Entering the Immortal Sect for the Third Time

Inside the Mortuary, Wang Ping opened his eyes once again. "Dead again, huh." Even as he sighed with emotion, he subconsciously felt at his neck. Only after confirming his head was still firmly attached did he breathe a sigh of relief. The experience just before had simply left too deep an impression. "My death shouldn't be discovered anytime soon. "After all, I sealed the meditation chamber in advance. For the near future, outsiders will only assume I'm in secluded cultivation, which preserves an opportunity for my resurrected return." In short, the next time he resurrected, he would not need to spend fortune on a new identity, but could keep using his original one. Under such circumstances, so long as no one witnessed his death, it would pass without anyone ever knowing. No one would realize he had died and come back to life, and he could save up his fortune for the future. "The identity of a gold-bearing armed cavalryman is quite good, after all. "Especially since I seem to have caught the eye of the Royal Enshrinement Hall. If I want access to higher-level martial arts down the road, I must do everything I can to maintain this persona." And before that... Thinking up to this point, Wang Ping turned his gaze toward the towering tome before him, where the scroll of the Fiends from Beyond radiated a faint light. "I can exploit the timing and take a trip to the immortal sect first." Right now, having just died, resurrecting immediately might well draw a second strike if he was found out. It made far more sense to drag out the clock and lie low for a while. He could seize this golden opportunity to develop himself in the immortal sect. If he could pick up immortal sect spells like Qi Restriction or Soul Seizing again, just like before, he would have much more confidence upon returning to Dashun. With that in mind, Wang Ping walked straight toward the towering tome. *Existing identity: Six Desires Heavenly Demon King.* *Select this identity?* "No." Wang Ping shook his head decisively. Ghost only knew whether the Six Desires Heavenly Demon Flag was still in that Qi Refiner's hands; he was certainly not about to gamble with his own little life. Better to start with a new, randomized identity. At least judging from the past two experiences, a randomized identity for a Fiend from Beyond had a safety floor. It was unlikely to drop him right into an instant death. The next instant, Wang Ping stepped forward. *Clang!* Golden, hallucinatory colors surged just like before. Wang Ping's body and consciousness sank into them one after another. Drowsiness claimed him, and he had no idea how much time passed before he gradually regained awareness. What met his eyes was an unfamiliar ceiling. Wang Ping looked around and found himself sitting cross-legged on a meditation mat. An incense burner rested before him, trailing green smoke from three long sticks of burning incense. "Is this... an immortal cave?" Wang Ping instantly jolted with energy. Chore disciples in the immortal sect were not worthy of having their own caves. To possess an immortal cave of one's own, one had to be at least a formal disciple! Could he have struck pure luck this time? At that thought, Wang Ping immediately circulated his spiritual sense to inspect himself. But the heart that had just leaped into his throat sank right back down, and a helpless, bitter smile showed on his face. The good news was that this time, he had a spiritual root. The bad news was that it was a waste spiritual root—the kind of cheap, dime-a-dozen rubbish that the immortal sect could artificially engineer. His innate talent had not improved by a fraction of an inch. Right then, a splitting headache crashed over him. "Ugh..." Wang Ping pressed a hand firmly against his brow. Astonishment instantly surfaced in his eyes, for the background memories that came with this new starting identity far surpassed anything he had seen before. *** Ping Jiangzi was a rogue cultivator. As one of the hundreds of millions of rogue cultivators under the immortal sect, he held no place in the Daoist registry. Without being inscribed on the Daoist registry, one could not even be counted as an outer disciple. Consequently, like other rogue cultivators, he could only drift among the grotto-heavens and blessed lands governed by the immortal sect, toiling away each day to earn the dharma coins needed for his cultivation and daily livelihood. Even so, compared to those chore disciples, as well as the countless strongmen and cauldrons, his life was already considered quite good. At least, that was what his parents had always told him. Like many rogue cultivators, Ping Jiangzi's father had been a divine general—a higher-tier rank among the sect's strongmen, with combat strength comparable to a cultivator at the first layer of Tribulation Crossing. His mother was a discarded cauldron whose utility had been worn out. After she was phased out, she had been allocated to his father to breed the next generation of strongmen—a regulation introduced by the immortal sect three thousand four hundred years ago. The objective was cutting costs and boosting efficiency. After all, compared to wasting time manually refining strongmen, natural birth cost almost nothing, and the strongmen produced by pairing a divine general with a cauldron were of high quality. Replacing refining with breeding resolved two difficulties at once; it was as simple as that. Beyond that, the divine generals and cauldrons, as parents, would strive diligently to nurture the next generation, thereby stimulating consumption and the circulation of dharma coins within the immortal sect. Under normal circumstances, Ping Jiangzi would have entered the standard rearing program