Who Let Him Cultivate？

Chapter 4: Hand It Over

“My axe!” Meng Jingzhou bellowed into the illusion, fully prepared to dive into the depths to retrieve his lost tool.

The water parted with divine grace as the River Spirit manifested upon the surface, levitating three axes.

“Young child, have you—”

*Splash!*

Before the ancient entity could finish his sacred script, Meng Jingzhou executed a flawless swan dive. He plunged into the river with a resounding plop, exhaling a stream of bubbles larger than the River Spirit’s own head.

What in the heavens was happening?

The River Spirit floated in stunned silence. In all his years of testing mortal greed, he had never encountered such a brazen maneuver.

The gurgling bubbles dwindled and vanished. The river’s surface settled into an eerie, glass-like calm. Only the ambient spiritual pressure radiating from the River Spirit disturbed the water, sending out slow, concentric ripples.

“Why is there no movement? Did the boy drown?” the River Spirit muttered. He wasn’t particularly concerned about a fatality—this was a construct of the mind, after all. Death here was an impossibility.

But before the River Spirit could unravel the boy’s bizarre logic, the river rebelled.

The ripples upon the surface accelerated into a violent churn. The River Spirit frowned. His power was perfectly restrained; this disturbance was not of his making.

Realization struck him like a thunderbolt. “It’s that brat!”

Threads of brilliant golden aura bled into the rushing currents. The mist hovering above the water suddenly thrummed with the heavy, suffocating weight of immortal intent. It was as if some primordial terror was gestating in the riverbed!

The sheer magnitude of this unknown dread made the River Spirit’s soul quake.

Three geysers erupted from the depths, surging higher into the heavens, casting a veil of pale golden mist across the expanse and blinding the River Spirit to the horrors within.

An ethereal wind swept down from the void, tearing the golden mist asunder.

Three figures hovered above the water. All three bore the exact visage of Meng Jingzhou, yet their auras were so vastly, terrifyingly different that it felt as though heaven and earth had been inverted.

The River Spirit trembled, a primal instinct seizing the very core of his being.

There stood an ordinary mortal Meng Jingzhou, a Cultivation Great Power Meng Jingzhou, and… an Immortal Meng Jingzhou!

This was the foundational law of the illusion: any mundane object dropped into the river would manifest in three distinct states—mortal, spiritual, and immortal.

Meng Jingzhou had dropped *himself*.

“Hand it over,” the three Meng Jingzhous commanded in perfect, terrifying unison.

Crushed beneath the absolute authority of Immortal Meng Jingzhou, the River Spirit was rendered utterly powerless. He could only watch in paralyzed horror as they moved to claim their prizes.

Immortal Meng Jingzhou seized the Immortal Artifact, the Heaven-Splitting Axe. Cultivation Great Power Meng Jingzhou claimed the Spirit Weapon, the Mountain-Splitting Axe. And the ordinary mortal Meng Jingzhou, riding the coattails of his transcendent selves, snatched the rusted iron axe right out of the dazed River Spirit’s hands.

With all three axes secured, the illusion violently shattered. Meng Jingzhou had cleared the trial.

As was customary for those who succeeded, his mortal body’s self-preservation instincts kicked in, plunging him into a temporary, merciful unconsciousness.

…

Outside the illusion, the elders and disciples of the Dao Seeking Sect stared at the unconscious forms of Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou. A heavy, suffocating silence hung over the pavilion.

Weren’t these trials supposed to test for honesty?

Yun Zhi stood like a statue of white jade, her silence heavy and absolute. A dark premonition stirred within her: allowing these two into the Dao Seeking Sect would spell the end of their peaceful days.

For the first time in her life, she prayed her instincts were wrong.

Suddenly, the true River Spirit materialized in the physical realm. Gripping a golden axe in one hand and a silver one in the other, he charged toward Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou with murderous intent.

As a revered guardian spirit of the Dao Seeking Sect, he had never suffered such catastrophic humiliation.

“Unhand me!” he roared, his spiritual pressure flaring. “Today, I will teach these two little bastards a lesson! I’ll sever their limbs and forcefully reattach them!”

Panic erupted. The Dao Seeking Sect disciples swarmed the enraged entity, desperately holding him back.

“Senior River Spirit, stay your blade!”

“Senior River Spirit, please quell your fury!”

“If we butcher the trial participants, the Dao Seeking Sect’s reputation will be dragged through the mud!”

Ultimately, it was Dai Bufan who stepped into the fray, his presence commanding enough to halt the furious spirit.

“Senior River Spirit, stay your hand. The third trial was personally designed by me. I swear upon my Dao heart, I will teach these two a lesson they will never forget.”

Mollified by Dai Bufan’s solemn vow, the River Spirit finally lowered his axes, though he continued to glare daggers at the unconscious boys.

