The white stone was about 3cm by 2cm by 1cm in volume. It was a rectangular piece of stone that was very translucent. While the overall stone was white, if one looked carefully, it had a cloudy texture inside it.
Alex had never seen anything like this before. 'It can't also be a pill, can it?' he thought. He focused on the stone for a bit before a panel popped up. The panel only had three words on it.
[Common Spirit Stone]
'Common Spirit Stone? What is that?' he was even more confused now. He wanted to come back to the game fast, so he had only learned what he thought was necessary to him, and not bothered with the nitty-gritty stuff.
"What is this?" he asked as he picked up the common spirit stone.
"That's a spirit stone." The inner sect disciple said without missing a beat.
"What's a spirit stone. " Alex continued to ask.
"What? Have you never seen a spirit stone?" the disciple asked with a questioning look on his face.
"No. This is my first time hearing about one, let alone seeing it." Alex answered truthfully.
"Oh. This is a common spirit stone. The inside of it is full of Qi that you can absorb while cultivating to improve your cultivation. Or, you can also choose to use it as a currency as most of the cultivators only exchange stuff in spirit stones." The disciple was smiling while answering this. It seemed it was his first time meeting a cultivator that did not know what a spirit stone was.
"Go now. You are taking up the line. You can come back exactly a month from now to get another [Minor Healing Pill], [Qi Increasing Pill] and a spirit stone." The inner sect disciple ignored Alex and started calling the next person forward.
Alex silently put the 3 items into his inventory. He thanked the disciple and walked out of the room.
Now that he had a nameplate, he could go get a book from the library. So, he headed towards the library.
He was just walking out of the Disciple Hall when he noticed something. It was the big black rock that kept the rankings for all the disciples in the sect.
Even the back of it had a list of all the students in the ranking, ones that were constantly changing every second. The stone was still as magical as ever.
But there was something different about this ranking. For one, the ranking no longer said 'Contribution points' but instead said 'Alchemy Achievements'.
Alex quickly went to the front side of it to check if the ranking was still there, and it was. It seemed the rock showed two different rankings, and he had missed the backside because he was too hasty at going to the disciple hall.
He went back to check the names on the backside. Wan Li was still in the first place, Zhou Mei was still in second place, however, Fan Ruogang was not in third place but instead the fourth place.
The third place was instead occupied by someone named Song Zun. The name Song Zun was nowhere to be found in the contribution point's list's top 20 names.
This made Alex quite befuddled. The term 'Alchemy Achievements' was very vague for Alex to know what the rankings were based on.
"Guess I will learn it later, " he thought and decided to go to the library. As he was about to leave, a name caught his eye.
Yu Ming.
"Oh, this thing already has my name recorded on it. And I'm even dead last. I'm surprised I can be on the list with zero alchemy achievements or contribution points." He found it amusing.
After a while, he left. He made his way back to the library where the elder was taking in the different disciple's nameplates while giving others back.
He walked up to the elder with a nameplate in his hand.
"Nameplate," the elder said absentmindedly. Alex handed him his new nameplate.
The elder instinctively took the nameplate and brought it up to his head, and frowned. He jolted out of his absentmindedness and looked at Alex.
"Hey boy. Why don't you have a single contribution point?" he asked.
"Elder, I am new to the sect. I joined today, so I haven't done anything to earn contribution points yet." Alex said nervously. Was this man going to turn him back? He was worried.
"If you don't have contribution points, then you can't enter boy. Everything in here costs contribution points to borrow. The better the book, the more it costs. Even the cheapest ones cost at least 100 points. "
"So go to the contribution hall and take some missions. Earn some points, and only then come back. Doing anything else will be a waste of your time." The man said as he handed Alex back his nameplate.
Alex didn't immediately take back his nameplate. Instead, he started saying,
"Elder, I might not have any contribution points at the moment. However …" he opened his inventory and brought out the metal token," I have this. I was told that I could pick any Earth grade or lower book for free from the Library."
"Hmm…" the elder squinted. "A silver library token?" the elder was surprised. He didn't even see a bronze token normally, but to think a silver token was here.
"How did you get this boy?" he asked Alex.
"Elder Lang gave this to me this morning." He replied truthfully.
"An outer sect disciple getting a silver library token huh. You must've done very well in the entrance exam then. " The elder mused. He then handed back the nameplate and the silver token and said,
"Alright, you can go in. Since you are an outer sect disciple, you can go anywhere up to the 5th floor. Pick whatever book you want in there. As long as the book is earth grade or lower, you can borrow it for a week for free."