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Wishing our entire reading community a glorious Easter Sunday. Today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the victory of life over death. May your day be filled with the joy, hope, and light that His rising brings to the world.
CHAPTER 3: The Examination
"I didn't make any of this up. Go ask a disciple from any orthodox sect and they'll tell you the same thing." Qin Yuxi let out a derisive sound. "Or is Senior Sister Chu saying she already knew and came back anyway?"
The words had barely left her mouth before a flash of gold and red swept through the air. The round fan, wrapped in a sharp blaze of killing intent, shot straight for the boy's face.
It stopped less than an inch from him. He only blinked at it, leaning against Chu Li with the same unguarded expression as before, as though the danger hadn't registered at all.
Chu Li's hand was already moving. She knocked the fan aside without thinking. "What do you think you're doing, attacking my person without any warning?"
Qin Yuxi stumbled back a step. For just a moment, genuine surprise flickered across her face. She clearly hadn't expected Chu Li to deflect it bare-handed.
"I was only testing him." She levelled the fan at the boy. "He's been keeping his head down this whole time. No one can even see his face. For all we know, he's a spy from the Demon Realm trying not to be recognised."
Before Chu Li could pull out her paper umbrella and give Qin Yuxi something to think about, a voice came through the gates, carrying quiet authority without any effort at all.
"Yuxi. That's enough."
Qin Yuxi's whole manner changed at once. She lowered the fan and stepped aside, dipping her head respectfully. "Elder Wen."
Chu Li was still supporting the boy and couldn't bow properly. She looked toward the voice instead.
Elder Wen had the kind of face that belonged on a painting, all composed elegance and effortless grace, yet she wore plain white robes with no ornamentation whatsoever. According to the novel, after reaching the Deity Transformation stage, she had withdrawn entirely from sect affairs and rarely bothered even with her own disciples. For her to appear at the main gates in person was almost unheard of.
So Qin Yuxi hadn't been exaggerating after all.
"Little Li." Elder Wen's voice was measured. "Yuxi was wrong to strike first. But the situation is not ordinary right now, and you cannot bring someone in without clearance." She lifted a hand and dissolved the spiritual threads coiled around Chu Li's ankles, then turned to point at the boy. "He must pass an examination before he sets foot inside this sect."
As she spoke, she had already crossed to stand directly in front of them. Her gaze settled on the boy with cool focus. "Raise your head. Let me see you."
The boy shrank further into Chu Li's arms instead, his soft hair pressing against her collarbone, and she had to fight down a completely inappropriate urge to laugh in front of an Elder at the Deity Transformation stage. She settled for patting the top of his head.
"It's all right. Just let Elder Wen have a look. I'm right here."
Slowly, he turned his face toward Elder Wen. His lips were pressed shut and his gaze slid pointedly to the side, every line of him broadcasting that he would rather be anywhere else.
Elder Wen studied him for a moment. "Where does he come from?"
"I passed through the eastern waterlands and found him there. His spiritual aptitude was exceptional, so I brought him back." Chu Li was careful to keep the location vague. The original Chu Li's movements had overlapped with Bai Lingyu's at the Linxian Inn, and she had no interest in inviting that kind of scrutiny.
"Is that all?" Elder Wen pressed. "His origins? His past?"
Chu Li nearly stumbled over that one. "I thought... since he'll be joining the sect and leaving the mortal world behind, his past wouldn't matter much."
"His features suggest decent aptitude, I'll grant you that. But you've been reckless, Little Li." Elder Wen's tone shifted into a sharper register. "I can overlook you leaving the mountain without permission. But how could you bring a complete stranger back to the sect without even knowing who he is?"
From the side, Qin Yuxi couldn't help herself. "That's exactly what I said. Senior Sister Chu has no regard for the sect's safety, and now she's trying to argue her way out of it."
"This doesn't concern you." Elder Wen didn't look at her. "Go."
Qin Yuxi's fingers tightened around her fan handle. Her mouth did something complicated. Then she shot Chu Li a resentful look and flounced off.
Elder Wen turned her calm gaze on the boy. "Little Li may not know your circumstances. But you should know them yourself. What can you tell me?"
"I don't remember anything..." The boy tucked his face against Chu Li's shoulder like a small startled animal. After a long moment, he continued in a halting murmur, "I only know I ran away from somewhere frightening. And then I found Sister."
Chu Li stroked the top of his head and offered an explanation. "When I was passing through the eastern waterlands, I accidentally strayed into rogue cultivator territory. He'd escaped from there. The shock of it was what made him like this."
"If the rogue cultivators had wanted him dead, how did he get out alive?" Elder Wen was unmoved by the explanation. "Did you witness this yourself, or did he tell you?"
"My instinct tells me they didn't target him because he has no cultivation. Without spiritual energy, he wouldn't have been worth their while."
"In other words, you have no proof." Elder Wen's palm shifted, and some invisible force gathered around the boy's waist, drawing him firmly out of Chu Li's arms.
