19 Quest Hall

With a spear in his hand, Brax swings it around performing simple moves such as sweeps and thrusts before connecting them together to perform a sequence of moves.

With every instruction clear in his mind, he performs these movements as perfectly as they possibly could be performed. Trying to burn them into his muscle memory.

He has been busy practicing spear techniques these past few days and Brax is satisfied with his progress.

When it comes to basic-level weapon techniques, there is nothing special about them other than how elemental and Qi energy is implemented on them. As for its movement, it only consists of single thrusts and slashes.

For example, there is a technique called the Serpent thrust. It is a simple thrust technique, but the one on the receiving end must do much more to defend against it. This technique makes the spear look and act like a snake. By implementing Qi into the spear, a cultivator can bend the spear to his will and go around their opponent's defense to land a strike on them or fake the direction of the attack. An opponent might think the strike is aimed towards their chest but at the very last moment, the spear might bend and go for their neck.

Brax found this technique very useful and focused most of his attention on it.

Brax firms his grip on his iron spear, which feels weightless because of his incredible newfound strength, and starts infusing his Qi energy into it.

By doing so, not only is he executing his spear technique, but also strengthening his spear.

He pulls back his spear and manipulates the Qi energy inside it as per the technique. As he does this, his spear glows and radiates Qi energy. This Qi energy then takes the form of a snake, a viper, to be exact.

Brax could do so without creating the silhouette of a snake, but he decided to do so because it looked cool.

The technique says that when it's performed right, the silhouette of a snake will be formed, but Brax found out that it's necessarily not true. When a cultivator uses this technique, the silhouette of a snake is formed because of their subconscious. Since the technique says that a snake silhouette should be formed, cultivators try to achieve it on a subconscious level.

When Brax studied the technique, he realized that the technique at its core was just the manipulation of the spear's molecular structure with the help of Qi energy without affecting its strength, nothing else. As for the snake silhouette, it plays no significant role other than looking cool.

But Brax doesn't mind it. He decides to stick with it so that he doesn't stick out in the eyes of the public.

Now that his spear looks like a golden snake, he thrusts it forward, but the spear's tip or the snakehead doesn't move forward. Instead, it coils back like a snake and then lunges forward with twice the speed.

The speed of the thrust easily breaks the sound barrier.

After the thrust, Brax holds the spear with both of his hands and pulls it back by swinging it around over his head and then brings it down with a downward sweep but this time, instead of continuing with the snake technique, he manipulates his Qi energy and covers the spear with blazing hot white fire.

Right now, this is one of the many simple movements Brax is capable of doing. As for the intermediate-level techniques, he is still trying to master them.

They will take some time. He could, of course, use them, but the movement of the technique will be crude.

Brax continues to practice when his attention is suddenly brought to his little table. The alchemy ID card that he was given during the alchemy exam is glowing.

He stops practicing and walks up to his table. He lifts his ID card and takes a look at it. There is a change on his card. The blank space in front of the rank column which was empty is now filled with letters.

"Alchemy apprentice, 100%" is what is written.

Brax smiles. His results are in and he has a perfect score, just like he expected.

"No time to waste then," he says and walks out of his house. His destination- the quest hall. As he planned, he is going to take a quest to earn some money for himself.

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Brax arrives in front of the Quest hall and he is surprised by how crowded this place is, the amount of disciples is twice in number compared to the manual hall which is usually packed daily.

He even saw some inner sect disciples as well, they are a rare breed down here as they spend most of their time in the mountains. The only reason they have to come down here is to collect supplies and take quests.

Quest Hall seems to be the place where you will most likely see an Inner sect disciple as it is one of the main sources of income for every disciple in the sect.

Like all inner sect disciples, the ones Brax saw were immensely arrogant and didn't shy away from showing their status by cutting lines and bumping into someone intentionally and then bullying them for getting in their way.

Power tripping is a very common occurrence in this world and no one bothers to interfere when it's happening, unless it's personal.

Ignoring the crowd and the commotion around him, he walks up to the quest board that is accessible to everyone.

Many outer sect disciples are standing in front of this board looking for a suitable quest for themselves.

Brax joins the crowd and starts looking through the posted quests, most of them are collecting and gathering tasks and some of them have decent rewards which causes quarrels between disciples on who gets it, but at the end of the day, it always comes down to strength.

There is also another type of quest that has decent rewards but most disciples don't even want to look at them. These quests are requests from mortal villages and settlements regarding bandit-caused problems.

The reason most disciples aren't showing any interest in them is because the mortality rate is high and even if the reward is decent, many of them don't want to risk their lives.

One only takes these tasks when they are desperate.

 But in Brax's case, these quests are easy money-earning opportunities. His eyes finally land on a particular quest. It's a quest regarding bandit problems in a village west of their sect and the reward is 50 spirit stones.

The reward is more than decent but it also means that the danger is high, quests like these start with only 25 spirit stones but the prize money may rise if someone fails to complete the quest.

The 50 spirit stone price tag might be a very appealing reward but to outer sect disciples, it's a clear death flag.

With his mind made up, he takes the quest sheet from the board which catches the attention of some outer sect disciples.

Some of them who have a higher cultivation level than Brax gloat inwardly after sensing his cultivation level. 'Another idiot thinking he can get rich quick, he is going to die a miserable death' they all think as they watch Brax make his way toward the quest counter.

Nobody bothers to even warn him about the danger the quest possesses.

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After waiting for an hour in a line because a few inner sect disciples came and cut right in front of them, Brax finally arrives in front of one of the counters.

The counter is currently being handled by a cute female disciple who has a 3rd stage Qi cultivation.

Disciples like these are the ones who couldn't progress any further but they didn't want to return to the mortal world so they decided to work for the sect and live here for the rest of their lives.

"How can I help you senior brother?" the girl asks but in reality, she might be way older than Brax, maybe in her 40s.

"I want to take on this quest," Brax says and hands over the quest sheet he took from the board. The girl takes the quest sheet, looks through its content, and then looks at Brax with concern.

"Are you sure senior brother, two disciples had taken this quest but were killed by the bandits," she tries to warn Brax about the danger which Brax appreciates. It is nice to see someone give two shit about someone in this fucked up world.

"I am, please hurry up," Brax says. The girl nods and starts going through the process of assigning the quest, she still shows concern on her face but won't do anything regarding it. She has already given a warning to Brax so now it's all on him if he dies.

She then asks for his name and house number to register his name in the system. In case of his death, they will know that his house is empty and will get assigned to some other disciple.

"Here you go," she says and hands the quest sheet back to Brax, he smiles at the girl and exits the line.

'I can't wait to see the world outside the sect,' he thinks as he walks out of the quest hall.