A Will Eternal

Chapter 9: Age-Prolonging Longevity-Enhancing Pill

    According to an ancient saying, time flying by is like catching a glimpse of a white colt flashing past a chink in a wall. That is exactly what happened for Bai Xiaochun. A month later, cold winds blew down the Heavenspan River and through the Spirit Stream Sect. All of a sudden, Bai Xiaochun realized that he had been in the sect for a year already.

The past year had been chock-full of one event after another. He had left the world of mortals to become a cultivator, elevated his cultivation base to the third level of Qi Condensation, and had resolved all the conflicts that cropped up due to him joining the Ovens.

Xu Baocai never showed up at the Ovens again, and when Bai Xiaochun left on supply runs and saw him from a distance, he would scurry away, clearly terrified.

Despite all of that, however, after a month went by, Bai Xiaochun looked as anxious as ever, and was sighing constantly. He didn't talk to Big Fatty Zhang and the others about his concerns; he simply wallowed in his helplessness.

"One year of longevity...." he thought, looking at a tree off in the distance, whose leaves had already begun to turn yellow and fall to the ground.

"I'm just like that tree, and those falling leaves are just like my one lost year of longevity...." Having reached this point in his train of thought, Bai Xiaochun suddenly felt very sentimental.

During the course of the past month, he had come up with countless ideas on how to restore the lost longevity, and yet, that white hair on his head remained as white as ever. He made some roundabout inquiries of Big Fatty Zhang, and learned that in the cultivation world, methods did indeed exist which could restore longevity. However, such methods were either well-kept secrets, or as easy to track down as a phoenix feather or a qilin horn.

Soon, he even lost interest in eating and drinking, and his face became wan and pallid. Eventually, he decided that he had no choice but to give up and accept the fact that he had lost the longevity. However, the following day when he went out on an Ovens supply run, he happened to catch sight of an enormous stone stele below the Third Peak, and all of a sudden, he started to pant.

On the south bank of the Spirit Stream Sect, all of the mountain peaks had stone steles like this one. It was covered with dense script, lines and lines of writing that glittered with bright light. Occasionally, the lines of script would flow like water as old characters were replaced by new ones.

That stone stele was where missions were handed out by the Spirit Stream Sect. Anyone in the sect who wanted to could accomplish the missions to earn the spirit stones necessary for cultivation, as well as merit points.

The merit points could be used to pay admission fees to scripture sermons or the Magical Arts Pavilion. They could also be used to gain access to all sorts of special places in the sect set aside for certain aspects of cultivation. Virtually everything in the sect could be acquired with merit points, and they were actually viewed as more valuable than spirit stones.

At the moment, quite a few Outer Sect disciples were gathered around the third peak's Mission Stele, staring at the missions. When one of them selected a mission to take, they would respectfully notify the middle-aged cultivator sitting cross-legged beneath the stele.

There were even some servants mingling with the Outer Sect disciples. The servants wore their uniforms, and the Outer Sect disciples wore green robes embroidered with cloud and river designs, making it very easy to tell who was who.

There were certain missions that only Inner Sect disciples could accept, but missions like that wouldn't show up on this particular stone stele. The missions here could be accepted by Outer Sect disciples and servants alike.