The Scrolls In The Library

“Let me introduce you. This is the librarian, Jin Xiaotan. And this is Kou, who has just become a new outer disciple.”

“Please take care of me.”

“If you have any questions about the books or scrolls in the library, ask me anything.”

“Can I read anything in here?”

“Unfortunately, there are restrictions depending on your tier in the Qi Refining Stage. Also, some of them are written in the Immortal Secret Script, so you probably will not be able to read them. What is your qi level, Kou?”

“It is the Fifth Tier.”

When they heard that, Yingjie and Xiaotan looked at each other.

“Really the Fifth Tier?”

“Shall I show you?”

I began refining my qi and raised it to the Fifth Tier. Once that qi began leaking even outside my body, the two of them, Yingjie and Xiaotan, seemed to understand as well.

“Whoa, it really is the Fifth Tier.”

Yingjie was surprised. I did not understand why he was surprised. Even if I was only an outer disciple, I was still a Taoist practitioner, so the Fifth Tier should have been nothing more than a passing point.

“Why are you surprised?”

“A lot of outer disciples quit being Taoist practitioners before they can even reach the Third Tier.”

“But weren’t there also people who became inner disciples?”

The two of them made bitter faces.

“It’s not that there are none, but most gave up and left Gyorei Cave.”

Yingjie said that with the same bitter expression on his face.

“Is becoming an inner disciple really that difficult?”

Hearing that, Xiaotan nodded with a sullen look.

“In the inner disciple exam, reaching the Third Tier is enough to pass, but to go from outer disciple to inner disciple, you need to reach the Eighth Tier.”

“I cannot accept that. The difference between the Third Tier and the Eighth Tier is too great.”

It seemed the people at the top of the sect were not seriously thinking about raising outer disciples at all. They might simply have created the outer disciple system because they wanted labor.

“Is that the only condition for becoming an inner disciple?”

“No. You also have to become able to read the Immortal Secret Script and defeat a Thunder Bear before you can become an inner disciple.”

It felt far too harsh. Since I had been a detective in my previous life, it reminded me of the difference between career-track and non-career-track police. The career-track officers were police bureaucrats who passed the national civil service exam and entered the National Police Agency, while the non-career officers entered the police as local civil servants, and their promotion and salary were different.

Just as a non-career officer could never become the Superintendent General no matter how hard he worked, even if someone worked hard in this sect, an outer disciple by origin probably could not rise to the top. But I did not want to climb the ranks within the sect.

I wanted to become stronger. For that, the quickest path would probably be to become an inner disciple and receive direct instruction from an elder. No matter what, I wanted to become an inner disciple.

When I checked with Xiaotan how far I was allowed to read, he told me that I could read the books stored on the first six bookshelves from the left. There were seven bookshelves in total, so only the seventh bookshelf was forbidden. Starting tomorrow, I would investigate the books in the library.

When I woke up in the morning, it was time to fetch water. The outer disciples worked together to draw spring water and fill the large water jars set up in nine places. The method was physical labor: drawing spring water into buckets, carrying them on our shoulders, and pouring the water into the jars. They said it was training to increase muscular strength using qi, but I had my doubts.

When breakfast time came, we stopped, ate, and then continued fetching water, apparently finishing around noon. Lunch was not served in the dining hall. Instead, it seemed there was no problem if we cooked for ourselves and ate that.

Without eating lunch, I went to the library and began examining the books from the leftmost shelf. Most of them were about the basic knowledge of the immortal path. If I had read these first, I probably would have gotten a perfect score on the exam.

Of course, I could not finish examining everything in a single day, so it took several days. On the second shelf, there were many books about the basics of qi. The third shelf contained history books, and the fourth and fifth shelves had many martial arts books.

But the martial arts books ranged from hand-to-hand combat to those using weapons like swords, spears, and axes, and there were so many that I could hardly decide what to choose.

And on the final sixth shelf, there were scrolls written in the Immortal Secret Script. It seemed the upperclassmen here chose one scroll from among them, deciphered the Immortal Secret Script, and learned the martial arts or qi training method inside.

I also began examining the scrolls one by one, trying to choose the martial art and qi training method best suited to me.

“Hm? This is…”

I picked up a scroll from the bottom row of the sixth shelf. Written on that scroll were the words “Meimei Gong, Middle Transmission.” I took it to the librarian, Xiaotan, and got permission to read it.

I spread the scroll out on the table in the center of the room and began reading. But since it was written in the Immortal Secret Script, I had to decipher it while consulting the Immortal Secret Script dictionary I remembered. It was faster than looking things up in a thick dictionary, but it still took time.

In “Meimei Gong, Middle Transmission,” the qi training methods from the Sixth Tier through the Tenth Tier were written down. However, it seemed that to reach the Sixth Tier and above, the help of immortal elixirs was necessary.

Immortal elixirs were spiritual medicines or immortal medicines made from ingredients such as various medicinal herbs and spiritual herbs. “Meimei Gong, Middle Transmission” described how to make the required immortal medicine, and that immortal medicine seemed to be called the Qi Prosperity Pill.

The problem was that the ingredients for the Qi Prosperity Pill could only be gathered in the demon realm. It might be possible to buy them, but they were probably expensive, so I likely would not be able to afford them.

“So I have to go gather the medicinal herbs myself. But it’s the demon realm.”

In the demon realm there were not only dangerous wild animals like bears, wolves, and tigers, but also yōma. Even the weakest Fang Rabbit was strong enough to kill a human easily. Meisen Swordsmanship alone was not reassuring enough.

Meisen Swordsmanship was a powerful martial art, but if anything, it was meant more for fighting people. To defeat yōma with this swordsmanship, I would probably need a special sword—the kind called a famous blade or a treasured sword. …Sigh, I cannot afford that.

For the time being, I engraved “Meimei Gong, Middle Transmission” into my mind using my instantaneous memory ability. Xiaotan, who had been watching me, came closer.

“Kou, can you read the Immortal Secret Script?”

I shook my head and denied it.

“I only know a few characters, that is all.”

“I see. Since you were looking at a passage written in the Immortal Secret Script without even using a dictionary, I thought you could read it.”

“It seems to be a book that contains a qi training method, but is there no Initial Transmission?”

“‘Meimei Gong, Middle Transmission,’ huh. The Initial Transmission of that was lost, so this is what drifted here. The inner disciples must have made some blunder. A shame.”

Since there was no Initial Transmission, it had become difficult to master. In the text, there were expressions like “as written in the Initial Transmission” and “the same as in the Third Tier,” and those parts had become impossible to understand.

“Is there no Final Transmission?”

“It seems the Final Transmission is still in the library of the Main Hall.”

The Main Hall was the building where the inner disciples trained, and it contained the library and the apothecary. Incidentally, outer disciples were not permitted to enter the library in the Main Hall.