Wu Tan Cheng — Xiao Clan Testing Grounds
The testing square smelled the same every year.
Incense from the morning shrine offerings. Nervous sweat from the younger children who had not yet learned to hide it. The dry dust of the courtyard, kicked up by hundreds of shuffling feet.
And beneath all of it, the faint metallic undertone of the black stone monument at the square's center.
Xiao Se had stood in this crowd eight times before, and every year the smell arrived like an old acquaintance — familiar, complicated, carrying more history than he particularly wanted to revisit.
It has been 15 years since he was reborn from earth just like Xiao Yan. And he was a direct cousin of Xiao Yan so basically his father was the younger brother of Xiao Zhan but sadly both his father and mother had disappeared as soon as Xiao Se was born thus he was brought up by Xiao Zhan and his late wife.
Xiao Se was fifteen years old. He stood near the middle of the gathered crowd, which was the correct position for someone who wished to be present without being noticed. Not at the back, where the anxious lurked and hunched, and not at the front, where the confident went to perform. The middle was invisible. Xiao Se had spent a great deal of effort learning to be invisible, and he was good at it.
The black stone monument stood at the center of the square like a patient judge. One by one, the clan's young members were called forward to press their palms against its surface and have their Dou Zhi Li measured and displayed for every watching eye to see. The monument did not lie. It did not soften results or reward good intentions. It simply showed what existed, and left the crowd to do the rest.
Xiao Se clasped his hands behind him, watched the ceremony unfold, and waited.
* * *
"Xiao Yan!"
The tester's voice carried easily across the square. The crowd shifted — not dramatically, but with that small unconscious movement that people make when they know they are about to witness something they already have an opinion about.
His cousin walked to the monument with the gait of someone who had decided not to care what anyone thought, and who had been practicing that decision for three years. Xiao Yan was fifteen. Same age as Xiao Se, same jaw, similar height, same black hair — the Xiao family resemblance ran strong between them. But where Xiao Se had learned to move through the world with deliberate quiet, Xiao Yan moved through it like a fire that had been disciplined to burn lower. The heat was still there. It had simply been compressed.
He pressed his palms to the monument.
The stone lit. The characters blazed.
'Dou Zhi Li — 3rd Stage.'
The crowd did not even bother with surprise. The murmurs came immediately, worn smooth by three years of repetition: trash, fallen genius, poor Clan Leader, what a shame. Xiao Se heard every word.
He was watching the back of his cousin's neck instead of the monument, and he saw the single, barely visible tightening of muscle there — the only sign that the words had landed at all.
Then Xiao Yan stepped back, and his face was entirely calm, and Xiao Se allowed himself a very small, entirely private nod.
Three years of this, still upright. He had a great deal of respect for that particular kind of stubbornness.
The ceremony moved on. Xiao Mei stepped up with her chin raised and received a High rank 7th Stage result to scattered applause. Several of the younger children tested through middling ranges, their results met with the usual gradients of parental satisfaction and disappointment that Xiao Se had long since stopped tracking.
Then Xiao Xun Er stepped forward, and the entire square went genuinely quiet.
She was extraordinary, and the crowd understood it in their bones. The monument lit under her hands like it was glad to be touched.
'Dou Zhi Li — 9th Stage. High Rank.'
The silence lasted two full seconds before the noise broke. Xiao Se watched her accept the response with the composed grace of someone who expected the result and was neither moved nor surprised by it.
He thought she was probably the most capable person in their generation within this clan, and he thought this with complete neutrality — the measured admiration one gives a masterwork that belongs in someone else's story. He had made his decisions about Xiao Xun Er long ago.
She was Xiao Yan's, not his. He had no interest in complicating either of their lives by inserting himself and getting involved with Xiao Xun Er or with her clan the Gu clan because if he was to get involved with her we will not be able to have his own huge harem.
If we look at the Btth original story, no one knows that Xiao Yan is a good guy but his love life was controlled by this young lady.
So as soon as he got the past memory,he made a decision that his Cousin Xiao Yan can have Gu Xun Er but he will be taking all the other beautiful women as his own.
So his brother only needs to put his full focus on cultivating, than flirting with girls, and becoming a Dou Di. And when their Xiao Clan bloodline activates he will at least become a Ban sheng and will have a good life after.
