Immortal Master: Invincible Presence, Zero Power

Ewan Linden runs a sect and takes in disciples with talent. A system pays him for it. Each time he builds the sect up or recruits a gifted student, the system hands him a reward, and part of what comes back goes into his own cultivation. The rest arrives as items and cards, and when he uses them in public he looks like an immortal of real power. In front of his students he keeps up the manner of a master of great depth. His actual cultivation is lower than that of the students he is teaching. He had wanted to join a sect from the day he transmigrated into this world. A con man got to him first, and he spent five years digging ore in a mine before the system finally turned up.