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I opened the jade box Emperor Li had given me, and the room was instantly filled with scorching energy. I used my fire affinity to keep the excess heat away from my body, but it was a struggle. My affinity was too low to completely control it.

I nearly rushed to place my hand in the box and begin absorbing the fire, but a moment of rationality came over me, and I asked the system a question to help gather information Emperor Li had refused to give me.

“System, how much to learn to perfectly control the Three Thousand Flames spirit fire?”

Mastery of Earth-Rank Three Thousand Flames Spirit Fire. Cost 10 trillion credits.

Earth-Rank. He had given me an Earth-Rank spirit fire for free. That immediately suggested one of two possibilities in my mind. Either Pill Emperor Li was absurdly wealthy, which, if he was a 600-year-old monster, he most likely was, or he was so willing to give it away because he possessed the Three Thousand Flames fire seed. My guess was that both were true.

I didn’t know when the ‘time would be right,’ but I vowed to myself that I would find Emperor Li as soon as possible.

I was slightly worried about this all being a trap. I didn’t know if old monsters could steal someone’s body in this world, but, well, I had done it, so it definitely wasn’t impossible. If Emperor Li was truly running out of time, he might be planning to do such a thing to me, so I would need to take preventative measures, but he seemed genuine enough.

Not for the first time, I wished for an ability to read people’s true thoughts. Purchasing such an ability from the System, one where it would give me insights into a Pill Emperor, would be far beyond my means, but I needed to look into it the next time I had spare credits.

Returning to the present, I had to consider if I should absorb this new fire or not. Nearly every fiber of my being screamed at me to absorb it as quickly as possible, but there was a catch. The insane cost of mastery showed how difficult it would be to control. I could barely keep the heat away from myself while opening the box. Delicate alchemy operations would be nearly impossible.

After several long moments, I finally closed the beautiful jade box and returned it to my storage bag. Absorbing an Earth-Rank spirit fire offered me no benefits, there were only downsides. I needed to purchase a proper Profound-Rank fire I could more easily control, and that couldn’t happen until after I became a Pill Lord and started earning spirit stones. For now, the Cold Mountain Fire did everything I needed it to do.

I opened my soul and returned a portion of Cold Mountain Fire to my body.

Since I couldn’t progress to Pill Lord without a city to control, I also put my study of Emperor Li’s notes on hold. I felt like I had reached the end of what I could achieve in alchemy without advancing, so I instead focused on improving my skill in formations.

Years began passing one after another.

I mastered what the Hu Clan could teach me about Rank 2 formations and started my studies in Rank 3. This was much slower, and my comprehension boost was nearing the limit of its peak effectiveness, but I was still making good progress.

Eleven years after Mei left to become the Water Flower, it was finally time for the Water Flower’s Groom Selection.

The Groom Selection wasn’t too different from a Flower Blossoming, when a new Flower was chosen. There were five parts to the competition: appraisal by a master of astrology, a test of cultivation, a test of personal skills, a test of one’s ability to nurture new talents, and the Flower’s personal opinion.

Each area rewarded up to ten points, for a maximum possible score of fifty. Mei wasn’t allowed to freely choose who would be her Groom, but the structure of the competition was such that she could openly choose anyone who was within ten points of the top scorer after the results of the first four parts were tallied by giving her choice ten points and everyone else zero.

I had taken several classes in the Mountain District over the years to prepare, and I had worked through Manager Bai to massage the politics of the situation. Based on my impressions, there shouldn’t be anyone who could compete with me in most areas. I was confident about my personal skills, and I had to believe Mei would choose me over the others, but the astrology master’s opinion was unpredictable.

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The competition was held in the middle of the Water District. A large outdoor amphitheater was specially prepared for the competition, and thousands of potential Grooms gathered in a waiting area nearby. Most didn’t have the slightest chance of being selected, but they still came in the vain hope of a miracle occurring.

To enter the selection, we first had to pass through a series of archways. Examining them, I realized that someone of at least the Formation Lord level would have had to have made them. The first arch tested whether a person cultivated wood qi, the second tested if they were a Grandmaster, and the third checked if they were under sixty years old. A failure at any point meant disqualification.

I didn’t expect this check to stop anyone since these were the most basic qualifications and were widely known, but to my surprise, at least half of the aspiring Grooms were rejected at this point.

