Chapter 452: The Years
After holding his succession ceremony, Yaoguang and the entire Heavenly Dao Sect went completely quiet and stayed that way for thirty years.
For Void-Piercing Realm cultivators, whose lifespans could reach ten thousand years, thirty years passed with little emotion. For an ordinary person, it amounted to perhaps a month or two.
No friend or relative would think a promotion banquet attended a month or two ago belonged to the distant past. Unless you were close, even going a year or two without meeting would be considered perfectly normal. And for a Void-Piercing cultivator, the equivalent of a year or two was at least two or three hundred years.
Of course, though they made no great stir in those thirty years, rumors about him across the North Sea Star were no less than before.
Twenty years ago in particular, when the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings updated again, he displaced Demon Sovereign Kong Xuan, who came from the demon race, and directly took second place. His fame soared, and no one could say how many cultivators held him up as a model and took pride in aspiring to become the sort of cultivator he was.
The Heavenly Dao Sect's standing on the North Sea Star rose along with him.
With the influence of Yaoguang and Perfected Lord Jinghong, two figures on the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings, and with the mysterious artifact paragon who was about to refine a top-tier Dao Artifact for the Penglai Dao Lord having joined them, the sect's prestige among the Ten Great Immortal Dao Sects climbed to a level second only to the Three-Qing Temple.
All that clamor outside left Yaoguang untouched. Currently, certain matters had brought him out of the Heaven-Forsaken Valley, with Tang Fenghua at his side.
"So before I knew it, someone from the Nine Cauldrons Sect's new generation is about to break through to the Void-Piercing Realm," Yaoguang said, with some emotion.
Tang Fenghua smiled beside him. "The cultivators of the Nine Cauldrons Sect may not match the true disciples of the Heavenly Dao Sect in talent, but thanks to you handing over nearly all the revenue from those factories in the southern domain for the Nine Cauldrons Sect to manage ourselves, with hundreds of millions of Pure Yang Grand Pills coming in every year, even the poorest talent ought to have reached this point by now."
Then he added, "What's more, what we practice is the Primordial Creation Art you passed down to us. It has become the core scripture of our sect, and it's even more profound than the Heavenly Dao Sect's true inheritance. That art alone has been enough to close the talent gap between the core members of the Nine Cauldrons Peak and the Heavenly Dao Sect's true disciples."
"The Primordial Creation Art..." Hearing Tang Fenghua mention it stirred something in Yaoguang.
The Primordial Creation Art came from the Creation Group, a power that Yaoguang suspected originated in the Immortal Realm. In other words, this art likely belonged to an Immortal Realm inheritance.
It was upright and even-tempered, with astonishing compatibility and stability. Its cultivation speed wasn't fast, but every step it took landed on solid ground.
So it went from Core Formation to the Heavenly Fire Realm, from the Eternal Light Realm to the Crimson Golden Core Realm, and from the Blazing White Golden Core Realm to the Azure Golden Core Realm. Every step was steady, with almost no risk in the entire process.
Moreover, when Su Yaoxue, Lin Xia, Leng Jun, Shen Qinglian, and Xu Nianhua, the rising talents of the Nine Cauldrons Sect, practiced the art to the threshold of the Void-Piercing Realm, they discovered to their surprise that the success rate they'd have while attempting to take things one step further and open a grotto-heaven was noticeably higher than what other arts offered.
With the mountain of resources she received, Su Yaoxue was the first to reach the peak of the Azure Golden Core Realm, and she planned to attempt breaking through to the Void-Piercing Realm, hoping Yaoguang would act as her protector. For this "younger sister" of his, at least in name, Yaoguang was naturally willing to do so.
"Thirty years of settling has let Perfected Master Yaoxue thoroughly consolidate her realm, so her odds this time are excellent. Once she succeeds, she'll be the first perfected lord of the Void-Piercing Realm the Nine Cauldrons Sect has produced apart from Elder Li and Elder Wan. It marks an entirely new milestone in the sect's growth, and we hoped you could witness that historic moment yourself, Sect Master," Tang Fenghua said as he led the way.
"The group I brought over, they haven't caused any trouble?" Yaoguang asked. "Has anyone leaned on their connections to bully or seize things inside the Nine Cauldrons Sect?"
"No," Tang Fenghua answered quickly. "Perfected Master Yaoyu and Perfected Master Yaoxue, one gentle and one firm, have taught them well. On many matters, they lead by example, and countless disciples admire them for it. It's precisely their fairness that has kept the atmosphere in the Nine Cauldrons Sect so healthy. In nearly a hundred years on the North Sea Star, not one disciple has thrown their weight around or acted like a tyrant."
Yaoguang nodded. He had paid little attention to Su Yaoxue, Su Yaoshuang, and Su Yaoqin, but he still saw Su Yaoyu from time to time.
Because of her nature, even though she was now effectively the steward of the Nine Cauldrons Sect's finances, she kept the same careful, earnest attitude toward life and toward her work. With Su Yaoyu watching over them, that group would not easily be corrupted.
