The zombie-to-drowned conversion was taking way longer than Alexei had expected. In the game, it took thirty seconds. Apparently, reality didn't give a shit about game timers. While waiting, he decided to make himself useful. He collected all the drops from the mobs Qingxue had slaughtered, then scouted the surrounding area.
He managed to find two more surviving zombies, one creeper, and a spider that had somehow avoided Qingxue's murder spree.
After personally taking care of them, he gained a total of twenty-three experience points. Based on the sheer volume of drops scattered around, Qingxue had clearly killed over thirty mobs. Yet somehow, through either terrible spawn rates or garbage luck, he'd only managed to find a single leather legging among all the loot.
He should've explained the equipment situation to her beforehand. Too late for regrets now.
Fighting the mobs felt almost exactly like the game, which was both comforting and surreal.
Zombies and spiders? Just charge in and swing.
Creepers? Hit twice, sprint away, wait for them to calm down, repeat.
The Better Animations Collection made the monsters look less robotic, their movements more natural. But they were still fundamentally stupid, simple lock-on AI with zero tactical thinking. For him, who was more agile and had a functioning brain, the fights were even easier than in-game. The only difference was that the monsters looked a hell of a lot creepier in real life. Seeing a pixelated zombie on a screen was one thing. Watching rotting flesh slough off bones as it shambled toward you was another experience entirely.
---
Qingxue watched the entire process.
At first glance, the kid's fighting style was crud, no formal technique. But if you paid attention, you'd notice every single swing carried exactly the same force. And every strike unleashed one hundred percent of his available power.
Perfect efficiency, zero wasted movement, and complete control over his output. That kind of consistency was incredibly rare, even among trained cultivators. Most people's strikes varied, fatigue, emotion, distraction all causing fluctuations in power delivery.
But this teenager maintained uniformity across every attack.
A perfect foundation for sword cultivation, she thought. Even if his spiritual roots turn out mediocre and he can't walk the path of a spirit sword cultivator, he could become a body-refinement sword cultivator.
She immediately shook her head at her own thoughts.
What was she even thinking? "Mediocre spiritual roots"? That was practically cursing him.
Just look at that silver-white hair and those blue eyes, no ordinary spiritual root produced physical traits like that. And despite being a teenager, his aura was remarkably pure, almost like a newborn's. Untainted by the world.
A perfect candidate for spiritual cultivation.
She didn't need to test him with any spirit-measuring artifacts. His talent had to be exceptional. The Eastern Territories might be about to produce another Immortal-grade spiritual root. First one in over a thousand years.
She kept these thoughts to herself, of course. No need to put that kind of pressure on him.
---
After confirming there were no more mobs in the area, Alexei returned to the drowning pit with Qingxue.
The zombie was still twitching underwater. Beneath its rotting skin, faint blue patterns had begun to emerge. The longer it stayed submerged, the more frequent the blue flashes became. But full conversion was still some time away.
"How long does this usually take?" Qingxue asked.
"I don't know." Alexei shrugged.
"Mmm." She settled down to wait, apparently content to observe the process.
Alexei sat nearby, organizing his inventory.
---
Meanwhile, several hundred kilometers away...
High above the outer edges of the Demonbeast Forest, three black coffins streaked through the sky, leaving trails of dark spiritual energy. The disheveled old man piloting them, if "piloting" was even the right word for whatever necromantic bullshit was happening, suddenly felt a faint ripple of energy from his chest.
The Soul-Anchor Pearl he kept close to his body was reacting.
Had the half-demon's concealment method finally worn off?
The three coffins came to an abrupt halt, hanging motionless in the air. He pulled out the pearl, a sickly green orb. A faint tugging sensation seemed to be trying to pull it in a specific direction. Based on the brightness of the glow and some quick mental calculations, he could estimate the approximate distance.
"Silkspore Basin?" he muttered. "That half-demon bitch is still in the Silkspore Basin?"
A struggle flickered across his face.
Should he turn back? Go to the Silkspore Basin and capture the half-demon while she was still weakened from the tribulation?
With her current injuries, it would be child's play. She couldn't possibly defend herself properly. But he quickly dismissed the idea. Capturing the half-demon would only let him make up for his previous failure, at best, it would be considered "redeeming himself" in the eyes of the sect elders.
But if he brought the younger generation of the clan instead, gave them the credit for the capture... That would put them in the higher-ups' good graces. And wasn't that more valuable in the long run?
