The applicants who passed the first stage followed Lingyunzi into Crimsoncloud Mountain.
As they passed through the spirit-beast forest, Mu Yunran noticed that its creatures were hiding. Unlike three years ago, they did not secretly watch the newcomers.
Only one familiar bird remained in sight.
The garnet bird had no interest in anyone else. It pecked at its feathers while its tiny eyes studied Mu Yunran, as if confirming something. Soon it reached a decision and took flight.
It ignored the excited noises from the crowd and headed directly for her.
A Clearcloud disciple walking beside Mu Yunran assumed he had attracted it. Delighted, he extended one hand for the bird to land on. Instead, the white-feathered, red-eyed creature neatly swerved around his palm without sparing him a glance and settled on Mu Yunran’s shoulder.
Mu Yunran had been thinking the bird looked familiar. When it began rubbing its head against her with the same force and movement she remembered, she became certain. This was the garnet bird she had met three years ago.
The disciples at the back of the group watched with such envy that Mu Yunran grew embarrassed.
The bird’s appearance attracted the other applicants. Noise spread through the rear of the procession until even the people ahead began wondering what had happened.
Lingyunzi coughed softly. He ordered a disciple to lead the group onward in his place, then appeared at the rear in an instant.
When the Clearcloud disciples saw the acting sect leader, they immediately stopped enjoying the spectacle. They stood properly and warned the young applicants not to make a disturbance.
Lingyunzi waved for everyone to keep moving. The entrance trial would be followed by choosing masters and adding names to the sect register. Too many tasks remained to waste time.
He deliberately waited until the others had gone some distance before walking with Mu Yunran. Plainly, he wanted a private conversation.
“This little creature seems very fond of you.”
Lingyunzi knew this particular garnet bird. It was famous for its strange temper and was far pickier than others of its species.
People said that garnet birds could see the color of a person’s soul through their red eyes. They loved approaching those whose souls were pure white. Gentle spirit beasts that liked humans would also gather around such a person.
Someone with a pale-gray soul might occasionally attract a garnet bird as well. Pale gray was the most common color—the color of an ordinary person. Cultivators believed in past lives. As long as someone had committed no terrible evil in either a previous life or the current one, their soul would remain pale gray.
Only the most wicked people, spirits, and demons possessed souls stained pure black.
Several centuries ago, a demonic cultivator had accidentally obtained a book of forbidden spells. Afterward, countless innocent mortals and cultivators became sacrifices on his path to power. He tore out their souls while they still lived, creating the first soulless victims.
Only after his capture did his confession reveal that human souls came in three colors. He had also caught a demon and a spirit creature, both of whom had pure-black souls.
Cultivators combined his confession with old records about garnet birds. From then on, they sometimes used the birds to judge the color of a person’s soul—and, by extension, whether someone was good or evil.
Fewer than one person in ten thousand had a pure-white soul. Pure-black souls were equally rare. Lingyunzi was therefore delighted to encounter one.
A girl accepted by the garnet bird was unquestionably human, goodhearted, and pure of soul.
Mu Yunran’s past remained a mystery, and her identity might be far from simple. Even so, Lingyunzi decided to keep her. True geniuses were difficult to find, and he also hoped she could help Lu Qingran.
His mood sank when he thought of Lu Qingran’s changed personality.
If not for that hateful talisman cultivator and the female cultivator who exploited her kindness, how could his first disciple have become like this?
She should have been the gifted daughter of heaven whom everyone in the Clearcloud Sect respected and loved. Instead, she lived alone in a quiet courtyard far from the others. Junior disciples who once admired and approached her now stayed at a distance. Only a few remained willing to endure her coldness and stand beside her.
Lingyunzi could not bear to let Lu Qingran continue living in loneliness. He placed great hope in Mu Yunran. He wanted her to change Lu Qingran, and he wanted both girls to become leading figures of the cultivation world who would carry the Clearcloud Sect to its greatest heights.
He sensed that neither Mu Yunran nor Lu Qingran would remain ordinary. Becoming an immortal was a goal he might pursue for life without reaching. For these two children, perhaps it would be only the beginning.
Would he live to see that day? And what kind of future awaited the Clearcloud Sect?
Mu Yunran stopped stroking the garnet bird’s head. The creature chirped unhappily at the loss of attention and began acting spoiled, even batting her cheek with one wing.
She gave it two careless strokes. Offended, it lightly pecked her finger.
“It does seem to like me. Maybe garnet birds are naturally friendly with people.”
Lingyunzi raised an eyebrow. “You know what kind of bird it is?”
Mu Yunran nodded.
“I met this little one when I passed through the forest three years ago. Big Sister Qingran was with me, and she told me about it.”
Remembering Lu Qingran’s old personality, Lingyunzi found that unsurprising. He was surprised, however, that she had never mentioned the encounter.
Lu Qingran was his first disciple, but they were also as close as father and daughter.
More than ten years earlier, on a snowy night, Lingyunzi had been traveling beyond the sect when he found a red-cheeked baby at the foot of a mountain. She lay in a basket, dressed in thick clothes and wrapped securely in a small quilt.
Unable to find her parents, the softhearted Lingyunzi brought her back to the Clearcloud Sect. He channeled spiritual energy into the Cloudblossom Tree, an ancient sacred tree older than the sect itself and a symbol of life and vitality, and asked it to name the child.
The characters for “Qingran” appeared upon the trunk.
Lingyunzi bowed to the sacred tree and carried the baby home. After spending the entire night unable to choose a family name, inspiration finally struck. He had found the child on the road back to the sect, so he gave her the surname Lu—”road”—and named her Lu Qingran.
Before her recent change, his first disciple had told him about every unusual or amusing thing she encountered. No matter how small, Lu Qingran had always wanted to share it with him.
Lingyunzi suddenly felt like a father whose grown daughter no longer confided in him. He pressed his lips together and stared at Mu Yunran. The girl no longer looked quite as pleasing as she had a moment ago.
Jade had to be carved before it became useful. Young people ought to work hard.
As they talked, the two quickened their pace and caught up with the group.
Lingyunzi ordered everyone to close their eyes. With one sweep of his hand, he opened the Crimsoncloud Immortal Realm.
The second stage of the trial awaited them before the Cloudblossom Tree, where each applicant would be asked whether to stay or leave.