And if someone else were to reincarnate in this world instead of him they would foolishly try to hug Gu Xun Er thing and try to be with her without strength and try to get Xiao Yan's opportunities but did they think they can take the most important opportunities like the swallowing Heavenly flames.
That utterly foolish because
First of all you need the Flames mantra which is with Yao Chen, who was betrayed by his past disciple, so getting it from is not possible and even if you get flames mantra,can any normal person swallow a Heavenly flame like Xiao Yan did and come out alive.
No! Not everyone can do that, Xiao Yan survived all his life or death situations because Xiao Yan has his own protagonist luck. But normal reincarnated people do not have it. So they will only die if they were to do all the things that Xiao Yan did.
And more over his talent was as good as Xiao Yan before he lost his Dou Qi so why would he need to go and seek death. Thought Xiao Se
* * *
"Xiao Se."
His name was finally called.
He walked to the monument at his usual unhurried pace. He felt the quality of attention directed at him and recognized it precisely: the mild, vaguely pitying attention people give an orphan boy who has always occupied the background of more interesting events.
He had cultivated this quality of attention with great care over many years. It was one of his better achievements. And why is that, thats because Grass that stands out in Paddy would be pulled out and it's simple as that.
He placed his hands on the black stone.
The crowd had already redistributed its attention elsewhere — conversations restarting at the edges, a child asking its mother a question, the tester's brush moving into position to record another unremarkable result. Last year, 6th Stage. The year before, 5td Stage. A slow, moderate climb toward the top in a normal way. No one expected anything else.
Xiao Se took a slow breath. Then he channeled part his Dou qi into the monument — For Xiao Se it was not a test of his Dou Qi growth but a test of his Dou Qi control, the full and actual measure of how he had learned to control his Dou Qi through five years of careful, private, unobserved cultivation —
The stone's reaction was not the gentle brightening of previous years.
It flared.
White-gold light erupted from the monument's surface in a sharp pulse that snapped the surrounding conversations dead the way a thunderclap stops birds. Several people nearest the monument took an involuntary step backward. The tester's brush dropped from his hand. Every head in the square swung toward the source.
The characters appeared.
'Dou Zhi Li. 9th High Rank.'
The silence had texture. Xiao Se could feel it pressing in from every direction — shock, the specific cognitive scramble of people trying to reconcile what they were reading with what they thought they knew, a small child somewhere behind him asking loudly what was happening and being immediately hushed.
He removed his hands from the monument and took one step back. His expression was serene.
"Nineth—" The tester stopped. Read the monument again. His voice, when it came, had lost its professional flatness entirely. "Xiao Se. Dou Zhi Li, 9th Stage. High Rank."
The square erupted.
Xiao Se stood within the noise and let it break around him. He heard fragments from all directions — how is that possible, he tested 6th Stage last year, is there something wrong with the monument, the orphan boy — and he let every word wash past him the way water divides around stone. He was looking, across the churning crowd, at his cousin.
Xiao Yan was looking back. His expression was something only Xiao Se could have read accurately, and even then it required fifteen years of shared history: pride, no surprise whatsoever, and the specific private amusement of someone who had been waiting a long time for a particular thing to happen. The corner of Xiao Yan's mouth moved — barely a twitch with a grin of amusement.
And Xiao Se silently Breath a sign of relief for successfully hiding his real strength Dou Zhe 8th stage
........................
It was while the commotion was still at its peak — while the elders pressed forward with suspicious questions, while the tester read the result a third time as though repetition might change it, while half the square argued with the other half about what it meant — that the warmth arrived.
A point of heat below his sternum, small and contained. He had noticed something like it before, an intermittent sensation over the past several weeks that he had catalogued privately and discussed with no one. But this was categorically different.
This was not a background warmth. This was a pulse. One. Two. Three. As deliberate and specific as a knock on a door.
Then, behind his eyes — or perhaps inside them, in the space that existed between his vision and his thoughts — characters appeared.
Not the blunt luminous script of the testing monument. Something finer than that.
Something that carried the distinct sensation of being addressed, personally, specifically, as though whatever was writing to him had been looking for him for a long time and had finally found him in the crowd.
