At Recruitment Booth #10, a group of five hundred older Outer Disciples in patched gray robes stood holding their free bowls of mutton soup, looking both grateful and deeply ashamed.
The leader of the group was a forty-two-year-old man with gray hair at his temples named Chen Laoliu. His cultivation was at Rank 4 Peak Qi Gathering—just one thin step below Rank 5 Foundation Establishment—and his hands were thick with calluses from twenty-five years of cutting spirit-stone blocks in the Joyous-Gold Sect’s deepest tunnels.
When Chen Laoliu saw Pei Xuan walk up in his clean brocade robe, the old miner quickly set his soup bowl down and bowed low.
“Lord Pei,” Chen Laoliu said, his voice rough with emotion. “Please don’t misunderstand us! Your soup is the best thing we have ever tasted, and we want to work for you until the day we die. It’s just... Little Stone tried to put us in the ‘Future Rank 5 Officer Training Class,’ and we don’t want to cheat you out of your high wages!”
Pei Xuan raised an eyebrow. “Cheat me? You are already at Rank 4 Peak Qi Gathering, Old Chen. With a week of good food and my Furnace-Blood Scripture, you’ll be a Rank 5 Foundation Establishment master. Why shouldn’t you be in the Officer Class?”
