Lin Tianren woke early the next morning, the previous night's conversation with the system still settled clearly in his memory. He didn't bother easing into the day slowly.
Do you think I'll actually pass this tournament?
The system took nearly two full minutes to answer, considerably longer than its usual response time. When it finally did, it delivered the answer as a clean assessment rather than a simple yes or no.
[Combat: Extremely High][Herb Knowledge: Unknown][Pill Refinement: Unknown][Spiritual Knowledge: Unknown][Spirit Combat: Extremely High]
"Why does it keep saying unknown?" he asked.
[Because I genuinely don't have data on your current knowledge in those categories. Combat and spirit combat are rated confidently because you've already accumulated real battle experience and an established spirit bond. The other three categories are simply untested.]
That, at least, made sense. He set the interface aside and sat with the results a moment longer, something else occurring to him as he did.
"It's strange," he said, mostly to himself. "I've been here a full week, and I don't think I've had a proper conversation with anyone the entire time."
He grabbed a broom out of habit more than intention, wandered out of the outer courtyard, and let his feet carry him toward the garden instead of his usual chore rotation.
Two disciples were already there when he arrived — a short girl with wide eyes and hair the color of pale gold, and a heavyset boy with small, watchful eyes who was clearly in the middle of teasing her about something.
Lin Tianren introduced himself, and the two exchanged names in return. Xia Qing, the girl said. Gu Chen, the boy added.
He fell into conversation easily enough, curiosity carrying most of it. "The tournament's four phases," he said. "Do you two think you can make top twenty?"
"It's going to be difficult," Xia Qing admitted. "But I'll do my best. My spiritual knowledge should be solid, at least — my family's been in the artifact business for generations. It's the family trade."
"So you're wealthy," Lin Tianren said.
"Not really," Gu Chen cut in before she could answer. "We've been friends since we were kids. Their shop does fine, but they're not exactly rich."
Xia Qing's face went red at that, and the two boys laughed while she scowled at both of them in equal measure.
They were still mid-conversation when another disciple jogged up, breathless. "Inner courtyard," he said. "Come see what's happening."
The three of them followed without much discussion.
What waited in the inner courtyard was a girl beating a boy with a thoroughness that made the surrounding crowd go quiet. Lin Tianren watched from behind at first, curious more than alarmed, wondering who she was and what had earned the boy this particular treatment.
Then she turned.
Lin Tianren lost the thread of his own thoughts entirely. She was beautiful in a way that didn't feel real, the kind of beauty that made a person forget, briefly, what they'd been about to say.
"She's so beautiful," he murmured, not quite quiet enough.
Gu Chen elbowed him sharply. "Keep your voice down. This is the inner disciple courtyard. Say something like that too loud and we'll all get beaten for it."
"Who is she?"
"That," Gu Chen said, lowering his own voice properly this time, "is Luo Tianyi. Top genius of the entire sect. A generation of her own. Late Heaven Sovereign, and the sole personal disciple of one of the sect's ancestor masters."
Lin Tianren stared at her again, considerably more carefully this time. As if sensing the attention, she turned fully toward the boy she'd been disciplining, one hand raising as a thin thread of lightning gathered around her fingers — barely visible, almost delicate in its thinness.
The power behind it wasn't delicate at all. Lin Tianren felt it settle into his spine before it had even discharged, sweat beading along his back despite the distance separating them. Even the fox, dormant and disguised at his side, went rigid at the sensation.
Beauty with power, he thought, unable to fully separate the two reactions from each other. It wasn't only him she'd unsettled, apparently. His own contracted spirit had felt it too.
The surrounding disciples laughed openly at the boy still on the ground. A few minutes later the crowd dispersed, Luo Tianyi disappearing back into the inner courtyard without a backward glance.
Back in the outer courtyard, Gu Chen filled in the rest once they'd settled somewhere quieter.
"She's been here ten years," he said. "Beautiful since the day she arrived, and there's been some boy infatuated with her every year since. Why wouldn't there be? She reached Late Heaven Sovereign within that same ten years. Plenty of wealthy families — especially their second or third generation heirs — have tried to marry her into their line." He shook his head. "All of them got beaten for the attempt. She beat this one badly enough that he'll remember it. His name's Su Xu. Third-generation heir, family runs an artifact business in the Southern City, under the Fangshi banner."
