Sect Recruitment: I Can See Attribute Entries

For cultivators, Loving Family Peak wasn’t actually all that large — and not every corner of it was worth a visit.

Where the ground sat bare and ugly, San Dong simply never took Qian Qing.

Everywhere San Dong did bring her was a good spot, hand-picked by San Dong himself.

For instance: from the lip of a little slope, they could gaze off at the flood dragon coiled up dozing in the distance — close enough that you could count the scales on her body.

Then they’d amble down to the creek’s edge, feel the bite of cold in the water, and watch the unafraid little fish weaving through the current.

San Dong could even find the little white tiger, and let it carry the two of them on a slow promenade across the mountain.

It was Qian Qing’s first sighting of the little white tiger, and her face held no small astonishment; even once she was seated atop the beast, San Dong could still feel how ramrod-stiff she was.

San Dong patted the little white tiger’s head and assured Qian Qing that the white tiger in front of them was a well-behaved, good tiger.

Qian Qing sat for a while and had to agree — the white tiger really was docile to a hair-raising degree.

Sometimes, facing things she couldn’t understand, Qian Qing had found a thought that let her make sense of them instantly — this is the way of immortals.

It was perfectly normal for immortals to have parts that weren’t.

For example, an obedient white tiger. For example, a flood dragon who puffed out clouds and mist with every sneeze.

There were cultivators who rode their swords like shuttles across the sky, and gentle, adorable flower spirits.

No wonder the world said heaven was big, earth was big, but the immortals were biggest of all — that a martial artist’s heaven-piercing skills amounted to no more than a cultivator’s glance across a hundred mortal years.

The world of cultivators was a wholly different kaleidoscope of wonders.

And besides — she had assumed that silly monk Yuankong couldn’t possibly know anyone important. After all, how could a fool of a monk with not two coins to rub together, who insisted on doing good deeds and earned his bread performing martial arts in the street, ever know anyone important?

But clearly, that Chu Xingchen she had met and drunk wine with last time truly was somebody enormous.

On the way here, the little monk from Daoxuan Temple had kept saying that Tianyan Sect was a zenith-star-tier sect — one of the eighteen greatest sects under heaven, on a par with Great Thunder Temple and the Buddhist sect itself.

The greatest dream of any cultivator under heaven was to join it.

A martial artist’s heart should know no fear; the heart of the fist is the heart.

Even so, actually seeing all this — just this one corner of it — made one instinctively feel lost.

Qian Qing felt the powerful, fluid motion of the white tiger beneath her, looked up at the flower spirit beaming brilliantly ahead, and asked a question whose answer she already knew:

“Cultivating immortality takes a spirit root, doesn’t it?”

“For a human… I suppose it does?”

“Without a spirit root, is it really impossible to cultivate?”

“The Sect Master says nothing in this world is absolute — but San Dong doesn’t know the answer to this one. When the Sect Master comes back, you can ask the Sect Master. San Dong’s Sect Master knows everything there is to know! Or ask the other Sect Master of Tianyan Sect — a grandpa named Lu Xuan. Everyone says they’re frighteningly good at telling fortunes. Or ask Yanyun — she’s very amazing too.”

A sudden, relieved smile came over Qian Qing. Both hands gently closed into the white tiger’s fur, and she said:

“Never mind. There’s no need to ask.”

If people without spirit roots could cultivate immortality, then the world would long ago have been nothing but cultivators.

San Dong’s gaze swung back to Qian Qing:

“Do you want to cultivate immortality?”

“I didn’t, originally.”

“Because of Yuankong?”

“Perhaps.”

San Dong thought for a moment, then took a jade token from the spatial ring hanging at his neck and poured spiritual power into it.

Qian Qing watched the jade token before San Dong dissolve into a flash of spiritual light and vanish. She understood at once — this absurdly kind-hearted flower spirit genuinely meant to figure something out for her. She spoke up immediately:

“I know I have no spirit root. I was just letting myself think about it, that’s all. Something you were never born with stays useless no matter how hard you try — there’s no need to spend any more thought on my account.”