While Qiu Ling found out the very same day that things weren’t going as he had expected, Shao Hai needed quite a bit longer. Several weeks went by before he finally noticed Jing Yi going around and actually asking for tasks that were not much better than the ones he had said before.

Now, Jing Yi didn’t just go and rake the leaves and sweep the floors and wash the clothes, no, whenever he saw a martial sister carrying something heavy, he would rush up to her and ask if he could help to carry it. People probably would have thought that this was just him growing up and finally showing an interest in girls but … In fact, even if Jing Yi saw a martial brother carrying something heavy, he would also go and ask if he could help him.

The disciples were a little weirded out at first but since this benefited them, nobody said anything and just agreed to Jing Yi’s offer. Why shouldn’t they? He asked himself. It wasn’t like they were taking advantage of him! Soon enough, they couldn’t help but feel that this was really beneficial to them. So every now and then, a more daring person would walk up to Jing Yi and directly ask for his help.

Jing Yi was happy. This was very good. Shao Hai had been completely right. It wasn’t enough just to sit around and wait for people to assign him tasks. No, if he really wanted to be a hero, he had to go out and search for tasks himself! And then, people who needed help would actually approach him to ask for his help too. Wasn’t that great? Thus he happily dived into his new task, driving Shao Hai crazy.

Shao Hai didn’t know what to do though. He figured that this was, unfortunately, partly his fault. He had tried so hard to make Jing Yi give up on doing the tasks his senior martial brothers had handed to him but he hadn’t thought it through well enough.

This time, he couldn’t hurry too much. No, he had to consider the problem from all sides before he did something hasty again. There definitely couldn’t be another slip-up. After all, he had already heard from his senior martial brothers that cultivation would be easier the earlier one started. Actually, it was the same for practitioners. The older you were when you started out, the more troubles you would face. So they were actually in a good age since they were weren’t too young anymore and could already comprehend things better but on the other hand, they weren’t too old that problems would already crop up. In that case, he couldn’t wait too long but he didn’t have to hurry too much either. They weren’t yet above the right age. Taking a while to figure out a foolproof plan should be alright.

Thus, Shao Hai started to ponder the issue of how one became a hero, asking his senior martial brothers to tell him some stories on what it was like to be a practitioner of their stage. After all, these guys very much fit what Jing Yi imagined a hero to be, didn’t they? So whatever they had to say about their own lives and the experiences they had made, it should be valuable information that he could use to form his plan.

In that way, several months passed. Another year had soon gone by and once again, a group of disciples was admitted to the Yun Zou Sect.

By now, Shao Hai had come up with a few options on how to go about the problem with Jing Yi. He wasn’t too sure if they wouldn’t backfire though. After all, he had also thought that his last plan had been pretty good but had turned out to be such a disaster.

Now, he felt that he had to be careful. He went to go about his training as usual and then watched the disciples that had recently joined, sighing at the thought that Jing Yi had already been here for two years and still hadn’t managed to even reach the first stage of cultivation.

Never mind that this was the outer sect where things would take more time in most cases, this really was a very sad record. Even the worst disciple should be able to reach the first page in this amount of time. After all, that was the easiest stage. Among all the stages of cultivation, it should take the least amount of effort to finish it.

If Jing Yi already needed two years or, well, even more than two years to reach it, then would he ever be able to truly become an immortal? Shao Hai had asked about it and apparently, a cultivator needed to reach the third stage to even stop aging. The practitioners even needed to reach the fourth one but for them, lacking talent could be made up for with diligent practice which was apparently much more difficult for cultivators. So in a sense, he had an advantage over Jing Yi. Not that he was that much better than him. He had only recently managed to reach the first stage, after all. That wasn’t too impressive. Looking at the way Xiao Dong had managed to learn everything in that simple manual in just a few short months … He sighed. That could probably be called reaching the second stage, couldn’t it?

Well, that wasn’t important now. He had to make sure that Jing Yi would manage to reach the third stage by the time when he also stopped aging. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be really sad if he became immortal while his Xiao Yi was still a normal human? He couldn’t let that happen! How would they marry then? No, he definitely had to come up with a plan soon. One year should be enough. If the first plan he tried didn’t work, he would just try another one.

He got up from the stone bench and walked over in the direction of the building where Jing Yi lived. He walked by groups of new recruits and heard them excitedly talking to their senior martial brothers.

"Then what about the missions?"

The senior martial brother laughed. "You don’t have to worry about missions yet. In a few years, when you’re a little older and have learned more about cultivation, then you can start thinking about doing missions with the older disciples. Right now, you should just concentrate on learning how to cultivate."

Shao Hai stopped right in his tracks and turned to look at them incredulously. What had he just heard? Missions? How come he had forgotten about that?! Ugh! Wasn’t that the solution he had been searching for?!

He would just try to interest Jing Yi in a mission and make sure that he found out that reaching at least the first stage of cultivation was important for that. Then, Jing Yi would certainly invest more time into learning how to cultivate. Yes, he should do that. Thus Shao Hai ran to inquire from his senior martial brothers just how they should go about picking a mission.