By the time he reached his tiny sect granted cultivation cave Zhao was soaked from the ongoing deluge.

Adrenaline thrummed through his veins, thoroughly convincing him that the ill formed plan he had concocted was the only viable defense against the Li clan.

He fiddled with the lock on the ornate pine door set into the mountainside before him frustratedly.

The moon and stars were obscured by the angry thunderclouds overhead, leaving the sect shrouded in darkness.

With a click he turned the key, and Zhao sent the door flying open to gain access to his residence.

Diving inside to escape the rain, he slammed the door closed tiredly.

Zhao plodded over to the right, where an approximation of a kitchen was carved straight into the stone walls. A number of shelves, a rudimentary well pump, and a countertop were the epitome of opulence for Inner Disciples.

Cooking still required using the firepit set into the center of the cave like a mortal.

After drying himself as best he could with a rag that had been resting on the countertop, Zhao made his way from the central living area into one of the two separate rooms in his residence; the office he affectionately called a dungeon.

A desk too large to fit through the entryway had been miraculously manifested in the room. It took up two thirds of the floor in a display Zhao could only assume was meant to disabuse disciples of the notion that they were valuable.

Light seeped in anemically from above, where iron bars inlaid with runes stood guarding a tiny hole in the wall.

He was almost certain the closet-sized space had been repurposed, though Zhao couldn’t imagine what the original intent of its design was.

Almost manic in his need to find a solution, Zhao began digging out the admissions papers he’d copied during his brief tenure as an Assistant Admissions Disciple.

The desk creaked in protest at his every movement while he distractedly thanked the heavens that the famous ancient Chinese bureaucracy was present in this cultivation world.

Papers were stacked haphazardly on the chipped surface of his workspace before being shuffled into an approximation of organization.

Spread out before him, the stacks of reports offered insight into hundreds of disciples.

If another Admissions Disciple had seen Zhao’s illegal copies of official sect records, they might have coughed blood from his defacement of the forms.

Notes written in English were scribbled after every disciple’s affinities, root evaluation, and test scores.

Certain disciples had a crimson star emblazoned next to their name to signify that Zhao should stay away from them. Those were the individuals whose materials that he collated into a list of possible benefactors.

Zhao had only been directly employed by the Misty Cradle Sect for a few months. As a result, his intelligence wasn’t as extensive as it could be and the final roster ended up only a few dozen strong.

He went over the candidates one by one, gradually narrowing his search down as the rainstorm outside eased to a drizzle before picking back up.

Every so often a translucent barrier would spark around the iron bars overhead when a stray droplet attempted to gain entry to the office space.

Zhao shivered when he came to his notes on a particular disciple named Zhan Mei. She was the exemplar for why he had tried to avoid interacting with the people in his documents.

His notes described her as abnormally normal since her affinities, roots, and test scores had all been the exact average of the recruits in her cadre.

Unlike many of the other disciples whose paperwork Zhao had copied, he had personally handled Zhan Mei’s entrance into the sect and experienced firsthand the oddness of her character.

The girl had behaved erratically, at times acting far older or younger than her actual age. Zhao’s suspicion was that he was witness to an instance of reincarnation or possession.

Aside from being generally unnerving, she had done a remarkable job crafting an eerie aura.

He still remembered her promise to ‘kill him quickly’ if it ever came to it. As it was a normal way to thank a civil servant for doing their job diligently.

In squished handwriting, an addendum had been added after the Yellow Moon Assault.

The home Zhan Mei inhabited in the Outer Disciples’ lodging just so happened to be right above the tunnel the invaders had dug.

She had survived their appearance due to her unfathomable cultivation speed having propelled her into the 9th stage of Qi Condensation over her short time in the sect.

Once that came to light she was promptly snapped up by one of Core Elders searching for a disciple. Zhao pitied whoever her master was, almost certain she would bleed them dry.

Although he had never actually caught the girl doing anything that could be considered a deviation from the righteous path, Zhao had a strong feeling that Zhan Mei was a demonic cultivator.

Put plainly, she was creepy and apathetic to the lives of those around her.

In his past life Zhao hadn’t given credence to the power of intuition, but after coming to Jianghu he was more inclined to place his trust in the illogical reaction.

Shaking his head, Zhao made the young woman’s file the first to be placed in the newly christened discard pile. Others followed readily.

A strategic approach to his choices was necessary for a couple reasons. Socially, engineering a relationship was well beyond Zhao, and he felt too pressed for time to develop one naturally.

