I woke up too early.

  I hadn’t gotten much sleep and my body was still feeling the effects. However, the good kind of tired. The kind that comes from making real progress in your cultivation rather than, say, being tossed around by raiders in another world.

  The sect library was a large building even by the standards of the Azure Peak Sect. It stood three stories tall, made from the same blue-gray stone as everything else, but with intricate carvings covering the entire exterior. There were dragons, phoenixes and other mythical creatures twisting around the columns and archways. Two enormous statues of cultivators in meditation poses flanked the main entrance, their stone faces serene.

  I joined the group of outer disciples that were already gathered outside the library. Most of the disciples were chattering excitedly, basically vibrating with anticipation. Today was a big day. This was the day we would choose our cultivation methods.

  “Ke Yin!” Lin Mei motioned me over. She stood with Wei Lin, both of whom looked far more alert than I felt.

  I walked through the group and positioned myself next to Lin Mei and Wei Lin. I kept my aura tightly controlled. None of the disciples could possibly know that I’d broken through to stage two. Not yet. I’d learned enough about cultivation politics to know that showing too much cultivation progress would attract unwanted attention and lead to questions I wouldn’t be able to answer.

  “Aren’t you nervous?” Lin Mei bounced lightly from foot to foot. “I barely slept last night thinking about it.”

  “I’m a little,” I admitted. Although my nervousness was due to the fact that I’d spent half of the previous night dying in another world.

  “The Flowing River Method sounds perfect for me,” Lin Mei stated, not waiting for my response. “It’s supposed to be really great for people that want to cultivate using spiritual herbs and medicine. The water flow principles help with essence extraction.”

  “That does sound like a great fit,” I said.

  Wei Lin looked like he was amused. “She has been talking about it for the last 10 minutes.”

  “It’s a major choice,” Lin Mei protested. “Do you have a method chosen yet, Wei Lin?”

  Wei Lin shrugged. “I already chose a method,” he said nonchalantly. “My father gave it to me before I came to the sect.”

  Lin Mei and I stared at him.

  “You’ve already chosen a method?” Lin Mei’s voice rose an octave. “You never told us about this earlier. Why didn’t you tell us about this sooner?”

  Wei Lin shrugged again. “It didn’t come up. But yes, it's Earth rank.”

  Earth rank?

  That was a full tier above the methods we were going to be choosing from later.

  And the difference between earth rank and human rank was significant.

  Wei Lin would advance faster, reach greater heights and be able to utilize more versatile abilities than any of the rest of us who were selecting from the sect’s standard offerings.

  But that was how the cultivation world worked.

  Those who were born into powerful families had the advantage of head start that the rest of us could only dream of.

  “What is it?” I asked, honestly intrigued.

  "Ah, well..." Wei Lin scratched the back of his head. "My father was pretty insistent I keep the details to myself. You know how merchant families are about their techniques." He paused, then grinned. "But everything has a price. I could share the information... for the right compensation."

  Of course he could.

  This was Wei Lin's entire personality distilled into one moment. Even friendship came with a potential transaction attached.

  Lin Mei rolled her eyes so hard I was worried they might get stuck.

  "I bet it's something with a marketplace inner world," I mused aloud, ignoring his offer. "That would be perfect for you. You could trade resources between different stalls, optimize your cultivation based on what you need."

  “Ha! A marketplace?” Wei Lin laughed, but there was something odd about it. “That's... that's a pretty specific guess, Ke Yin."

  I studied his face, confused by his reaction. Was I right? Wrong? His expression gave nothing away, but the laugh felt like it was covering something up. Maybe I'd hit closer to the mark than he wanted to admit, or maybe I was completely off base, and he found my speculation funny for reasons I didn't understand.

  “Oh, and if neither of you find what you're looking for in the sect library,” Wei Lin continued, his grin widening, "my family has connections…"

  I didn't even look at him.

  Lin Mei didn't either.

  We'd learned by now that acknowledging Wei Lin's sales pitches only encouraged him.

  Fortunately, we didn’t need to respond because the crowd suddenly became quiet.

  Senior Sister Liu had arrived.

