For most new disciples, this was a time of celebration. They were being led to the East Wing—the Outer Sect dormitories—where paved stone paths were lined with glowing lanterns, and the air smelled of roast spirit-duck and jasmine.
Mingzhi walked the other way.
He followed a narrow, overgrown dirt path that wound behind the massive western wall of the Outer Sect. With every step he took away from the main plaza, the temperature seemed to drop.
The change wasn't sudden; it was a slow, suffocating gradient.
The pristine white mist that bathed the upper peaks began to thin out, replaced by a heavier, grimier fog. It didn't swirl playfully; it hung in the air like a wet wool blanket. The scent of pine and ozone faded, strangled by a new, acrid stench.
It smelled of sulfur. Of burnt sugar and scorched metal. Of rotting biomass.
It was the smell of failure.
Mingzhi crested a small ridge and looked down.
The Waste Sector lay nestled in a deep, jagged ravine, cut off from the rest of the sect by a sheer cliff face. It was located directly downwind from the massive Alchemy Hall and the Smithy furnaces on the cliffs above.
All the smoke, all the chemical runoff, and all the spiritual slag produced by the thousands of elites above drifted down here, settling in the valley like sediment in a dirty cup.
The sky above the ravine wasn't blue or golden. It was a permanent, bruised purple, stained by the alchemical smog.
“The Qi here is plentiful,” the Spirit murmured with disgust. “But it is foul. Thirty percent of it is industrial filth. Mortals who breathe this long enough will pay for it with their lungs."
Mingzhi pulled his collar up over his nose. "Let's keep moving."
He descended the muddy slope.
The architecture here was a stark insult to the palaces above. There were no white jade pagodas. The housing consisted of hundreds of mismatched wooden shacks, clustered together like barnacles on a rock. Some were built from grey driftwood, others from scavenged crates. Moss and black mold streaked the walls.
As he walked deeper into the sector, the silence was unnerving.
There was no laughter. No sound of sparring swords. No ambitious shouting.
Mingzhi passed a row of huts. On the porches, figures sat in the gloom.
They were disciples—technically. They wore grey robes that were stained, torn, and patched with rough hemp. But it was their eyes that caught Mingzhi’s attention.
A man in his thirties sat sharpening a rusted dagger on a whetstone. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. He didn't look up. His eyes were glazed over, staring at nothing. The fire of cultivation had long since burned out, leaving only a pile of cold ash behind.
Further down, a girl with a crippled leg sat leaning against a rain barrel, chewing on a piece of dry root. She watched Mingzhi walk by with the dull, predatory gaze of a starving dog. She didn't have the energy to be hostile, but she clearly had no pity to spare.
These weren't cultivators. They were ghosts. They were the ones who had failed to climb, but refused to leave, trapped in a purgatory of debt and delusion.
To the north of the shacks, a massive, gaping pit scarred the earth. It smoked constantly, glowing with a sickly green subterranean heat.
The Slag Pit.
Even from here, Mingzhi could feel the chaotic, angry heat radiating from it. Carts from the upper sect were dumping loads of glowing debris into the maw—broken cauldrons, failed pills, twisted metal.
The "Waste Sector" wasn't a home. It was a landfill with a population.
Mingzhi stepped over a puddle of iridescent, oily water. The mud squelched beneath his boots.
"It’s desolate," Mingzhi whispered, looking at the silent, zombie-like figures haunting the shadows. "It’s shady. It’s toxic."
He looked at a shack that had collapsed in on itself, reclaimed by thorny vines.
"It’s perfect."
At the bottom of the muddy path, a small, weathered stone guardhouse stood sentinel over the cluster of shacks. Inside, a Deacon in dark blue robes sat drumming his fingers on a wooden desk, his leg bouncing with impatient energy.
He looked like a man waiting for a slow kettle to boil.
When Mingzhi stepped into the light of the guardhouse lantern, the Deacon let out a loud, dramatic sigh of relief. He didn't even look at Mingzhi’s face; he looked at the scroll on his desk.
"Finally," the Deacon grunted, dipping a brush in red ink. "You're the last one. I've been stuck in this smog for two hours waiting for a straggler."
He held out a hand without looking up. "Name?"
"Xie Mingzhi."
"Xie... Xie..." The Deacon scanned the bottom of the list. "Found it."
He slashed a red line through the name. He grabbed a wooden waist token from a pile, stamped it with a heavy iron seal, and slid it across the counter along with a folded piece of rough paper.
"Here. Identity Token. Map of the Sector."
