Wan Lihan slept silently alongside his three new roommates, his breathing perfectly shallow as his core cultivation quietly circulated energy through his veins during the midnight hours.When the first rays of dawn finally broke through the windows, the entire quarters stirred awake. Lihan was the very first to leave the room. He stepped out onto the mountain pavilion, his flat eyes taking in the grand, misty view of the lower peaks before returning inside to prepare for the morning assignment.The roommates gathered around the main courtyard table where the daily mission scrolls were laid out. Lihan reached out his hand, tracking a reasonable contract to start his day. But before his fingers could brush the parchment, a wrinkled, heavily calloused hand aggressively snatched it away.Supervisor Meng stood over the table, his 14th Layer Qi Cleansing aura flaring slightly as a warning to the new recruit. The greedy old manager casually redistributed the scrolls to his favored students. He handed the low-effort Level 1 chores to the weakest cultivator in the yard, routed the mid-tier Level 3 runner messages directly to the senior outer disciples, and passed the most lucrative Level 4 and 5 hunting scrolls to the strongest fighters in the pavilion.Lihan was left with nothing.
Fe Tian's face flushed with anger, stepping forward to protest. "Supervisor Meng, you can't do this to him! He just arrived at the outer sect today!"Supervisor Meng merely sneered, ignoring Fe Tian entirely as he threw a final, heavily worn scroll onto the empty wooden surface. "Take it or leave it, boy."Lihan looked down at the scrap. It was the Level 2 contract.As the old supervisor shuffled back into his office, Lihan turned his blank gaze toward his roommate.
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"Why is the Level 2 mission never taken?"
Fe Tian sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping.
"Because it is the absolute most tiring, agonizing job in the entire lower mountain. Nobody wants it.
""How?" Lihan asked flatly."The task requires you to walk down to the jagged river banks completely on foot," Fe Tian replied grimly. "You have to load up two wooden buckets with water, balance them across your shoulders, and carry those crushing loads up thousands of steep stone steps. You have to do it entirely on foot, over and over again, until you successfully fill up the main 50-ton storage pond at the top of the ridge.
For a grounded cultivator, it's literal torture."Lihan stared at the Level 2 scroll, his expression remaining a frozen, unreadable stone. To the others, this was a cruel, exhausting punishment meant to break a new recruit's spine.A 50-ton water pond. Endless physical repetitions. hard manual labor. He could push his physical frame to its absolute limits, reinforcing his muscles and masking his true 4th Layer Qi Cleansing density under the excuse of pure, grueling hard labor right in the open courtyard."I'll take it," Lihan said smoothly, picking up the