Pragmatically that translated to essentially contracting a main character rather than befriending them. Implementing that condition eliminated the sect’s silk pants and powerhouses, whom Zhao could offer nothing.

More abstractly, he also needed to balance what each person selected brought to the table.

With Tai Yang, Zhao had easy access to a competent fighter. In theory, avoiding adding another combat specialist to his entourage would allow him to access a more diverse set of opportunities.

Implementing that condition eliminated a disciple from the ‘sword saint’ archetype and all the adjacent nascent weapons masters training in their sect.

The analysis became stricter the fewer candidates remained.

Eventually Zhao narrowed it down to his two preferred cultivators; a young man and a boy.

The fact that the sect held thousands of disciples he knew nothing about threatened to rekindle his anxiety, as Zhao came to the conclusion that, with how prevalent archyptical characters were, it had only been a matter of time until he was pulled into danger.

Reviewing his illicit records always made him feel jumpy, but the effect had been heightened by recent events.

The first candidate identified was named Che Fang. He had been a prodigy of the sect’s revered Che clan many years ago with affinities, roots, and test scores that were absurd. By every metric he was one of the heavens’ chosen.

After breaking through to Foundation Establishment the young man supposedly experienced a Qi deviation or backlash of some sort which gradually diminished his cultivation.

In addition, Che Fang’s father passed away soon after the incident. The heir’s misfortune culminated in his being stripped of all inheritance and banished from the sect by his own clan.

At that point Zhao had met the downtrodden youth to process his expulsion paperwork.

Che Fang had sported a simple onyx ring on his finger which had immediately caught his attention. When Zhao made an offhand comment about the band a bitter look had surfaced on Che Fang’s face.

It was an obvious case of an ‘Old Geezer’ hiding in an artifact and draining the Qi of an unsuspecting disciple.

Zhao’s speculation was that Che Fang would come to leave the sect’s territory once the ghost on his finger fully awakened, likely returning years later to reclaim his position with a show of force.

That should have been the extent of Zhao’s interaction with Che Fang, but curiosity had taken root.

The many mortal street children in Misty Cradle village had been more than happy to keep an eye on the disgraced young master on Zhao’s behalf in exchange for bread.

At first Zhao had only wanted to know if and when Che Fang would disappear, to prepare for his potential return. But as the days dragged on, listening to reports of a young man wasting away had stirred Zhao’s conscience.

The Golden Rule should have stopped him from interfering. In hindsight, it was another breach of discipline. Nevertheless, he had been feeding spirit stones to the noble-cum-papuer via street urchin delivery one at a time.

For that reason Che Fang was an ideal choice, as it should be straightforward to build upon their preexisting liaison.

The other character Zhao would attempt to recruit was a young boy named Gu Hong. The kid was so obviously a main character with heaven defying comprehension that it was a miracle the Misty Cradle Sect hadn’t dumped all their resources into him blindly.

Specifically, upon his arrival it was discovered that Gu Hong was at the third stage of Qi Condensation without having ever received outside help.

Questioning him had led to the discovery that his progress was the result of a self taught mantra.

The lad’s parents had been killed by a demonic cultivator, and his explicit goal was vengeance for their deaths.

When put through an affinity test abnormal results had manifested, but whatever lazy disciple was performing the assessment had failed to perform the appropriate follow up. The child had good spirit roots and decent test scores.

The main reason that Zhao selected him was due to the sect’s neglect.

Outer Disciples were not treated well, and Gu Hong should still be young enough to be impressionable.

Though Zhao couldn’t offer a luxurious life, he could pull Gu Hong into the Inner sect easily.

As a bonus, Gu Hong’s path was shaping up to lead him towards becoming an upright defender-of-mortals type of cultivator.

That alone was enough for Zhao to want to befriend Gu Hong if he was going to violate the Golden Rule anyway, as most cultivators held unjustifiable ethical positions.

Having made his selections Zhao slumped in the wobbly chair that supported him.

Blinking owlishly, his sluggish hands put away all the papers he had reviewed.

Rubbing his palms into his eyes, Zhao fought the weariness that attempted to seduce him into falling asleep.

He doubted his spiraling thoughts would allow him to rest even if he wanted to despite it surely being well past midnight.

Standing up, Zhao headed to the door and pointedly ignored the wind throttling it in a warning to stay inside. After a single revolution of Qi to help calm the aches in his body, Zhao stepped onto the uneven road.