Chương 107: 106. Separate Jade from the Chaff

By the time I leave Ling'er's quarters, my head hurts. Ling'er had walked me through three more ingredient interactions after the first example, each one more reasonable than the last until she explained why my interpretation of it would have produced a medicinal paste that irritated the meridians. Everytime I answered what I thought should happen next, my answer would be wrong in a new and educational way. Ling'er, being Ling'er, gave me the answer gently.

"Master can learn," she had told me, after the fourth correction.

"Your observations are unusually precise. The difficulty is arranging them into a changing sequence." She had meant it sincerely, which made it harder to resent. In my previous life, chemistry had never been my strength. I understood enough to pass what needed passing, then happily abandoned the subject once my life no longer required me to remember reaction equations or pretend I found lab reports enriching. This is worse.

This is chemistry, medicine, cultivation, cooking, weather, elemental theory, and formation logic forced into the same furnace.

'I am not an alchemist.' That realization settles as I cross the main courtyard.

'I am the sect leader.' My task is not to outthink Ling'er inside a cauldron. My task is to make certain she does not become the cauldron, the furnace, the fuel, the recipe, the instructor, and the entire supply system by herself. By the time I return to my quarters, the Huang family contract looks different. I sit behind my desk, pull the papers closer, and read the terms again with the alchemy texts still open beside me.

Earlier, the contract looked like a trap I needed to avoid if I wanted Coiling Dragon to develop properly. Now, after seeing Ling'er's room, Mei Lin's notes, and my own failures at synthesis, the answer is less simple. We cannot reject outside supply entirely. Not yet. Recipe-following clans have value. Stable pills have value. Even mediocre public formulas have value when the alternative is injured disciples, delayed training, and experiments we are not yet qualified to scale.

Coiling Dragon needs medicine now, not in some ideal future where our alchemy hall is fully staffed, properly equipped, and no longer operating out of my Core Disciple's quarters. But needing supply is not the same as accepting dependence. I take a fresh sheet and begin making notes. The first draft of my response to the Huang family had been defensive. Too much of it focused on bargaining the price down, as though the main issue was whether they could rob us a little more politely.

The price matters, but the structure matters more. If we buy from them, we buy time. Nothing else. Time for Ling'er to train Mei Lin. Time to sort our storehouse properly. Time to learn which medicines we can prepare ourselves and which ones remain beyond us. Time to avoid injuring disciples through pride disguised as self-reliance. I will not pay for that time with our future. I dip the brush and begin the formal reply. The tone remains courteous.

They have offered a business arrangement, and if the arrangement happens to favor them heavily enough that I briefly consider burning the paper, that is not something one writes in an official response. Coiling Dragon Sect expresses gratitude for the Huang family's generous attention and congratulatory words. I pause, then continue. In light of current sect development and ongoing administrative expansion, Coiling Dragon Sect is prepared to discuss limited cooperation regarding regular medicinal supplies.

I write slowly, adjusting the phrasing until the refusal is polite enough to be read without anger and clear enough to be understood without hope: We decline exclusivity. We decline the full-year minimum volume. We decline interest-bearing supplier credit. We are willing to purchase specific finished pills in limited monthly quantities, with quality inspected upon receipt.

We request separate pricing for raw ingredients, including low-grade herbs suitable for instructional preparation, failed-batch materials, damaged but usable stock, and alchemical records the Huang family no longer considers commercially central. It is possible they will refuse. It is also possible that a respectable pill-supplying family has shelves full of outdated, incomplete, or low-level records they consider beneath their current business.

Things too poor to sell proudly, but still useful to a sect trying to build foundations from the ground up. If they think us too ignorant to extract value from their leftovers, all the better. I add the request. Then I set the brush down and read the response from beginning to end.

