Now? Nothing. The moment his master disappeared, the respect vanished too.
He sighed. Complaining was pointless. This was a true cultivation world where strength was everything.
Even if those outer disciples were weaker than him, they had backing. He didn't. That made all the difference.
He was simply being bullied.
Su Ming picked through the sack and noticed an envelope tucked inside.
He opened it.
By decree of the Heavenly Cloud Sect: In one month, the disciple recruitment ceremony will be held. All nine inner peaks and seventy-two outer peaks are hereby requested to be present at the Sect Ceremony.
Along with that, there was a special note attached to it.
Special Note to White Lotus Peak: Due to the current vacancy and repeated negligence, the peak master is required to recruit at least one disciple during the ceremony.
Su Ming's hands tightened on the letter.
Recruitment happened every year. But White Lotus Peak had been left alone until now—ignored and quietly tolerated. Everyone knew why. Elder Xuan, his late master, had been a Nascent Soul cultivator. Reclusive, yes, but his contributions to the sect had been vast—decades of successful missions, treasures brought back from secret realms, enemies slain without mercy.
Even all his shenanigans—like choosing Su Ming, a cripple with no talent, as his successor—had gone unchallenged. It was because of Elder Xuan's shadow that White Lotus Peak still stood, even after his passing. For years, no one had dared touch it.
But now…
Su Ming exhaled slowly. "So the sect finally thinks the debt has been repaid."
The timing was obvious. The sect had given White Lotus Peak its grace period. But without Elder Xuan, without disciples, without prestige, the peak was just wasted space. And the sect had no room for sentimentality.
And given Su Ming's so-called "talent," that also made sense. His cultivation had long been stuck.
His foundation was filled with cracks. The truth was - the chance of ever reaching the Core Formation realm, the bare minimum for an elder, was a pipe dream for him.
Su Ming's face darkened. "…I transmigrated, died once, got roasted alive, and now the sect itself is gunning for me, again?!"
Still, he wasn't surprised at how quickly he was adjusting to his current state. The situation was bizarre, to say the least. He had read novels, sure, but he was not delusional.
He was mature enough to separate fiction from reality, but this was life now.
Back on Earth, his ties had been shallow at best. Parents, siblings, relatives—he had them all, but those connections had long since soured. Too many disappointments, too many times he had tried to reach out, only to be let down. Somewhere along the way, he had stopped looking back.
He had longed for family, but what he got was distance. He had wanted warmth, but what he got was cold shoulders. So, when he woke up in a new world, a new body, and a new identity, the thought of "home" barely crossed his mind.
This was his life now. And if there was one thing Su Ming knew how to do, it was to adapt.
Su Ming stared at the lantern glowing faintly in his mind. Against the vastness of the sect, against the immensity of a world split into five continents, his chances were laughable.
"But so what? Setbacks never beat me down—they only steel my resolve."
"Fine," he muttered. "You're my only hope now, Lampy. Let's go and get ready to recruit a disciple next month. I'll show them what happens when they underestimate an overworked office worker who has binge-read far too many cultivation webnovels."
***
The shabby hall of White Lotus Peak was silent, broken only by Su Ming's shallow breathing.
He sat cross-legged, the scroll of the Crimson Flame Mantra spread before him. It was not the original fragment, but with Elder Xuan's dense annotations and insights, scribbled in elegant but heavy-handed calligraphy.
It was all Elder Xuan had left behind symbolically as the White Lotus Peak's inheritance. His legacy and the main cultivation technique Su Ming practiced.
The true torn page, the source of the mantra, had long been taken away by the master himself.
What remained were only interpretations, layers upon layers of metaphors - dragons swallowing the moon, phoenixes reborn in heaven's fire, mountains breathing the essence of the cosmos. A lifetime of a Nascant Soul expert's reflections..
But the faint lantern in his mind pulsed gently. The fragments might still hold insight. Perhaps, if read with new eyes, his master's words could reveal something more.
In the past, the old Su Ming had swallowed cheap pills, forced qi through clogged meridians, and tried to brute-force mastery. He failed spectacularly. But now… Su Ming had something else. A faint, steady glow in his mind, the lantern halo, his cheat, guiding him.
