had the normal disciples advanced once and the elites advanced twice?


    After flipping through my journal, I found the truth. None of the normal disciples other than myself had advanced at all during this first month. That meant that if I wanted to fit in, I couldn’t take even a single step forward.


    This seemed… wasteful. If I wasn’t supposed to cultivate for an entire month, what was I supposed to do?


    I considered taking a Shadowed Soul Pill and teleporting around the clan to stealthily learn what information I could, but I had no real interest in any of the clan’s secrets. My concerns were more about what kind of person each individual was and how they treated each other. I couldn’t learn that through being a mere disinterested observer. I needed to be a participant in their lives.


    Another possibility was to make a quick hop over to the Blue Wind Pavilion and start dealing with matters there, but that felt… out of place. I doubted this life would last long enough for anything I started in the Pavilion to bear fruit, so it would be best to reserve that journey for when I had a longer life expectancy.


    After considering my options, I left my house for a walk around the courtyard. Since I was here to interact with the other Disciples, that was what I should do. However, after more than an hour of wandering, no one left their house even once. They were all hunkering down and trying to learn to cultivate.


    I couldn’t blame them for this. If they didn’t learn, they would likely end up dead, but it did make my task of getting to know them that much harder.


    I thought about forcing my way into one of their homes for a private chat, but I didn’t think that would accomplish much. I would let everyone study in peace and see what came of it.


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    With nothing else to keep me busy, I decided to start learning the mystical art of refining.


    Using a Peak-Yellow metal qi cultivation technique, I was able to break through to Martial Disciple 2 in only a single day. The low density of qi in the Wastes slowed my process down a bit, and it would make recovering any energy I expended far slower, but that was fine. I wasn’t in any rush.


    Once my breakthrough was complete, I turned to the System to give my studies a bit of a boost.


    “System, increase my comprehension of refining by ten billion credits.”


    Purchase confirmed. 754,956,558,560 credits remaining.


    Since I didn’t expect to get any large infusions of cash in the near future, I needed to be a bit thrifty with my credits, but ten billion was more than enough to help me learn low-level refining.


    I next opened my mental library and retrieved Jin’s guide to Rank 1 refining.


    According to Jin, there were two primary aspects to refining. Restructuring the base materials and infusing those materials with energy.


    The ‘restructuring’ process wasn’t new to me. It was similar to how a formation specialist would restructure a stone. The difference was that while a single monocrystalline stone was ideal for formations, the ideal crystalline structure of refined items varied based on which attributes were desired in the final product.


    If a bar of iron were formed entirely from a single crystal, it would be far harder than normal, but it would also be incredibly brittle. When formed from a collection of smaller crystals, the hardness of the metal decreased, but so did its brittleness. This meant that managing the crystalline structure of a metal had an immense impact on its mechanical properties.


    This was one of the reasons LiTing had found it difficult to make a weapon that was both durable and deadly sharp. These two attributes required a careful balancing of the mechanical properties of the base materials.


    While Jin’s Rank 1 book only covered basic metals such as copper and iron, I could see how these concepts could be translated to stone or even wood. The structure of wood was far different from metal, and it would require an entirely different understanding of material science, but the basic idea of needing to adjust the molecular organization of the material to achieve optimal results would still hold true.


    Of course, this was only talking about the basic physical structure of the object. The art of refining included far more than just that. After a sword was properly forged, it would then need to be infused with qi. This energy would flow through the grains of the metal to enhance, diminish, or change its normal properties.


    To start learning Rank 1 alchemy, all I had needed to do was burn away a few toxins within a flower and compress the resulting energy. From even a cursory glance, I could see that Rank 1 refining would be a far more involved process.


    Thankfully, I had time, ample materials, and Jin’s expert knowledge to guide me.


    <hr>


    During my first week of studying refining, I didn’t make much progress. I spent most of my time just getting a better feel for altering the crystalline structure of metals.