'They may dislike the counteroffer.' That is acceptable. Coiling Dragon cannot act like a starving sect grateful for scraps anymore. We are not rich, nor are we strong enough to offend everyone who attempts to profit from us. But there is a difference between poverty and desperation. I sand the page lightly and leave it on the corner of my desk for Shen Qiao to review in the morning. My gaze moves from the contract to the window. Outside, the evening sect continues in pieces.

The training yard has not fully emptied. Wei Chen is shouting something at the younger disciples. Jun stands nearby correcting someone's stance with quiet persistence. Beyond them, workers carry timber toward the half-finished storage hall. A servant chases two disciples away from a stack of roof tiles before they can turn it into a climbing challenge. On my desk, Shen Qiao's ledgers occupy their own pile; trade opportunities, transport requests, and more. We cannot pursue half of them. We lack manpower.

We lack trained administrators. We lack alchemists, formation assistants, reliable escorts, healers, scouts, and enough older disciples who can teach without needing constant correction themselves. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! The same problem appears everywhere. We have a few exceptional people and too many jobs. I had entered the day thinking I needed to help Ling'er make pills. That may still be true, in small ways.

My identification can be useful. My Gaze can inspect incoming pill quality if I ask the right questions. I can help determine whether a merchant is selling us medicine, garbage, or medicine that becomes garbage when stored badly for too long. I can support the beginning of the alchemy hall without pretending to be its center. But that is not the real task. The real task is making certain Ling'er is never forced to become the sect's only answer to every complicated problem we encounter. The sect needs disciples.

For months, recruitment has been a future concern. A thing to attempt once the sect was less embarrassing. Once the buildings were repaired. Once our reputation no longer invited pity. Once we could offer more than danger, mold, and the chance to be personally corrected by a child who might one day make immortals feel inadequate. After Stone River and months of development, that excuse no longer holds. We have proof that our training works. We have road access to defend. We have merchants watching.

We have too few hands for the future we are trying to build. I pull another stack of papers closer. Letters from cultivator families. Petitions from villages. A recommendation from a minor merchant household. A message from someone who claims to have admired Coiling Dragon Sect for years, despite the fact that no one has admired Coiling Dragon Sect for years. Some families want placement for spare children with mediocre roots.

Some villages ask whether Coiling Dragon intends to accept mortal-born applicants after the Stone River victory. One letter is careful enough that the writer clearly fears sounding desperate. Another is so flattering that I suspect the applicant's father believes compliments can substitute for talent. I take out a clean sheet. For several moments, I do not write. Disciple trials are not a small matter. Recruitment changes a sect's shape.

The wrong applicants bring spies, clan obligations, hidden grudges, and mouths we cannot feed. The right applicants bring the same problems more slowly. Still, the decision has already formed.

'Coiling Dragon Sect will hold disciple trials.' I dip the brush. The announcement begins plainly. Coiling Dragon Sect, following recent developments and in preparation for future expansion, will open formal disciple trials to qualified applicants from Greenstone Town and surrounding settlements. I stand near the entrance of Coiling Dragon Sect and watch the road fill with people who would not have spared this mountain a second glance two months ago.

Before Stone River, recruitment had been humiliation wearing formal robes. Coiling Dragon did not attract promising disciples. We accepted the desperate, the stranded, the unwanted, and the children I had taken under my wing years ago because no one else had bothered. We did not choose from a pool of candidates. We gathered what we could, fed who we could, taught who we could, and hoped they would not leave the moment they understood how poor we were. That was how this sect survived.

Now, after defeating Stone River in open conflict, everything has changed. Not enough that major powers will turn their attention toward us except in the passing way one notices a strange insect crawling across a table. But enough for people nearby to notice that Coiling Dragon's disciples are improving faster than they should. Enough for local clans to wonder whether the dying sect has stumbled onto something useful. So they arrive. Dozens of them.

Some are fifteen-year-olds brought by anxious parents who keep smoothing their sleeves and whispering last-moment instructions. Some are grown men and women nearly thirty, old enough that most sects would consider them poor investments unless they had already shown promise. Some arrive alone with patched bags, worn shoes, and hungry eyes. Others carry letters of recommendation from village elders whose names I vaguely remember.

