The Cultivation World’s Last Nepotism Hire

[No System + No Golden Finger + No Transmigration]

At thirteen, he was on the brink of death beside a mass grave when a wandering outer-sect elder happened to find him and bring him back to this immortal mountain, a place everyone yearned to visit. The elder said his aptitude was ordinary, that he had the most inconspicuous mixed spiritual roots, and that he barely qualified to join the outer sect as a servant. Over the next ten years, he swept the sword grounds, tended the pill furnace, fed spirit birds, dusted the scripture repository, and performed every lowly chore in the outer sect.

His fellow disciples laughed that he was hopeless, mocking him for wasting Shu Mountain's resources while making no progress. They even gave him a Taoist name: Che Xuanzi.

Che Xuanzi: utterly baffling, good for nothing.

Shen Che had heard it countless times. Each time, he only smiled, neither angry nor resentful, neither arguing nor defending himself.

Only he knew that it wasn't for lack of effort.

For ten years, he meditated and drew in qi every day before dawn, then cultivated by moonlight at night, never slacking for even a single day. Yet whenever spiritual energy entered his body, it vanished like a stone sinking into the sea. His meridians were like a dried-up riverbed, unable to hold onto the slightest trace of spiritual power. He had been stuck at the peak of the Dust Cleansing Realm for eight whole years, unable to plant a Dao Seed in his heart and advance to the Dao Seed Realm.

The Nine Realms of Immortal Cultivation

First Realm: Dust Cleansing

Second Realm: Dao Seed

Third Realm: Divine Illumination

Fourth Realm: Transcendence from the Mortal World

Fifth Realm: Treading the Void

Sixth Realm: Arcane Insight

Seventh Realm: Crossing Tribulation

Eighth Realm: Questioning the Dao

Ninth Realm: Transcendence

It seemed only a step away, but to him it was an insurmountable chasm.