The Deacon stood up immediately, brushing dust off his robes as if the very air of the room was soiling him. He pointed a vague finger toward the darkest corner of the ravine.
"Your assignment is Hut 404. It’s that way. Lose the token, and no one will bother asking what happened to you."
Mingzhi took the items. "What about the sect rules? The duties?"
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
The Deacon waved his hand dismissively, already stepping out of the booth and locking the door behind him.
"I don't get paid enough to give the orientation speech twice," he scoffed. "If you want to know the rules, go to the Mission Hall. Read the board. Everything is posted there."
He pulled a silk handkerchief from his sleeve and covered his nose and mouth, his voice muffled.
"Ancestors, this smell..." the Deacon muttered, walking briskly up the path back toward the Outer Sect. "One more minute and my cultivation would regress. What a dump."
He disappeared into the gloom, leaving Mingzhi standing alone in the silent, sulfurous street.
Mingzhi didn't take offense. He preferred neglect over hostility.
He unfolded the map. It was drawn on cheap, yellowed paper, the ink faded in places. It showed the layout of the Sect:
Residential Area (The Shacks) – Where he stood.
The Slag Pit – The massive smoking crater to the north.
The Mission Hall – A slightly larger hall near the Outer Sect area.
Mingzhi looked at the direction of Hut 404. Then he looked at the Mission Hall.
His body was tired. The leg he had injured in the fight with the boar ached in the damp air, like weathered bones beneath gathering clouds. But his mind was racing.
"Information first," Mingzhi whispered. "Rest later."
He tucked the map into his sash and turned away from the dorms, heading straight for the Mission Hall.
Mingzhi followed the map out of the ravine and up a winding stone path.
As he ascended, the sulfur smell faded, replaced by the scent of pine and polished wood. He emerged onto a wide, paved plaza near the center of the Outer Sect.
The Mission Hall stood here—a massive, three-story pagoda built of sturdy Ironwood and blue tile. It wasn't a shack; it was the commercial heart of the sect.
It was chaotic.
Hundreds of disciples were streaming in and out of the wide double doors. Most wore the fresh grey robes of the Outer Sect, but there were splashes of blue from Inner Disciples and even the occasional silk-robed merchant from the city. Deacons ran back and forth with stacks of paperwork, shouting out new postings like auctioneers.
Mingzhi stepped inside. The noise hit him like a physical wave—a roar of haggling, gossiping, and the scratching of quills.
He kept his head down, weaving through the crowd. His dusty, patched robes earned him sneers and wide berths from the cleaner disciples, who looked at him like he was a walking disease. He ignored them and pushed his way to the massive Central Bulletin Board that dominated the back wall.
This was the rulebook of the Sect Economy. Mingzhi scanned it, his mind snapping into calculation mode.
- Monthly Cultivation Allowance (Wages, based on ranking):
Core Disciple: 10-50 Mid-Grade Spirit Stones.
Inner Disciple: 30-50 Low-Grade Spirit Stones.
Outer Disciple: 10-20 Low-Grade Spirit Stones.
Waste Disciple: 0 Stones.
Mingzhi’s lips thinned. Zero.
- The Sect Tax:
Requirement: Every disciple, regardless of rank, must contribute 50 Contribution Points per month to cover residency, array maintenance, and protection.
Penalty: Failure to pay results in immediate expulsion.
- Mission Categories:
Outer Missions (Combat/Field):
Hunting Spirit Beasts, Gathering Herbs in the Wild, Escorting Caravans.
Note: Open to external posting. Merchants and Villages may also post requests with cash/resource rewards. The Sect sets a minimum fee, but clients may offer more.
Inner Missions (Technical/Service):
Herb Garden Tending: 5 Points/Day.
Furnace Assistant (Alchemy/Forging): 5 Points/Day.
Talisman Paper Pressing: 5 Points/Day.
Pill Making/Weapon Forging/Talisman Crafting: Based on quality
- Combat & Advancement:
Monthly Ranking Battles (1st of Month): Climbing the rank increases your monthly wage and grants discounts on facility rentals.
Quarterly Advancement Battles (Every 3 Months): The Top 10 of a Lower Tier may challenge the Bottom 10 of an Upper Tier.
stakes: Winner takes the loser’s Rank and Housing.
Finally, Mingzhi found the small, tacked-on notice at the bottom corner, specifically for his designation.
- Waste Sector Mandatory Duty:
Task: Slag Collection & Transport.
Requirement: Deliver 1 full cart of Alchemy/Smithy waste to the Waste Pit daily.
Compensation: 30 Points / Month.
Mingzhi stood back, letting the crowd flow around him. He ran the numbers.