He tucked the Soul-Anchor Pearl away again, formed a sword finger gesture with his right hand, and a yellow talisman suddenly materialized between his fingers. Closing his eyes, he began muttering an incantation under his breath. Black characters appeared on the talisman paper.
Fwoosh.
Ten seconds later, the talisman ignited in gray flames and dissolved into the air, carrying his message across hundreds of kilometers in an instant. The coffin artifacts shot off toward the horizon once more.
---
Meanwhile, at the Aureate Summit Sect...
Two weeks had passed since Qingxue left the sect.
Apparently, the sect master's name was not some mysterious "Feng something-or-other." His name was Qin Zhengxing, not quite the grand-sounding name one might expect for the head of a sect. He stood on the highest pavilion, gazing worriedly at the sky as if he could somehow see across the hundreds of kilometers separating them.
In truth, he knew exactly how strong Qingxue really was. To be precise, all the remaining disciples of Aureate Summit knew, except for the three youngest members who'd joined in recent decades.
A nostalgic look crossed his face as memory took him back.
Their master had pursued the Great Dao with single-minded devotion. According to the old man's stories, even in the spiritually rich Profound Border Region, where spiritual energy was dozens of times denser than the Eastern Territories, it had taken him three hundred years to reach the Dharma Aspect realm.
Of course, he suspected their master's aptitude simply hadn't been exceptional. He'd only possessed a high-grade Earth spiritual root, after all. In the cultivation world, even the tiniest improvement in spiritual root quality made an enormous difference in advancement speed.
He'd heard stories that in the outer domains, there were heaven-blessed geniuses who reached Dharma Aspect before turning one hundred. He'd also heard that cultivators there didn't even bother using low- or mid-grade spirit stones for cultivation, because absorbing spiritual energy directly from the ambient atmosphere was faster. Of course, he'd never seen it himself. Just stories passed down from travelers and merchants. Yet Qingxue had reached the Dharma Aspect realm in just three hundred years while living in the spiritually barren Eastern Territories, and with no signs of instability or forced advancement.
One could only imagine how terrifying her innate talent was.
Dharma Aspect experts... there weren't even a hundred of them in the entire Eastern Territories, a region that spanned millions of square kilometers. They were true regional powers. The kind of cultivators that kingdoms and sects alike had to treat with respect.
He had full confidence in her abilities, but still... what if something went wrong?
Unfortunately, aside from worrying, there was truly nothing he could do to help. He himself had been stuck at peak Spirit Condensation for seventy or eighty years without even touching the edge of Nascent Soul advancement. How could he possibly assist someone who was already at Dharma Aspect?
The best thing he and the other senior disciples could do was simply not cause her any extra trouble. The greatest help he could offer was probably the single Radiant Lightning Talisman their master had left behind.
Though Qingxue had an icy personality and kept most people at arm's length, everyone had seen how deeply she cared for her fellow disciples. And none of them had ever treated her differently because of her half-demon bloodline. She probably still didn't know that her heritage had been exposed the very day she joined the sect.
Their master had never told young Qingxue that the Azure Heaven Ancient Jade was only a low-grade Profound-tier concealment artifact. Its ability could, at best, fool cultivators no more than two minor realms above her own level. To the senior disciples, who, three hundred years ago, had been three or four major realms stronger than a newly recruited child, the jade might as well have been made of regular glass. But eleven-year-old Qingxue had been extremely sensitive and fragile at the time, traumatized by years of persecution from her village. The master and disciples hadn't wanted to add any more pressure to her young heart.
After discussing it, they'd all agreed to pretend they hadn't noticed.
Later, after their master passed away and they'd considered coming clean, none of them could figure out how to bring it up without causing her distress. So they'd just... let it continue. And here they were, three centuries later, still maintaining the polite fiction.
Zhengxing chuckled silently at a particular memory.
There was this one time, probably a hundred and fifty years ago, when Qingxue had been breaking through to Foundation Establishment inside the sect. Her spiritual energy had gone haywire during a critical moment, and she'd accidentally let her fox tail manifest. It had scared the daylights out of Han Yan and Shu Zhi, who'd been standing outside the door ready to rush in if something went wrong. Fortunately, only Yan had entered the room. Even now, Qingxue probably still believed she'd hidden it perfectly.
