Chương 38: The Adventurer's Seal

The Adventurer's Guild hall occupied a converted warehouse near the district's eastern edge. Its stone floor had been worn smooth by generations of boots, its high ceiling hung with boards listing active contracts, and its counters arranged in a rough triangle around a central evaluation pit where applicants demonstrated their capabilities. Wei Chen arrived early, before the morning rush of independent cultivators seeking work.

The clerk at the registration counter was a heavyset man with a braided beard and the bored expression of someone who had seen too many hopefuls fail.

"Name, cultivation realm, specialties."

"Wei Chen. Foundation Establishment. Alchemy, close combat, tracking." The clerk's pen paused.

"Foundation Establishment at your age? You from a sect?"

"Independent."

"Hnh. We'll see. Step into the evaluation pit. Standard assessment: three forms against the testing dummy, one defensive demonstration, then a speed drill." Wei Chen had researched the guild's ranking system during his first two days in the capital. Ranks ran from copper to silver to gold and beyond, with each rank determining contract eligibility.

The evaluation criteria emphasized measurable qualities: speed of technique execution, number of strikes delivered, visual manifestation of qi, and the ability to produce flashy defensive barriers. It was a system designed by and for modern cultivators. It had no category for efficiency. No metric for power per movement. No way to measure what happened when a single blow landed. He entered the pit. The testing dummy was a column of enchanted hardwood reinforced with bronze bands.

It could register impact force, track strike count, and measure qi emission. Guild evaluators watched from a raised bench, making notes on slates. Wei Chen performed three techniques from the Primordial Sage legacy, each one stripped down to near invisibility. A palm strike that seemed casual. A elbow-driven compression. A short stepping blow that ended with his hand resting against the dummy's surface rather than snapping away. The dummy registered the impacts. The evaluators did not look impressed.

"Slow," one said.

"Low strike count. Qi manifestation minimal."

"Defensive demonstration," the clerk called. Wei Chen raised a forearm and channeled qi through his skin in a tight pattern. The barrier was not a glowing dome. It was a dense field visible only as a faint distortion in the air, extending barely an inch from his flesh. He held it for three breaths, then released it.

"No visible shield," an evaluator noted.

"Limited range." The speed drill required him to strike targets as they popped up around the pit. Wei Chen moved economically, hitting each target once, precisely, without wasted motion. His score was adequate. It was not spectacular.

"Copper rank," the clerk announced, stamping a copper disc and tossing it onto the counter.

"Low copper, actually. You can take pest control, escort, and cleanup contracts. Nothing rated above your rank, no team-lead positions, no split on valuable spoils beyond standard finder fee." Wei Chen picked up the disc.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Thank the guild for not throwing you out. Foundation Establishment should look more impressive than that. Either you're lying about your realm or you've got the worst technique execution I've seen this month."

"I understand the concern." The clerk snorted.

"Next." Wei Chen stepped away from the counter and studied the contract boards. The metrics problem was not personal. It was systemic. The guild ranked cultivators according to what its evaluators could see and count: speed, flash, volume. A cultivator who threw twenty weak fireballs in ten seconds would rate higher than one who threw one devastating blow in the same time. A cultivator whose defensive technique lit up the evaluation pit would outrank one whose invisible barrier could actually stop a blade.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. In qi-poor Veritas, where modern cultivators could not afford deep techniques, this distortion made a kind of sense. Flash and speed were all most of them had. The guild measured what the local tradition valued. But the measurement was not the truth. Wei Chen knew what his body could do. He had shattered the defenses of spirit beasts in the jungle.

He had killed a corrupted cultivator whose techniques were far more visually impressive than his own. He had deflected falling stone in Stoneback Pass with a barrier the guild would have dismissed as inadequate. Underestimation was not a failure. It was camouflage. He selected a contract from the board: Feral spirit rats infesting the grain warehouse of Merchant Huro. Clear nest, dispose of bodies, seal entry points. Payment: three silver plus salvage rights on cores. Copper-rank work.

