The next morning Jack got up before dawn and did his usual exercises. After working up a sweat he went and washed with the cold water from the well. A few other people from the unit joined him as they took to copying his daily habits. They talked and joked around for a bit, and then went back to their houses to get ready for the day.
Jack got dressed in the slightly ill-fitting ceremonial uniform and went outside to gather up with everyone else, before following Du Angliang down the mountain to Tranquil Lake Town.
When they arrived to their building everyone entered the courtyard, only Jack and Du Angliang stayed behind and entered Du Angliang's office.
Inside, Du Angliang went to his table, opened a drawer, and took out a new clean robe. He presented it to Jack and said "Elder Yu had me pick this up for you. You have to wear it anywhere you go in your position as a disciple of the Endless Cycle Sect and, more importantly, as a disciple of Elder Yu."
Jack received the robe and felt the rich texture of its fabric on his fingers. It only had the Sect's crest of a large black circle with a smaller circle in it as a mark on its pure whiteness.
"Put it on, we have a lot of places to visit today." Du Angliang said and walked out of the office.
Jack quickly changed his clothes and returned his old uniform to the bottom drawer of the old cabinet he took it from a year and a half ago with a slight sense of melancholy.
With a start, he shook his head and thought 'What am I doing? It's just a piece of cloth.' He slightly chuckled as he closed the drawer and left the office.
When Jack entered the lobby, Du Angliang looked him up and down and said "I guess that will have to do." He turned around on his heel and walked out of the building.
Jack caught up with him in the street and said "Thanks for the advice last night. I'll try it out later and see how it goes."
Du Angliang grunted in response and kept walking in silence.
Soon they reached a large wooden building that had its outer walls painted in red. Once they entered Du Angliang nodded to a few disciples in red robes that stood in the lobby, and headed for a door to the side.
Once he opened it Jack heard a surprised feminine voice on the inside say "Disciple Brother Du? You came early, we still have three days."
Du Angliang moved to the side of the door and allowed Jack to enter. Inside he saw a girl in her teens standing behind a desk while covertly ironing her hair and giving Du Angliang the googly eyes.
Jack glanced at Du Angliang and saw him swishing a sleeve in dismissal as he said "I am not here for the payment." He motioned to Jack and said, "Elder Yu accepted a new disciple, his name is Song Tanda, and he will take my duties over from now on."
Du Angliang turned to Jack and said "This is Disciple Sister Gao Fumu; she represents the Undying Flame Mountain here in Tranquil Lake Town. Every tenth day you will come here and take their payment for our services."
Jack clasped his hands and slightly bowed towards Gao Fumu. She quickly clasped her hands in response while looking at Du Angliang and asked "Have you broken through to the seventh grade already, Disciple Brother Du?"
Du Angliang shook his head as a somber mood formed over him and he said "I still need that last push. Elder Yu arranged for me to go to the back mountain so I can focus on breaking through."
Gao Fumu covered her mouth and said "My apologies, Brother Du. I feel certain that you will break through in time for the inner disciple test." She stepped closer to Du Angliang and placed a hand on his arm in comfort while he nodded his head.
Jack stood to the side with wide open eyes as he thought 'What the hell just happened? Since when does Du Angliang care what other people think? Or talk like a normal person, for that matter?'
Gao Fumu and Du Angliang chatted for a few minutes, after which Jack followed his new Disciple Brother back to the main street.
In the next couple of hours, Du Angliang took Jack around to all of the major organizations of the Sect that sent their dead to the Gravedigger courtyard. He had to introduce him and inform him on how much each organization had to pay for what. Luckily Du Angliang had scrolls filled with the current debt back in his office so Jack didn't have to write anything down.
After they visited all of the organizations that sent them their dead, Du Angliang took Jack to meet the few older servants that lived in the Tranquil Lake Town and worked as corpse collectors.
As a carrier, Jack knew all of these people and had no problems with getting along with them. Du Angliang instructed him that he had to pay them one gold coin every ten days. From their expressions, they considered it decent pay, but Jack couldn't help but feel shocked at the disparity between even the servants that had a wage and formal disciples of the Sect.
Their last official stop in town happened at a mid-sized restaurant for disciples. Jack still hadn't entered one of them so he felt quite curious as they passed through the doors.
The interior disappointed him. The ground floor had around a dozen half-filled tables with regular wooden chairs, a couple of simple paintings, and a few decorative plants. A waiter walked between the tables and made sure that all of the disciples had what they needed.
Du Angliang ignored the ground floor and led Jack to the stairs on the side that took them to the first floor. Here the tables had thin wooden screens between them to provide an illusion of privacy, but everything else looked the same.
A young waiter greeted them at the landing and said "Welcome back Young Master Du, how can I serve you today?"
Du Angliang nodded to him in response and said "Bring us today's special, and something nice to drink. I am celebrating today."
Jack followed Du Angliang to a table in the corner of the room and sat down opposite him.
