Don't Cause Trouble Chapter 17: Qianji Sect

How could someone say something like that so casually? She had to be faking it!

On the platform, the elders and inner disciples of Poyuan Sect stared at Ye Su in disbelief—only to watch her actually close her eyes and begin meditating in front of everyone!

Arrogant. Unbelievably arrogant!

However… no one had ever said breaking through during the preliminary test was against the rules. The elders had no choice but to hold their tongues and allow it. Their eyes kept drifting toward Ye Su, especially Elder Zhang, whose eyeballs looked like they might pop out of his head.

Ming Liu Sha and the others paused for a moment and glanced over at their senior sister. Then, unfazed, they went back to writing—after all, they knew exactly what kind of person she was.

The accommodations for the selected rogue cultivators had Spirit Gathering Arrays, but the ambient spiritual energy was only so-so—it wasn’t in the core area of the sect. The trial grounds, on the other hand, were massive, with a powerful Spirit Gathering Array underneath.

From the moment Ye Su sat down, her spiritual core began absorbing qi on its own and refining it. Her cultivation had already been on the verge of a breakthrough. Over the past few days, her realm had become more and more unstable. She had been suppressing it earlier to finish the test, but it was no longer sustainable—so she had to stop and break through on the spot.

The spiritual energy within the array surged toward Ye Su like a tide. Her spiritual core devoured it all like a bottomless sea, without the slightest sign of rejection.

"…That’s not something a normal artifact refiner could manage," Elder Rong Chuqiu muttered, her expression complex. With a sigh, she flipped her hand and cast a powerful barrier of spiritual energy around Ye Su, shielding the rest of the examinees from the disturbance so they could focus.

In the cultivation world, the Foundation Establishment stage was where cultivators formed and developed their spiritual core. Each breakthrough expanded the core, and the peak of Foundation Establishment was the last chance to do so before forming the Golden Core.

Ye Su was no stranger to this process. Drawing in spiritual energy, refining her core—she did it smoothly and without hesitation.

She sat unmoving from sunrise to sunset, eyes never opening. By the time the lights in the trial grounds flickered on and then off again, nearly everyone else had put down their brushes.

In fact, by the sixth hour, most of the participants had already stopped writing. Many of them didn’t recognize most of the materials, let alone know how to combine them. The rest of their time was spent guessing and scribbling nonsense.

Xia Er flipped through the images of the materials, trying to recall their names. A few looked familiar, but he just couldn’t remember what they were called. He gave up with a sigh—he had already filled a good portion of his scroll and felt he should be safe for passing.

He set his brush down and looked over to Ye Su at the edge of the arena. His senior sister was still in the middle of her breakthrough, and with less than an hour left, he couldn’t help but feel anxious.

He wasn’t the only one. Ming Liu Sha and Xiyu also stopped writing and turned toward Ye Su’s direction.

But none of them dared disturb her while she was breaking through. They could only sit quietly and watch the minutes tick away.

Finally, with only half an hour remaining, Ye Su opened her eyes. She had successfully reached mid-Foundation Establishment. The three of them let out a collective sigh of relief.

"Senior Sister, hurry up and write! Only half an hour left!" Xiyu whispered urgently.

Rong Chuqiu withdrew the spiritual barrier. "No talking during the exam."

The arena fell silent once more.

Ye Su didn’t have time to savor the breakthrough. She glanced at the sundial, then lowered her head and began writing furiously.

None of the hundred materials were unfamiliar to her.

But given the time crunch, she immediately filtered for speed—anything with a long name, she skipped. Complex refining methods? Skipped. She wrote the ones with short names and easy formulas.

Toward the end, her handwriting practically floated across the scroll.

"Time’s up," Rong Chuqiu announced.

All the scrolls flew into the air and were collected with a sweep of her hand.

At last, the participants exhaled in relief. Many began chatting with the people next to them.

"That was way too hard. I didn’t even recognize half of those materials."

