That night, Liu Xiaolou tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Out of nowhere, two powerful new contenders for the role of retainer had appeared, and both were three layers above him in cultivation. How could he possibly sleep well after that?

These two competitors were also being extremely cautious. Neither had revealed their full strength, so he couldn’t get a clear sense of what he was up against. His own cultivation was shallow to begin with, and without knowing his opponents, he had no way to prepare. Tomorrow would be tough. He didn’t even know how many retainers the Red Conch Manor was planning to recruit. If the number was small, his hopes might be dashed altogether.

By morning, both side rooms were empty. He had no idea where the other two had gone. Since the banquet was still a long way off, Liu Xiaolou stepped out of the courtyard and wandered around the manor at a relaxed pace. Some areas were off-limits, and the manor staff politely turned him away when he got too close, so he simply followed the allowed paths, taking in the sights. Before he knew it, he had wandered up to the northern part of the manor.

The north side bordered Bailu Lake. In the sunlight, the snow piled up along the shore was still melting, trickling into the lake and sending up wisps of mist. Liu Xiaolou stood on the lake embankment, gazing into the distance. A sense of peace washed over him, and the worries that had weighed on him last night slowly melted away. If he succeeded, it would be his good fortune. If he failed, it would be fate. Why force things?

Just then, he noticed someone about thirty yards to his left, sitting cross-legged atop a tree canopy, white Daoist robes fluttering in the breeze. It was the White-Robed Swordsman. Turning to his right, about a hundred yards away, he saw a three-foot-high lake rock, and sitting on it, breathing in rhythm and cultivating, was the man in the Scholar in Blue.

Liu Xiaolou felt a pang of guilt. He scolded himself for wasting half an hour while his rivals were already cultivating. Even without spirit stones, converting true qi wasn’t the whole of cultivation. After thinking it over, he decided to get more familiar with the Groundbinding Spirit-Scattering Cord.

He didn’t have the skill to sit in cultivation atop a treetop like the White-Robed Swordsman. He could leap up and land on the crown of a tree, no problem, but staying balanced there for any length of time was another story. At best, he could hold on for a few breaths before falling. Still, being able to do that at all was impressive in itself. He couldn’t help but wonder whether he might manage such a feat once he broke through to the fifth layer someday.

As for the large lake rock beneath the Scholar in Blue, Liu Xiaolou looked around but couldn’t find anything similar nearby. In the end, he settled for a spot that looked relatively clean and sat down cross-legged.

He channeled true qi into his right arm and soon sensed a thread-like spiritual strand, running through him like a meridian. He guided his true essence into it, and the strand immediately began to reveal itself, half of its head emerging like a spirit snake flicking its tongue, writhing gently.

At the same time, the eleven acupoints of the Hand Taiyin meridian, the twenty of the Hand Yangming, twenty-one of the Foot Taiyin, forty-five of the Foot Yangming, and the eight he had already opened on the Hand Jueyin, along with the Jingming acupoint he had forced open after swallowing a snake gall in Wuling Mountain, began to thrum all at once. All 106 acupoints lit up within the Groundbinding Spirit-Scattering Cord, flickering like a sky full of stars. These were the Shadow Acupoints.

The power of this spiritual cord was directly tied to its user’s cultivation. What it reflected was the current layer of the user’s cultivation. As long as an opponent hadn’t opened more than a 106 acupoints, every one of them would be fully covered by the 106 Shadow Acupoints. The true qi within these acupoints' primordial pool wouldn’t be able to circulate, its spiritual nature would vanish, and it would lose all the power true qi is supposed to have; left to be drained away by the cord.

It was like having every air passage suddenly sealed off, causing them to suffocate and dry up. This was what’s called the effect of “yuan-dispersing.”

Of course, its weaknesses were just as obvious. As long as the opponent had opened more acupoints than the cord could cover, their true qi would still have room to circulate. Their “breathing” would remain unobstructed, and the fewer acupoints the cord could lock down, the weaker the yuan-dispersing effect would become.

That’s why, at Liu Xiaolou’s current level, the cord couldn’t yet display its full potential. During the Qi Refinement stage, the meridians and acupoints each person opened varied from one to another. Even at the same layer, it could only seal a portion of the opponent’s channels. But the cord’s power would grow alongside Liu Xiaolou’s cultivation, and its potential for growth was tremendous.