After a few seconds he couldn't hold himself back anymore and said "Today, during our whole tour, you never called anyone we talked to names or treated them like human garbage. Why don't you extend that courtesy to the people in our unit?"
Du Angliang looked at Jack with slightly confused eyes as he said "Why would I? They are garbage, worms that cannot break through the barrier to the fourth grade even after years of trying. I could kill them all with a wave of my hand. The people that we met today are diligent cultivators that deserve my respect, unlike those wastrels."
Jack stared at him in disbelief for a few seconds, before asking "Then what about me? I'm the same as them."
Du Angliang gave a dismissive wave of his hand as he answered "You, Song Tanda, have proven that you have the spirit of a cultivator, unlike the rest of them."
He hesitated for a few seconds, before saying "I must admit that I wanted to sabotage you in the beginning. I disliked that you had the ability to see spirit energy without ever cultivating, while everyone else had to put in a lot of blood and sweat to get where you were just by the luck of your birth. Only after I saw how you struggled to break through every barrier that I put in front of you did I start to respect you."
Jack's mouth hung open as a sudden flash of insight passed through his brain 'Do all of them see normal people like this? I thought that I just met a few bad apples, but what if it's the system itself. How would people on Earth behave if they could murder dozens with the wave of a hand, and not get punished for it?'
He closed his mouth, cleared his throat, and said "I'm not carrying that grudge anymore. Let's change the topic. I always wondered what you would do if you came across a village that bandits just started attacking?"
Du Angliang furrowed his brows slightly as he asked "Are the bandits my enemies?"
Jack shook his head and answered "No, just regular village robbing bandits."
Du Angliang's brow furrowed even more as he asked "Does the village have anything useful to give me?"
Jack shook his head again as he said "No, the village only has peasants and the things that peasants have."
Du Angliang's brow straightened as he gave a slight shrug and said "Then the problem becomes simple, I would do nothing. What does it matter to me if some peasants get robbed or killed? It just means that their destiny demanded that they die then and there."
Jack slowly nodded his head as he said "I figured as much." After a slight pause, he continued "What if the…"
He got interrupted as the waiter came to their table and brought a small brown bottle and two cups.
"Here we have some excellent Brilliant Immortal wine. Elder Huang just sold it to us this morning so you're quite lucky." The waiter said as he placed the alcohol in front of them and poured them both a cup. "The food will come shortly." he added with a bow and left the table.
Du Angliang raised his cup, said "To breaking through!" and downed it. Jack mimicked him and drank his own. 'This one's a little stronger than what old Long puts out.' Jack thought as he breathed the heat through his nose.
They made a few more toasts which made Du Angliang loosen up a little and, with Jack's prompting, he started to talk about the Sect and his life in general.
Jack found out that his father's family had roots in the sect for six generations, but his last relatives died in some alleged conspiracy and he ended up as a servant to Elder Yu as a seven-year-old child. He did everything that the Elder asked of him, but he never lost his cultivator's pride and vowed to bring his family back to their rightful place.
It fascinated Jack how Du Angliang made his family look like the good guys in a story that sounded like an old-fashioned struggle for power, while he made his supposed enemies seem like the worst scum that ever lived. Jack just nodded and listened on, it looked like Du Angliang held this in for a long time and needed to vent.
After they finished their meal, which Jack considered half passable, they went to the back of the restaurant and a Du Angliang introduced him to its manager and the people that carried the Gravediggers their midday meal every day. Du Angliang had his aloof mask back on and no one noticed the slight redness of his eyes and cheeks.
Jack made a mental note to come to the restaurant later and see what he could do to make the Gravediggers' meals better than just plain rice.
They followed the food servers back to their courtyard, where Du Angliang served the rice for the last time. After which he allowed Jack to ride the corpse cart with him and showed him how to control the animals.
When they got to Elder Yu's estate they left the others to their digging and went back to the courtyard.
Du Angliang showed Jack the side door where they gave the corpses over to the Elder's spirit puppets, and the place where he needed to store the cart.
After that, they waited for everyone else to return from their work and took a group of five to the graveyard shift.
For the first time, Jack saw how Du Angliang used the Spirit Capturing knives. Every time a spirit attacked a person he just controlled a knife with his spirit energy and stabbed it through. He spread the people in a line so they attracted as many spirits as they could and didn't care if any of them got hurt.
During all of this, he chatted normally with Jack, as if the screams of the others didn't bother him at all. After a few times where he let a spirit attack a teen for too long, Jack asked him for a few knives and did what he usually did while on patrol.
When Du Angliang saw his method he only shook his head and said that he just made the others weaker by protecting them like that. Jack ignored him and they continued the patrol.
After a few hours they returned back to their houses and Du Angliang said "Tomorrow morning we will go to visit Elder Yu and I will formally pass my responsibilities on to you."
Jack nodded his head and said goodnight as he entered his house. When he closed his door his face darkened as he thought 'There's no fixing that. The indoctrination goes too deep.' and went to bed filled with rage.