By the murmuring stream, the boy gripped his wooden practice sword and stared up at the white-haired man riding a sword through the sky.
"Your root aptitude is exceptional. Will you come with me?"
The boy was young, but he had eyes. He saw the grandeur of the azure heavens. He opened his mouth to answer — and heard a stubborn voice beside him.
"Take me!"
The voice belonged to his playmate, the same boy he had just beaten in their "duel."
He knew how stubborn his friend was. Today's duel was one of countless matches, all because the boy had lost once before and refused to stop until he won one back.
The boy thought: we could cultivate together.
Most details had faded from memory. But he never forgot the immortal's eyes — clear as stream water, vast as the sky.
Those eyes studied them. Two children who had been inseparable since birth. The white-haired man's smile held meaning the boy could not read.
"I accept only one disciple."
He repeated it: "Both of you show promise, but I will take only one."
What should I do? The boy had only a heartbeat to wonder.
In the next heartbeat, his friend shoved him into the river.
Splash!
Water exploded upward. His friend — the boy he had played naked with in these same waters, still just a child — had pushed him in without hesitation.
Through the rippling water, he saw his friend's expressionless face. And the immortal's unwavering gaze.
Then a frost-white sword light shot into the clouds.
His playmate and the white-haired man vanished inside that brilliant radiance, coming and going like a thunderclap on a clear day.
Like so many legends of immortals choosing disciples, they brushed past the pathetic, ordinary mortals below.
Leaving behind only disbelief. Only the jolting awake, again and again, in the dead of night.
* * *
Jiang Chen opened his eyes.
Darkness pressed in from every side. The dormitory was silent. Ling Chuan and Du Hu breathed in long, measured rhythms — the cadence of the basic breathing technique.
Only inner disciples received that foundation method. It was the bedrock art of the Zhuang nation's Dao Academies, unchanged for centuries.
The Maple City Academy's inner selection had held few surprises. Ling Chuan, Du Hu, and Zhao Yan all made it. Their names were carved into the jade registry kept in the ancestral hall.
But until their Dao meridians manifested, they could not wear the hemp-gray robes of true Daoist disciples.
Meridian-Opening Pills were worth a fortune in gold. Even a state-funded Academy could not give them to every disciple. The best outer disciples who earned inner admission usually needed a full year of accumulated merit before they qualified.
Only the top contributor among outer disciples each year could exchange merit for a pill. That was the Academy's special incentive. With Jiang Chen in this cohort, no one else could copy his path.
Even so, Jiang Chen had earned that pill through life-or-death slaughter. Now there were no more West Mountain bandits within a hundred li of Maple City to exterminate.
Join the outer Academy. Train hard. Beat the competition to enter the inner circle. Accumulate merit. Earn the pill. Step into the extraordinary.
That was the ordinary cultivator's road in Zhuang. A visible, level path.
But compared to those born with manifested meridians who entered the inner Academy directly, these outer-route youths wasted far too much time.
In cultivation, one slow step meant every step after would lag. That was why Jiang Chen had risked his life on missions in the outer Academy. And it was why Fang Heng could not restrain his greed.
No one wanted to wait that long.
Jiang Chen understood Fang Heng's hunger. He could never forgive his methods.
Men like them — Ling Chuan, Du Hu, every exceptional warrior — who craved the extraordinary any less than Fang Heng? Yet none of them had stooped so low.
Jiang Chen's father once said: a man is defined by his choices. Jiang Chen believed it completely.
And he had faced a difficult choice of his own.
Every cultivator knew the Nine-Rank system. First Rank was supreme; Ninth Rank marked the beginning of the extraordinary. The sign of achieving Ninth Rank was forming a Dao vortex, from which Dao essence would generate spontaneously.
Cultivators had spent uncountable ages refining this very first step.
The spine was called the body's great dragon, and the Dao meridian hid within it. Once manifested, a cultivator could feed the meridian with blood and vitality to generate Dao essence. Dao essence was the root of all Dao arts and the foundation of the extraordinary.
Jiang Chen's Earthworm Meridian demanded considerable blood vitality each time he mobilized it. The power had to run the full length of his spine before a single pearl of Dao essence could form. At his level, he could attempt this meridian-charging cultivation twice per day at most — yielding two pearls. Not from lack of effort. His body simply could not take more. Exhausting his blood and vitality would damage his source and spirit, a losing trade.
After accumulating Dao essence, the next step was to guide it with the mind, arranging formation points according to the foundation array diagram. Complete the array, and the Dao vortex would form.
As an opened-meridian cultivator, the Academy had taught him the standard foundation array: the Primordial Array, with eighty-one formation points. At perfect execution, he would need forty-one days — nearly six weeks — to truly become a Ninth-Rank cultivator. The two pearls he had saved before were already spent in battle.
Previously, Jiang Chen had no dilemma. But now he had stumbled into the Ethereal Realm. He had inherited Zhuo Lie's Dongzhen Ruins, unlocking the Sword Dueling Platform and the Deduction Platform. And that brought new troubles.
Yesterday, after receiving the Primordial Array diagram, he had poured all 1,850 points of Merit into the Deduction Platform to test it. The result was the staggeringly complex Starfield Array: three hundred and sixty-five formation points.
Never mind the difficulty of replicating it. Even at perfect execution, he would need half a year to generate his first Dao vortex.
And Ninth Rank to Eighth Rank required three vortices. Eighth to Seventh required nine.
The time cost was staggering.
The Starfield Array was unquestionably stronger than the Primordial Array. But the foundation time it demanded was exactly what tormented Jiang Chen. He needed to advance quickly to catch those born with manifested meridians. Time waited for no one.
Yet tonight, after waking from that dream, he had made his choice.
Jiang Chen closed his eyes. He urged his single pearl of Dao essence — born from yesterday's charging — to move slowly through his spine. In the vague perceptual world of essence guidance, this was an endless, boundless space.
Because the great dragon dwelt here, it was called the Sea of Spine.
But in the oral tradition of cultivators, it bore a grander name: the Celestial Palace.
Pierce through the Celestial Palace. Open the Gate of Heaven and Earth. That was the threshold from lower to middle rank.
In that boundless palace, a single pearl of Dao essence was smaller than a speck of dust. Yet it did not drift. It moved with stubborn, unyielding will. Sliding, sliding — until it hovered at its destined place.
The position of the Solar Star in the Starfield Array.
As the pearl came to rest, Jiang Chen seemed to see the white-haired cultivator's eyes again.
He would never forget being pushed into the water.
Those eyes seemed to speak to him —
"The path of cultivation is a struggle."