At another table nearby, a woman wearing a veiled hat glanced at the bustling scene outside and reached up to pull the brim of her hat even lower.
She took a sip of tea and muttered softly,
“Hmph. I’m coming. Just you wait…”
Today was destined to become a day that many people in Clear Water Village would never forget.
As the morning sun began to shine brightly, Liu Yunan, Sun Yigao, Qin Jianghe, and the others appeared before the Heart-Questioning Road and announced to everyone that Lingxian Sect’s recruitment drive had officially begun!
The people gathered at the foot of North Mountain rubbed their fists and eagerly awaited their turn. As long as they could successfully pass along the breathtaking Peach Blossom Mountain Road behind the group—a road surrounded by beautiful scenery and steeped in legend—they would truly be able to join Lingxian Sect, become disciples under an immortal’s tutelage, and set foot upon a path they had never even known existed!
“Because there are so many people here today, please do not push or crowd one another. Rest assured, we guarantee that everyone will be able to enter the Heart-Questioning Road and undergo the assessment smoothly. All right, enough with the formalities. Lingxian Sect’s entrance examination officially begins now!”
“We’ll be waiting for you at the end of the Heart-Questioning Road.”
Liu Yunan’s voice carried throughout every corner of Clear Water Village.
At his words, the crowd, which had still been somewhat disorderly moments before, immediately settled down.
After Liu Yunan and the others left, the seal on the Heart-Questioning Road was officially lifted, and those determined to join Lingxian Sect proceeded inside in an orderly fashion.
Once they returned to the sect, Liu Yunan and the others finally breathed a sigh of relief. They relaxed beneath the Ten-Mile Peach Blossom Trees.
“Whew, we’ve finally made it this far!” Liu Yunan tilted his head back slightly and let out a long breath as he gazed at the clear sky.
Qin Jianghe smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
“We’ve really worked Hall Master Liu to the bone lately. You’ve done well.”
Sun Yigao nodded with a smile.
“Indeed. You’ve worked hard. Over the next few days, get some proper rest. We’ll keep an eye on things along the Heart-Questioning Road.”
“That’s right. Leave the next few days to us. Go take a break,” Qin Jianghe said.
“Ah, I’ve been waiting for you two to say that!” With that, Liu Yunan sprang to his feet.
“I’ll leave everything here to you! I’m off!”
“Go on, go on.”
However, Liu Yunan had not gone far when the identity token at his waist lit up.
He slowed down and picked it up. Seeing that something was happening in the Main Control Room, he frowned.
“Strange. Aren’t Brother Xiao and I the only ones with permission to enter the Main Control Room? Could Brother Xiao have come out of seclusion?”
He muttered to himself as he continued walking. His original destination had been the Affairs Hall, but he immediately changed direction and headed toward the Yaoguang Floating Island.
Before entering seclusion, Lin Xiao had made preparations in case he failed to emerge before the recruitment drive and some problem arose that could not be dealt with in time. He had transferred part of the system’s main control authority to the newly built Main Control Room on Yaoguang Floating Island. He had also granted Liu Yunan independent operating privileges, giving the person chiefly responsible for recruitment the authority to act decisively when necessary.
When Liu Yunan arrived outside the Main Control Room, he saw that the doors were tightly shut. It did not look as though anyone was inside.
Puzzled, he used his identity token to open the door and walked in.
The moment he stepped inside, rows of text appeared on the white jade control console.
[Detection: Three-quarters of the Heart-Questioning Road’s current capacity has been occupied, and the remaining capacity is continuing to decrease. The Heart-Questioning Road is about to reach its usage limit. Would you like to upgrade the Heart-Questioning Road? Reminder: Each level gained by the Heart-Questioning Road will increase its capacity by one thousand people. The upgrade will not affect entry or exit.]
Below it were two options: [Yes] and [No].
Because the system had detected that its host, Lin Xiao, was currently in seclusion, it had sent the upgrade notification directly to the Main Control Room he had designated.
Looking at the message on the control console, Liu Yunan thought of the densely packed crowds at the foot of the mountain in Clear Water Village. He also remembered Brother Xiao telling him to make all decisions himself, act boldly, and not hesitate or worry too much.
Without a second thought, he selected [Yes].
[This upgrade will consume one thousand ordinary spirit stones from the sect’s spirit-stone mine. Confirm upgrade?]
Seeing the number of spirit stones required, Liu Yunan let out a breath of relief.
A thousand spirit stones. That was still manageable. Even if something went wrong, his salary should be enough to cover it.
He continued and selected [Yes].
In the blink of an eye, the text on the control console changed to:
[Heart-Questioning Road upgrade complete.]
After that, the control console fell silent.
Seeing this, Liu Yunan prepared to return to the Affairs Hall to deal with the remaining work.
However, just as he had left the Main Control Room and stepped into the entrance of the Affairs Hall, his identity token lit up again.
It was the Main Control Room once more.
With no choice, he turned around and went back.
Once again, he saw the same message appear on the control console—one he had only just seen moments before.
[Detection: Three-quarters of the Heart-Questioning Road’s current capacity has been occupied, and the remaining capacity is continuing to decrease. The Heart-Questioning Road is about to reach its usage limit. Would you like to upgrade the Heart-Questioning Road?]
…
A thousand people had filled the capacity that quickly? So many people wanted to join their sect that it was almost enough to make him feel proud.
Naturally, Liu Yunan selected [Yes] again.
[This upgrade will consume one thousand five hundred ordinary spirit stones from the sect’s spirit-stone mine. Confirm upgrade?]
He noticed that the number of spirit stones required was no longer one thousand, but one thousand five hundred.
After thinking it over, he decided that an extra five hundred was still acceptable. His savings could cover it, so he continued with the upgrade.
[Heart-Questioning Road upgrade complete.]
This time, Liu Yunan did not leave. Instead, he waited beside the console.
Sure enough, it was not long before another upgrade notification appeared.
He selected [Yes] again.
As expected, the spirit-stone cost for this upgrade had increased by another five hundred, reaching two thousand.
As his hand touched [Yes], he thought to himself: It’s fine. Jianghe’s savings should be enough to help cover the shortfall. After all, aside from cultivation, they had nowhere else to spend their spirit stones.
And so, he repeatedly selected [Yes], losing track of how many times he had done so. In his mind, he had already begun adding the salaries and savings of Lin Xiao, Jiang Youfu, Sun Yigao, and all their other brothers to a hypothetical fund for “covering the shortfall if something goes wrong.”
At last, the control console stopped displaying new notifications for a long, long time.
Only then did he let out a sigh of relief.
It was finally over. If it had continued any longer, the salaries they had saved over the years would not have been enough.
The cost of each upgrade increased by another five hundred spirit stones based on the previous amount. Even though they had earned quite a lot over the past few years because they worked often, they still could not withstand that kind of snowballing expense.
Fortunately, the recruitment drive would last only a single day. No matter what, there was a limit to how many people could arrive to take part today.
Once he was certain it was safe to leave, Liu Yunan departed the Main Control Room and returned to the Affairs Hall to finish his remaining work.
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
