Starting as a stray dog, I embarked on a journey of cultivation.

On the evening of the ninth day of the Divine Wind Sect's recruitment.

As the day's selections came to an end, the people in the central square dispersed.

The elder of the Divine Wind Sect in charge of this disciple selection was very depressed and was drinking alone in a restaurant in the city.

In order not to attract the attention of ordinary people, he deliberately changed his clothes and disguised himself as an ordinary mortal.

After recruiting for nine whole days, not a single disciple with a high-grade Earth-rank spiritual root was found.

Although many children came to participate in the selection, only a few were truly talented.

So much so that he frowned and shook his head repeatedly.

Just then, a figure suddenly sat down next to him.

The elder looked up, frowned, and said, "This is my seat, please move aside."

But Gou An suddenly smiled and asked, "Elder, how is this ordinary wine?"

Upon hearing this, the Shenfeng Sect elder immediately cast a scrutinizing gaze at Gou An: "Who are you?"

At this moment, Gou An completely concealed his demonic aura and pushed his transformation technique to its limit, making him appear no different from an ordinary person.

"Just an idle rogue cultivator!" Gou An maintained his calm smile, clearly confident in his disguise.

As expected, the elder didn't notice anything amiss with Gou An, and simply asked, "What do you want with me?"

"Naturally, I've come for the Divine Wind Sect's recruitment of disciples!" Gou An stated his purpose directly.

"Hmm?" But the elder frowned after hearing this and said, "What could be the matter with disciple recruitment? If you want to join the sect, I'm afraid you're not qualified."

"Our sect never recruits cultivators who come halfway through their cultivation journey. All the core elders of our sect have cultivated their way up from ordinary disciples."

"It wasn't me!" Gou An shook his head with a smile. "It's a child I have here that I'd like to introduce to the elders."

"Children?" The elder shook his head helplessly upon hearing this: "If any children want to participate in the selection, there is one last day tomorrow. They can come and line up for testing then. As long as they have spiritual roots, they can join the sect."

"No!" Gou An shook his head: "The child here is no ordinary child."

"What could be different?" The elder smiled slightly, clearly not holding out much hope, after all, more than 10,000 children had been tested over the past nine days.

"Of course, his talent is extraordinary!" Gou An laughed. "This child here can be described as having astonishing talent!"

"Just say it, what kind of spiritual root!" The elder still frowned, seemingly a little impatient.

"High-grade Heavenly Rank!" Gou An answered directly.

However, the elder of Shenfeng Sect was not excited or happy after hearing this. Instead, his expression became more and more impatient: "Fellow Daoist, if you want to cause me trouble or have fun with me, I suggest you leave as soon as possible. I don't have time to play with you here."

Seeing that the elder did not believe him, Gou An could only take out a piece of jade the size of a palm from his pocket and place it on the table.

"Whether what I said is true or not, you can just take a look and see for yourself." Gou An pushed the jade stone in front of the elder.

The elder of the Divine Wind Sect looked down and his gaze immediately sharpened.

This piece of jade is the one that Gou An used to test the spirit stones for Pang Ya. The test record is still preserved on it.

The elders of the Divine Wind Sect naturally recognized that this stone was an ordinary spirit-testing stone, and at this moment, they could vaguely see a wisp of golden light flowing within the jade stone.

This is a residual reaction after the discovery of a Heavenly Rank spiritual root.

"Golden light! Is it really a Heavenly Grade jade?" The elder picked up the stone in disbelief, his emotions becoming excited. He quickly examined the jade carefully again, and after confirming that it was genuine, he was overjoyed.

"See, I told you I wasn't lying!" Gou An smiled slightly, then said, "Do you want a genius disciple with a Heaven-rank spiritual root? And one who's not even four years old yet, practically a genius among geniuses."

"If you just ask, I can bring her to you."

"Fellow Daoist, I need it so badly!" All the worries on the Shenfeng Sect elder's face disappeared, replaced by excitement and urgency.

"However, a disciple with such talent is not someone you can just take whenever you want!" Gou An suddenly became mysterious.

"Fellow Daoist, please feel free to make any requests. As long as I can fulfill them, I will do my best!" the elder of the Divine Wind Sect replied hastily.

"This genius child was entrusted to me by an old friend!" Gou An feigned helplessness and slowly said, "Unfortunately, I don't know how to teach children, nor do I want her to waste her talent, so I wanted to find her a good sect."

"As you know, there are many sects in the world, and no single sect is the only choice."

"It just so happened that we met here these past few days, so I wanted to have a talk with the elder."

"I understand, I understand!" The Shenfeng Sect elder nodded repeatedly, as obedient as a diligent student.

"So I'd like to learn some basic information about your sect. I'll ask, and you answer!" Gou An said calmly.

"Fellow Daoist, please ask!" The elder of the Divine Wind Sect hurriedly poured wine for Gou An, fearing that Gou An might suddenly regret his decision.

"Your sect is one of the four great sects, so why are the requirements for recruiting disciples so low? You only look at their spiritual roots, and even those with low-grade human-level spiritual roots can easily join the sect?"

"Fellow Daoist, you are unaware of this!" The elder of the Divine Wind Sect hurriedly replied, "Our sect used to have very high requirements for recruiting new disciples, starting with Earth-rank spiritual roots."