The third and final trial originally had two proposals. One was drafted by Yun Zhi, which was relatively gentle. The other was designed by Dai Bufan, which bordered on draconian. Both were perfectly capable of testing a candidate’s Dao heart. After a democratic vote, the sect had unanimously chosen Yun Zhi’s proposal.

However, Yun Zhi’s trial was so forgiving that failing it carried zero Penalty. Now, to appease the wrath of their guardian spirit, they had no choice but to pivot to Dai Bufan’s brutal alternative.

Yun Zhi offered no objections. Her expression remained an unreadable mask of divine grace.

Let the little monsters suffer a bit. It built character.

The second trial had culled the herd significantly. Faced with the overwhelming temptation of immortal weaponry, many had succumbed to their base desires, lying to the River Spirit’s face and claiming the Heaven-Splitting Axe or the Mountain-Splitting Axe as their own.

Cast out of the illusion, the failures grumbled endlessly about the Dao Seeking Sect’s absurdly high standards.

Naturally, not everyone complained about the difficulty—those who passed, for instance, found it quite reasonable.

…

“The second trial was rather straightforward,” Man Gu rumbled, his massive arms crossed. “You just had to tell the truth.”

The surviving candidates nodded in solemn agreement, echoing the barbarian youth’s sentiment.

“What?” Meng Jingzhou blurted out, his eyes wide. “So we weren’t supposed to dive into the river and mug the River Spirit for the axes?”

Why was everyone else’s method so boring?

Lu Yang shot Meng Jingzhou a look of profound pity, marveling at the boy’s sheer lack of survival instinct. “If the River Spirit hadn’t been an illusion, do you have any idea how badly you would have provoked an ancient entity?”

“You should have employed basic logic, like I did,” Lu Yang explained deadpan. “Ask the River Spirit to hand over his axes, then throw all of them into the river. That way, the system registers all three axes as your dropped items.”

Meng Jingzhou struck his palm with his fist in sudden enlightenment. “Brother, your tactical genius is terrifying.”

The rest of the candidates stared at the two of them in absolute, horrified silence. For a brief, terrifying moment, they genuinely began to doubt if telling the truth had been the wrong way to pass the trial.

Man Gu, however, nodded thoughtfully. He recalled his chieftain father’s solemn warnings: the ancient barbarian tribes had nearly been wiped out due to their arrogant refusal to learn from outsiders. As a modern descendant, he had to overcome this racial flaw and humbly study the wisdom of others.

Staring at Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou, Man Gu felt he had finally found his intellectual role models.

Just as the crowd was spiraling into an existential debate over the correct way to pass a morality test, Yun Zhi, Dai Bufan, and the senior disciples of the Dao Seeking Sect descended upon the pavilion.

A dangerous smirk played on Dai Bufan’s lips. He casually flipped his palm, revealing a miniature, palm-sized mountain. He tossed it into the courtyard. The artifact caught the wind and expanded violently. In the span of a few breaths, it erupted into a towering peak over a thousand feet high.

The crowd gasped, stepping back to crane their necks at the sheer scale of the magic. Such casual manipulation of space and mass was a breathtaking display, rare even among seasoned Cultivators.

The peak was densely forested with ancient, emerald pines, indistinguishable from a natural mountain. Carved into its sheer face was a seemingly endless stone staircase that pierced the cloud line.

“This artifact is known as the Mountain of Mind Questioning,” Dai Bufan announced, his voice echoing with spiritual authority. “It is a wondrous object I commissioned an Elder to forge. Upon this mountain, immortals and mortals are rendered entirely equal. Your task is simple: climb. The higher you ascend, the more indomitable your will.”

“Reach the fiftieth step, and you pass the trial.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd before a brave soul raised a hand. “Senior, wouldn’t Man Gu have a massive advantage?”

At a mere fifteen years of age, Man Gu possessed the chiseled, hulking physique of a veteran warrior in his mid-twenties. He towered a full head above the rest. On a staircase, his massive strides could easily clear two steps for every one of theirs.

Dai Bufan’s smile widened. “You need not worry about biological unfairness. The Mountain of Mind Questioning enforces absolute parity. It will forcibly suppress and equalize everyone’s physical attributes. Whether you are a frail mortal or a body-tempering Cultivator, upon my mountain, you will all possess the exact same baseline mortal strength.”

“Is there a time limit?” another candidate asked nervously.

“None whatsoever.”

A wave of palpable relief washed over the examinees. No time limit meant they could simply rest and try again if they failed. How could anyone fail under such generous conditions? Was this legendary third trial merely a formality?

“Are we permitted to use Dharma Treasures?” a wealthy scion asked eagerly. Many of them carried specialized artifacts bestowed by their noble clans—treasures designed to function without the active channeling of Spiritual Qi. It would be a monumental advantage.

Dai Bufan’s smile twisted into something distinctly gleeful. “You may.”

Assuming your Dharma Treasures still function, that is.