Chapter 8: The Task Hall and The Dangerous Mission
The Outer Sect Task Hall stood in stark contrast to the decaying ruins Lin Tian had woken up in two days ago.
Crossing its obsidian threshold felt like stepping out of a post-apocalyptic wasteland straight into a bustling metropolis. The ceiling soared a hundred feet up, held by thick pillars of white jade pulsing with faint, stabilizing spiritual energy.
Above the crowd, thousands of glowing jade slips floated like a school of luminescent fish, each one projecting a semi-transparent screen listing sect missions.
He stood near the entrance, his windbreaker pulling tight against the cool, spiritually enriched air.
*The quest board. The economy center.* If he wanted to farm resources and climb fast enough to survive this world, it started here.
He moved deeper into the hall, blending into the shadow of a jade pillar. Arrogant young masters and their sycophantic lackeys drifted through the crowd in pristine silk robes, jade pendants swinging at their waists, parting lower-ranked disciples through nothing but the weight of their Qi.
None of them so much as glanced his way. To them, a Level 1 scavenger in a rust-stained windbreaker wasn’t worth the effort of contempt — he was simply background noise, the same way a server rack didn’t register as furniture until it broke down. He filed that indifference away as useful. Invisibility had its own tactical value.
“System.” He leaned against the cool stone. “Activate [Insight Eye].”
[Ding! Scanning local environment…]
The familiar violet-gold overlay bloomed into view. Data boxes lit up beside the strutting young masters one after another.
[Target: Outer Disciple Zhao]
[Cultivation: Qi Gathering (Level 3)]
[Flaw: Unstable lower Dantian due to excessive consumption of low-grade pills. Right knee bears a hidden ligament tear from overtraining.]
[Target: Outer Disciple Chen]
[Cultivation: Qi Gathering (Level 4)]
[Flaw: Arrogant and prone to anger. Spiritual veins are slightly scorched from practicing an incompatible Fire-attribute technique.]
A faint, predatory smirk tugged at his lips. To anyone else, these young masters looked untouchable — wealth and power radiating off them like heat.
Through the System, they were just badly optimized code, riddled with exploitable errors.
But knowledge without stats was still a Level 1 character standing in a high-level PvP zone. He needed to lay low, gather resources, and climb fast.
He turned to the floating mission boards, sorted by the color of their glowing text.
Green missions were safe and mundane — sweep courtyards, sort spirit herbs in a warehouse. The rewards matched the effort: one or two contribution points, barely enough for a single impure spirit stone.
A cluster of nervous-looking disciples crowded around the green boards, arguing over who’d claim the safest tasks first. He recognized the posture immediately — people optimizing for survival over growth, playing not to lose instead of playing to win.
Too slow. At that rate, reaching Level 5 would take ten years. He’d be dead from the fumes or some random young master’s temper long before then.
He shifted his gaze upward, to where jade slips glowed an ominous blood-red. High-risk missions, avoided by most disciples for good reason.
One slip pulsed violently. He reached out with a sliver of Qi and tapped it.
[Sect Mission: Resource Retrieval]
[Location: The Dark Mist Forest]
[Objective: Retrieve 10 Silver-Leaf Herbs and 3 low-level beast cores from the Dark Mist Forest]
[Reward: 50 Contribution Points, 2 Low-Grade Spirit Stones, 1 Qi-Condensation Pill.]
[Warning: The Dark Mist Forest is infested with mutated demonic beasts and highly toxic miasma. Recommended Cultivation: Qi Gathering Level 4 and above. Fatality rate for lower levels is 89%.]
His pulse ticked up. Fifty points. A Qi-Condensation Pill with enough pure energy to shove his body straight to Level 2 — maybe Level 3, if his synergy with the System cooperated.
No risk, no reward. That part of this world hadn’t changed from Earth at all.
The Dark Mist Forest was a death trap for anyone at his level — miasma draining stamina, mutated beasts ambushing from the shadows, an environment where raw power meant nothing against terrain that punished the careless.
But he wasn’t a traditional cultivator relying on brute force.
Dense terrain. Complex sightlines. His mind ran the calculation like a threat assessment. Perfect ground for stealth, traps, guerrilla tactics — not the kind of face-to-face fight cultivators announced with a battle cry before throwing the first punch.
He didn’t need to fight the beasts head-on. With [Insight Eye] marking every flaw and blind spot in advance, he could let the terrain do the killing for him.
He reached out and closed his hand around the red jade slip.
The moment his fingers made contact, the light flared, announcing to the hall that a dangerous mission had just been claimed.
Noise in the hall dipped for half a second. Heads turned to see who’d been reckless — or stupid — enough to take a Dark Mist Forest mission.
When their eyes landed on him — grimy windbreaker, unmistakable Level 1 aura — the silence cracked into something else entirely.
Mockery.
“Look at this! A trash scavenger actually took the Dark Mist Forest mission!” A young master with a gaudy jade fan sneered loud enough to carry across the hall.
“Is he blind, or just tired of living?” a lackey chimed in, pointing at his frail frame. “A Level 1 rat thinks he can hunt in that forest. He won’t clear the outer perimeter before a Corpse Rat chews his legs off.”
“Maybe he’s saving the sect the trouble of burying him,” a third laughed, and the ripple of mockery spread through the surrounding crowd.
Lin Tian stood still, jade slip gripped tight in his fist. [Insight Eye] automatically locked onto the loudest instigator.
[Target: Young Master Xu]
[Cultivation: Qi Gathering Level 4]
[Flaw: Vain and entirely dependent on defensive artifacts. Zero actual combat experience. Footwork is unbalanced; strikes to the left ankle will completely shatter his mobility.]
A dark, brief urge surfaced — step forward, one flick of the hidden blade, and turn that arrogant laughter into a wet gurgle.
Earth’s cold logic doused it before it could take root.
Zero tactical advantage in a face-slapping contest right now. He kept his expression flat, unreadable. Kill Xu here, and the Disciplinary Hall executes him before sundown. Fight him and reveal the wrist-blade, and he loses the one advantage no one in this hall knew he had.
Let the NPCs bark. He had leveling up to do.
Without a word, he turned his back on the laughing crowd, tucked the mission slip into his inner pocket, and walked toward the exit.
His silence only fed the mockery. “Look at him run! Write your will before you step into that forest, trash!”
He stepped back out into the hazy, smog-choked air of the Outer Sect. The laughter died behind the walls, already dismissed from his mind.
His focus had already moved on — to logistics.
He wasn’t walking into the Dark Mist Forest like a barbarian swinging blind. He needed tools, wire, toxins, gear. He needed the outer market, and whatever salvaged junk he had left to trade for something closer to Earth-style survival equipment than anything this world’s cultivators would recognize.
A proper cultivator would meditate for days before attempting a mission like this, building up Qi reserves and mental fortitude. Lin Tian didn’t have days, and he didn’t have the reserves. What he had was a shack full of scrap, a repaired wrist-blade, and roughly one afternoon to turn junk into an edge.
Let them laugh. He adjusted the sleeve hiding his wrist-blade, eyes narrowing against the toxic haze.
In this world, the loud ones died first.
The silent ones did the killing.