  She didn’t fly into battle with her sword today. She simply walked up the path to the library, her purple robes flowing behind her. However, regardless of the lack of fanfare, her presence commanded attention. The sheer amount of cultivation energy emanating from her was a constant reminder of the immense gulf between her strength and our own.

  Her eyes scanned the gathering of disciples, lingering on each of us for a fraction of a second longer than the rest.

  She knew.

  Of course she knew. As a senior sister in the core circle of the Azure Peak Sect, Liu Qingge likely sensed the cultivation levels of the disciples with a mere glance. My attempts to conceal my advancement to stage two were futile against a cultivator at her level.

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  However, she didn’t say anything. She merely nodded slightly, and then continued her survey of the disciples.

  “Follow me,” she said, turning towards the library door.

  We trailed after her in a somewhat orderly manner, attempting not to appear overly eager. The massive doors creaked open as we approached, revealing the interior of the sect library.

  The first floor was extremely large. Bookshelves towered from floor to ceiling, containing stacks of jade slips, scrolls and tablets. The air inside the library had a faint scent of aged paper, and something else that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps spiritual energy. The collective accumulation of centuries worth of wisdom from generations of cultivators, condensed and stored.

  A small elderly woman sat at a desk near the entrance. She was very short, probably no taller than five feet, with her white hair tied back in a strict bun. Her wrinkled face displayed no emotion as she watched us enter the library.

  I attempted to assess her cultivation level and couldn’t find anything.

  Which meant that she was far stronger than I was, and I couldn’t even perceive her cultivation.

  “Elder Chang,” Liu Qingge bowed deeply. All of the disciples quickly followed her example.

  The elderly woman’s mouth twitched in a possible smile. “Liu Qingge, I see you’re still bringing me the young ones to corrupt with knowledge.”

  “They need to select their cultivation methods, Elder,” Liu Qingge replied respectfully.

  “Yes, of course they do.” Elder Chang stood up, surprisingly agile for someone who looked a thousand years old. “Young ones, listen carefully. I will only speak these words to you once.”

  The library instantly fell completely silent.

  “Cultivation methods are the basis of your cultivation path,” Elder Chang started speaking, her voice carrying despite not being loud. “Methods determine how your internal world develops, what elements you’ll be able to cultivate, what techniques you’ll be able to master. If you make poor choices, you’ll struggle for the remainder of your life. If you make wise choices, you’ll unlock doors to realms of power you can hardly conceive of.”

  Elder Chang began walking down the aisles between the bookshelves. We followed her like ducklings.

  “There are three primary ranks of cultivation methods available in the broader world,” she continued. “Human rank methods are the fundamental. Reliable, stable, and well understood. Earth rank builds upon those foundations, providing additional power but requiring greater care in cultivation and additional resources. Heaven rank...” She smiled faintly. “Well, those are far beyond your concern now.”

  Chen Wu, one of the clan disciples, a boy who thought he knew better than anyone else, raised his hand. “Elder Chang, are there rankings above heaven?”

  “Only rumors exist,” Elder Chang said while continuing to walk. “And for outer disciples of the Qi condensation realm, such information is irrelevant. What you cannot understand, you cannot comprehend; what you cannot comprehend, you cannot practice.”

  “But—” Chen Wu began.

  “Your only available methods today are Human rank,” Elder Chang firmly interrupted him. “All of the methods listed here have been cultivated by thousands of cultivators over thousands of years. They will provide you with a base of operation, provided you apply them correctly.”

  She stopped in front of a specific row of shelves, which contained more modern-looking jade slips, many of which appeared to be well-maintained compared to some of the older shelves we had passed earlier.

  “These are the Human-rank methods applicable to Qi Condensation cultivators,” Elder Chang announced. “Take your time. Study the descriptions. Ask questions if you have to. Remember: once you begin cultivating with a method, switching methods will become exponentially more difficult. Your internal world will have begun to form based on the principles of the method you are using; you will have to tear down what you have created and begin anew.”

  This sounded painful.

  “Now,” Elder Chang said, stepping away from us, “take a look at your available methods.”

  The disciples rushed forward, anxious to view their options.

  I held back, letting the most enthusiastic ones go first.

  No reason to fight my way through the crowd when I could simply wait my turn.

  Interestingly enough, I didn’t notice Song Xiang anywhere.

