Chapter 21: Life 50, Age 23, Martial Disciple Level 8
Seven years. That was my deadline.
While you could become an outer sect disciple even if you were over a hundred years old, it was extremely rare. Almost everyone who did so was younger than thirty. Whenever I talked to someone who chose to become a servant disciple instead of continuing to pursue the outer sect, they told me the reason was because they didn’t make it by age thirty. Their consistent advice was always to push as hard as I could before then, otherwise, I may lose any possibility of progress. So, I had seven years left.
To become an outer sect disciple, I needed a Martial Master rank cultivation and to be able to make High-Purity Superior pills at above 90% efficacy. Likely, above 95% was needed.
In the past seven years, my rate of progress had been nowhere near what it would need to be to accomplish this in the next seven. I had to push. I hadn’t spent that time slacking off. I had built a strong foundation to stand upon. Now it was time to use that foundation to build a castle.
The first thing I did was go to Cao. She was someone I knew I could trust to teach me well. She was a Martial Master who was able to routinely make High-Purity Superior pills now, so her lessons should have been expensive. Most people in her position wouldn’t do any lessons at all because their time was too valuable. I was grateful that she still charged me the base 50 points. I could have paid more, and I would have, but any savings at this stage was a blessing.
She gave me a list of techniques to learn. The problems I faced were a known quantity to alchemists, so solutions were ready to go. They just needed practice.
Her big advice was to get all my qi skills up to row four. That was the point I would likely be able to win a Rank 2 cultivation skill. Very few people were capable of doing row five, and after they won once or twice they had no reason to compete again, so I didn’t need to worry about them.
However, if I wanted any kind of chance at entering the outer sect in the top three, row five was a must. It should just be put behind reaching Martial Master and learning to concoct the most basic Superior pills.
As I practiced the skills, I ran into a problem.