Sect ranking

The sect ranking was actually pretty straightforward. It was divided into 1 to 4 star alchemists, why not 5 star and higher? Because there was only one 5 star alchemist in the entire sect!

The one and two star rankings had a thousand disciples each on the ranking board.

The three star rankings had one hundred disciples on the rankings and the four star rankings had ten spots.

The ranking itself was decided by pill perfection rate. When alchemists refined pills it would have a certain amount of impurities, the lower the impurities, the higher the effect of the pill, and secondly eating pills with low impurities can create issues in the long term because removing those impurities from the body is very difficult.

The sect and empire rankings both gave out some rewards each month to motivate the disciples to cultivate on top of the fame.

Fang Qiu soon got the general idea from the explanation given by Jiang Xinyue who was the girl that was explaining him about the important places of the sect. After finishing up at the ranking board they also went around the spirit pavilion which sold all sorts of tools and weapons but mainly consisting of mountains of cauldrons. Many outer sect disciples were even refining pills right in front of this building in case they exploded a cauldron they could immediately go buy a new one.

They also passed by the battle arena and pill arena for disciples to fight with weapons or fight by refining the same pill and whoever had the purest pill won.

Lastly they went through the various buildings of smaller importance like the place where you could rent alchemy rooms and training rooms and eventually Fang Qiu made his way back up the mountain whilst Jiang Xinyue went to her outer sect courtyard to continue cultivating, cultivation was a continuous process after all.

On the way up Fang Qiu could see more than one disciple doing the same, they probably were going up to request private classes from the elders or were likely going to ask them to refine pills for their cultivation.

"Hey, junior brother! Do you wanna buy a ranking book? It lists info about all two-thousand one hundred and twelve members of the sect on the ranking boards and has extra info about each of them!"

Fang Qiu looked over and saw a fatty waving at him from about a dozen meters away, soon after he was holding a copy of the book and was a few spirit stones poorer as he made his way to his immortal cave.

Upon arriving at his residence he saw many people staring at the door and whispering amongst each other, he didn't know why they were staring at the door but he assumed they were just there to see what the "new genius disciple" looked like which he didn't really care to much about, after all he wore a mask so what was there to see.

Suddenly many people were alerted, it seems someone was going up to the cave, if anybody could just go knocking on the door at will, why would they be waiting here? Someone's gotta stop that guy from embarrassing himself!

One of the people amongst the crowd couldn't just stand and look at that junior disciple embarrassing himself, after all every immortal cave in the top half of the mountain had a massive thick door that blocked out sound!

"Hey junior brother, its useless to walk up to the door, only immortal caves that have their door open can allow visitors!"

Fang Qiu was surprised they called out to him but he wasn't a stupid person and was not planning to embarrass the fellow disciple for calling out to him out of goodwill so he soon made his way back over to the bunch of disciples waiting at the cave.

"Thanks for the advise fellow disciple, but I am the new owner of the immortal cave so I can enter at will."

Actually Fang Qiu's answer was unnecessary because everyone recognised him from the rumours upon seeing the mask on his face when he turned around. One of the disciples recovered pretty fast from his shock and quickly explained why they were here.

Apparently every core disciple has 2 assistants and they were all here to apply for the position. Being the alchemist assistant of a core disciple was a very rewarding job, after all even though Fang Qiu wasn't even a one star alchemist yet, he would soon rise above all of them considering his insane talent so many were looking at the long term benefits to be gained by watching a highly talented alchemist create pills.

There were about a hundred people here and four of them were rankers on the school rankings. Fang Qiu wasn't going to pick two poor looking kids like they always do in the novels on earth, after all he was given a massive chance so why would he waste it, he soon picked the two oldest disciples out of those four since they had more years of experience, after all for him their potential was less important, what truly mattered was how well they could handle medicinal plants and control alchemy fire since that would be their main job as assistants, secondly they also had way more experience with sect related stuff so they would be a massive help when he started creating and selling pills for others or when he needed something.

He soon sat down with both of them and gave them both a token which would allow them to open the doors to the residence so they could come and go when needed. He wasn't in a rush to start cultivating or learn alchemy so he talked to the both of them about their lives and they also asked him about his life. There were lots of questions thrown at him by the both of them once they learned he was a soulless person in the past which meant that he had been living in a lower world before this. He even took of his mask for them which gave them a massive scare. After all many alchemists heard legends of the spirit clan being the greatest alchemists in the boundless realm, to many alchemists they were like gods. What would it feel like to suddenly have one standing in front of you? Looking at how one of them fainted and the other cried from happiness it seems like the spirit clan had a bigger impact on people than he initially thought.

After getting to know the both of them well he decided to call them second brother and third brother respectively with himself being the first brother, they would be cultivating and refining together for a long time after all so he couldn't keep calling them by their names. He also decided that Little Rou would be first sister from now on to the both of them, he himself would of course keep calling her Little Rou, since the both of them knew about his life and him being from another world it was way easier to get things done as he didn't need to hold back and could ask the both of them whatever he didn't know yet about the world.

Second brother was a 34 year old man named Wen Huang, he was a one star alchemist who had been in the sect for almost twenty years and he was an outer sect disciple up until today, personal assistants moved into the immortal caves of the core disciples they worked with so of course he couldn't be counted as a core disciple anymore. His status was now directly related to Fang Qiu. Wen Huang was considered a very handsome guy who had many suitors but average talent, he was very hardworking though which made him very good at handling medicinal ingredients which was also the reason he made it in the sect rankings.

In fact if his skill at controlling flames was better he could make it into the top hundred since he truly was a prodigy at handling all sorts of 1 star herbs.

Third brother on the other hand was the exact opposite. His name was Teng Wuhan and he was a very average looking male at 39 years of age. He was very good at handling alchemy flames and was not that good at handling alchemy ingredients.

They both still looked 18 even though they were in their thirties because of their cultivation base. They had already both broken through to the spirit realm initial stage after all these years which extended their lifespan to 250 years.

Near the end of the day they both gathered all their stuff and got installed in their own rooms and were ready to start their new life in the pill cloud pavilion and rise to the top riding the coattails of their genius first brother!

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3 years later...