Chapter 158
More Elders from High River Sect are called in to hammer out the details with Sect Master Sun and a few of our training focused Elders. It sounds like things are going well though, nobody is outright objecting, in fact they seem enthusiastic, it’s just a matter of the details to be worked out.
Tentatively, they’re going to ask families to send two potential trainees for every position we fill with a qualified recruit, to account for failure rate and differing aptitude. The Shadowed Blade Elders think this is a great idea, because it moves us further from the model of the male centric martial cultivators and towards the more balanced composition of purely cultivation or knowledge focused Sects, as most Neutral Sects are.
Appearances are important when you’re actually sending assassins to every corner of the continent.
Sect Master Sun is lucky in that the Sect currently has Training Elders that used to be both household staff and Ladies Maids. With that knowledge in hand, the first wave of bodyguards can be properly prepared for their expected duties and the other necessary trades can be taught to the incoming students.
Students is the name they’ve reserved for those going into domestic service. They’ll be trained well as cultivators, but officially calling them disciples might upset a great number of other Sects who would view it as a blatant power grab. Training students as servants to do domestic chores for noble households while raising their cultivation enough that they’re not a liability sounds more like a benign public service.
Many schools currently exist for the purpose of raising future staff for nobility, minus the cultivation training, which is why they become a liability, or disposable asset, depending on the views of the family.
Me, Karl and Elder Song have a different mission today though. We’re setting off on a short journey to recover a lost relic of the Sacred Thunder Sect to return as a gift in the upcoming open tournament. Elder Song has gotten word that we’re not the only ones looking for it, as the relic was recently sensed by a number of Elders from various Sects following the earthquakes caused by the unstable portals.
That’s why he’s coming with us. To keep everyone civil. Fights between competing Sect members after the same target are always expected, but unless it’s a Light Sect and Devil Sect member meeting, it’s considered in bad taste to kill each other. At least, if you get caught.
Elder Song, as he has now reached the level of Divinity in his cultivation gives us an unfair advantage over most. Not only are his senses stronger and more accurate, as a mage type cultivator with an aptitude for Arcane spells, he can open portals so we can simply step across the continent instead of running for weeks.
The energy signature of the artifact is diffused over an area, but we can at least get within a few hundred kilometers of the destination accurately to begin our search.
"What is this artifact that everyone is searching for it?" I ask Elder Song, who is preparing random items he thinks might be useful on the trip.