The image of that panicked teenager frantically trying to tuck her tail behind her back, only for it to keep popping out, was almost too adorable.
"What's our esteemed Sect Leader smiling about?"
A gentle, melodious voice drifted in from outside the hall. A graceful woman with an elegant figure and a soothing aura walked into the pavilion. She looked to be in her thirties, though Zhengxing knew she was well over two hundred years old.
His smile didn't fade. "Yan. What brings you here today?"
"Good news, naturally." Her voice was like a spring breeze over water, just listening to it made one feel inexplicably relaxed. Of course, Zhengxing knew it was partly an illusion created by her cultivation technique.
Beneath that gentle exterior, she was actually bold, carefree, and didn't sweat the small stuff. The voice was real, but the personality was more "friendly tavern keeper" than "graceful lady."
"Good news?" His interest was piqued. "Let's hear it."
Yan smiled. "The Verdant Vine Mystic Realm has been showing signs of activity lately. It should open in less than a month. Doesn't that count as good news?"
Zhengxing's expression went flat. "How is that good news?"
Whether a secret realm opened or not had nothing to do with a tiny, bottom-tier sect like theirs. Every single time one of those realms opened, didn't thousands of disciples from various sects and rogue cultivators die inside? And for what? A few spiritual herbs and maybe a decent artifact if you were lucky?
With the pitiful handful of disciples Aureate Summit could scrape together, throwing them into a realm like that wouldn't even register as a statistic.
Seeing that Zhengxing still hadn't caught on, Yan prompted gently, "Have you forgotten about Verdantree City one month from now?"
"One month from now... Verdantree City..." Zhengxing blanked for a moment, then his eyes lit up. "The disciple recruitment ceremony!"
But the light in his eyes quickly dimmed again.
Even if all the major sects sent their top combatants into the secret realm, so what? They could still dispatch regular inner disciples to handle recruitment just fine. The big sects had people to spare.
Yan knew exactly what he was thinking. "When I went down the mountain to sell medicinal pills last week, I heard something interesting. This opening of the Verdant Vine Realm is supposedly unprecedented in scale. Several sects have already announced they'll be withdrawing from this year's recruitment ceremony entirely."
She paused for effect. "This might be our chance to finally step into the ninth rank."
The more Zhengxing listened, the brighter his eyes became.
On the Profound Sky Continent, sects were divided into nine official ranks, with anything below ninth rank considered "unranked" or "bottom-tier." The current Aureate Summit Sect was precisely one of those unranked sects. Only by reaching ninth rank could a sect receive protection from the Immortal Alliance and gain the right to participate in the Alliance's grand tournaments. With it came better resources, political legitimacy... everything that separated a genuine sect from a simple gathering of cultivators.
The problem was the massive hurdle between unranked and ninth rank.
Because so many cultivators had realized there was profit in founding sects, countless fly-by-night organizations had sprung up. The Immortal Alliance had been forced to keep raising the bar for ninth-rank promotion. The original requirement had been "three Foundation Establishment cultivators under eighty years old, plus seven Qi Refining disciples." The current requirement was "ten Foundation Establishment cultivators under eighty years old."
A seemingly small change that was actually devastating.
In the spiritually barren Eastern Territories, anyone with a spiritual root below Profound tier basically had no hope of reaching Foundation Establishment naturally. And Profound-tier roots were rare. Very rare.
Thus began the insane talent-grabbing wars among the unranked sects.
The problem? They still couldn't grab anyone worth having.
No ambitious cultivator parent would willingly send their child to an unranked sect when legitimate, ranked sects existed. One step slow on the path of cultivation meant falling behind forever. The only disciples the unranked sects could compete for were the leftovers after the major sects had taken their fill. And for a low-key, weak, utterly impoverished sect like Aureate Summit? Even the leftovers were out of reach.
In the two hundred-plus years since the old sect leader passed away, Aureate Summit had recruited a grand total of twenty-two disciples. Ten had been poached by other unranked sects during training excursions. Three had ignored warnings, entered secret realms seeking fortune, and never returned. Four had given up on cultivation entirely and left the mountain in despair. One went missing under mysterious circumstances. Two died of old age, never advancing past Qi Refining.
Current active disciples: three.
Two women, one man.
The root cause of this pathetic state could be traced all the way back to that world-ending heavenly tribulation tens of thousands of years ago, when the continent's spiritual energy had been depleted...
But that was a long story.
The short version?
They were poor.