Otherwise, how could such a large family like the Li clan only select five candidates?
They even had to pull Li Zhouxuan, the current emperor, off his throne of merely ten years.
Of course, the matter of choosing the next successor from the clan would have to be dealt with later.
As it turned out, Li Zhanying's careful selection paid off.
Among the five Li clan members who entered the Heart Trial, four actually passed!
This pass rate was quite impressive.
However, this didn't mean that joining Lingxian Sect was easy. Their strict requirements were clearly set: if you didn't meet them, you wouldn't make it through.
These five candidates who went in had been meticulously chosen from the vast Li clan.
And of the four who successfully passed the Heart Trial, Li Zhouxuan was the only one who entered in the morning and emerged successfully by evening.
The other three exited the trial either the next afternoon or evening.
The one Li clan member who didn't pass still managed to last a couple of hours before being pushed out by the Heart Trial.
Thus, the four successful Li clan members were accepted into Lingxian Sect.
At Li Zhanying's request, Li Zhouxuan was assigned to the External Affairs Office of the Trade Affairs Center, where he would oversee external trade.
As for the other three, they were not assigned to any duties outside the sect but were instead placed within the sect to fill the manpower shortages caused by the construction of Shuishui City.
It wasn't that Lingxian Sect was suspicious of the Li clan; after all, those who passed the Heart Trial were highly regarded for their character.
However, since these four had entered the sect carrying the weight of their family backgrounds, integrating them into the sect quickly was a priority. The best way to do this was to separate them and assign them to different roles.
Moreover, aside from Li Zhouxuan, the others had virtually no cultivation base. Only one of them had barely reached the "drawing in qi" stage, but even then, they could hardly store much spiritual energy in their bodies.
Compared to the Qingyun Peak disciples, whose weakest member was already in the mid-stage of Qi Refinement, these newcomers couldn't yet be trusted with tasks outside the sect. For now, focusing on cultivation was the most important thing.
After all, if they worked at the same efficiency as mortals, what would be the point? There were plenty of mortals for such labor tasks.
Thus, the four Li clan members were settled within the sect.
When Mo Yuanjiao found out that Li Zhouxuan had joined Lingxian Sect, he was so surprised that he put aside the urgent matters at hand and hurried to Li Zhouxuan's quarters at Qingyun Peak.
Seeing Li Zhouxuan, who had just settled in and was preparing to leave, Mo Yuanjiao walked over quickly, circling around him in amazement while clicking his tongue in surprise. Li Zhouxuan, watching this with a bemused expression, eventually couldn't take it anymore.
"If you have something to say, say it. You're making me dizzy," Li Zhouxuan finally said.
Mo Yuanjiao stopped, casually throwing an arm around Li Zhouxuan's shoulder, and exclaimed in amazement, "I never thought, Emperor Cousin, you'd end up joining too. So, you're giving up the throne?"
With everyone in the sect busy lately, Mo Yuanjiao hadn't been keeping up with news from the capital. Most of the sect's external affairs were now handled by Liu Yunan, Qin Jianghe, and Lin Yun, so he hadn't known about the Li clan sending candidates to Lingxian Sect.
Now that he knew, he was overjoyed. As a child, he'd been very close to Li Zhouxuan, his cousin who was more than ten years his senior. It was Li Zhouxuan who had personally taught him during his early years, and Mo Yuanjiao had smeared his cousin's imperial robes with snot more than once.
Back then, Li Zhouxuan had taken Mo Yuanjiao's childish stubbornness seriously and had often helped him deal with their elders, acting as a caring older brother.
So, Mo Yuanjiao had always liked his cousin.
However, after Li Zhouxuan ascended to the throne, and as Mo Yuanjiao grew older and learned more about societal rules, their relationship became more distant.
But for Mo Yuanjiao, it was just a matter of worldly identities. He disliked the stifling atmosphere of the palace, and while his royal status prevented him from being as close to his cousin as before, his admiration for Li Zhouxuan never wavered.
Now that Li Zhouxuan had shed his imperial title, Mo Yuanjiao felt no hesitation in being informal with him, casually slinging an arm around his shoulder.
"Yeah, Ancestor sent me to Lingxian Sect, so I'm not an emperor anymore," said Li Zhouxuan, smiling as he noticed how his cousin was acting much more casually than he did back in the palace. "You've grown taller," he added, reaching up to compare their heights.
He realized that his cousin was now half a head taller than him, which explained how naturally Mo Yuanjiao had thrown his arm around his shoulders.
Mo Yuanjiao straightened up proudly, raising an eyebrow and teasingly said, "Guess what my cultivation level is now?"
In the past, Lingxian Sect didn't openly reveal its disciples' cultivation levels to the outside world, and the disciples used a Taoist Peach Leaf Pendant to conceal their true strength.
But now, the lower-level disciples didn't need to wear the Peach Leaf Pendant unless they were far from the sect. As for those above the Golden Core stage, they had a technique that allowed them to conceal their own cultivation.
Despite Mo Yuanjiao no longer wearing the pendant, Li Zhouxuan, being only at the first stage of Qi Refinement, had no way of discerning his cousin's level. So, he played along and asked, "What level?"
Mo Yuanjiao puffed out his chest with pride, thumping it with a hand and declared, "Golden Core! Mid-stage!"
"What? Golden Core?!" Li Zhouxuan was stunned.
"Uh-huh~" Mo Yuanjiao smugly confirmed, then leaned in closer, whispering, "And I'm one of the slower ones! My Senior Brother Sect Master and Senior Brother Yigao are even faster."
Li Zhouxuan, still reeling from the revelation that his cousin had become a Golden Core cultivator in just a few years, stared at Mo Yuanjiao in a daze.
Seeing this, Mo Yuanjiao quickly continued, "Our Sect Master Brother is already at the Nascent Soul stage, and Yigao just recently reached Nascent Soul too. Oh, and you probably don't know yet, but we've also got an Elder named Liao who ascended to the Divine Transformation stage just a few days ago."
Although Lingxian Sect now had a clearer system for disciple rankings, Mo Yuanjiao's use of titles was still all over the place. He was the only one in the entire sect who still called people by random titles, and no one could get him to change. But in Lingxian Sect, especially among the original disciples, titles didn't really matter much anymore, so Lin Xiao had long since given up trying to correct him.
Finally getting this off his chest, Mo Yuanjiao felt relieved.
He had been holding in this news for a long time!
When he first joined Lingxian Sect, he hadn't fully grasped the extent of the sect's capabilities, only realizing that it was different from the three great sects.