"It is precisely because of such high requirements that my sect has not had many members over thousands of years."

"A few days ago, there was a demonic disturbance in the East Sea. Our sect sent a large number of disciples to suppress it, but suffered heavy casualties."

"Therefore, sects urgently need a large number of fresh blood. In addition, with the decline of the Heavenly Dao, the probability of high-level spiritual roots appearing among human disciples is getting lower and lower. There is no other way but to lower the requirements."

"The demonic threat from the East Sea?" Gou An's interest was piqued upon hearing this term.

"Yes!" Elder Shenfeng nodded helplessly: "That was a black dragon at the Nascent Soul stage, with profound cultivation. Our sect used almost all its strength to suppress it, but we also paid a huge price."

In the end, he couldn't help but let out a long sigh.

"Alright!" Gou An nodded, then asked his second question: "If I were to entrust the child to you, how do you plan to raise him?"

The elder of the Divine Wind Sect immediately replied, "If it is truly a Heaven-Rank Spiritual Root, then it must have been nurtured with the sect's best resources."

"If it is indeed the high-grade Heaven-rank spiritual root that you mentioned, then it will definitely become the sect master's personal disciple, and may even be cultivated as the future successor of the sect."

Gou An nodded after hearing this, and then asked, "Since your sect suffered heavy casualties in the pacification of the demons, the sect must have been greatly weakened. I wonder if the foundation has been damaged, and whether it will decline in the future because of this?"

"I don't want my old friend's son, with such talent, to join a sect that's declining."

"Don't worry about that!" The elder of Shenfeng Sect quickly assured, "As the saying goes, even a starved camel is bigger than a horse. The strength of our Shenfeng Sect is incomparable to that of other small sects."

"Although the casualties were heavy this time, the foundation was not damaged. Even if the vitality is damaged now, it is still not comparable to the Twelve Dao Sects."

After listening, Gou An said, "I wonder what level of cultivation your sect leader has, and what the strength of your sect is. Could you also please introduce some basic information about your sect?"

The elder of the Divine Wind Sect did not hesitate and began to answer directly, since these questions were not exactly secrets.

"Our Divine Wind Sect Master entered the Nascent Soul stage a hundred years ago. The sect also has three Nascent Soul stage elders, six Divine Control stage elders, and eighteen steward elders at the Core Formation stage."

"In addition, there are about sixty core disciples at the Core Formation stage and over nine hundred disciples at the Qi Refining stage."

At this point, the elder of the Divine Wind Sect sighed deeply and said with great regret, "This is the population statistic after the East Sea demon scourge. Before the demon scourge, the sect was much more prosperous."

Gou An nodded after hearing this. It seemed that the four major Dao sects were indeed powerful, and their top combat strength was even stronger than that of the Ten Thousand Demon City.

This is just the foundation of one sect. If we add the other three great heavenly sects and the twelve Dao sects, it will be even more terrifying.

This is understandable; the demon race is trapped in the Demon Beast Mountain Range and is indeed no match for them.

Moreover, Gou An was worried that if these human sects joined forces, they could even directly wipe out the Demon Beast Mountain Range.

So it's better to be human!

Gou An couldn't help but sigh, and even considered whether he should find an ordinary child to possess, but unfortunately Gou An didn't know the art of possession.

Moreover, it's also a question whether the system in the brain will still exist after possession.

After pondering for a moment, Gou An asked Elder Shenfeng again, "If I hand over my child with a high-grade Heavenly Rank spiritual root to your sect, what benefits would I receive?"

Faced with Gou An's question, the elder of the Divine Wind Sect answered with a slight hesitation: "According to the rules of our sect, during the selection of disciples, disciples with human-grade spiritual roots will give their children's families a hundred taels of silver as a token of appreciation, disciples with earth-grade spiritual roots will give a thousand taels of silver, and disciples with heaven-grade spiritual roots will give ten thousand taels of silver."

But Gou An shook his head and said, "I am a cultivator. Silver is not important to me. I want spirit stones, magic weapons, cultivation techniques, and other cultivation resources."

"This..." The elder of Shenfeng Sect suddenly didn't know how to answer. After a long while, he finally said, "Indeed, we have never encountered such a situation before. We always select disciples from among the mortals. For the families of these children, silver is the best reward."

"If your sect doesn't want this genius!" Gou An sighed, then said, "I don't mind asking other sects."

After saying that, Gou An deliberately made a gesture of getting up, pretending to leave.

"No, no, no!" The Shenfeng Sect elder quickly grabbed Gou An's hand. "We can talk, we can talk!"

"Then name your terms!" Gou An said.

"How about five thousand spirit stones?" The elder held up five fingers, but asked somewhat nervously.

Seeing this, Gou An simply shook his head: "It seems you are not sincere, fellow Daoist!"

"I am merely a steward elder, not a core elder!" The Shenfeng Sect elder looked troubled. "I don't have much to offer."

"Moreover, the sect entrusted me with selecting disciples here, but they didn't provide me with many spirit stone resources."

"I want to ask!" Gou An suddenly said, "What if this disciple wasn't selected through a public process, but rather someone you accidentally discovered in the mortal realm, a treasure you picked up out of thin air!"

"Then you'll bring it back to the sect. That should be a great achievement, right? I wonder what kind of reward you'll get?"