upon birth, and like many other children born into divine general and cauldron households, he would have been processed through the strongman training pipeline to serve the immortal sect in the future—until the day he was born. As his parents described it: "I was a one-in-a-million miracle." For though Ping Jiangzi had been born as a strongman, he had miraculously manifested a spiritual root. Even if it was only a waste spiritual root, it meant he could cultivate. In other words, he had the hope of becoming a true cultivator. From that day forth, his father and mother, who had frequently quarreled, argued no longer. Both began striving toward a single shared goal. To fund Ping Jiangzi's path toward immortality. To that end, his divine general father worked even harder, volunteering to join perilous explorations of mystic realms, while his mother poured all her love and energy into their home. As for Ping Jiangzi, he had grown up as an envied "prodigy" among countless children—one capable of immortal cultivation. He, too, had understood from a tender age how hard-won all of this was. Sensibly and diligently, he studied, sacrificing virtually all his leisure time. Finally, at the age of eighteen, he passed the immortal sect's examination. From that moment on, he became a rogue cultivator. Not only was he bestowed immortal methods, but so long as he reached completion in the first layer of Tribulation Crossing in the future, he could be formally inscribed onto the Daoist registry and become a genuine outer disciple. The future seemed bright and full of promise. Even now, Ping Jiangzi remembered the soaring ambition of those days—a newborn calf that feared no tiger, determined to carve out a grand immortal path of his own within the sect. Until one day, three years later. Grievous news arrived concerning his divine general father. During an Immortal-Fan Sword Contest, the inner disciple his father served had been defeated by a monk of the Fan Realm, and his father had been gravely injured in the process. Shortly afterward, his divine general father was declared scrapped. A scrapped divine general could no longer handle his original duties and could only accept the strongman labor he had once looked down upon. The household's income plummeted as a result. Under such circumstances, they naturally could not afford to sustain Ping Jiangzi's continued cultivation. Thus, at twenty-one years old, Ping Jiangzi took the initiative to halt his cultivation and head out to the grotto-heavens and blessed lands governed by the immortal sect to seek suitable employment. Fortunately, his aptitude was genuinely decent. Though the dharma coins he earned were meager, they were just barely enough to get by. "One could say that fate favored me." Several years later, Ping Jiangzi encountered an exceptional opportunity. A newly promoted true disciple of the immortal sect, Senior Sister You Xuexin, was raising dharma coins from rogue cultivators. This was a privilege exclusive to true disciples. Rogue cultivators lent dharma coins to a true disciple in exchange for various quota slots under that disciple's banner, including jobs that many rogue cultivators could only dream of. Unlike the veteran true disciples, Senior Sister You had only just been promoted. She had plenty of openings under her name, and while the asking price was high, there was no need to wait in line. Virtually as soon as one paid, the slot would be granted immediately. Therefore, rogue cultivators answered her call in droves, and Ping Jiangzi was no exception. He was determined to seize this opportunity. Yet before long, he slammed headlong into the chasm that every cultivator in the immortal sect encountered most easily, most frequently, and found most insurmountable: "I didn't have enough money." Ping Jiangzi had found an excellent post. The dharma coin compensation was high, and it happened to correspond with the cultivation method he practiced, allowing him to work and cultivate simultaneously without compromising either. The only problem was that the asking price was also high. After weighing it back and forth, Ping Jiangzi was honest with his parents. He chose to give it up rather than force the issue. "Yet on the second day after that... "When I returned from work in a blessed land, my parents, who had always come outside to welcome me, were nowhere to be seen. Only my mother stood alone by the doorway. "In her hands was a thick stack of dharma coins. "Only later did I learn that Father had sold his hands, his feet, his head, his torso, his five viscera, his six bowels, his weapon, and his magic power—every last bit of it." Though scrapped, a former divine general's body was still made of valuable materials. His father had sought out friends still in active service and obtained the highest possible mates' rate... And so, when Ping Jiangzi returned home, all he saw was his father's solitary wisp of a soul smiling at him, his voice brimming with joy: "Don't worry, Ping'er. Our family has money now." Everything that followed unfolded as a matter of course. Having paid the full sum of dharma coins, Ping Jiangzi smoothly secured the position through Senior Sister You's recommendation. He became a staff member of the blessed land's Soul-Drooping Study. His duties consisted of crafting and selling the Soul-Drooping Study's proprietary soul-drooping straw effigies and soul-summoning talismans, working on three rotating shifts, with overtime required whenever transaction volumes surged. It was an exceedingly precious job. Neither soul-summoning talismans nor soul-drooping straw effigies were particularly difficult to craft, yet they demanded a vast expenditure of energy—not worth the time of a true disciple. Hence, it had to be outsourced. Because