The deacon signaled to one of his disciples, who drew from his tunic a black stone stele carved with primitive runes and placed it on an altar table.
"The test is simple," the examiner continued. "Each aspirant will touch the stone to register the quality of their root. Immediately after, my disciple will extend his hand charged with a field of spiritual attraction. The aspirant must channel their own internal Qi and condense a Sphere of Qi in the intermediate space. A sphere both visible and stable, holding its form through first contact, means they have passed the initial examination. A sphere that disperses into smoke means failure."
A murmur of nervousness ran through the plaza.
The first to step up were the youths of the local noble families. A city official, tasked with announcing the results, approached the stone. A boy in a tunic embroidered with gold placed his hand on the black stone. The stele lit up with a brilliant green light.
"Spiritual Root of Grade Six! Excellent!" shouted the city presenter.
The boy smiled with self-satisfaction and placed his palm before the sect disciple’s extended hand. However, when he tried to channel his Qi, the energy burst uncontrolled from his knuckles. The spiritual wind blew in all directions, and the light dissipated in a gust of inert air.
"Dreadful control. Dispersed energy. Rejected," the disciple sentenced, his expression locked in cold boredom.
"But I have a Grade Six Root! My father paid for pills!" the youth protested, his face red with shame.
"A large container with a hole in the bottom is useless for storing water. Next," the disciple said coldly, as two guards dragged the boy off the altar amid tears and shouts.
One by one, dozens of aspirants stepped up and failed. Some generated unstable sparks that collapsed within a second; others managed a faint flicker of Qi before it died. The test measured the fine refinement of the meridians, a discipline most of the youths raised on commercial pills had overlooked entirely.
"Next," the examiner announced with evident boredom.
Shen Tian made his way through the crowd and began to climb the marble steps.
The contrast between him and the altar was brutal. His clothes were gray rags stained with dried mud, his boots were worn down to the sole, and his face, though clean, showed the aftereffects of malnutrition. A murmur of suppressed laughter ran through the wealthy families at the base of the stage.
"A vagrant? Do the guards let just anyone up now?" whispered a merchant.
The disciple examiner wrinkled his nose upon noticing Shen Tian’s appearance.
"Put your hand on the stone quickly, boy. Don’t make us waste time."
Shen Tian kept silent. He placed his right hand on the black stone. The stele flickered with a turbid light, barely visible, of a dull brown color.
"Spiritual Root of Grade Four," the disciple said, letting out a dry chuckle. "A ruinous root. A waste of effort all around, but extend your hand if you want to end this farce."
Shen Tian extended his right hand, holding it ten centimeters from the disciple’s palm.
Inside his body, the calm was absolute. Shen Tian measured his release with surgical precision. He knew that with his poor root, competing in volume was suicide. Instead, he resorted to the 135 years of technical experience that dwelled in his memory.
Before channeling, a warning flickered in his vision:
"[Warning: The use of deduced techniques in the presence of high-ranking cultivators may generate Causality Anomalies. Proceed with caution.]"
Shen Tian ignored the warning. Only this path lay open to him.
He activated the circulation of his newly opened second meridian. He guided a minimal fraction of Qi and forced it through a mental filter of compression, spinning in a spiral like a high-speed vortex. The energy coiled tight within his palm, contained to the last thread.
When the energy emerged between both palms, the air stayed still and the light remained within its bounds.
A faint, sharp buzzing vibrated in the ten-centimeter space. Before the disciple’s incredulous gaze, a small sphere of Qi the size of a marble condensed in the air.
The sphere was dense, polished, and transparent, seemingly carved from solid crystal. The surface rotated with perfect stability, holding every drop of energy within its bounds. The compression was so absolute that the disciple’s magnetic field slid harmlessly across its surface.
Silence fell over the platform.
The disciple examiner stood paralyzed, his hand extended and his eyes bulging. He tried to apply pressure with his own Qi to test the sphere’s stability, but his energy bounced off the tiny marble as if crashing against a wall of refined steel.
"This... this density..." the examiner stammered, his mind grappling with the impossible pairing of a Grade Four Root and a level of microcontrol he had only seen in the sect’s elders.
Shen Tian kept his gaze neutral, awaiting the official verdict. He had calibrated the display to appear as a rare talent in control, guaranteeing his pass as an outer disciple while his true cultivation level stayed concealed.
However, before the disciple could articulate the word "Passed," something in the sphere’s energy signature caught the deacon’s attention. The elder, who until that moment had remained with his back turned observing the horizon, turned his head abruptly. His gray eyes, cold as frost, fixed on the tiny crystal marble.
The spiritual pressure in the plaza spiked abruptly, making the air turn heavy as lead.
The elder walked toward Shen Tian with slow, deliberate steps. Each footfall made the marble steps resonate with an ominous echo. He stopped one meter from the boy, observing the crystal sphere with a mixture of deep suspicion and a strange perturbation.
"That rotation frequency..." the deacon said in a grave voice that made Shen Tian’s chest vibrate. "Inverted vortex compression. I have seen that method of isolating impurities only within the forbidden archives of the sect, in the records of the Great Northern War."
The elder raised his gaze and fixed his eyes on Shen Tian’s pupils.
"That is the execution seal of the Mud Lotus Art. The personal technique of the Demon Patriarch whom the Jinyun Sect helped exterminate a hundred years ago. A technique that was degraded and corrupted after his death, and whose disfigured remnants ended up in the breathing manuals of servants and farmers of lesser sects. Where did you get this method, child?"
Shen Tian’s heart maintained its steady rhythm, but his mind evaluated the situation in a fraction of a millisecond. In his past life, the Iron Cloud Sect had handed him the Mud Lotus Art as a basic manual for spiritual farmers, its forbidden origin a secret buried with the Patriarch. The System, by deducing it to 100%, had unintentionally restored the original technical signature of the Patriarch. A cruel irony.
A calculated lie rose to his lips, but his vision flickered sharply in a violent blood-red color.
The System panel began to display emergency notifications at dizzying speed:
[!MAXIMUM SECURITY WARNING!]
[Causality Anomaly Detected: The observer has recognized the technical footprint of your previous life.]
[Subject Hostility Level: 98%. Preparing eradication protocol.]
[Option A: Initiate Suppression Point overload for a desperate escape. Undocumented emergency function. Consumes all available Points and may have permanent side effects. (Survival probability: 12%).]
[Option B: Allow fragmented memory scan by the observer. This will reveal part of your memories, but may calm his hostility. (Survival probability: 64%).]
The deacon raised his right hand. A layer of golden energy, sharp as a blade and capable of cutting steel like paper, wrapped around his fingers, positioning itself mere centimeters from Shen Tian’s neck.
"Answer," the elder ordered, as the air around them began to distort from the force of the imminent impact.