"Our family's not doing badly," Xia Qing added, "but nowhere near that level."
Lin Tianren sat with all of it for a moment. She's genuinely remarkable, he thought.
[Confirmed. A rare talent, even by this sect's standards.] the system offered, agreeing without being asked.
Gu Chen stood, brushing dust off his robes. "I have a mission today, by the way."
Lin Tianren blinked. "What kind of mission?"
"Sect mission. Protecting a village."
Something uncomfortable surfaced in him at that, a question he couldn't voice out loud. If people here can be sent to protect villages, where were they when Ashenfall was burning?
[Immortal Realm cultivators generally cannot enter the Mortal Realm freely. As cultivation advances, the likelihood of ascending to a higher realm increases. An average cultivator in a higher realm typically exceeds even the strongest cultivator of a lower realm, due to greater spiritual density and access to superior artifacts, techniques, and knowledge.]
[This doesn't mean the Mortal Realm is permanently closed to you. Crossing back requires passing through a lightning threshold that sits between realms. Survive it, and you arrive in the Mortal Realm alive. Fail it, and you don't arrive anywhere at all.]
He absorbed that quietly, understanding a little better now why the war he'd fought had unfolded entirely without outside intervention.
"Have you ever been on a sect mission?" Xia Qing asked.
He scratched the back of his head, mildly awkward. "I've thought about it. I just didn't want to go alone." He couldn't tell them the actual truth — that he hadn't even known sect missions existed until this conversation.
"Wait," he said instead, turning to Gu Chen. "You're an outer disciple. Why would you need to take sect missions? Shouldn't those be for inner disciples?"
"Missions are open to everyone," Gu Chen said. "Inner disciples get bigger, more dangerous assignments. Outer disciples get lower-risk work." He shrugged. "Most people who take them are from weaker families — talented enough to reach the Immortal Realm, but without the resources to actually advance once they're here. Artifacts, pills, spirit contracts, even basic money — you need all of it, and none of it comes free."
"And if you find something valuable on your own?"
"Then you'd better be ready to defend it," Gu Chen said. "Luck alone doesn't guarantee you keep what you find. If a stronger cultivator or a powerful family wants it, they'll simply take it — by force, if it comes to that. So smaller families take sect missions instead. Complete them properly, and you earn a fair shot at decent artifacts or herbs, enough to refine a real pill, enough to actually perform in the tournament."
"But outer disciples only get what inner disciples don't need anymore," Xia Qing added. "Whatever's already been passed over."
"Then what use is that to you?" Lin Tianren asked her directly.
"An artifact doesn't lose its power just because it's old," she said. "Even broken down, the core strength remains if you know how to work with it properly. It still improves your spiritual roots. Old doesn't mean useless."
Gu Chen glanced at Lin Tianren with something like realization. "You really didn't know any of this."
"Maybe he's from a big family," Xia Qing guessed.
"Nothing like that," Lin Tianren said. "Just a decent one." Something in the word settled uncomfortably for a moment, an old memory surfacing before he pushed it back down.
"Well," he said, recovering, "if neither of you mind, I'd like to come along on a mission sometime."
"Sure," Gu Chen said easily. "Though it sounds like you haven't registered for outer disciple missions yet. You'll need to do that first, at the mission hall. Once you're registered, you can pick whatever assignments suit you. Complete one successfully, and the reward's yours."
Lin Tianren considered it for a moment, then nodded. The two said their goodbyes and headed off toward their own assignment, and he turned toward the mission hall alone.
The building rose ahead of him considerably grander than he'd expected — green tiled walls threaded with a single golden line running the full height of the structure, cultivators from what looked like a dozen different disciplines moving in and out of its entrance. A wide garden stretched out in front of it, spiritual trees planted in careful rows along the path, their leaves catching light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
He crossed the garden slowly, taking it in, and stepped through the entrance to register for the first sect mission of his life.