Income: 30 Points (Mandatory Job).
Expense: 50 Points (Tax).
Deficit: -20 Points.
"It's a debt trap," Mingzhi murmured. "The mandatory job isn't enough to pay the rent. They force you to do extra missions just to survive."
He looked at the Exchange Counter nearby, where disciples were buying supplies for Contribution Points. Pills, Weapons, Spirit Stones.
"I need 20 extra points just to stay inside the gates," Mingzhi calculated. "That’s 20 points less worth of supplies."
He looked at the frantic energy of the hall. People were fighting over the 'easy' herb-gathering missions. Inner Disciples were posting requests for 'assistants' and offering measly points for backbreaking labor.
But Mingzhi’s eyes drifted back to the Waste Duty.
Deliver 1 cart of waste daily.
To everyone else in this hall, that was a punishment. It was handling toxic garbage for pennies.
But to Mingzhi with the Spirit’s support?
"Alchemy slag," he whispered. "Forging scraps. Broken talismans."
He turned away from the board, a cold, confident smile touching his lips.
"I don't need to fight for missions," he thought, turning to leave the bustling hall. "I just need to make sure I'm the one pushing that cart."
Leaving the brightly lit, noisy Mission Hall felt like stepping off the edge of the civilized world.
Mingzhi walked away from the paved streets of the Outer Sect, where the air was warm and smelled of roasted meat, and descended back into the cold, sulfuric gloom of the ravine.
The silence of the Waste Sector swallowed him.
It was pitch black down here. The only light came from the occasional flickering lantern in a distant shack or the sickly green glow of the Slag Pit far to the north. The air grew damp, clinging to his skin like a wet shroud.
Mingzhi didn't head straight for his hut. He kept his eyes on the ground, scanning the muddy path with the intensity of a hawk.
I have a deficit of 20 points, he thought, his mind churning. I need resources. And I need to secure my base.
He spotted a discarded crate near the sector entrance, likely thrown out by a delivery driver who didn't want to haul it back up the hill. Mingzhi knelt to inspect it.
"Ironwood," he murmured, running a hand over the rough splinters. "Reinforced with low-grade steel nails. Good."
He didn't see trash; he saw structural support. He broke the crate apart with a precise stomp of his boot, gathering the sturdy planks and the nails.
Further down the path, near the riverbank, he found a patch of grey, sticky clay. He scooped a large glob into a broken ceramic jar he found in the weeds.
"Waterproofing," he noted.
By the time he reached the end of the muddy row of shacks, his arms were full of scavenged materials.
Hut 404 stood clinging to the edge of the cliff, looking like a strong sneeze would send it tumbling into the darkness below. It was isolated, separated from the other shacks by fifty meters of overgrown thorns.
"Perfect isolation," Mingzhi whispered. "No prying eyes."
He approached the door. It hung crookedly on one rusted hinge. The wind whistled through the gaps in the wood, creating a mournful, hollow sound.
Mingzhi shifted the planks in his arms. He was already planning the repairs in his head: Use the clay to seal the roof. Use the Ironwood to brace the door frame. Create a simple trip-wire alarm with the leftover twine.
He reached out to push the door open, mentally preparing for a long night of manual labor before he could even think about sleeping.
Creeeeak.
The rusted hinge shrieked in the silence.
Mingzhi stepped into the darkness of the hut.
"Spirit," he projected, preparing to drop his supplies. "Scan the structural integrity of the roof. I want to know which beam is likely to fail fi—"
He stopped dead.
The air in the hut wasn't stale. It didn't smell of mold and dust like it had earlier.
It smelled faintly of... Jasmine?
Mingzhi’s muscles locked. He dropped the clay jar. It hit the dirt floor with a heavy thud, but he didn't look down.
In the center of his small, ruined room, standing amidst the moonlight streaming through the holes in the roof, was a figure.
It was a person of slight build, wrapped in a heavy dark cloak that obscured their features. They were standing with their back to him, looking up at the leaking ceiling as if inspecting the poor state of his accommodation.
They hadn't moved when he entered. They hadn't flinched when he dropped the jar.
Mingzhi’s hand drifted instinctively toward the small knife in his sash, his heart hammering against his ribs.
An assassin? No, an assassin wouldn't use perfume.
A thief? There was nothing here to steal.
The figure slowly turned around. The hood was pulled low, casting the face in shadow, but a stray lock of hair escaped the cowl.
"You live in a pigsty," a familiar, cool voice said, echoing softly in the empty shack.
Mingzhi blinked, his hand falling away from his knife.
"You?"