He traced the characters carefully. "Flame is life. It is born in weakness, made strong by rhythm, and dies in stagnation."
The insight hit him like a wave. The first chapter wasn't about fire—it was about breathing, qi, life itself. You could not force it. You could not rush it. You nurtured it, allowed it to rise, and fed it patiently.
Su Ming muttered under his breath as he activated the faint halo: "As the phoenix rises, so must qi spiral. Heaven above, earth below, the stars dance in harmony…"
Ridiculous. Completely absurd. And yet… somehow profound.
"Dragons, phoenixes, heaven-and-earth… how does this even make any sense?" he muttered.
With the halo guiding him, Su Ming drew in a deep breath. He circulated his Qi slowly, carefully, as the halo pulsed faintly in his mind.
One Cycle … two cycles … three cycles …
By the hundredth cycle, he reached the peak of the eighth stage of Qi Condensation realm a level the old Su Ming had struggled to achieve previously. For a brief moment, warmth bloomed in his dantian, steady and rhythmic. Qi flowed like molten fire through clean meridians.
The halo continued its gentle pulse, whispering subtle insights. Su Ming's thoughts danced between the metaphors and his own reasoning:
"Flame is birth. Flame is rhythm. Flame is life. Breath is flame. Flame is breath."
His body shook, sweat poured, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He didn't stop. He had inherited memories—he knew the limits of his body, the approximate cycle counts, the stages of cultivation—but nothing could truly prepare him for the intensity of the first thousand cycles.
By the next hundredth cycle, he could feel a faint halo of warmth expanding outward. Not wild, not chaotic, but alive, breathing, connected. He whispered fragments of the scroll, as the mystical nonsense became practical insight:
Heaven above, earth below. Phoenix and dragon, life and death… all metaphors. All teaching the flow.
It was hilarious. Ridiculous. But also… true.
Cycle after cycle, he refined his control. Twenty, fifty, a hundred… a thousand cycles later, he reached the ninth stage.
He exhaled warm breath, leaning back against the cold stone wall. His dantian throbbed, his veins carried the clean qi, his lungs burned from the exertion—but he could feel something profound. The contents of the Crimson Flame Mantra were no longer on paper. It had become a part of him, etched into his bones, his muscles, his very breath.
He looked at the halo flickering faintly in his mind. Insight blossomed.
Su Ming allowed his body to rest, breathing deeply. He reviewed his cycles, tracing the flow of qi and the rhythm of the flame.
"Life is flame. Flame is breath. Patience births strength. Impulse kills it. Weakness is the seed. Rhythm is the soil."
He chuckled at the absurdity of it all. Half of the metaphors sounded like nonsense. The phoenixes, dragons, and heaven-and-earth comparisons made him laugh out loud. But beneath the silliness was an undeniable truth.
After hours of rest, with muscles still trembling, he took a deep, steadying breath. He circulated his qi again, fully trusting the halo. Every inhale stoked the fire, every exhale fed it. He pushed through another thousand cycles, slow, methodical, deliberate, absorbing insight from the lantern's guidance.
He reached the tenth stage of the Qi Condensation realm. But he wanted to break through.
WHOOSH!
Scarlet light erupted from his body. Not wild, not chaotic - rhythmic. Each pulse matched his breathing, each wave steady as the rise and fall of a flame. His ruined foundation shattered… then rebuilt itself layer by layer. Cracks sealed, fractures smoothed, everything reforged into something pure.
His body convulsed, muscles trembling as the fire surged through him. He gritted his teeth, breath ragged, yet the rhythm of qi never broke. A faint glow spread across his skin, crimson light rising like a quiet flame. It flared once - steady and controlled - then slowly dimmed, sinking back into his dantian.
As he sat trembling, drenched in sweat and blackened filth, the scroll's faded metaphors returned to him:
"The dragon coils in the abyss, awaiting the breath of heaven."
"The phoenix sings, its fire kindled by the world's essence."
"Earth bears, heaven shelters, flame is born between the two."
Su Ming let out a hoarse chuckle. "Dragons, phoenixes, heaven and earth… Elder Xuan really knew how to hype up a breathing exercise."