"Same here."

"Sigh… guess I’m heading home."

Ming Liu Sha scooted over to Ye Su. "Senior Sister, what realm are you in now?"

"Mid Foundation Establishment," Ye Su said, finally taking a moment to examine her spiritual core.

Seeing Xiyu and Xia Er approach as well, she asked, "How many materials didn’t you recognize?"

Xiyu lowered her head and said quietly, "I didn’t know the last few."

"Same here," Xia Er added. "They looked familiar, but I just couldn’t place them."

Ye Su thought for a moment. "Was it from Jinyang Bone onward, or Burning Silkworm Stone?"

"Jinyang Bone," Xiyu said.

"Burning Silkworm Stone," said Xia Er.

Ye Su nodded, then walked them through it from Jinyang Bone onward. "By the way, some of the materials in the middle were tricky. Are you sure you could tell Rainbow Chrysalis from Illusion Chrysalis?"

Xiyu and Xia Er looked at each other, speechless.

Ye Su shook her head and turned to Ming Liu Sha. "What about you?"

Ming Liu Sha gave a lazy "Oh" and replied, "Couldn’t tell, so I didn’t write it."

No answer, no mistake. Xia Er couldn’t help giving his second senior brother a thumbs-up.

"Senior Sister, was it Rainbow Chrysalis or Illusion Chrysalis?" Xiyu asked.

"Illusion Chrysalis," Ye Su replied as she pulled out a blank talisman from her storage pouch and sketched the difference between the two. "Rainbow Chrysalis doesn’t have a spiracle on its abdomen. Remember that next time."

The preliminary round was over. They could go back to rest, and in three days, the list of those advancing would be announced.

……

"Elder Rong, I want to see her scroll," Quan Jiaying said as he entered and addressed Rong Chuqiu.

"Who?" Rong Chuqiu was in the middle of grading when she looked up and met his gaze. Understanding dawned instantly. "Ye Su’s scroll was taken by Elder Zhang."

Earlier that day, when they had just begun grading, Elder Zhang had specifically requested the scroll with the refining formula for Mistflower Fang, wanting to see just how skilled that person really was. So Rong Chuqiu had set Ye Su’s scroll aside and handed it to him.

Inside the hall were seven or eight desks, each manned by an elder swiftly grading scrolls. Their pace was brisk—most mistakes were apparent at a glance. Some contestants even got the names of materials wrong, never mind the refining methods or ratios.

Quan Jiaying made his way around a few elders until he reached Elder Zhang.

Unlike the others, who could finish a scroll in no time, Elder Zhang was still holding Ye Su’s scroll, brows tightly furrowed, eyes locked onto the page like he’d run into something truly puzzling.

"Elder Zhang," Quan Jiaying greeted him, his eyes falling on the scroll. The handwriting in the upper half was bold and fluid, but by the second half, the characters were practically flying off the page. "This is Ye Su’s scroll?"

"Jiaying?" Elder Zhang finally looked up, then pointed to a line on the scroll. "Perfect timing. Take a look at this refining ratio—does it seem right to you?"

"One piece of Burning Silkworm Stone, two Serpent-Boar Bones, three taels of Illusion Chrysalis…" Quan Jiaying frowned. He’d never seen that combination before. In fact, he wasn’t even aware that Serpent-Boar Bone could be combined with Illusion Chrysalis. "Is that even a valid formula?"

"I’ve seen it before," Elder Zhang said, tapping the scroll with his finger. "A skilled artifact refiner can use this combination to produce a pretty decent magic tool."

Quan Jiaying’s heart felt complicated. He didn’t know this combination—but she did.

"There are a few refining methods here I still can’t quite judge," Elder Zhang admitted with a sigh. Then he looked up at the most gifted disciple in the sect. "Jiaying, she’s extremely familiar with rare materials. All those obscure ones you didn’t recognize—she knew them all."

