After Lu Yaoyao decided to go out for field training with her friends, she surprisingly encountered no objections. As soon as she mentioned it to her master, he agreed immediately, only instructing her to be careful and prioritize safety. He then gave her a pile of pills and sent her back to prepare.
Soon after, news reached her senior brothers, who came one after another to share their experiences and advice on field training, along with more pills and spiritual stones. Even the eldest senior brother, who usually secluded himself in the alchemy room, emerged to give Lu Yaoyao a stash of pills before drifting away.
Following this, Martial Uncle Lu and Brother Junyang also contributed… and Lu Yaoyao’s already very rich private stash instantly grew bigger.
At the agreed time, Lu Yaoyao departed to meet up with her friends at the sect’s mission hall. When she arrived at the entrance, she saw Chao Muxue and Du Qianshan already waiting. Seeing her arrival, they stopped their conversation and waved with a smile: “Yaoyao, over here!”
Lu Yaoyao quickly joined them: “Muxue, Qianshan! Did you wait long?”
Chao Muxue smiled: “We’ve just arrived too.”
The three started chatting until Wen Zixing arrived not long after. His lively voice reached them before he did: “Guys! I’m here!”
Approaching Lu Yaoyao and the others, Wen Zixing struck a pose: “Handsome guy always arrives one beat late, doesn’t he?”
Lu Yaoyao deadpanned: “You’re extra late.”
Wen Zixing couldn’t believe it: “Impossible, I timed my entrance perfectly.” He had planned to make a grand entrance at the very last moment.
Chao Muxue and Du Qianshan burst into laughter. The three years had left marks on each of them. Du Qianshan, who once had a youthful air, had matured into a handsome young man. Chao Muxue’s demeanor had also undergone great changes. Of course, the most significant transformation was Wen Zixing, and the only one who hadn’t changed was Lu Yaoyao.
“Yaoyao, stop teasing Zixing. Let’s go inside.” Chao Muxue said. The mission hall saw a lot of people coming and going, and many had already noticed them, with curious glances being cast their way.
The four stopped frolicking and proceeded inside. The main lobby of the mission hall was a spacious square area, featuring a massive wallboard that stretched from floor to ceiling across from the entrance. Bathed in a gentle, glowing light, the board displayed every sect mission currently available.
Lu Yaoyao’s group stopped in front of a long, age-old wooden desk, ready to select a mission. However, the moment she stepped up to the front, Lu Yaoyao found her line of sight obstructed. Her small body was shorter than the table!
After convincing her friends and acquaintances of her real age three years ago, Lu Yaoyao stopped letting people casually carry her. When they were still unaware of her age, thinking she was just a four- or five-year-old human child, she could still shamelessly enjoy being coddled. Now that everyone knew her actual age, she firmly refused any attempts to carry her for convenience… except with her Father and Dad, in whose eyes she always remained a little cub.
Of course, special circumstances warranted some exceptions — Lu Yaoyao didn’t mind being treated like a child when she needed assistance. So, when Chao Muxue lifted her to see the mission wall, Lu Yaoyao didn’t refuse. She looked at the expansive wall, her eyes dazzled by the rows and rows of missions.
The mission hall offered a wide variety of missions, ranging significantly in various factors. The rewards for completion, naturally, also varied depending on the difficulty of the missions.
Some of the missions available were issued by the sect and involved assisting certain cities within the Cultivation Realm or addressing anomalies at specific locations, requiring sect disciples to solve the problem. This type of mission, typically taking longer and more troublesome, was commonly undertaken by disciples facing cultivation bottlenecks who wanted to explore and gain experience.
Simpler missions were often posted by sect disciples themselves, usually looking for certain items or assistance. For instance, the South Fifth Peak might require special spiritual materials found only in specific areas, and if the sect’s reserves were insufficient, missions would be posted in the hall, offering pills or spiritual stones as rewards.
The missions on the wall were organized by difficulty from left to right, with the most challenging missions to the right. Thus, the majority of disciples gathered from the left to the middle of the wall to pick up missions.
Lu Yaoyao and her friends were curious about the available missions and started skimming from left to right. She noticed a long-term mission posted by the South Fifth Peak for acquiring spiritual materials, something she was very familiar with. These missions were usually managed by her second senior brother, and Lu Yaoyao had seen him handling such affairs on several occasions.
Basic pills with quick effects such as the Great Restoration Pill and the Essence Renewal Pill were in high demand and considered essential by most cultivators. Consequently, the ingredients required for these pills were needed in large quantities, exceeding what the sect could provide, so disciples out on missions would often collect these materials to exchange with the South Fifth Peak. Of course, these spiritual materials were quite common and not highly priced, but rarer materials could fetch a much higher value.
In the broadest context, the missions could be divided into two categories: long-term and one-time. Long-term missions remained posted indefinitely, regardless of how many took them, until the requester withdrew them. One-time missions, on the other hand, were removed from the wall once accepted and only reappeared if the task was either completed and needed settlement or was not completed and had to be reposted.
While staring at the wall, the group discussed: “Here it says they want the claws and complete skin of a hopbeast. Is this mission difficult?”
Du Qianshan explained, “Of course. The name hopbeast may sound silly, but it is one of the most challenging spirit beasts in the Cultivation Realm. It can jump at a tremendous height, causing the land within hundreds of miles to crack with each jump and shattering the internal organs of even Nascent Soul cultivators, hence the name.”
“The claws and teeth of the hopbeast are incredibly hard and sharp, and its fur offers excellent defensive attributes, so they were ideal for crafting top-tier artifacts or weapons. Many people wanted to get their hands on these materials, but they’re hard to come by.” Moreover, hopbeasts were scarce, with only two known artifacts made from their materials in the world, and not even Guiyuan had one.
Lu Yaoyao was amazed.
“Even young hopbeasts are very tough to handle, and adults are far worse. Privately, our seniors say only His Venerable could complete this mission.” But His Venerable wouldn’t descend to take on missions from the hall, so it remained unclaimed.
“And this one…”
“We should start picking up missions now,” Wen Zixing listened to his friends’ enthusiastic discussion and glanced at the highest-difficulty missions. What gave them the courage to discuss the hardest missions? Wake up; they were still novices who had never undertaken a mission!
“If we don’t move now, all the good missions will be taken.” Wen Zixing had scouted some missions beforehand and noticed that a couple he was interested in were already gone.
With some reluctance, Lu Yaoyao, Chao Muxue, and Du Qianshan had no choice but to move away from the toughest missions and joined Wen Zixing on the left side of the wall, where the simpler missions were displayed. Wen Zixing pointed to one of them and said, “This one requires ten Wind-Thunder Bamboo shoots, and the reward is ten mid-grade spirit stones.”
The reward was actually on the lower side, considering Wind-Thunder Bamboo shoots had to be foraged from the Wind-Thunder Forest, a place infamous for endless lightning and stormy winds. Furthermore, even if someone reached a cluster of Wind-Thunder Bamboo, it was uncertain whether they could find a single shoot there. Entering the forest meant being at risk of getting struck by lightning, but Wen Zixing had talismans that could avoid lightning, making this mission possible for them.
“There’s also this one, capturing a spirit mink.”
“At the west of Tianyan City…”
Wen Zixing showed them several missions that caught his eye.
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