After practicing his control and sensing for a while, he felt much more comfortable using it, as if the cord had become an extension of his own body. Seeing that no one was nearby, he stood up and walked to the edge of the lake. From there, he released the spiritual cord from his wrist, letting one end of the rope dip into the lake.

The cord stretched over ten feet long, and once most of it had slipped beneath the surface, Liu Xiaolou felt his meridians link with it completely. His senses extended into the cord, as if he himself had entered the water along with it. His gaze sank down into the lakebed, and he could clearly perceive everything beneath the surface.

Every grain of sand and stone, every blade of grass, every insect, fish, crab, shrimp, and snail appeared in his mind as vividly as if they were right in front of him.

Wait... snail?

One particular snail was about the size of a child’s fist. Its shell glistened like it was covered in silvery dew. It burrowed in and out of the gravel and stones at the bottom of the lake with surprising agility, even faster than the swimming fish. It was clearly a spiritual creature, nothing like an ordinary freshwater snail.

The White Dew Fortune Snail was highly alert. At the slightest disturbance, it would dart away in the blink of an eye, making it extremely hard to catch. Liu Xiaolou relaxed his focus, keeping his connection to the spiritual cord faint and almost imperceptible. As a result, the cord floated limply in the water, like a rootless strand of aquatic grass, gently swaying with the ripples.

He didn’t know how much time had passed like that, but eventually, the cord drifted close to one of the White Dew Fortune Snails. By then, the snail had grown used to the cord’s presence and took it for an ordinary piece of lake grass, paying it no mind. That was the opening Liu Xiaolou had been waiting for. The cord snapped to life, wrapping tightly around the snail’s shell and pulling it up to the surface.

From morning until late afternoon, Liu Xiaolou stayed by the lakeside, focused on catching these snails as a way to train his control over the Groundbinding Spirit-Scattering Cord. After working at it for most of the day, he had only managed to catch three. If sliced, they’d barely make up half a plate. Clear proof of how difficult they were to catch.

Strictly speaking, the three snails were property of the Red Conch Manor. As a guest, taking them without permission wasn’t exactly proper. So Liu Xiaolou pried the meat out, swallowed it raw, and used it to tide himself over until dinner. The spiritual energy it provided wasn’t much, but cultivation was about persistence and consistency. Every bit helped build his true qi, and not a single drop should go to waste. That was a habit ingrained in him as a rogue cultivator from Mount Wulong.

By early evening, with the sun leaning west, one of the stewards came to the lakeside to summon the three for the banquet. The White-Robed Swordsman floated gracefully down from the treetop. The Scholar in Blue straightened his clothes on the lakeside rock. Liu Xiaolou, flustered, quickly tossed the three snail shells back into the lake and followed behind them into the manor.

Glancing back at the lake under the setting sun, Liu Xiaolou suddenly noticed several manor workers struggling to move the very same stone the Scholar in Blue had been sitting on. They were clearly transporting it back to the manor. His heart tightened. That man must have a deep connection with Red Conch Manor. He must be someone with serious status. Liu Xiaolou told himself he’d better not try to compete with him.

The evening banquet was held in the manor’s grandest hall, Dewlight Pavilion. Inside stood two large purple nanmu columns painted red and gilded with gold. This was clearly a place of high status. The room had already been arranged with over a dozen tables. Apart from the central table reserved for the host, five tables were lined up on each side, stretching all the way back to the doorway. Many guests were standing inside the hall, but since the host had yet to arrive, no one had taken a seat.

Liu Xiaolou entered with the others and picked a spot in the corner to quietly wait. As he looked around, he realized something odd. Every single person in the hall was strikingly good-looking. Some were delicately handsome, some had a calm and elegant presence, some carried themselves like noble gentlemen, and others radiated refined composure. Even Liu Xiaolou had to admit the sight was quite pleasing to the eye.

What was going on here? Was Red Conch Manor really choosing their retainers based on looks?

If that were the case… did his chances just go up?

Liu Xiaolou couldn’t help but fall into deep thought.