Life as an Outer Sect disciple of the Spirit Stream Sect was, Bai Xiaochun discovered, essentially a series of near-death experiences punctuated by rice gruel.

He was assigned to the Fragrant Cloud Peak, which sounded pleasant but was actually a windswept mountain where the 'fragrant cloud' was the perpetual mist that made everything damp and cold. His dormitory had twelve roommates, two of whom snored, three of whom cultivated in their sleep (producing colorful light shows at three in the morning), and one who kept a spirit snake in his bed.

The training was brutal. Every morning at dawn, the disciples gathered in the courtyard for physical conditioning, which consisted of the instructor — a man named Elder Sun who seemed to be composed entirely of muscle and disapproval — making them run up and down the mountain while carrying increasingly heavy stones.

'This is to strengthen your bodies,' Elder Sun said on the first day. 'A cultivator's body is the vessel for spiritual power. A cracked vessel cannot hold the ocean.'

'What if I don't want to hold the ocean?' Bai Xiaochun asked, halfway up his second run and already wheezing. 'What if I just want to hold, say, a small pond?'

Elder Sun assigned him an extra run.

But Bai Xiaochun discovered something strange during those brutal training sessions. His body, for all its cowardice and caution, was naturally suited to cultivation. He absorbed spiritual energy with an efficiency that shocked even Elder Sun, and by the end of his first week, he had already reached the second level of Qi Condensation while his peers were still struggling with the first.

'Natural talent,' Elder Sun grunted, looking at Bai Xiaochun's evaluation results. 'Wasted on a coward.'

'Talent isn't wasted if you're alive to use it,' Bai Xiaochun said, and meant it with every fiber of his being.