1912 A Bad Mission?
Alex and the man arrived at the Mission Hall, a large building with many disciples vying for a job to do, in return for some contribution points.
They could use the contribution points to either create a mission of their own or use them on various items and services they could purchase from the sect.
"Any suggestions on what I should get, brother Tai?" Alex asked.
"Uhh… I don't know if you will have much of a choice, Brother Dawnblade. The missions we get also depend on the amount of contributions we have earned. So it entirely depends on our luck," the man said. "Pray that there are missions you would want to do. Last time, I had to clean a senior disciples' house, and let me say it was not a fun mission."
Alex grimaced a little. He hoped he could get a good mission.
There seemed to be two major lines of disciples. One for the ones getting a mission, and another for the ones returning from a mission.
Occasionally, there were groups of people who directly went into a deeper part of the building, which made Alex wonder where they were going.
"That is for people who have come to put up a mission. There are elders inside who will judge the difficulty of the work that is to be performed and assign contribution points for it."
"Sometimes they come with people that they want to get the job done," Tai Guidao explained.
Alex nodded as he understood a little more. The things he was being explained made sense to him. He had to remain in the line for quite a while. There were too many people who wished to gain some contribution points, and they all seemed to come during the morning.
Thankfully, the line also moved forward quickly as people got their mission and left.
After half an hour of waiting, it was Alex's turn.
He arrived in front of the elder and quickly got himself a list of missions he could perform. Unfortunately, as a newcomer, there were simply not that many things he could do.
Alex specifically searched for works that could be done outside the sect and found there were none. All of the missions were for inside the sect.
He navigated through the list and quickly found one he thought he could do. It was a mission to take care of someone's garden for an entire month. In return, Alex would get 20 contribution points.
Once he took the mission, he left the hall.
Tai Guidao waited outside for Alex. "What mission did you get?" he asked.
"Taking care of someone's garden," Alex said.
"Oh…" the man's face changed slightly, giving a worrisome look.
"What's wrong? Did I choose something bad?" Alex asked.
Tai Guidao couldn't hide his awkward look anymore. "Maybe you did, maybe not," he said.
Alex's eyes narrowed. "Can you tell me what I did wrong?" he asked.
"Pray you didn't," the man said. "Sometimes, cultivators in this sect end up spending a majority of their time cultivating, and as such end up ignoring their garden."
"So, when they end up realizing that they cannot fix their garden in time for the yearly check-in, they get a mission out of sect and employ some poor fool to fix it."
"Because the garden is usually unfixable, the person who took the mission ends up being punished for failing to maintain it, while the person whom the garden belonged to only gets away with minor punishment."
"It's a very well-known method of reducing your punishment, and most cultivators don't take this mission until they have surveyed the garden beforehand."
Alex frowned. "So I am being taken advantage of?" he asked.
"Perhaps. One cannot say for certain until youtake alook at the garden itself,"the man said."Let me go with you and see. I fell for it the first week I was heretoo, so I know what to look for."
Alex checked the missionandthe house was indeed to be empty. The person who had taken the mission had left the house.
"Can I refuse the mission now? What happens if I abandon it?"Alex asked.
"If youdon'tcomplete in the allocated time, youhave togive the sect back some of your contribution points in return."
"That sucks,"Alex said."Let'sgo check the garden first."
"Let'sdo that. Who is your employer?"the man asked.
Alex checked his nameplate."House number 455. Quite a high-
ranking personIassume."
"455 is upper Inner sect disciple.Probablyin the late Immortal Ascendance realm. Is there a name?"the man asked.
"No name,"Alex said."But 455 should be someone by the name of Kang Reiyun. The talisman I received said so."
"Let'sgo check then. I need to help fix a formation for house number 1224."
Alex and Tai Guidao arrived at the mountain where the 455th-
ranking disciple lived. The house was empty, so Alex and Tai Guidao quickly entered, arriving at the back where the garden was.
"Yep!"Tai Guidao said asthe two of themwalked out into the garden."You got trapped into the same thing as me, brother. That sucks for you."
The poison plants were already showing signs of dying, with manyof theleaves turning yellow, some even wilting.
Alex sighed at the sight of it all.
"Do what you can, brother Dawnblade. The plants I looked after were dead before the senior came back. If you can keep these aliveforlong enough, maybe you have a chance."
Alex nodded."Thank you for your aid, brother Tai.I'llsee you later."
Tai Guidao nodded."See you, brother Dawnblade."
Alex watched as the young man walked away, finding him quite likable. Unlike Zhi Naibao, who seemed very cold toward him in general, Tai Guidao was much more friendly and likedto talk a lot.
Alex needed someone like that to help himfurtherunderstand life in the Immortal realm.
He turned back around and looked at the plants in front of him. His eyes wandered through the plants, the name flowing into his mind one after another.
Dark Poison Moss, Striped Dogbane, Weeping Bugeye, Red Climbing Ivy, Dotted Silver Lily, Triple-thorned Clove, and many other plants.
He took a moment to look at all the plants, not a single one of which was something hedidn'tknow about. AlchemyGod'sknowledge helped him in this regard.
He took another moment to go through each plant and learn about it. He tried to understand what they did, how they were grown, howthey were planted.
Alex approached the plants next and began touching the plants, trying to learna littlemore.As hetouched, he employed the Dao of Plant Growth togive some additional help tothese plants that wanted to continue living.
After looking through them all in about 20 minutes, Alex came up with a list of materialsthat he neededto make these plants work.
On top of his Dao of Plant Growth, he needed to supply them withactualnutrients, which he needed to do next.
Thankfully,there werethousands of ingredients in the Demon Realmthatwere completely unused.Should he use those, these plants wouldgo back to being stable onceagain.
