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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’ve 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 this? 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, such a delay can result in weakened or crippled blessings.”

“Thank you for the explanation.”

Su Heng’s information mostly matched what I had been able to learn previously. 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 before a child had an opportunity to attend a blessing ceremony, but it would never happen to anyone younger than 16.

Did Su Heng forget to include this additional information, or did he not know it? In the Wastes, with its low qi density, 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. 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 alongside 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 the 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 anyone, a few of the children showed signs of its effects. While only a few showed any physical signs of being blessed, 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 of these children had received some type of blessing that altered their physical bodies in some way.

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 signs that the Grandmasters want to see?”

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Su Heng gave a weak chuckle. “It is extremely rare for a blessing to have an immediate, visible effect. 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 both the strength of the blessing and the strength of the child.”

This made me fully turn and gawk at the man. Putting aside the fact that he didn’t have a way to see the various 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 everyone in the Su Clan was as incompetent as I expected, I had a hard time accepting that no one could piece things together and figure this out. Was there truly no one in the Su Clan capable of understanding what was going on? It was possible that such people existed and just didn’t care about the blessing ceremony, but that felt unlikely. It was also possible that the Su Clan never produced anyone with enough talent to see qi well enough to understand what was happening, but that also felt unlikely.

Instead, I couldn’t help but feel that the answer was a bit more sinister than that. I already knew the Rising Sun Empire was recruiting soldiers from the Su Clan. Were they stealing away anyone competent enough to see what was going on? Was this a means to maintain 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.

True or not, 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 there was also a greater chance for hidden gems to emerge from them.

Though, this situation did make me wonder if there was another Su Clan in the Rising Sun Empire where the recruits went after they left the Wastes. If there was, would I 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 use the children here 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 that 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 that held the clan’s 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 who had been with YuanFei were already sitting around a table and discussing the results of the blessing 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 everyone else as they talked 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 their 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 of Disciples. 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 the most rankled 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 observed the affinity testing process a while ago, I couldn’t help but notice 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 cut him off. “No! I will not allow you to interrupt the elder and the young master.”

I nodded to him graciously. I was willing to push, but I didn’t want 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 those that did 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 our 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. Either way, 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.’