  That made sense though.

  A guy like that probably already had some overpowered cultivation method handed down from his mysterious background.

  Why would he need to pick through the sect's standard Human-rank offerings like the rest of us?

  “Master,” Azure said quietly in my mind, “Shall we evaluate the available methods collectively?”

  “Yeah. Let’s take a look at what we’re working with.”

  Once the initial wave of disciples had dissipated, I walked over to the shelves. The jade slips were categorized and arranged by type. Each slip was clearly marked with the method’s name and a brief explanation of what it did.

  Verdant growth method:

  Generates an internal world with forests and vegetation. Uses the principles of the Wood element and cultivates Life Energy. Useful for cultivators interested in Medicine or Alchemy.

  Flame heart method:

  Creates an internal world with Volcanic terrain. Possesses strong offense but requires careful control. Fire Element focus.

  Stone foundation method:

  Generates an internal world with mountain and valley terrain. Favors defense and physical enhancement. Earth element focus.

  Flowing river method:

  Creates an internal world that is primarily water. Utilizes Water Circulation principles to assist in essence extraction from spiritual herbs and purify.

  There were roughly a dozen others, each with their own specialty. They were all functional, reliable and well-proven methods. The types of methods that a cultivator would expect to rely on through the lower cultivation realms and into the mid-range.

  However, I considered them all to be disappointingly unimpressive.

  I knew I shouldn’t be complaining. At least to a rural recruit like the original Ke Yin, access to Human-rank methods was a privilege.

  However, I wasn’t really Ke Yin. I was Kane, a transmigrator with an unusually robust soul and apparently a proclivity to be randomly transported into other worlds. I needed something that could give me an edge. Something that could allow me to survive whatever cosmic joke was being played out with my existence.

  These methods were fine. They were just... ordinary.

  Lin Mei had already selected the jade slip for the Flowing River Method and was studying it with a look of pure elation. That was actually perfect for her. She had experience farming and her family had a medicinal garden. Using a water-based method to enhance herbal cultivation was an obvious fit.

  I continued browsing, but my mind was working differently now.

  I had seen enough cultivation novels to see how this usually played out.

  You should never choose the obvious choice, the one in plain sight on the first shelf.

  No, the protagonist usually stumbled on a long-forgotten technique collecting dust in the corner.

  Something ancient and powerful that everyone else missed because it was too simple or too hard or just uninteresting.

  Those were usually the secret methods to get ahead.

  It was almost an unwritten rule for the genre.

  "Master, are you seriously using novel tropes as a cultivation strategy?" Azure asked, and I could hear the amusement in his voice.

  "Why not?" I thought back. "So far, everything else about this world has followed those patterns. Jade beauties, arrogant young masters, mysterious protagonists with tragic backstories. I might as well lean into it."

  “You…you do have a point.”

  Most of the disciples were crowded around the top-of-the-line displays, debating the merits of the Flame Heart Method vs the Stone Foundation Method.

  No one was paying any attention to the dusty corners.

  Perfect.

  I walked down the far side of the aisle, where the light was somewhat dim.

  Here there were the old jade slips, the dusty ones, the ones that probably hadn’t been touched for years.

  "It’s here," I thought. "This where you can always find the good stuff."

  I looked through them.

  Basic Earth Circulation Method - nothing exciting.

  Mortal Body Refining Technique - too basic.

  Nine Winds Foundation - the jade slip was actually cracked.

  "Master," Azure said immediately, with more seriousness in his voice. "Look to your left, down near the back."

  I followed his directions and what I found was not just a single jade slip, but a full tablet.

  It was older than anything I’d seen so far.

  The jade had a slightly different shade, a deeper green with veins of gold running through it.

  The patterns carved into its face were more complex than any of the others, with flowing designs that seemed to change depending on which direction you looked at them.

  And, yes, it was dusty.

  “There it is,” I thought with satisfaction. “The hidden treasure.”

  “Or maybe it is hidden because it’s cursed.” Azure suggested. “That happens too.”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  I reached for it, my hand acting almost automatically.

  When my fingers contacted the jade tablet, I experienced something.

  A resonance, deep within my soul, as though the tablet was reacting uniquely to me.

  What was this?