After that, we were separated into different rooms to be checked by an astrology master. The one who tested me was an older-looking man in a fantastical black robe embroidered with silver and gold stars. I wasn’t clear about the specifics, whether he had a blessing or some kind of trained skill, but he placed his hand on my forehead and started muttering to himself.

“A dog wants to marry a rooster? What a joke,” he snorted as he muttered to himself. “At least it’s a metal dog for an earth rooster. It’s not going to be a happy marriage, but he will profit from it. Will it be good for the kingdom?”

He turned and looked at the scribe. “Give him three points and pass him on. Let him compete.”

The scribe noted it down and then asked me for my name, age, and exact cultivation level.

As he was writing, I saw several more people entering, and the old man waved them away without even touching them, showing they failed at a fundamental level. Having only scored three out of a possible ten was a bad place to start, but I knew it would only get better from there.

After that, I faced a woman with an extremely domineering spiritual presence. My soul had grown extremely strong over the years, but in front of this woman, I almost felt like a child. She had to have cultivated her soul to the extreme and probably had a blessing boosting it.

She looked at every inch of me and examined my cultivation level. When she was done, she turned to the scribe. “Pass him. Eight points.”

The people who passed these two tests were gathered in a hall behind the amphitheater. After the archways and both tests, the pool of competitors was narrowed to only forty.

Inside the amphitheater, hundreds of people waited for our performances. In the front rows and along the left and right sides of the seating area, important members of clans from across the city were in attendance. The center area was completely taken up by rows of private boxes.

Nearest the bottom, each of the current Flower and Groom pairs was given a box to view the competition up close. Above them, in larger, more lavish boxes, former Flowers and Grooms watched the proceedings in small groups. Finally, seated above everyone else, the King and Queen sat on golden thrones and oversaw everything.

We were brought onto the stage one by one to demonstrate our personal talents. Everyone was a wood qi cultivator, and we were competing for the position of Water Groom, so nearly everyone displayed talents in herbalism. They took out various plants they had grown, discussed why they were special, and talked about the fields under their control.

Breaking the mold, a handful of people demonstrated martial or healing skills, but considering the role the Water Flower and Groom played in the city, those didn’t seem to impress the judges as much.

When I went on stage, I demonstrated that while I was a wood cultivator, I also cultivated fire qi. I brought out a large assortment of pills I had made previously and performed a quick bit of on-stage alchemy. I considered creating a formation, but that would have been difficult without using my fire seed, and that wasn’t something I wanted to flash around this crowd.

The judges seemed impressed enough, so I waited for the next competition.

The ‘talent nurturing’ portion was not a practical test as I originally expected. There was no easy way to test such capabilities in a short time span, so instead, we were given both written and verbal exams. The written portion was handled backstage while competitors appeared on stage one by one for the verbal portion.

This was challenging. Even though I had studied for it, the fact was that I didn’t always agree with what my teachers had told me, so I had a hard time remembering the ‘correct’ answer when it differed from ‘my’ answer, but I still aced this test easily enough. I had a hard time remembering, so I just cheated.

All the relevant material had long been stored in my mental library, and I had a good understanding of where to find any particular piece of information on this topic, so when I got a question, I just flipped to that book and copied the answer. It was slightly more difficult to do this during the verbal test since I needed to be quick and not give any physical tells, but I managed.

Finally, it was all down to the final test. It was the one I both felt the most confident about and most feared. Mei would give each competitor points based on her personal preference.

At this point, the highest-scoring competitor had a total of 38 out of 40 points, and since Mei could only award a total of 10 points, anyone with a score lower than 28 was automatically eliminated.

I barely passed this elimination round with a score of 29. A total of 11 from the first two rounds, 10 from the personal talent portion, and 8 from the nurturing test pushed me across the line, barely, but most others weren’t so lucky. For the final selection, only five of us remained.

The five of us walked out onto the stage as the audience looked on. In the center box, Mei stood up. She closely examined my competitors, but she didn’t spare me a single glance. After looking at each contestant, I saw a brief flash of disappointment cross her face.

Finally, she announced her decision. She could have graded each of us on a 10-point scale, but doing so was meaningless. We were the group of people deemed to be viable companions, and she had the choice of who she would marry from among us.

Each of my competitors received 0 points, and I got the full 10. Watching Mei’s reaction, it didn’t feel like a victory, though. The entire time I was on stage, she didn’t look at me even once. I didn’t know what she was feeling. If she was sad, angry, or even happy, I couldn’t tell, but we would have time to figure it out together.