Lingyunzi watched his silent first disciple continue wiping her sword and sighed.
If Lu Qingran did not wish to see Mu Yunran, he could not force her.
As he left the courtyard where she lived alone, he murmured, “I thought that little girl might change Qingran’s mind. Was even she unable to do it?”
Lingyunzi departed the Crimsoncloud Immortal Realm and rode his sword down the mountain. When the recruiting disciples came into view, he stepped off the sword and walked unhurriedly toward the head of the line.
Mu Yunran did not notice his arrival. Several applicants remained ahead of her, so she still had some time to wait.
People with spiritual roots were a minority—only three or four out of every ten. The queue had once stretched like a dragon. After applicant after applicant left in disappointment, it shrank to only a few dozen.
As more people departed, the worried and frightened voices around Mu Yunran grew louder.
Everyone feared having no spiritual roots and failing the very first test.
Mu Yunran watched without expression as the person ahead of her ran away crying. Behind her, a girl spoke in a sweet, trembling voice.
“Are you afraid?”
Only one applicant remained before Mu Yunran, and she had nothing else to do, so she answered.
“No. I believe I’ll pass. You should believe in yourself too.”
In one sense, Mu Yunran was a chosen one—a chosen piece of cannon fodder. Of course she would enter the Clearcloud Sect.
The girl said, “Oh,” sounding much calmer.
Mu Yunran supposed her encouragement had worked.
If she wanted to survive in the Clearcloud Sect, she could not be a solitary outsider. She needed not only Lu Qingran’s protection, but good relationships with many others. She must not attract too much attention, yet she could not remain so quiet that everyone forgot her.
The system had reminded her on the journey that the main plot would begin once she entered the sect. Like her, the original male lead would become an outer disciple during this recruitment gathering.
Mu Yunran wanted to build a useful circle of connections, so she would never waste an opportunity to show kindness.
In the original story, the male lead had pretended to be a good person from the start. With his handsome face and acting ability, he won people’s affection and favor wherever he went. That was why readers had cursed him for days once his true nature emerged and he began committing every kind of evil.
“Young miss, please place your recruitment token in my hand, then put your hand on top of it.”
The guiding disciple’s mild voice pulled Mu Yunran from her thoughts. She nodded and obeyed.
Focused on the test, she did not notice Lingyunzi observing her. She followed the disciple’s instructions, closed her eyes, and felt warmth rising from the token.
Lingyunzi stood beside another disciple, unusually nervous about a simple spiritual-root test.
The heat beneath Mu Yunran’s palm spread through her entire body. Her eyes remained closed, so she did not see sweat appear on the guiding disciple’s face.
He pressed his lips together and endured. The token was becoming so hot that he could barely resist throwing it away. He had guided more than ten thousand applicants and had never encountered this. Tokens sometimes changed slightly in temperature or texture in response to unusual spiritual roots, but the difference had never been enough to affect him.
Lingyunzi’s gaze fell on their touching hands, and he realized something was wrong.
“Shaoquan, pull your hand away!”
He appeared beside them in an instant, seized the recruiting disciple’s hand, and examined it.
The commotion made Mu Yunran open her eyes. She saw Lingyunzi’s grave expression, then the disciple’s injured hand.
It was bright red and covered in several blisters, as if badly burned.
A possibility occurred to Mu Yunran. She looked down at the recruitment token. Once pure white, it had turned fiery red, with patterns of flames and feathers across its surface. Her name, age, spiritual roots, and other information had also appeared.
She had no interest in reading further. She seemed to have caused an accident, and serious trouble might follow.
Even the normally calm Mu Yunran felt a little panicked. She glanced at the wounded disciple, then at Lingyunzi as he treated the injury, and pressed her lips tightly together.
No one nearby dared speak for fear of distracting him. This finely dressed middle-aged cultivator plainly stood far above the young disciples.
Lingyunzi summoned a ball of water the size of a fist and poured it over the burn. He took medicinal powder from a storage pouch, scattered it on the disciple’s hand, then used spiritual energy to help the medicine absorb faster.
Only after this treatment did the burned hand recover.
Lingyunzi relaxed and patted the disciple’s shoulder.
“Shaoquan, return and rest. Someone else will take over here.”
Cui Shaoquan thanked him and headed back to the Clearcloud Sect.
Lingyunzi ordered another disciple to replace him, then beckoned Mu Yunran toward the edge of the woods for a private conversation.
“It has been three years, little girl. Don’t be nervous. I won’t blame you for what happened to Shaoquan.”
His friendly greeting eased Mu Yunran’s anxiety.
“Hello, Uncle Lingyunzi. Is that big brother truly all right? I didn’t mean to hurt him. I didn’t even know what was happening. It just… happened.”
Lingyunzi might not blame her, but Mu Yunran still needed to explain.
She knew that, in his eyes, she remained a person of unknown origin. She wanted to prevent every possible misunderstanding.
“He is fine, so don’t be afraid. Something like this happened many years ago as well.”
More than two centuries earlier, a peerless Clearcloud genius who had since become an immortal had accidentally injured a guiding disciple in the same way. The only difference was that Mu Yunran burned someone, while that genius had frozen someone.
Lingyunzi remembered reading the account and doubting it at the time. Today, he had seen proof with his own eyes.
He asked for Mu Yunran’s recruitment token. The flame pattern confirmed his expectations, while the feathers beneath it made him thoughtful.
Recalling the astonishing result of his examination three years ago, Lingyunzi gave Mu Yunran a warm smile.
“Mu Yunran, thirteen years old, with a single fire spiritual root. Excellent. If your talent is strong enough to burn the guiding disciple, it must be exceptional.”
Lingyunzi felt both joy and worry. The Clearcloud Sect might have gained another once-in-an-age genius. Yet Mu Yunran’s origins were unknown, and one other matter remained strange.
“Here, keep your recruitment token safe. Congratulations on passing the first stage.”
He patted Mu Yunran’s shoulder and used the opportunity to examine her once more.
This result brought both surprise and delight. His curiosity about the mysterious girl deepened.
Three years ago, part of her Human Soul had been missing. Now it was whole.
Her Heavenly Soul, however, remained incomplete.
An incomplete Heavenly Soul could interfere with cultivation.
Hmm there’s a lot of info with foreshadowing