Time quickly flew by, and it was now the day for Haomiao Sect's disciple recruitment. They had departed the sect four days early, and Zhou Yanxi had dragged her senior brother Yuan Hen along to sign up for the mission.
Originally, she had intended to go alone with the other disciples, but considering her weak cultivation and not wanting Yuan Hen to worry, she opted to bring him along.
Yuan Hen was at early Core Formation (Jindan). For a recruitment mission in the mortal realm, the sect elders welcomed such a figure. In past years, these kinds of tasks were usually handled by late Foundation Establishment cultivators who had little hope of further advancement. Catching Yuan Hen—such a big "sucker"—this time, the sect was naturally delighted.
Of course, this was something Zhou Yanxi had discussed with Yuan Hen beforehand. Though she wanted to go, she wouldn't disregard his wishes.
Yuan Hen: You already said you're going—what can I even say to that? Clearly, his little junior sister was bored out of her mind in the sect. As her senior brother, how could he not go along? It just so happened he'd also hit a bottleneck in his cultivation.
In truth, Zhou Yanxi had accepted this out-of-sect task mostly as a cover—she wanted to investigate Li Haochen.
She felt that his cultivation path had been far too smooth, always having someone to block danger for him. And since he hadn't officially started cultivating yet, now was the best chance to probe his origins.
As one of the Four Great Sects, Haomiao Sect had dispatched thirty disciples for this mission. The lowest cultivation level was early Foundation Establishment, and the highest was early Core Formation. Compared to previous years, the overall strength had increased—thanks largely to Yuan Hen.
As for Zhou Yanxi—although she carried defensive treasures gifted by her father—as an alchemist, her combat ability ranked among the lowest.
After all, treasures can only protect you from physical attacks. When it came to things like the mutated Crimson-Blood Spider's venom from her past life, they were completely useless.
Even though she had cultivated diligently for over twenty days recently, that still couldn't make up for decades of difference in cultivation.
Reactions to Zhou Yanxi's participation were mixed. Some fellow disciples didn't care, thinking the little princess just wanted to go out and play. Others were indifferent.
In truth, if not for sect contribution points, no one really wanted this task. Haomiao Sect required disciples to contribute a certain number of points each year to repay the sect for its resources.
This rule applied to all disciples—even Zhou Yanxi. She had always fulfilled it through alchemy work.
This time, they traveled to the mortal realm on a spiritual flying vessel. Because of the distance, flying by sword would deplete too much spiritual energy—especially in the spirit-scarce mortal world.
To reduce risk and ensure the safe transport of the sect's future disciples, the sect dispatched a mid-size spiritual vessel capable of carrying over a thousand people.
While such vessels had excellent defense and large capacity, their fatal flaw was their slow speed.
That's why the Haomiao Sect always set out four days early for its once-every-ten-years mortal realm recruitment drive.
During the journey, Zhou Yanxi stayed in her room cultivating using a spirit-gathering plate gifted by her father. When hungry, she simply ate her own fasting pills.
Most of her fellow disciples assumed: Senior Sister Zhou is probably refining pills again. Inspired, some even resolved to work harder.
However, a small portion of disciples from humble backgrounds scoffed in disdain. They believed Zhou Yanxi was just pretending to work hard, putting on a show. In their eyes, if she truly cultivated diligently, someone with her spiritual roots wouldn't still be at such a low level.
Zhou Yanxi, meanwhile, ignored all this noise. She was completely focused on cultivating the "Fire-Wood Creation Technique", a high-level technique her father had exchanged for with his own contribution points. It was one of the sect's best available cultivation methods.
She had no plans to switch techniques, but she was painfully aware that her offensive means were lacking. All she had was her recently learned blade techniques and a spiritual technique she exchanged from the sect's archive called "Forging the Spirit".
This "Forging the Spirit" specialized in spiritual sense attacks, which had caught her eye instantly—though, sadly, only the first half of the technique existed.
These days, she'd been diligently studying it, noting down everything she didn't understand to ask her senior brother about later.
On the fourth day, their group finally arrived at the sect's mortal-world base camp. Because the recruitment area was vast and directions scattered, the group split into teams of two. Naturally, Zhou Yanxi paired with Yuan Hen.
Each team was assigned to seven cities and told to regroup in seven days at the sect's outpost.
Zhou Yanxi had no idea which city Li Haochen was currently in—his early life wasn't even covered in the original host's memories. Still, she was confident they'd cross paths eventually.
Sure enough, recruiting disciples was a pain in any world.
At the moment, Zhou Yanxi was facing a crying, snot-nosed little boy. Hearing his high-pitched sobs, she immediately signaled the City Lord's guards to take him away.
The truth was, people with spiritual roots were extremely rare—one in ten thousand, if that. In the last three cities, they'd only recruited a dozen or so children with spiritual roots. The most promising one had a fire-earth dual root, but even that had low values. The rest were mostly pseudo-spiritual roots (children with four or five mixed attributes).
The constant root-testing had become mind-numbing. Zhou Yanxi was growing frustrated when suddenly, a 13-year-old boy's voice interrupted her thoughts:
"Immortal Master, my name is Li Haochen. May I begin?"