Chapter 62 — The Minimum Requirement

CHAPTER 62

The Minimum Requirement

The selection notice drew a crowd before the paste dried. Shi Feng came to buy lamp oil and stopped, because three young men were arguing loudly enough to make a fish seller forget to cheat his customer.

“My family has lived in the capital for three generations! That should count!”

“Count for what? You’re still Qi Condensation, you fool!”

“Move aside, I can’t read the small characters!”

The royal Sima seal stood at the top of the notice. Beneath it, Great Liang announced the selection of representatives for the great tournament of the surrounding kingdoms. Registration would close in ninety days, at the end of the third month. Lineage and birth records would be checked. Cultivation would be verified.

Foundation Establishment was the minimum realm.

Shi Feng read that line twice.

At the mountain pass, a Foundation Establishment cultivator had tried to rob him and ended pinned to a rock. Beneath Chiyun Ruins, another found out that a flying blade didn’t protect its owner from a broken neck. Neither encounter changed Shi Feng’s own realm.

He was still in Bone Refinement, and the golden transformation made that gap far more expensive to cross. A clerk in a dark cap stood beside the notice with a register, and people were asking questions faster than he could write down his answers. Shi Feng waited until the argument about family places ended.

“Is the minimum decided by actual cultivation, or by fighting strength?” Shi Feng asked.

The clerk looked up. His name board read Yu Cheng.

“Actual cultivation,” Yu Cheng said. “Foundation Establishment and the age limit. Brawlers can watch from the street.”

Behind him, someone groaned about how few people in the capital reached Foundation Establishment before thirty.

“Few,” Yu Cheng said, and went back to writing.

Shi Feng pointed to the rolls being unrolled beside the register. “Are those the eligible birth years?”

“Yes,” Yu Cheng said. “Next.”

Shi Feng found it. Age wouldn’t stop him. Cultivation would, if he kept putting off the next realm.

He stepped aside so the next person could start explaining how important his grandfather was.

Lower on the notice were the names of the nearby Great Sects: Martial Palace, Hundred Flower Valley, Artificer Hall. The kingdom’s best young cultivators would be sent toward opportunities no ordinary household in the capital could buy. The notice spelled out the champion’s reward in careful detail: direct entry as an inner disciple into a Great Sect of his choice.

Shi Feng’s eyes rested on Artificer Hall.

Xu Changhe’s badge lay at home beside the sword record, tucked in the corner with his bedding. Shi Feng didn’t think the whole sect was like one dead enforcer. Every sect had its greedy men and proud fools, he thought.

But he respected the warrior who wrote the notes he’d carried out from under a fallen slab. Returning them there someday was a better reason to choose a destination than counting the embroidered robes in a procession.

First the kingdom selection. First Foundation Establishment.

Beyond the board, Ling Qingzhu had stopped beside her household carriage. Her white veil stirred in the breeze, but her gaze stayed on the sect names.

“Will accepted disciples return under the kingdom's orders?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

“They answer to their sect after admission, Fairy Ling,” Yu Cheng said. “Their new elders arrange their journeys.”

Her fingers eased on the folded notice in her hand. Shi Feng noticed that small movement. The board promised more than cultivation resources to her. He hadn't realised how much of her plan rested on that one line.

Ling Qingzhu caught him watching, nodded once and returned to the carriage. He looked back at the minimum realm.

They had different reasons to want the same door open.

Laughter rose behind him.

“Look, it’s Brother Shi,” Bai He said, loudly enough for the whole crowd. She stood by the fish stall with two White Crane Pavilion juniors. “Reading the notice! How touching. Some people just can’t let go of old dreams.”

One junior giggled at the idea of him even knowing what Foundation Establishment meant.

A few onlookers glanced between them.

“Isn’t that the Ling family’s husband?”

“The cripple, yes.”

“…”

“Bai He,” Shi Feng said without turning around, “your sleeve is in the fish basket. The seller’s going to charge you for it.”

