Mission at the Foot of the Mountain

What did this indicate?

It indicated that the peachwood sword was extremely sturdy and could undergo several rounds of more advanced forging and refinement.

Not to mention the fixed monthly allotment of spirit stones and pills. If they took some time to participate in the sect’s various jobs, they could earn additional wages. If all else failed, they could also go to the Miscellaneous Affairs Hall to accept assignments…

Their sect was simply too powerful!

As for such a sect’s foundation, Yuan Jinsheng was not very familiar with the cultivation world, but judging from what he knew, there was probably no sect in the entire mortal world that could compare.

With his Golden Core fully restored and his son having successfully broken through, Yuan Jinsheng was in an excellent mood. He rose and left the room, intending to go to the Miscellaneous Affairs Hall to take on some assignments.

Xiushui Village was currently under construction at the foot of the mountain, and the Miscellaneous Affairs Hall had issued a great many assignments. The disciples of Qingyun Peak would basically accept a few whenever they had free time.

The disciples of Qingyun Peak rather enjoyed taking on assignments. It was not only because they could earn some spirit stone rewards; doing assignments in Xiushui Village also allowed them to go down the mountain.

Although the sect did not completely forbid them from leaving the mountain, they had to submit an application every time they did so, which was inconvenient. Even so, the disciples of Qingyun Peak did not feel particularly unhappy about it.

That was because Elder Liu had carefully explained the reason for restricting their trips down the mountain: Their cultivation was still low, and going down the mountain whenever they pleased could easily lead to trouble.

Once they applied before leaving, the sect would know where they had gone. If anything happened, it could also send people to provide assistance.

Furthermore, establishing an application process gave the disciples a clear understanding that they should not leave the mountain unless necessary. This also helped ease the sect’s current burden of managing them.

After all, there really were not many people in the sect, and they could not spare enough manpower to oversee the disciples’ outings.

Still, people inevitably grew tired of staying in one place for too long. Even the picturesque Lingxian Sect was no exception.

Thus, although Xiushui Village was merely at the foot of the mountain, being able to change their surroundings from time to time was still a pleasant experience.

Moreover, the villagers of Xiushui Village were extremely friendly toward them. Every time they came down the mountain to complete an assignment, the villagers would welcome them warmly. That sense of achievement was truly addictive.

As a result, every one of the Qingyun Peak disciples was eager to go down the mountain and work on Xiushui Village’s construction projects.

Yuan Jinsheng arrived at the Miscellaneous Affairs Hall. After looking over the assignments and their specific requirements on the task board, he chose one of the more strenuous ones: using Object-Control Technique to stack stone bricks and build walls.

This assignment did not require much technical skill. In fact, none of the assignments related to helping construct Xiushui Village required much technical skill. They all involved relatively basic spells and formations.

What made this particular assignment difficult was the amount of spiritual power it consumed.

For most of the Qingyun Peak disciples, whose cultivation was at the Qi Refining stage, controlling one or two objects with the Object-Control Technique was not difficult. The challenge lay in controlling multiple stone bricks at once, positioning them precisely and stacking them neatly in the proper places, then repeating the spell again and again.

After only a few rounds, their dantians would usually be completely drained.

Thus, in the eyes of the Qingyun Peak disciples, this was considered one of the more difficult assignments.

Yuan Jinsheng clearly knew this, which was why he had deliberately chosen it.

He was not the only one. Liang Zhonghuai had done the same.

After all, the two of them were the only Qingyun Peak disciples whose cultivation had already reached the Foundation Establishment stage or higher before joining the sect.

Of course, the two of them alone could not complete all the more difficult assignments. The rest had to be completed through the combined efforts of several other disciples.

Elder Liu Yunan was only too happy to see this.

He had privately discussed the matter with Qin Jianghe and Sun Yigao. The Qingyun Peak disciples currently ate, lived, and traveled together. If they could also cooperate closely while completing assignments, it would be highly beneficial for cultivating their teamwork and strengthening their bonds.

After accepting the assignment, Yuan Jinsheng’s sect identity token was immediately granted permission to leave the sect. He hung the token from his waist and went down the mountain.

The restriction array set up at the entrance to the Heart-Seeking Path detected the permission on his identity token and let him through without obstruction.

As Yuan Jinsheng passed along the Heart-Seeking Path, he saw a young man he had never encountered before standing on it. The man’s eyes were tightly shut and his brows were knitted together. He was clearly undergoing the trial of the Heart-Seeking Path.

Yuan Jinsheng found this rather strange.

The elders had told them that the Heart-Seeking Path had been closed after their batch of disciples finished their examinations, and outsiders could no longer enter it.

Moreover, sect members who had passed the examination only needed to retake it if their state of mind developed a serious problem and the Heart-Seeking Path expelled them.

So how had this man gotten in…?

Could he have forcibly broken through the restriction and barged in, only to be stopped by the Heart-Seeking Path?

That did not seem likely. If that were the case, the elders should have received notification that the restriction had been breached long ago.

Perhaps the sect had arranged for someone else to enter and be tested.

Unable to figure it out, Yuan Jinsheng stopped dwelling on the matter. As he headed toward the construction site in Xiushui Village, he sent Elder Liu Yunan a voice transmission talisman to inform him of what had happened.

He was not using a voice transmission talisman because he had forgotten about the Lock Ring, or because he did not know Elder Liu’s secondary formation inscription. Rather, it was because Elder Liu was genuinely very busy.

His Lock Ring was busy as well.

Nine times out of ten when Yuan Jinsheng contacted him, he was already communicating with someone else.

Therefore, if the matter was not particularly urgent, sending him a voice transmission talisman was actually more convenient than using the Lock Ring.

After sending the voice transmission talisman, Yuan Jinsheng arrived at his assignment location in the blink of an eye.

It was the height of activity around noon.

At the construction site, a group of able-bodied young men from Xiushui Village and the surrounding villages were working enthusiastically. Although it was already deep winter, their foreheads were covered in sweat. They had even taken off their quilted jackets and placed them together in a thatched shelter nearby.

The area where the walls were being built and the bricks stacked was filled with dust. There were also several disciples of the Lingxian Sect using spells to lend a hand at the construction site, so the many visitors who had come to watch kept their distance and did not dare approach too closely.

Most of these visitors were scholars and artists. They stood to one side, composing poetry and painting pictures, recording the scene in words and images.

Yuan Jinsheng spotted Du Changsheng, the village chief’s son, supervising the work nearby.

He walked over and greeted him.

“Changsheng, I accepted an assignment to stack stone bricks and came over. Take a look and see where I should go.”

Seeing him arrive, Du Changsheng’s face lit up. He hurried over with a smile.

“Senior Yuan has arrived! You’re doing the stone-brick assignment again? Perfect timing. They only started laying bricks in the southern section today. I’ll take you there.”

Ever since Xiushui Village had begun expanding into a town, Yuan Jinsheng had often come down to take on assignments. After interacting back and forth, the two had become quite familiar with each other.

At first, Du Changsheng had addressed Yuan Jinsheng as an immortal. However, Yuan Jinsheng had heard the elders mention in the sect that Xiushui Village was the ancestral home of the sect master and the elders, and that they should treat the villagers as kindly as possible.