Chapter 70: Life 60, Age 29, Martial Grandmaster 1
The Dragon Gate. When a carp is strong enough and swims against the current with all its might, it has a chance to climb a waterfall and jump over the Dragon Gate. If it achieves this legendary feat, it will transform into a true dragon.
In the Wastes, everyone, cultivator and mortal alike, was nothing more than a lowly carp. Cultivators would fight with all their might to swim against the current, ascend the waterfall, and jump into the wider world, but almost all were destined for failure.
The four great powers of the Wastes, the Twin Mountains Sect, the Verdant Fields Sect, the Su Clan, and the Blue Wind Pavilion had paths that could allow their most promising members to smoothly walk out of this small corner of the world, but entry into these forces was extremely difficult, and ascending out of them was even harder.
Take the Twin Mountains Sect, for instance. Each year thousands attempt to enter, but only a mere handful become outer sect disciples. Of those, only a fraction reach the inner sect, and only a fraction of that fraction ascend to the outside world.
Even with everything working against them, cultivators still join these sects en masse, hoping to be the one chosen to advance. The odds were against you, but if you didn’t play, you had no chance at all.
However, there was another way to join one of the outside powers.
The forces outside the Wastes may have been mighty, and they did disdain the people who lived here, but they were not willing to allow good seedlings to rot if they could be taken away and nurtured. Most cultivators with a promising future would enter the sects, but for various reasons, a few would be left behind. The powerful forces outside still wanted to rope in anyone with potential, even if they hadn’t joined a feeder sect. Thus, the Dragon Gate Festival was created.
Once every ten years, the three great forces surrounding the Wastes, the Rising Sun Empire, the Verdant Forests Sect, and the Flowing Mountain Sect, would send representatives to Dragon Gate City. Cultivators could display any talents they possessed, and if they were powerful enough, they would be directly recruited by one of these factions. This was an opportunity to jump the Dragon Gate and soar.
I originally learned about this event through Bao’s investigations, and I had considered trying to use this as a path of advancement myself, but I finally decided to pursue a path through the Pavilion first. After living here for years, though, I found access to technique manuals much more limited than it had been in the Twin Mountains Sect.