“What?” Bai He looked down and shrieked. Her silk cuff was trailing through a tray of silver carp!

“Ha! The White Crane is fishing!”

The fish seller demanded two stones for the tray. The crowd laughed, and the White Crane juniors edged away from Bai He’s fishy sleeve.

“Came to mock Fairy Ling’s husband and bought a basket of carp scales instead!”

“Look at the Shi boy—he didn’t even turn around and she’s paying the fishmonger!”

Bai He’s face burned crimson as she threw two stones into the basket and fled down the street with her cuff pinched between two fingers, while the men by the royal notice board stepped aside to clear a path for Shi Feng.

At the medicine street, the same preparations he’d bought seven days ago cost more than he remembered. He checked two counters before he accepted that his memory wasn’t the problem. The shopkeepers had read the royal notice too.

Fang Jingyuan stood behind the third counter, inspecting a delivery with the sour look of a man hoping to find a reason to charge less. When he saw Shi Feng, he straightened at once.

“Prices are up, I know, I know,” Fang Jingyuan called, wringing his hands. “Everyone’s buying! The young cultivators will empty these shelves, what can I do?”

“They haven’t emptied them yet,” Shi Feng said.

“It’s the demand!” Fang Jingyuan said. “I can’t help it!”

“Your medicine learned to see the future before you did,” Shi Feng said.

He asked the cost of the raw ingredients instead. Fang Jingyuan’s smile thinned. The gap between a packet of ingredients and the finished pill was big enough to make Shi Feng respect plain robbery for being honest.

“The skill costs too, you know!” Fang Jingyuan said, wringing his hands harder.

“So does being the customer who never asks that question,” Shi Feng said.

He bought nothing and left.

At home, Ling Qingzhu sat under the pear tree choosing between two lengths of silk for a torn lining. Shi Feng set the lamp oil down and began laying out his receipts beside a sheet of blank paper.

“You saw the tournament notice? The capital talks of nothing else,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“I did,” Shi Feng said.

She glanced at the receipts, and her expression turned sharp and suspicious.

“Don’t tell me you’re pricing out an entry fee. Seriously?” Ling Qingzhu said.

“I’m working out the cost of medicine,” Shi Feng said.

“Good. A sensible worry,” Ling Qingzhu said, and went back to the silk. Then she added, not looking up, “Bai He was at the fish stall. Hongxiu heard it from the baker. Ignore her. She’s been jealous since we were twelve.”

“I didn’t,” Shi Feng said. “She minded the fish.”

Ling Qingzhu’s needle paused. She bent lower over the silk, and her shoulders shook once.

In her mind, his ruined meridians made the tournament question silly before cost could even matter. She would have been shocked to learn the truth. She thought he was studying prices because the public excitement had made his errands more expensive. Shi Feng let her keep the mistake. He wasn’t asking anyone’s permission to cultivate.

The calculation took all afternoon. Hunting cost days of travel. Odd jobs covered meals and rent, then swallowed his training hours. Finished medicine cost enough to keep its maker far more comfortable than its buyer.

The golden traces in his bones demanded far more than the ordinary refinement ever did. He could give up the deeper transformation, rush Foundation Establishment, and aim at the entrance requirement like a starving dog lunging at the nearest scrap. Shi Feng put the thought aside.

I didn’t open three hundred and sixty-five meridians to choose a smaller future just because someone posted a deadline on a wall, he thought coldly. The problem needs more resources, not a weaker foundation!

He opened Xu Changhe’s medicine notes.

Beside one common preparation, the elder had written a blunt calculation of ingredient costs. Beneath it was a second remark.

Buy the ingredients separately. Finished medicine costs fools dearly. Shi Feng looked from the old handwriting to his own pile of receipts.

He’d been an excellent customer.

The achievement didn’t please him anymore.

He marked the ninety-day window on his paper. Three months remained. His next step would begin with a furnace.