this was a long-term demand, there was no need to worry about the job vanishing. And so, Ping Jiangzi began a quiet life of leaving early and returning late every day. "Our days gradually improved. "My job was stable and related to souls. I ordered the highest-grade soul-protecting talisman for Father, and I even purchased a new immortal cave on a mortgage. "The only slight pity was that the workload at the Soul-Drooping Study was far heavier than I had imagined. I truly could not manage both cultivation and labor at once, so I had no choice but to abandon my cultivation and pour most of my energy into my work. My cultivation has not progressed for many years... But honestly, it didn't really matter." The voice within the memories grew weary and detached. Without realizing it, the spirited young man had long become utterly ordinary. Strands of white hair peppered his temples, and his brow was perpetually furrowed. Soon, ten years, twenty years slipped by. The young man still held onto his post at the Soul-Drooping Study. It was more than enough to support his household, yet his cultivation saw no progress whatsoever, leaving the completion of the first layer of Tribulation Crossing hopelessly out of reach. His entire future could be seen at a single glance. "In truth, I also thought about venturing into mystic realms to see if I could take a step further... But after weighing it again and again, I never dared put it into action." Because he was the backbone of his family. His father was reduced to a mere soul, and his mother had lost the capacity to work. He could not afford the slightest mishap or the smallest risk. He didn't even dare seek a Dao companion. Because he lived on Supreme Bliss Immortal Peak, the rules governing Dao companions differed from those of other immortal peaks. In short, once both parties signed a dharma contract, they had to compete in dual cultivation even as they lived together. Whoever lost would be sucked dry until death by their Dao companion, reduced to cultivation nourishment for the other. Once a Dao companion died, the survivor automatically returned to single status. And could look for another. Therefore, on Supreme Bliss Immortal Peak, when dealing with a cultivator whose depths could not be fathomed, people generally looked up their divorce records, judging their cultivation level by the number of previous separations. In practice, this method was remarkably accurate. Occasionally, when home alone late at night, Ping Jiangzi could not help but curse vehemently that these rules weren't about finding a Dao companion at all—they were about signing a death pact. Yet rules were rules. He could not alter the immortal sect's rules, so the only thing he could do was simply refrain from seeking a Dao companion, work hard to make a living, and manage his own modest days. Yet time never stopped for anyone. As the years flowed by, what was destined to come arrived at last: his divine general father's soul reached its absolute limit, and the soul-protecting talisman could no longer sustain its existence. And Ping Jiangzi had no way to obtain higher-grade talismans. His father was nearing death. Not long after, his mother also reached the end of her lifespan. After all, as a cauldron whose utility had been drained dry, her body had been depleted from the start; surviving this long was already a blessing. The next instant, the memory froze before a bedside. Ping Jiangzi knelt before the bed, tears and snot streaming down his face, while his father and mother lay there smiling. Clasping his hand, their eyes were filled with earnest longing. "Child, don't cry. "You've already done so well. Who knows how many people envy our family? You are our pride. It's just a pity... that we never got to hold a grandchild..." Ping Jiangzi forced a smile and agreed. After his parents passed away, his life became even more monotonous. Every day he commuted between his immortal cave and the Soul-Drooping Study, living the respectable life that many rogue cultivators envied. He owned an immortal cave, and even a low-grade flight dharma artifact. He had even found himself a Dao companion. Although taking on all three meant shouldering a considerable loan, forcing him to walk on thin ice every single day, he believed it was all worth it. Because this was what his parents had wished for. This was his happiness. "I'm sorry, you're fired." A heavy voice shook the entire torrent of memories, causing Wang Ping, who was almost completely immersed in the perspective, to let out a muffled grunt as blood slowly trickled from the tip of his nose. The cause was a soul-drooping straw effigy he had sold. Just a short while ago, a complaint had arrived claiming it was defective—it had failed to curse the targeted mortal to death, severely damaging the Soul-Drooping Study's reputation. Therefore, the Master of the Soul-Drooping Study decided to dismiss him to protect their name. Yet this was unjust. "That wasn't a soul-drooping straw effigy I made! You made it yourself, Master, and handed it to me to sell, didn't you? The defect wasn't mine..." "So what?" Faced with Ping Jiangzi's challenge, the Master of the Soul-Drooping Study remained entirely unmoved. "The achievements of the subordinate cultivator belong to the superior immortal; the faults of the superior immortal are the responsibility of the subordinate cultivator. "Selling it directly without discovering the oversight in my craftsmanship—that is your fault. "In any case, hand in your resignation tomorrow." This became the final straw that broke the young man. At the memory's end, he returned dazed to his immortal cave, sat cross-legged on his meditation mat, and closed his eyes. Ping Jiangzi never woke again. Wang Ping awoke.