[ TREASURE GU CULTIVATION SYSTEM Activated ]
[ INITIALIZATION: COMPLETE ]
[ HOST IDENTIFIED: XIAO SE | AGE: 15 | DOU ZHe LI: 8th STAGE ]
[ SYSTEM FUNCTION ]
The host may cultivate Gu worms — living vessels of bound power.
Each Gu worm bonds permanently with the host upon forging.
Gu worms grow as conditions are fulfilled.
[ FIRST SLOT UNLOCKED: MONSTER GU — RANK 1 ]
[ FORGE CONDITION: Hunt and refine one magical beast corpse (Rank 1 or higher)
within a natural magical beast habitat. ]
[ SYSTEM IS AWAITING HOST ACTION. ]
Xiao Se did not move. He did not blink faster than normal. He did not, by any visible measure, react to the text appearing behind his eyes while Elder Shan stood less than two meters in front of him and spoke in the clipped, demanding tone of a man accustomed to receiving answers.
He filed every character with the focused precision of someone who had two lifetimes of practice at receiving important information while appearing to receive nothing, and he waited for the text to fully fade before allowing his gaze to settle back on the elder's face.
"— which is precisely why," Elder Shan was saying, white brows drawn together, "a result of this magnitude requires an explanation. You tested at 6th Stage last year, Xiao Se. How do you account for this?"
"I trained," Xiao Se said. His tone was mild and slightly apologetic. "Every morning this past year, I focused on consolidating what I had rather than pushing for more. I believe my results in previous years may have been low — I did not always channel completely." He paused, then added with exactly the right note of sheepish candor: "I am not always at my best in crowds. I get nervous."
Elder Shan looked at him for a long, flat moment. Xiao Se met his gaze with the calm, open expression of someone who had nothing to hide and was vaguely puzzled by the scrutiny.
"Ok, Enough of that, What Xiao Se said is true you guys don't have to worry about where his strength came from, just continue with the ceremony " said Xiao Zhen from his leader's seat.
The elder eventually had turned away, still frowning, to confer quietly with the two elders behind him.
Xiao Se gave a grateful nod to Xiao Zhan and resumed attending to the remainder of the ceremony with the expression of polite, unremarkable interest he had perfected over years.
The warmth below his sternum had settled to a low, steady glow. Patient. Waiting.
He was not going to be patient for long.
* * *
That evening, after dinner, he sat in the small room that had been his since he was old enough to live on his own and thought clearly through what needed to happen.
The system's condition was specific: a first-rank magical beast, hunted within a natural habitat. The closest viable location was the Magical Beast Mountain Range to the east — two hours from the city walls on foot, approached through the small waystation town that hunters used as a jumping-off point. He had studied those routes carefully in the clan library over the past month, and had done so in the unhurried, unannounced way he approached most useful things.
He could not do this within clan territory. He could not do this under supervision. The system had placed something entirely his own in his hands — not a clan technique inherited through bloodline, not a resource allocated by elders based on testing performance, not a gift contingent on someone else's assessment of his worth. His. Without conditions or intermediaries.
He had no intention of sharing it.
He held no bitterness toward the Xiao Clan. His uncle Xiao Zhan was a genuinely good man who had taken in an orphaned nephew without hesitation and raised him with real care alongside his own sons.
Xiao Se carried honest gratitude for that. It did not change the structural reality: that this clan rewarded what it could measure, that his future within it had a ceiling set by other people's calculations, and that ceiling was low.
He had spent five years building strength in private precisely because he understood that what the clan saw was what the clan valued, and what the clan valued, it was controlled and visible to the out side world specially the Hun clan.
What the system had given him existed outside that entire framework.
He had to leave soon. Quietly, without drama. For long enough to enter the mountain range, forge the first Gu, and return with something that no testing monument in the world could quantify. He would tell Xiao Yan — that was not a question.
There were no real secrets between them, not since the evening three years ago when his cousin had said the word "Internet" in the dark and they had spent the rest of the night laughing with the specific hysterical relief of people who had each been carrying an impossible truth alone and had suddenly discovered they did not have to.
As for why Xiao Se came true to Xiao Yan and that was because some day the truth will come out from his actions accidentally so why not say it before that and gain Xiao Yan's trust.
For now he sat in the dark of his room and let the warmth pulse steadily below his sternum, and he looked toward the eastern window where the city wall was a dark line against a darker sky, and beyond it, invisible but present, the mountain range waited.