The Undying Immortal System Chapter 106: Life 62, Age 16, Martial Disciple 1

The next morning, we were woken up early and marched outside.

Each of us was given different chores. I was led to a kitchen where I was forced into hard labor scrubbing pots and pans for the entire day. I didn’t get back until late in the evening.

When I returned, my three roommates were just sitting around playing cards and having fun. This slightly bothered because I knew we were supposed to be spending this ti cultivating. If we weren’t careful, there might be soone like my old instructor from the Su Clan who ca and started killing people to make a point.

I entered the room silently to not make a scene, quietly sat on my bed, and picked up the cultivation technique scroll I’d been given. Just as I was about to open it, Ko spoke up to stop .

“Put that down for a while and co join us,” he said. “Don’t worry about that thing.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be cultivating?” I asked. “We need to be careful, or the boss might get angry. We need to try and advance to Martial Disciple 4 like he wants, right?”

Ko looked at the other two boys and they all simply nodded their heads. They all stood up as one, and Ko looked at . “Stay here for a mont,” he said to . Moving furtively, the group snuck out of the dormitory.

Less than a minute later Ko carefully opened the door and slid back inside alone. He walked close to and started talking in a quiet voice.

“Listen, you’re new in the city, right? I’ve not seen you on the streets before. You must’ve co in from so farm sowhere. You don’t know how things work around here, so I need to give you a few warnings. Don’t read that technique. Don’t cultivate. No matter what they tell you, don’t do it.”

“What do you an?” His words sounded threatening, so I thought I would need to defend myself, but looking at his expression, I felt he was actually concerned about .

“I know guys who ca here before. The treatnt is pretty good. Get a free house and food for a year, but you gotta make sure you don’t read that book. Otherwise, they’re going to trap you here.”

He seed to glance around the room at the shadows, worried that soone would overhear him.

“This guy, right, well, he’s a couple years older than . Well, he ca here like all of us to get a free place to live and earn a little money. Well, he had this idea. He was gonna cultivate up to level three or whatever. Then, he’d return to the street like a king. With the power he got, he would be able to lord over everyone out there. Thing is, he never ca back. The guys who were with him said after he started cultivating, his mind began to change and all he could think about was how to make the boss happy so he could keep advancing that technique of theirs.”

“But… aren’t you all here to cultivate? Why did you co here?”

Ko shook his head sharply. “No, you see, as long as you work and do the job, you get free food for a year. They pay you even if you don’t cultivate as long as you do the job. You can just walk out after that, and no one will say anything. If you cultivate, though, you’re gonna be trapped here for the rest of your life.”

I hadn’t expected the boys who ca here to be servants to know so much. If this had been happening for a long ti, sure, they would pick up on so things, but to know how dangerous it was to cultivate? I didn’t expect that.

Still, I understood what he was saying, but that didn’t change what I needed to do. If I wanted to live long enough, I had to be a Martial Master, so I would cultivate. It just wouldn’t affect in the way they thought it would.

I knew that if I did this, it would change my place in the group. I also had to accept that the plan of simply staying slightly ahead of the other boys was not going to work. I would have to figure out how fast to cultivate on my own.

“Sorry, Ko, but this is sothing I have to do. I understand what you’re saying, and you’re right, but this is sothing I have to do.”

Ko shook his head again quickly. “Look, I understand you’ve had a tough life, but this isn’t the way to do it. Just… think about what I said. Oh, and don’t talk to anybody else about this. If the boss hears we’ve been saying things about cultivation, they might punish or expel us, so just keep it quiet.”

After speaking, he went to the door and knocked twice. Then, the two other boys reentered the room. They had been stationed as lookouts during our conversation.

As I was about to pick the technique manual back up, one of them spoke up. “Fang, co over here and join us for cards. I need so help to take these bastards down.”

I saw a pleading look in his eyes, like he really wanted to join them. I knew what I would have to do, but I didn’t have to do it that night. I decided to sit down and just play so cards.

For the rest of the week, I was assigned various chores involving washing things around the complex. At night, any ti I moved to pick up the cultivation technique, one of my roommates would find an excuse to pull away from it.

I didn’t need that book to cultivate, but it was unique enough that I needed to get it stored in my ntal library for future research. To do that, I would need to find ti to sit down and read it carefully without interruption. Since that didn’t seem likely, I decided to implent an idea I had been thinking about for years.

The requirent of carefully reading every book before it could be stored in my library had been extrely restrictive. If I wanted to add hundreds of mortal reference books, I needed to spend years carefully studying them first. I needed a better solution.

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“System, I want to add a new capability to my ntal library. I want a perfect copy of any book I touch to be directly added to the library.”

Host’s current ntal library is capable of storing information up to Rank 3. Upgrading the library to store any information Rank 3 and below upon touch. Cost 10 million credits.

That was a bit more than I wanted to spend at the mont.

“How much to just apply this upgrade to mortal and Rank 1 information?”

Cost 100,000 credits.

That was acceptable. “Purchase.”

Purchase confird. Remaining credits 149,833,275.

I reached for the cultivation technique I had been given and gave it a light tap. With a thought, I saw that it had successfully been stored away.

Once it was successfully stored, I shifted my focus to cultivating the Subdued Waves Mantra. I wasn’t sure what rate the boss was expecting us to grow at, but with only doing an hour or two at night before bed, there was no way I was going to rush through any levels too quickly, so I didn’t worry. I just cultivated at a pace that felt natural.

