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Failure!

….

Lin Xuan sat silently for a long time, expressing neither anger nor sadness. His hands clenched tightly, nails digging into his palm, lips also bleeding from biting down. After a long silence, Lin Xuan took a deep breath, then sat back down again to once again continue in his efforts.

……

Early the next morning, the sun rose, and a new day began.

The Flying Cloud Palace, a grand and imposing building set in front of the Earth Stadium, one of the most important buildings in the Whirlwind Cloud Valley, as well as one of the most important buildings there. At the start of every month, Spirit Condensation disciples gather there to receive training. Despite the fact that he spent the whole night cultivating, and slept for less than three hours, Lin Xuan arrives at the Flying Cloud Palace on time in the spacious hall, where hundreds of disciples have already gathered, each one a Spirit Condensation disciple, each one with higher cultivation than Lin Xuan, his arrival caused the already gathered disciples to sneer and look down on him.

“Look at that trash, he has no spirit roots, but he’s trying to cultivate.”

“Well, he won’t last for much longer. It is just a waste of cultivation materials for trash like him to stay here.”

“Who said that? I heard that he works very hard, but without any Spiritual Roots, how can he compare to us? This explains why he is in the first layer for so long.”

“Such arrogance, to think that he wants to defy the laws of heaven and try to cultivate, it is impossible for mortals.”

…….

Arrogant! Lin Xuan stared blankly at the other disciples, thinking nothing of their words, taking it as the wild barking of mad dogs. He just quietly stood in the back.

With the ring of a bell, the disciples quickly stopped their discussions and lined up as an old man and a little boy walked into the hall. Each of the boy’s hands held a disk that was covered with a red cloth and a refreshing scent coming off of it.

“Elder Ma!” yelled the disciples while bowing.

“Oho.” The proud old man looks happy. His cultivation was not high, only at the early Foundation Establishment Stage, but he was in charge of the Medicinal Hall, so he had a high status.

In addition to talent and efforts, Spirit Medicines were also essential. It could be very important because if enough pills were taken, one’s cultivation speed could increase significantly; however, refining them required a combination of a lot of materials, including some rare herbs, so the school could only provide the disciples with a few pills.

According to the rules, Spirit Condensation disciples would receive two Purifying Essence Pills.

Purifying Essence Pills, as the name implies, could cleanse the spiritual Qi in one’s body, dissolving impurities and giving a little bit of spiritual power. Of course, the effects vary depending on the talent of each person, even the spiritual power it gives could vary greatly. The pills were also only useful to Spirit Condensation disciples.

As a fragrant scent spread across the hall. The disciples thanked the elder and began to approach in a line to receive the pills from the old man. They all had expressions of joy and happiness on their faces.

Lin Xuan quickly arrived in front of Elder Ma, who after showing an expression of disdain removed the cover from the second disk and threw two pills at Lin Xuan.

“Thank You.” Lin Xuan yelled. His eyebrows however suddenly jump up, looking at the two pills in his hand, they are… trash pills?

Cultivators were not all the same. There were scholars, tools makers, alchemists, talismans, and many others, each required vast amounts of knowledge.

For example, alchemy, in addition to a variety of precious materials, you also needed extremely hot flames to refine them in a cauldron, with careful amounts over a long period of time. The quality of the materials would also affect the success rate of alchemy.

Even experienced master alchemists often fail while using high-quality materials, creating trash pills, which have no use.

Trash pills are pills with excessive impurities, and to cultivators, not only did they have no benefit, but they might also damage the body. So usually, they were thrown away.

Although the Whirlwind Cloud Valley distributes the pills to the disciples regularly, it was only a small sect, and the pills were only low-grade. Even low-grade pills were still useful, but trash pills were different…

The Elder obviously intended to embarrass him, however, Lin Xuan snapped out of his shock, and retained his composure. It is unwise to say anything, as Elder Ma held a high position and reputation.

“Elder, are you sure you got the right ones? How can I take these two trash pills?”

“What‘s wrong?” Elder Ma’s disdain for Lin Xuan was clear, a low-level disciple was not worth his effort. He said while raising his nose “What, not satisfied?”

“With your talents, it is a waste to take a normal pill, a trash pill might be just right for you… so be it. To make up for it, I’ll just give you a few more bottles.”

Saying that, he took out two jade bottles from the plate, throwing them at Lin Xuan.

“The other disciples have only two Purifying Essence Pills, I’m giving you two bottles, who else would give such favored treatment to you!”

“Thanks, Elder”

Contrary to Elder Ma’s expectations, Lin Xuan’s resentment disappeared and backed down after a respectful bow.

“How come?” Elder Ma instead had a look of shock, slumped speechlessly.

Trash pills, simply put, were garbage. Taking them was detrimental to cultivators. Even if you have two bottles, it would just make it even more worthless. What was Lin Xuan thinking…

The elder thought that with how unfair he was treating him, Lin Xuan would yell at him, showing disrespect to an elder. With this as an excuse, he would be able to kick Lin Xuan out of the school.

It was not that Lin Xuan had offended him, and Elder Ma held no grudges against him, but this old guy was extremely arrogant and despised mortals with no spiritual roots. He thought that allowing Lin Xuan to be in the sect was a disgrace, so he wanted to kick him out.

The plan wasn’t perfect, but he was very careful to not break any of the sect’s rules. Only lower-level disciples could get Purifying Essence Pills, but he replaced Lin Xuan’s pills with trash pills. After such unfair treatment, with Lin Xuan being a teenager with far less experience than him, he expected Lin Xuan to attack, and as long as he was attacked, he could remove Lin Xuan from the sect.

However, even though Lin Xuan has no spiritual roots and was just an ordinary mortal. His was not stupid. He always thought of consequences before acting and was never impulsive. Deep in his heart, he was truly angry at the elder for giving him trash pills, but he was very good at hiding his emotions.

After seeing the look of disdain the elder gave him, Lin Xuan also saw a look of satisfaction, and immediately came to the conclusion that the elder was trying to remove him. Lin Xuan didn’t understand why the elder wanted to get rid of him for no reason, as he has never offended him, but that could be investigated later. The most important thing now was not falling into the trap.

Translated by: James1kd2

Edited by: Summit