A Pawn's Passage

After Yao Pei and Zhang Yuelu left, Qi Xuansu sat alone in his office, carefully sorting through the many changes of recent days.

Just as Yao Pei had said, they had finally reached the moment when the dagger was unsheathed and true intentions were revealed.

Last New Year’s Day, he had encountered Wu Luo. This New Year’s Day, it seemed he would spend it at Wuxing Mountain. Both occasions were unforgettable.

Time had not exactly flown. In the blink of an eye, two years had passed since his mission to retrieve the Xuan Jade at Fengtai County. Since then, he had been to the Jade Capital, the Western Region, Yishan City, Yunjin Mountain, Cuowenbu, Bohai Prefecture, Jinling Prefecture, Wanxiang Daoist Palace, and the Imperial Capital. He had traveled through 11 of the 19 states, fought in dozens of battles, escaped death many times, survived heavy injuries, and even lost his arm more than once. But his cultivation had climbed steadily, rising three major levels from the Kunlun stage to reach the Xiaoyao stage.

In two years, he had risen from the seventh rank to the fourth rank. He had grown from a wandering Daoist to a Superintendent of Ziwei Hall. One could hardly call that slow progress.

Unfortunately, such rapid promotion came at a cost. It required “battle merit” to support it, and the greater the merit, the closer one had to teeter on the edge of life and death. Sitting in the office every day would not earn him that many accolades.

Qi Xuansu currently had two Xuan merits. One came from handling Zhang Wuhen’s resurrection at the Upper Palace with Yao Pei, who conveniently took the larger share of the merit. The other Xuan merit came from his reconnaissance work at Wuxing Mountain. Given that it had involved Pseudo-Immortals and was extremely dangerous, one Xuan merit did not seem like much in exchange. It only seemed easier because Madam Qi had been shielding him. After all, everything seemed nice and cool while sheltering under a big tree. By that logic, people like Li Changge and Yao Pei probably found it even easier to earn merits.

To rise from the fourth rank to the third rank, he would require 3 Earth merits, which were equivalent to 1 Heaven merit or 9 Xuan merits. That meant Qi Xuansu was still short by 7 Xuan merits.

Beyond that, the tenure system required a fourth-rank Jijiu Daoist master to serve a minimum of 3 years before advancing to the third rank. This would be the last time tenure mattered, as advancing from the third rank to the second rank was by selection only.

Qi Xuansu definitely had not yet served enough time. In fact, he had not met the time requirements for his prior promotions either. Since he had already been exempted before, it was unlikely they would bend the rules for him again. He would probably have to grind out the years in the fourth rank. However, the Daoist Order had another special system that supplemented the tenure system, called the position-based rank system.

The position-based rank system essentially mirrored the structure where the Grand Master was above the Nine-Rank System and the Deputy Grand Masters were special first-rank Tianzhen Daoist masters. That meant a Daoist’s rank corresponded to the office they held. If they left that post, the position-based rank vanished in accordance. By contrast, formal rank remained fixed and was not changed by shifts in one’s position, unless they were demoted under special circumstances.