"Where are you taking him?" Chu Li moved after them at once.
Then the world changed.
She looked around and found herself standing in a place that had nothing to do with Qiyi Mountain. The landscape around her looked like ink wash painting, mountains and water rendered in brushstroke and shadow.
A spirit-formed array. An illusion space.
The boy had spiritual threads bound around his hands and feet, locking him in place. His eyes found Chu Li's, wide with barely contained panic.
"Please release him." Chu Li couldn't undo bindings laid by someone at the Nascent Soul stage, so she put herself next to him instead and appealed to Elder Wen directly. "He's already in pain. This is only making it worse."
"That's also something he told you?" Elder Wen's eyes cooled. She drew a glowing white stone out of thin air. "Do you know what this is?"
"A body-examination stone?" Chu Li recalled the description from the novel. "Isn't that what the Hehuan Sect uses to assess new disciples?"
"It is. Every disciple passes through three layers of examination before formally entering the sect." Elder Wen paused. "Today, I intend to use it to establish his identity."
Chu Li felt she was dealing with an unusual degree of single-mindedness. "You still suspect him?"
"How could I not?" Elder Wen's voice became grave. "The Demon Realm has recently been struck by heavenly tribulation, and the Demon Lord has vanished at precisely this moment. He has always worn a mask in public; no one knows his face. The entire cultivation world has concluded that he has slipped into our midst to destroy the sects from within."
"That can't be right," Chu Li said before she could stop herself.
In the novel, the great villain was perfectly settled in the Demon Realm at this point in the story. And even if things had shifted somewhat from the original plot, if he wanted to dismantle the major sects, the Hehuan Sect wasn't even on that list.
Besides, what would it take for the villain to lose his mind so completely that he'd disguise himself as a pitiful waif, follow her to the Hehuan Sect, and let her put him to work?
As someone who had read the original novel cover to cover, Chu Li swore on her honour that if that boy had even the faintest connection to the great villain Ji Wuyan, she would eat every page of the book on the spot.
[Author's note skit]
Ji Wuyan: Here's the book. Go ahead.
Chu Li: Where's my umbrella, WHERE IS MY UMBRELLA?!
"I take no one's word for anything. The examination stone is the only thing that can confirm his identity." Elder Wen beckoned to Chu Li. "You first."
Chu Li pressed her palm to the stone. A gentle warmth spread through her hand, the feeling of spiritual energy moving.
A moment later, at Elder Wen's signal, she lifted her hand. A line of luminous text rose above the stone: Chu Li. Twenty years old. Water-wood dual spiritual roots. Qi Refinement stage. Passed.
"This stone cannot directly examine the soul," Elder Wen explained, "but it can read the age, spiritual roots, and cultivation level of the body it contacts. Your name is registered because the sect master recorded it personally when you joined."
Chu Li understood at once. The examination stone was essentially the cultivation world's version of an identification system: a single touch, and your basic information surfaced from within.
Then a thought occurred to her. "If someone had taken over another person's body, couldn't they just use that body to slip through?"
Elder Wen looked as though she had been expecting the question. "That is precisely what the second layer of examination tests: the compatibility between body and soul. A person's body and soul are perfectly matched from birth. A taken body always carries traces of incompatibility, however subtle, and no trace is too small for this stone to detect."
She added, "If you were a soul that had taken over this body, you would not have received a passing result just now."
A cold sweat moved down Chu Li's spine.
She had only entered this body today. By any reasonable logic, her soul and this body shouldn't be anywhere near a hundred percent compatible either.
Transmigration, it turned out, really did operate on entirely different rules from soul-taking. Whatever mechanism had brought her here had let her slip in seamlessly in a way that ordinary forcible possession never could.
"Your turn." Elder Wen moved a fingertip, and another spiritual thread coiled around the boy's wrist, pressing his palm flat against the examination stone.
Chu Li wasn't worried. She trusted her instincts about him.
But when her eyes found his face, her heart climbed straight into her throat.
His eyes had gone red at the rims. Those doe-like eyes were turned downward, brimming with distress, his small face drawn and pale, his lips moving in a faint, soundless repetition.
The same words, over and over.
Sister, I'm scared.
"Don't be scared," she told him quietly. "It's all right."
The examination stone had been perfectly still until the moment his palm touched it. Then its white light began to pulse and waver, as though something inside was destabilising.
At the same time, the boy's hand flushed red, as though he'd pressed it against a branding iron.
Elder Wen reacted immediately, pulling the spiritual thread back and lifting his hand away.
Chu Li raised his wrist carefully and looked at his reddened palm, then looked up without lifting her head. "Elder Wen, what happened to him?"
Elder Wen wasn't listening to her. She was reading aloud in a low, focused murmur: "Unknown. Seventeen years old. Gold spiritual root. No cultivation... Passed."
At the word passed, Chu Li let out a breath.
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