Chapter 214 – Life 73, Age 32, Martial Grandmaster Peak

As I sat on the stage next to Su Heng, the servants finished their preparations on the ground below us. They would occasionally shoot wary glances in our direction, but since we didn’t say anything and didn’t interfere with them, they just went about their normal work.

Once everything was clean and the dirt was all swept back into its proper place, the servants departed and left Su Heng and me alone. While the situation seemed to be making the man a bit nervous, I just sat calmly and flipped through a few of the cultivation techniques I had picked up in the Su Clan to study what they offered their disciples in more detail.

About an hour later, the red double doors of the courtyard opened, and a young Martial Master led a large group of children inside.

Upon seeing us, he inhaled sharply, and his eyes widened in shock, but he didn’t address us. He just carefully guided the disciples to sit on the packed earth in straight rows and columns and ensured the spacing between each child was identical.

As he worked, this Master, just like the servants before him, kept glancing at me and Su Heng, looking for any signs of unhappiness or disapproval.

I put him out of my mind and turned to my companion.

“Su Heng, I have never studied these ceremonies before, and it has been a long time since my own. What can you tell me about them?”

“This… I only know what I have been told.” 

He began twitching as he thought through how to answer me. Su Heng seemed far too nervous for a man of his standing. He had been like this with YuanFei as well. Maybe he just wasn’t good with authority figures.

“These children have all reached sixteen years of age, so the qi in their bodies has started to awaken, and they are ready to be blessed by the Heavenly Dao. However, their bodies do not contain enough energy to connect them to that exalted entity. So, Young Master YuanFei will inject each of them with his qi to allow this connection to be made, allowing them to receive their blessings.”

I nodded at this. “What if he doesn’t do so? Will they just never be blessed?”

“You don’t kn—” He looked over at me nervously and pulled back his somewhat insulting question. “They can begin learning to cultivate now, without being blessed, and when the energy in their bodies is sufficient, the connection will form on its own. However, delaying like this can result in weakened or crippled blessings.”

“Thank you for the explanation.”

Su Heng’s information mostly matched the information I had been able to gather in the past. The only detail he left out was that it was possible to be blessed on one’s own without first learning to cultivate. Over time, energy would slowly accumulate in a person’s body naturally, and when it was sufficient, they would receive their blessing. In rare circumstances, this could even happen to a child before they had an opportunity to attend a blessing ceremony, but not until after they had reached sixteen years old.

Did Su Heng forget to include this additional information, or did he not know it? In the Wastes, with its lower qi density than other places, it was possible that such spontaneous blessings were impossible. Something to look into later. It was possible that this could mean an unusually large number of people in the Wastes had never been blessed.

After all the children were in position and kneeling on the ground, the Master who had been guiding them left, and shortly afterward, YuanFei and four other Grandmasters entered the courtyard.

YuanFei gave me a quick look of aggrievement, and his eyes landed on my throne for a little too long, but he maintained his composure.

After shooting Su Heng and me brief glances, the four Grandmasters following him took their seats, and YuanFei walked to the front of the stage. After a bit of speechifying about the glory of the Su Clan, he sent out thin tendrils of qi and used them to pierce the dantian of each child.

Many of them, especially the ones in the front, showed little reaction to this process, but some of the weaker and more malnourished children showed signs of extreme pain. This could have been because of their constitution, but it also seemed like YuanFei was being a little rougher with those children who were farther away from him. Either he didn’t care, or he didn’t have the qi control necessary to properly channel his energy at such distances.

I watched the whole process closely in energy vision. Bestowing blessings had to involve an energy transfer from the Dao of some sort, and I was hoping to see hints of how that worked. However, the Heavenly and Earthly Daos were as ineffable as always. All I could see was Su YuanFei’s qi as it cycled through the body of each child and slowly dissipated.

Once his part in things was done, YuanFei backed off and took his seat with the other Grandmasters while the children below went through the process of receiving their blessings.

While I couldn’t see the energy of the Heavenly Dao crashing down upon the children, in many of them, I could see its effects. Few showed any physical signs of being blessed, but I could see thin streams of energy begin to cycle through the bodies of over half of them. 

The appearance of this energy and the way it moved through their bodies reminded me of Cai XiaoYu’s and Jin ZiHan’s ‘beauty’ blessings. The energy in the bodies of these children seemed much weaker, possibly because they received a weaker blessing, but it seemed that most had received some type of blessing that altered their physical bodies.

I half-turned to Su Heng as I kept one eye fixed on the scene below.

“What does the Su Clan look for during these ceremonies? Are there any specific blessings they want to see?”

Su Heng gave a weak chuckle. “It is extremely rare for anyone to show signs of their blessings. Those that do are prized, of course, but usually, there’s nothing to see. The elders are mostly just studying everyone’s reactions. Was the process smooth? Was it painful? Did the child faint? Did they show no reaction at all? That kind of thing. By studying their reactions, the elders can estimate the strength of the blessing and the strength of the child.”

This made me fully turn and gawk at the man. Putting aside that he didn’t have a way to see the energies affecting the children below, had he not even seen that most of those ‘reactions’ were caused by YuanFei’s crude qi control? Even if Su Heng couldn’t see this, could no one in the entire clan see it?