There were about 1,200 formulas written on the scroll. In terms of quantity, she didn’t surpass Quan Jiaying. But a closer look showed she had used extremely rare materials, and her refining methods were anything but standard.

If she hadn’t suddenly paused to break through her cultivation during the exam, with more time, she might very well have outperformed Quan Jiaying’s usual ranking in the annual assessment.

Quan Jiaying stared at the scroll in silence. After a long while, he said, "I understand, Elder Zhang."

When he walked out of the hall, he didn’t feel the crushing sense of defeat he’d expected. Instead, he let out a soft, self-mocking chuckle. Perhaps it was because this feeling of helplessness had long been etched into his heart.

As the star prodigy of Poyuan Sect, every time he faced the two from the Zhanjin Sect, he had only ever known defeat. So now, losing to someone else somehow didn’t feel so unusual.

Maybe… he just wasn’t that good after all.

……

"Senior Sister, you’ve broken through two realms in just one year! You must be a genius," Xia Er started up again. "Next year, Core Formation. The year after that, Nascent Soul. And the year after that…"

Ye Su cut him off. "At that rate, I’ll ascend straight to the heavens in under ten years."

"I believe it," Xia Er said without missing a beat—he never needed a script for boasting.

"Not, too, far, off," Ming Liu Sha added in his usual slow and deliberate tone.

"Senior Sister, when are we heading back?" Xiyu asked as she checked herself in the mirror. "We’ve been out here forever."

"Once the next round is done and we collect the materials, we’ll head home," Ye Su replied. "By then, Xin Xin should be ready to fulfill his promise too."

As they were chatting, a sudden knock came from the door.

There were only four people in the room, and any of their own wouldn’t have bothered knocking.

Ye Su turned her head slightly toward the door. "Come in."

The door creaked open. Backlit by the sun, the figure’s face was hard to make out.

Ye Su squinted for a long moment until the figure stepped into the light. He looked familiar—an inner disciple dressed in slate-blue robes, with an embroidered flaming hand over his chest.

The four of them stood up. Ye Su was the first to speak. "Fellow Daoist…"

"My name is Quan Jiaying. I’m an inner disciple of Poyuan Sect," he introduced himself, not entirely sure how he’d ended up here.

Ming Liu Sha leaned in and whispered near Ye Su’s ear, "The, strong-est, one."

"With how well you did in the trial, unless something unexpected happens, you’ll definitely be accepted into Poyuan Sect as an inner disciple," Quan Jiaying said. After a brief pause, he added seriously, "I’m not afraid if you’re stronger than me."

Ye Su exchanged glances with her junior brothers and sister. They immediately sensed something was off—they already had a sect!

"Fellow Daoist Quan, I think there’s been a misunderstanding," Ye Su stepped forward, pulled over a chair for him to sit, and smiled sincerely. "We came to Poyuan purely for… sincere cultural exchange."

"Yeah, we’re not here to join your sect," Xiyu added from behind.

Quan Jiaying froze for a second, glancing at each of them in turn. Only then did realization dawn. "You don’t want to join Poyuan Sect."

That was rare. For most artifact refiners who took the exam, the ultimate goal was to join Poyuan. Yet they were saying they came just to "exchange experiences."

"We already have a sect," Xia Er declared proudly, puffing out his chest.

Quan Jiaying looked at the matching dark robes they all wore, and it finally clicked—they were the same group he'd overheard on the street once, saying they were from a small sect.

Ye Su cleared her throat. "Fellow Daoist Quan, that announcement of yours didn’t say other sect disciples weren’t allowed to participate, right?" She still wanted to take a few prizes home, after all.

"…No, it didn’t," Quan Jiaying admitted.

Whatever wild ideas he’d had coming here had completely evaporated. All that was left now was a single question.

"So, which sect are you from?" He was genuinely curious now—which small sect out there taught both talisman drawing and artifact refining?

Ye Su straightened her robes and answered seriously: "Qianji Sect."