At the end of the week, we had a day off. A different group of servants would be taking over our duties so that we had a little ti to relax. At first, I was a little surprised at this since it seed strange that they would give the servants any free ti at all. From what I’d seen in the city, it seed like everybody was working all the ti. Then, I realized what this ti was for. It was to give us an opportunity to cultivate without interruption. The people in charge wanted us to advance, so we needed to have a chance to do so.

I was considering doing as they wanted to and cultivating the entire day, but Ko ca up to and pulled out of the dormitory with the others.

“Co on,” he said. “We’re going into the city. You know, the girls are going there too. We might get a chance to spend so ti with them. I think ii might even have a bit of a crush on you.”

I froze.

I didn’t know who ii was, but the na… I wasn’t willing to pursue any ideas about soone with that na.

Ko saw my reaction and didn’t bring up the girls again, but he didn’t take no for an answer. He insisted that I go with them into the city no matter what.

The four of us walked to a poorer area I hadn’t visited before. They said there was a place to get so good food, so I followed them. They took to a food stall where a lady had a big pot of at simring in a light stew. On the side, she had a few small buns and several more cooking in an oven.

“Old Liu, four Roujiamo!” announced Ko.

“Right away, Young Master Ko,” the lady said with a wide grin. They both seed happy, and it felt like this ritual had been played out countless tis before.

The woman took the buns one at a ti, split them open, filled them with at, then drizzled a little stew on top. She finished them off with a few sprigs of a green herb.

“Here you are. 48 copper for the lot.”

Ko took out a large copper coin and two smaller ones, placed them on the counter, and took his sandwich. When the other two boys followed suit, I went ahead and did the sa.

I took a bite and was amazed at how good it was. Ko saw the look on my face and couldn’t help but comnt on it.

“I told you. This is the good stuff. Expensive though, so it’s a bit of a treat for our first day off. If you want at, better to stick with donkey in the future, it’s a lot cheaper.”

I was sowhat alard at the idea of eating donkey at. When the flash of fear showed on my face, the other boys couldn’t help but laugh.

We walked down the street as we talked, but we were soon stopped by two groups of boys facing off against each other. I wanted to retreat imdiately, but Ko cald down and pulled forward to take a look.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Things aren’t gonna get too out of hand here. This is just a small fight for so territory. Both of them are cultivators and one probably advanced recently, so he’s looking to take over a few more streets. They won’t bother us if we don’t get involved.”

“You think you can take now?” The larger boy puffed out his chest and cracked his knuckles. “Sounds like you need to learn a little respect.”

His opponent smirked. “You don’t stand a chance. I’m not the sa person I was last ti. I’ve advanced. I’m now a High Middle Martial Disciple 2 just like you. If you don’t want to get hurt, leave now!”

The large boy laughed. “You think just advancing to High Middle Disciple 2 is enough to face ? You’ve only just advanced while I’ve been at this stage for months. I’ve already advanced to Middle High Middle Disciple 2!”

His opponent’s eyes widened in shock, but he grit his teeth and kept his feet planted.

I looked at Ko confused. “Middle High Middle?”

He nodded. “You might not know. Martial Disciple is the first realm of cultivation and it’s divided up into several stages. 1, 2, 3, and so on. Well, each stage is a pretty big gap, so they are divided up into Low, Middle, High, and Peak. Just because two people are at Middle Disciple 2 doesn’t an they’re equal, though. Those two are both High Middle Disciple 2, so they can defeat most other Middle Disciple 2 cultivators.”

I blinked at him wordlessly.

“Now, Shin is a Middle High Middle, but Yang should only be Low High Middle since he just advanced. Their power is nearly the sa, but even the smallest advantage can an the difference between life and death as a cultivator.”

My mind went blank for a second at the absurdity of it all. Did these boys have any affinities at all? Even with a low nine-star affinity, Martial Disciple 2 shouldn’t be very challenging to skip through. Why did they need so many substages?

I watched as the two finally started fighting, but there was little to see. They didn’t use their qi at all, they just started throwing punches and kicks at each other, and they weren’t even good at that. It finally made sense to why Ko said soone thought he could rule the streets by only advancing to Martial Disciple 3 if this was his competition.

Their small gangs started to get involved in the scuffle, but that’s when Ko suggested that we hurry and leave. If the fighting drew attention from actual cultivators, we didn’t want to get caught in the ss.

After spending the day in town, the boys all returned back to the dormitory, and I began secretly cultivating.

They were living the simple life of mortals, facing mortal issues. Their biggest concerns were where they were staying for the night and where their next al was going to co from. They didn’t have to deal with Lords and Kings plotting against them.

Watching my roommates live their lives, I couldn’t help but think back to Old Pei. He was what these boys would beco one day. He had lived a life of sorrow and was never able to climb out of the poorest district in the city. That was the destiny of most mortals in this world.

There had to be so that rose above their station. Honest craftsn could earn more than a street vendor, and there certainly had to be mortal rchants who were able to beco quite wealthy, but all of it was balanced on a razor's edge. The mont they made a cultivator upset, their life could end in an instant.

I wished I could change it, but even with the imnse power the System granted , I had no idea how to even begin. I could help those I t. I could provide sothing for the people who were kind to . But I couldn’t fix the structural problems of this society.

I sighed. I didn’t know what I was looking for in this life anymore, but I knew I wouldn’t find it here among Ko and the others.

If there were any answers for in this place, I needed to advance to find them.