Even if the Su Clan was as incompetent as I expected they were, I had a hard time accepting that no one could piece things together and figure this out. That meant either the people who could do so just didn’t care about this ceremony, or more likely, those competent enough to see what was happening were being shipped out of the Wastes before they could do anything to change the status quo. If anyone with any real skill was banished to the Rising Sun Empire, then the only ones left here would be the absolute dregs.

This reaffirmed my commitment to focusing on only new Disciples and not using memory orbs to pull in any of the older, trained members of the clan. Not only were these youths not yet fully corrupted by the clan, but they would also not already be picked over by the empire. 

Though, I did have to wonder if there was another Su Clan in the Rising Sun Empire. If there was, would I still have a bloodline connection to it? There were possibilities in the vein, but even if true, it still seemed like a much better idea to build my own clan from scratch.

As I mused on these topics, the children below us started to open their eyes and wake from the process of being blessed. When he decided it was the proper time, YuanFei stood, gave a short speech, and then led the new Disciples away.

I looked at Su Heng. “What now?”

“Now, we decide who is worthy of being selected as an elite.”

---------------------------------------------------

Su Heng led me to the building with the affinity testing orb. After first showing me around the testing room and the small library of cultivation techniques, he took me to the second floor where the four Grandmasters that had been with YuanFei were already sitting around a table and discussing the ceremony.

I studied these men a bit more closely than I had done outside. I didn’t recognize most of them, and I was sure I had never even seen a couple of them before, but one of the men was somewhat familiar to me. Sitting slumped in his chair and seemingly ignoring the proceedings was Su YuanKong, the third son of the Patriarch and the man whose actions had led to my most recent death.

The other Grandmasters appeared to give YuanKong a slight bit of deference based on his status, but they didn’t seem overly respectful to the man himself.

Since neither Su Heng nor I planned to intervene in this discussion. We just took seats in the back of the room and observed as the group planned out the children’s futures.

A younger Grandmaster 3 man was the first to offer his opinion. “There can be no question that ShouLi is among the best of this year’s crop. The Patriarch’s lineage has always been strong, and ShouLi showed excellent poise during the ceremony.”

The Grandmaster across from him nodded. “Of course, there is no question that ShouLi is an elite. Instead, we must consider those like DongHu. The Third Elder’s line has produced a few powerful warriors over the years, but it is far less consistent than the Patriarch’s.”

I turned and whispered to Su Heng. “This is how the decisions are made? Based on lineage? Not on their affinities or blessings?”

As Grandmasters, everyone in the room could hear me, but it was the eldest man at the table, someone nearly 300 years old who was rankled the most by my comment. He looked at me with an annoyed expression.

“Of course we take such things into account, but it is easy enough to create a preliminary list of who to accept as elites based on their backgrounds. The Heavenly Dao bestows greatness upon those who deserve it. Knowing who is worthy is the best way to know who has the most powerful blessings.”

I bowed my head slightly to the old man, but he just huffed at me in derision before turning back to the discussion.

While I felt their methods were a bit absurd, they weren’t entirely without merit. When I had observed the affinity testing previously, I had seen that the better-dressed, wealthier children tended to have higher affinities. This only meant that they grew up in a more essence-rich environment, but that didn’t change the fact that those with the best affinities would usually come from wealthier families.

In total, the elders drafted a list of 15 names and sent it to YuanFei and the Second Elder who were waiting downstairs. Those two would then be responsible for choosing which ten would be elites and which would be castoffs.

I turned to Su Heng again. “Can we go down and observe?”

Before he could respond, the elderly man from before cut him off. “No! Do not interrupt our testing process.”

I nodded to him graciously. I was willing to push, but I didn’t want the Su Clan to break off all pretense of politeness. Instead, I dropped a small seed on the ground and used a tendril of my qi to force it to grow down through the cracks in the floor.

I might not be able to observe things in person, but I could at least use this root to listen in on the conversations happening below.

The testing process took hours, and as each disciple was led in, I jotted down their name, affinity, and stated blessing into my journal. As I had noted with the last group I had studied, most of the Su Clan’s Disciples didn’t know what their blessings did, and many of the others only had vague notions that it had improved their bodies in some way. When reports of this were passed up to the elders, they seemed extremely dismissive of such Disciples.

I had to wonder if some of those who ‘didn’t know’ what their blessings did had even been blessed at all. Had YuanFei simply failed to awaken them properly? Possible, and it was also possible that some were just lying like I had done in the past.

The biggest surprise to me was ShouLi. She had received a beauty blessing. When this was reported to the elders, I expected them to be disappointed and dismissive, but instead, they seemed ecstatic.

“A new era of prosperity is upon us!”

At first, I was confused, but the next elder who spoke made everything clear.

“If she can marry into the Rising Sun’s imperial family, it will change the fate of the entire clan!”

I noticed a couple of the Grandmasters looked at me side-eyed, but I just wanted to snort. They might have been worried that I would try to steal their new ‘princess,’ or they might have been thinking about how they could use her to punish me for my insolence. I couldn’t care less. I was far more interested in the other Disciples. Even without the agreement I had reached with the clan earlier, I had already decided that I had no desire to chase after anyone the Su Clan had labeled as an ‘elite.’