Demeaning, perhaps, but useful. It would establish a record of completed contracts. It would pay his rent. And it would allow him to observe how the guild operated from the inside. The warehouse stood two streets from the river, a long building of timber and whitewashed plaster that smelled of barley, millet, and the musky ammonia of rodent infestation. Merchant Huro was a thin man with nervous hands who had clearly never dealt with spirit rats before.

"They came through the foundation," he said, pointing to a gap between the warehouse floor and the outer wall.

"Three nights ago, just a few. Now my workers won't enter. I can hear them in the walls."

"How large?"

"Cat-sized. Maybe larger. Their eyes glow." Wei Chen nodded. Spirit rats were common vermin in cities with enough ambient qi to mutate ordinary rodents. Individually weak, they became dangerous in numbers, and their bites carried a corrupting influence that could fester in untended wounds.

"I'll need the warehouse cleared for the day. No workers inside. Close the doors behind me."

"You're going in alone?"

"Yes." Merchant Huro looked doubtful—a copper-rank youth, barely grown, proposing to clear a nest that had sent his adult workers fleeing. But he was also desperate. He handed over the key and retreated to a neighboring building. Wei Chen entered alone. The warehouse interior was dim, light filtering through high windows in dusty beams. The grain stores were stacked in sacks along the walls, creating corridors and hiding places ideal for nesting.

Wei Chen extended his senses and immediately felt them: dozens of small, hot qi signatures scattered through the walls and under the floor, plus three larger concentrations in the rear corner. He did not draw his sword. Swords were for enemies that required killing quickly. Spirit rats required thoroughness, not spectacle. He moved through the warehouse in a slow circle, channeling qi through his feet in a low-frequency vibration that the rats would feel as territorial intrusion.

They came to him in waves—first the scouts, then the soldiers, then the three alpha females from the rear nest. His movements were minimal. A step, a palm strike, a twist that broke a spine. No technique names. No visible qi manifestations. Just efficient geometry applied to soft bodies. The ancient forms were designed for exactly this: sustained combat where every movement cost energy and every waste was a step toward exhaustion.

The alpha females were larger than Merchant Huro had described, each the size of a dog, their fur matted with spiritual corruption that made their bites dangerous even to cultivators. Wei Chen killed the first with a downward palm that crushed its skull. The second he caught mid-leap and redirected into a wall with enough force to shatter its spine. The third tried to flee, and he ended it with a thrown iron staple from a nearby crate.

He spent another hour finding and collapsing the nests, dragging bodies into a central pile, and sealing the foundation gap with a mixture of lime mortar and a trace of qi-repelling powder he prepared from association-sanctioned ingredients. When Merchant Huro returned, he found the warehouse quiet, the bodies stacked neatly, the entry sealed, and the young cultivator sitting on a grain sack drinking water from a flask.

"All done," Wei Chen said. The merchant counted the bodies, his eyes widening.

"There must be forty of them. You killed forty spirit rats alone?"

"Forty-three. The alphas had cores. I'll take those as salvage, per the contract."

"Yes, of course." Huro paid him with shaking hands.

"Would you—would you be willing to take a regular contract? Monthly inspections? I have two other warehouses near the river." Wei Chen considered. Regular work meant regular income and predictable scheduling. It also meant being known as the rat-catcher of River Ward, a harmless label that would reinforce his invisibility.

"Monthly inspections. Five silver per visit. Additional fees if active nests are found."

"Done." Wei Chen returned to the guild hall in the afternoon and submitted his completion record. The clerk stamped it without interest, but Wei Chen noticed that the stamp went into his file, adding to a paper trail of reliable, unremarkable service. That evening, in his room at the Iron Lantern, he examined the three rat cores. They were low-grade, barely worth selling, but they were useful for practice.

He spent an hour extracting their spiritual essence using a legacy technique adapted to modern vermin, then recorded the results in his notebook. The guild had ranked him low. The merchant had doubted him. Both were correct, from their limited perspective. But the nest was empty, the contract was complete, and his reputation as a reliable nobody had begun. It was, Wei Chen decided, exactly the foundation he needed.