novelraw Chapter 114: You Don't Know How Deep the Water Is Until You Look
Chapter 114: You Don't Know How Deep the Water Is Until You Look
Murong Feng's move to flush out the snake by beating the grass had startled far more than just Yang Wenping.
Senior brothers and sisters of every stripe popped up all at once, like mushrooms after rain.
When he had first enrolled, Li Qiuchen's doubts had actually been much the same as Zeng Mingming's.
Do they actually teach cultivation arts here? Could this be all show and no substance?
Reading every day, memorizing texts every day, how long are we supposed to keep this up before anything happens?
As it turned out, the upper-year students really were cultivating. It was simply that those who had made genuine progress tended not to appear before your eyes or wander around where you could see them.
Now that Murong Feng had called them all back at once, the inner hall suddenly became a far livelier place.
The dragon has nine sons, each different from the rest.
These senior brothers and sisters were every kind of personality imaginable. Some were aloof and cold, with no interest in socializing, and after showing their faces on that first day to give Murong Feng the courtesy of their presence, were never seen again. Others were warm as flame, and the moment they arrived were calling on friends, laughing and fooling around, and making pointed jokes right in front of the teachers.
There was even one who went around handing out pills to the junior students, claiming they were immortal elixirs of his own making, encouraging everyone to help themselves without any need for ceremony.What were the effects? He had already said they were immortal elixirs, so what more did you need to know? Just eat one and find out.
A surprising number of fools actually believed him and took the pills on the spot. The result was a bout of stomach cramps and loose bowels that sent a queue of students rushing for the outhouse, nearly pushing the county school's facilities beyond their limits.
The pill-refining senior brother earnestly admitted his error to his junior brothers and sisters, and in an effort to make amends, donned a mask, picked up a stick, and began stirring through the contents of the cesspit, attempting to distinguish from within the specific compounds responsible for the digestive catastrophe.
A truly dedicated piece of analysis.
Li Qiuchen went through his days in a state of constant low-level dread, with the persistent feeling that several pairs of eyes were watching him from behind.
That said, the arrival of all these senior brothers and sisters was not without its benefits.
The benefit was that newcomers like themselves suddenly had access to considerably more channels of information.
Just as Senior Brother Yang had said, not all disciples admitted to the inner hall were given equal opportunities to cultivate.
After completing the foundational coursework, the county school would organize another examination to assess each student's progress. Those with outstanding results could be sent into illusory realms designated by the school to temper their state of mind.
At the conclusion of each illusory realm trial, students would be given a comprehensive score.
Only by accumulating sufficient points could a student gain access to the cultivation method for a first-grade Elixir Viscera.
Only after developing an Elixir Viscera could they enter the Hongwen Hall, select a cultivation technique compatible with their own nature, and formally begin Qi Refining.
Throughout this layered process of selection, students were continuously eliminated.
In the end, out of any given cohort, only roughly ten in a hundred would make it through to become cultivators who had reached the Qi Refining realm.
That, of course, was the most orthodox path of cultivation available.
If you found it too troublesome or felt it was unfair, you could always take less orthodox routes.
Li Qiuchen himself, for instance, had already gained access to cultivation techniques from the Hongwen Hall through Senior Brother Yang's back channel.
Bai Ke was going to considerable lengths to stay close to Xu Qing and play the loyal dog, and even scrounging through the gaps between that person's fingers had yielded him some benefit.
The inner hall's teachers took a stance of neither encouraging nor discouraging any of this.
Where there was a will, there was a way. The real concern was for those who didn't even bother to want anything, who simply sat there and waited for someone else to spoon-feed them.
Closer to home, Li Qiuchen had examples of exactly that kind of person right at his side.
In terms of results, they couldn't match Chen Nangsheng's level. In terms of resourcefulness, they weren't as nimble as Liu Huai'an. In terms of nerve, they didn't have Zeng Mingming's audacity.
They showed up to class on time every day, left on time every day, neither initiating nor refusing anything, with no particular interest in whether other avenues existed. They simply held the sincere belief that when the time came, good things would naturally fall into their laps.
The teacher said cultivation was possible, so they would just wait for it.
This sort of marking-time mentality was only showing its early signs among the new students and hadn't become too pronounced yet. Among the upper years, however, the picture was harder to read.
Within a couple of days, a traitor was exposed.
The person in question was a student who had passed the preliminary examination and entered the inner hall the previous year. Their results had been unremarkable, and they had no particular strengths to speak of. They had participated in the illusory realm trials but had never managed to accumulate enough points, failing repeatedly until they were eliminated.
Faced with this outcome, they had neither withdrawn voluntarily nor sought any alternative path. Instead, they had laid the blame for their elimination entirely on their fellow students.
Why did you all have to push so hard? Why couldn't you have left some room for me?
After being eliminated at the end of the previous year, they had prepared a quantity of mildly toxic herb powder and, when no one was paying attention, added it to the food and drink of others.
Because the toxicity was too weak, and because everyone was training in foundational physical cultivation and had considerably stronger constitutions than ordinary people, nobody had noticed anything unusual over the past several months.
It was the cesspit-stirring senior brother who uncovered it.
He was convinced there was nothing wrong with his pills and that there had to be some other explanation for why his junior brothers and sisters had all suffered stomach trouble. He kept digging into the matter, and his persistence set off a chain of events that rocked the entire institution when the truth came out.
Before long, a second traitor was exposed as well.
The cesspit-stirring senior brother again deserved the credit. Certain that the composition of the waste still wasn't adding up, he enlisted another senior brother's help and used the Five Ghosts Transport Technique to clear out the entire contents of the outhouse pit, then dug three chi deeper, and unearthed a decomposed corpse buried in the ground beneath.
The identity of the deceased was confirmed that same day. Looking back through the records, it emerged that this person had apparently been attending class that very morning.
Deeply unsettling.
Further investigation revealed that someone had murdered the original student, strangled them and buried them beneath the cesspit, then assumed their identity through the use of a disguise technique and taken their place, and had even been performing reasonably well in their studies.
When the news spread, the whole school descended into unease.
Something was seriously wrong.
How had the inner hall come to this?
A few pills had shaken out two traitors. Could anyone around you actually be trusted anymore?
Li Qiuchen had always kept a low profile, but even he couldn't escape the scrutiny.
He had just stepped out of the classroom one day when a sharp-looking senior sister with short hair walked up and greeted him cheerfully, "Hello there!"
Li Qiuchen's face was full of confusion.
Who are you, exactly?
Before he could say a word, the senior sister had two fingers pinching a yellow talisman and slapped it onto his forehead with a snap.
Li Qiuchen: "..."
"Sorry about that, just a small test."
The senior sister said sorry while simultaneously letting golden light shoot from both eyes directly into Li Qiuchen's gaze.
Li Qiuchen stumbled back instinctively, trying to retreat, but she seized him and pulled him back.
In that instant, his ocular technique was laid bare before her eyes.
"Just as I thought."
The senior sister gave a slight smile, grabbed Li Qiuchen by the collar, and dragged him straight out of the classroom.
"I knew a little one this adorable couldn't possibly be without something interesting going on."
What do you mean, adorable?
Li Qiuchen was immediately indignant. "Senior sister, can we talk this through properly? Please watch your choice of words."
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