I wonder what goes into selecting sect elders if this dude is a Dao Emperor and is still just an inner disciple.

Those webs of flesh between finger and thumb have been taking a beating lately. Most of the recent fights have seem to tear them open.

It's even harder if they don't watch the recordings. None of the missions that Shun has turned in were watched by elders and the outer disciples that watched them fast forwarded through quite a bit in some of the missions.

Well they still have to do personal missions once every three months. And nothing is stopping them from taking on more missions if they want/need to. I'm not sure if faction missions are mandatory on an annual mission either. But again, they can take on more faction missions as well.

Props to you, you correctly identified 60% of the monsters on Shun Long's team. That's a passing grade! And since a lot of people have overlooked Shun & Co before; this dude's grade would even be higher if we graded it on a bell curve. Too bad it won't help him though.

My guess is that there are two different tests. One test designed for the central continent, or at least the portion the Holy Sect controls and a second test for the outer continents. That's how a 1000 passed one set of tests and this set will only have a 100 or so that pass. Could explain why the others have a lot higher cultivation in only two months. Not everyone can cultivate as fast as Shun Long. They simply started at a higher level due to being exposed or related to various families and factions from the central continent, as well as the higher qi purity.

How stupid can you be? First you initially low ball the dude you need. And then you try to screw him for a single pill that might be worth a couple thousand stones at maximum when you need him for something that can net millions of stones?

I can address the other thing I mentioned in a flashback though, so I'll be doing so instead. The other stuff is just to fix grammar issues.

The issue is that there seems to be a big drop off in comments after the quest, bonding, and castle. One issue that's been brought up is the 'brainwashing', so I need to clear that up in order to help retain readers past that point. I also probably rushed to the castle after his huge level ups a little too fast as well, but that's harder to fix. So I'll just work on the addressing the perceived brainwashing.

It's a giant snake with some dragon characteristics.

I couldn't imagine how murky that would have looked. Hopefully you removed the tannins first and didn't find out after the fact!

If he keeps this up, he might be in the running for a peace prize . . .

I'm trying. Hopefully I pull it off.

It covers this a bit in the previous chapter, although I didn't give the full details. The different races get their own attributes when they level. For instance dwarves get extra constitution and strength, but mighty suffer a little in dexterity. So he got attributes aside from his farmer class that was nerfing his int, willpower, and charisma in addition to giving stats elsewhere. One of the paragraphs in the previous chapter starts off with "If he reset though" and covers it some. Then he leveled up from 19 to 24 and the rest is due to the bond with Amarok.

When I show stats, what is in parenthesis is how many attributes are bonus attributes. So his strength is 65 right now, and 5 of that is from Amarok.

Gotta love their thought process here. She's a traitor to her race, but they're also denouncing her as a half blood who should've been killed as a kid. You can't have it both ways.

I explained this better in another chapter comment you left. Basically, I didn't write down what I was thinking regarding the bond. And that's on me, I'll fix it later. But, the bond was forming naturally based on their previous interactions and it had nothing to do with the quest. The quest merely delayed formalizing the bond that was there. Just like Callum had a choice of rejecting the formal bonding, Amarok also had a choice to accept it or not. He accepted, but had to wait for some time before Callum was belatedly offered the choice.

Sorry, I can see why you would feel that. Thank you for the feedback, I can see how I didn't make that clear. Later, I'll add a paragraph regarding the bond in order to clear up what was in my brain but didn't make it into words. Basically, the bond was delayed because of the quest. So it formed naturally by their interactions over the previous weeks, but the formal bonding didn't happen until after the quest was over. Regarding the castle, yeah I might have rushed that too soon after the quest finished. I'm a first time author, so I've been making mistakes and learning as I go.

the enemy were outnumbered, minos' soldiers had the numbers advantage.

He'll focus on other things as time passes. Early on it's a big motivator though.