    Then, as the end of the week approached, I took out the herbs for a Rank 1 Energy Expulsion Pill and quickly concocted it. I didn’t bring a pill furnace back with me, but for such a trivial pill, I didn’t need one. I just floated the herbs in the air and quickly condensed a pill.


    Metal qi wasn’t nearly as good at destroying toxins as fire qi was, but these were just low-level herbs. Such details were unimportant.


    Once the pill formed, I popped it in my mouth and then stood and headed out to the martial arts training yard.


    When I arrived, I looked around at the children of the Su Clan.


    One of them was going to die today. I didn’t know which one it would be, but I knew that our instructor would decide someone needed to die.


    I focused on the man in the middle of the training yard. He looked to be in his late 40s, and a quick check showed that he was a Martial Master 1 earth qi cultivator. His hair was shorn short, and he wore a faded blue robe with cut-off sleeves to show off his bulging muscles.


    Once everyone had arrived, he began our ‘lesson.’


    “Quiet! Spread out and circle around.”


    He waited in a stiff pose as we followed his orders.


    “For the next three months, you will all be undergoing extensive martial training. Every hour of every day you will either be exercising, cultivating, or recovering. After three months, many of you will no longer be members of my clan. If you want any hope of remaining one, you will push yourself to do your best at every moment. If you do not want to be one, you will still push to do your best at every moment because if you don’t, the moment you leave this place, you will learn exactly how harsh this world can be to commoners. Basic martial skills are a necessity.”


    His eyes roamed across everyone as he gave us all a disgusted look. I could feel a deep hatred radiating from him. He didn’t want to be an instructor, and he didn’t want to have to deal with children.


    “This training won’t just be hard. It will be deadly. If you relax for even a moment, you might find out that it was your last.” He smirked and looked around the circle. “Now, time for a little demonstration. Do we have any volunteers?”


    Everyone froze. No one wanted to be the first to offer themselves up for a beating.


    As I looked around, I knew someone would be selected as the day’s sacrifice. Should I step in and stop it? Could I?


    He was a Martial Master 1, but his foundation was terrible. With my knowledge and experience, I might be able to defeat him. There was a chance I wouldn''t be able to survive such an attempt, but if I did, it might help me form a connection with my fellow Disciples.


    Before I could make a decision, the bastard of an instructor took it out of my hands.


    “Hmpf, not a single person brave enough to even demonstrate what they know. Fine. You! Step forward and show me something.”


    He pointed at a young man to my left. A quick check of my journal showed that he was Su Yan. No affinity detected, no known blessing.


    The instructor wasn’t kind to poor Yan. He used an earth qi technique to shove the boy forward onto the training yard. Then, he proceeded to torture him. It was almost a relief when the boy finally died.


    “This is your lesson for today. In this training, slacking off for even a moment means death!” He looked around at us, and I could feel that he was hoping someone would step out of line. “Now, pair up and fight. I want to see if any of you have any possibility of being worthy of my clan in the future.”


    Slowly the crowd began pairing off. My neighbor and I nodded at each other, and we moved into an open area to begin sparring. As we did, I didn’t pay much attention to my opponent. I kept my focus on the groups surrounding us so that I could study everyone else’s skill level.


    Suddenly, I sensed a build-up of earth qi from the other side of the training yard. A quick glance proved that it was the instructor. He was looking straight at me with deadly intent.


    The moment he saw me looking at him, he screamed at me. “What the hell are you doing?”


    Then, he punched out and sent a wave of earth qi hurtling toward me and my partner.


    I shoved my opponent sharply and then jumped backward, preventing either of us from being hit by the blast of energy.


    “What was that!? I told you to fight, not—”


    The instructor had instinctively continued his tirade, but when he saw both of us completely uninjured, his words cut off. A wave of emotions roiled through him, anger, confusion, and a tinge of resentment, but he didn’t strike at us again.


    “Focus on sparring.”


    With that, he snorted and turned away.