A few applicants are accompanied by clan representatives who smile too easily and speak as though Coiling Dragon should feel honored to receive distant branch relatives whose own families apparently did not feel honored enough to invest in them properly. Xiao Zei sits on a post near the gate and observes them all with a scrunched expression on his raccoon face. Several people point at him. He points back.

A young man near the front steps forward, bows with the stiffness of someone reciting words prepared by another person, and says, "This humble one has long admired the noble bearing of Coiling Dragon Sect."

'No you haven't.' The Gaze makes the crowd worse rather than better. Without it, I might have been able to look at the number of applicants and feel uncomplicated satisfaction. A sect that once struggled to be remembered now has people waiting outside its gate. Some of the applicants look at our training yard with the kind of hunger that comes from seeing a path they thought would never open to them. But the Gaze does not allow me to enjoy the scene without cost. Most have no spiritual root at all.

Of the minority who do, perhaps one in ten of the total crowd, and half of those come with problems that have nothing to do with cultivation. One young woman carries a fire root and a note hidden beneath the inner lining of her sleeve, instructing her to observe our training methods and report whether Wei Chen's body cultivation comes from a unique inheritance. A young man with a water root has already received payment from his uncle to memorize any herb storage methods he sees.

Clan children who will obey their family before the sect. Opportunists with roots too poor for better schools, hoping Coiling Dragon is desperate enough to accept anyone. Older applicants who spent years trying every nearby sect and have come here only because our standards are assumed to be lower. I understand the temptation. We need people. The alchemy problem alone proves that. But needing people is not the same as needing burdens. I am not running a charity. I am not looking for more children to babysit.

I am looking for people who can grow into something more than the role they arrived with. That distinction hardens my heart before the test begins. I step forward. The crowd slowly settles. Parents hush their children. Applicants straighten. A few clan representatives tilt their heads with polite interest, already judging whether the test will be worth reporting to whoever sent them. Several people look past me toward the sect grounds, trying to see which disciples have gathered behind the gate.

They see Mei Lin standing with calm attention near the training yard path. Jun is beside her, hands folded behind his back, expression unreadable. Lian stands farther back with several younger disciples. Ling'er is absent from the front, which is deliberate. Her schedule is already packed as-is. Xiao Zei remains on his post. I ignore him as best I can.

"Coiling Dragon Sect will accept new outer disciples," I say.

"But acceptance will not be granted by recommendation, gift, family name, or flattery. Anyone who wishes to join must take a single test." The murmurs quiet. I let them wait a moment longer.

"The rule is simple. Each applicant will have one attempt. To pass, you must make one current disciple of Coiling Dragon Sect take a single step back." Several people blink. A few look encouraged. I can see the idea forming in them. One step. Not defeat. Not injury. Not a duel until surrender. Just one step. It sounds possible. Each applicant will have one attempt, and what they choose to do with it will tell me more than any prepared answer about loyalty, ambition, courage, patience, desperation, and sense.

A clan representative in blue robes raises one hand.

"Sect Leader Lu," he says smoothly, "may this humble one ask which disciple will conduct the trial?"

"You may." He waits. I do not answer. His smile stiffens slightly until Wei Chen walks out. The mood changes immediately. He is only at the Fifth Stage of Qi Condensation, but he no longer looks like the half-starved disciple he used to be a year ago. Over the past months, his cultivation has risen by multiple stages, his frame has filled out, and his body has taken on the dense solidity of someone who eats meat, rice, vegetables, and punishment in equal measure.

His robes fit more tightly across the shoulders than they used to. His stance is casual, but there is weight in it. The Mountain Breaking Blade is not at his side today, but somehow that makes him look more cheerful rather than less dangerous. He rolls his neck once. Then he grins at the crowd. Several applicants visibly reconsider their life choices. Wei Chen plants himself in the open space before the gate and spreads his arms slightly.

"Who's first?"