Of course, if any of them truly turned out like some of the Penglai Dao Lord's disciples, blinded by profit and unable to tell right from wrong, Yaoguang would not hesitate to expel them from the Nine Cauldrons Sect, or even drive them out of the Heavenly Dao Sect entirely.
As the two traveled toward Nine Cauldrons Peak, Yaoguang sensed something, stopped, and glanced off in one direction. "What's happening over there? It looks quite lively."
"Over there?" Tang Fenghua thought back for a moment, then answered, "That's the Heavenly Dao Sect's true disciple assessment, held once every five years. The top-ranked inner sect disciples get to challenge the true disciples, and likewise the lower-ranked true disciples make a run at the higher placements, so as to win more of the sect's resources for their cultivation."
"Oh?" Hearing this, Yaoguang couldn't help but recall the scene from when he first came to the Heavenly Dao Sect all those years ago. It still felt like yesterday.
"The Heavenly Dao Sect's disciple assessment system needs changing," he said. "The Heavenly Dao Sect today is hardly short of the trifling resources it doles out to those below."
"I'll record your words at once and pass them to Lineage Leader Chu," Tang Fenghua said immediately.
"No rush. Let's go take a look." With that, Yaoguang drew in his own aura so as not to alarm the elder overseeing the assessment, then turned into a streak of light and flew toward it.
As it happened, the elder responsible for managing the assessment was someone Yaoguang knew: Ling Xi, renowned among the true disciples decades ago and now an elder of the heavenly lineage.
Unlike the other elders who merely went through the motions, Ling Xi took the assessment seriously, keeping order across the grounds and stepping in promptly to save any disciple who was in danger during the trials.
Yaoguang swept the field with a glance. The one making a run at true disciple status was an inner sect disciple who had formed an Azure Golden Core, and his opponent, remarkably, was also at the same realm.
Yaoguang glanced over the several dozen true disciples watching from a distance and was somewhat taken aback. "Does the Heavenly Dao Sect not have a single true disciple at the Blazing White Golden Core Realm anymore?"
"Blazing White Golden Core? Hardly. These days even an Azure Golden Core can't necessarily hold onto a true disciple's seat," Tang Fenghua said with a smile. "Thanks to your fame, Sect Master, the number of geniuses from every corner of the world wanting to join us has risen more than tenfold over these years. Of the eighty-eight true disciple seats, only the best among the Azure Golden Core cultivators are qualified to hold one, and the top thirty inner sect disciples also have Azure Golden Core Realm cultivation, without any exception!"
Yaoguang took another look at the inner sect's number one, the challenger. "His strength really isn't bad. Back in my day, he could probably have ranked in the top forty among the true disciples."
To him, this challenger was not much weaker than Xuan Shuang, the first Heavenly Dao Sect true disciple to die by his hand, and that one had ranked thirty-fourth among the sect's eighty-eight.
"It's all thanks to you, Sect Master. You crushed the Yin Lunar Sect and then the Light Divine Race, forging a peerless reputation for the Heavenly Dao Sect, and also enormously increased the sect's profits through the sale of warships and flying swords. Without that, why would the geniuses from every corner of the North Sea Star flock toward our sect, trying their best just for a chance to join us?" Tang Fenghua said.
Yaoguang smiled and said nothing. Tang Fenghua, however, noticed that Yaoguang's gaze had gone not only to that inner sect disciple but over the eighty-eight true disciples as well, and asked out of curiosity, "Are you thinking of choosing one of the true disciples to take on as a personal disciple, Sect Master? If word of that got out, every disciple in the Heavenly Dao Sect would be in an uproar."
"A disciple..." Yaoguang shook his head.
He didn't have a single disciple under his name. Add to that his position as sect master of the Heavenly Dao Sect, and taking anyone in now would make that person his eldest disciple, enough to draw the attention and regard of countless people.
But he had no intention of wasting time and energy on a disciple at the Golden Core Realm. Soon, he intended to attempt Dao Integration, and a disciple of a Dao Integration cultivator ought to be at least in the Void-Piercing Realm, didn't they?
Below the Void-Piercing Realm, a cultivator's lifespan was only a thousand years. Any non-Void-Piercing cultivator he took in would stand an excellent chance of reaching that realm eventually, but it was never the ten thousand that worried you, only the one in ten thousand. Heavenly Venerable Jiang was the perfect example.
"No disciples for me." Yaoguang turned and left, asking idly as he went, "Who's the top true disciple now? I remember it used to be Yan Huang. Is it still him?"
"Yan Huang had successfully reached the Void-Piercing Realm fourteen years ago and is a Void-Piercing Realm elder now. The current number one is a genius who joined our sect twenty-five years ago. In just twenty-five years, he came out of nowhere and fought his way straight to the top," Tang Fenghua explained.
Yaoguang had only asked in passing and had no interest in learning more.
Just then Ling Xi, keeping order over the assessment, seemed to sense something and glanced in the direction Yaoguang had gone, a trace of doubt in her eyes.
But she was far more conscientious than Jin Yuliu had been, and though those two flickering figures struck her as curious and somehow familiar, her duty held her in place, and she did not leave.
***
Elsewhere, Yaoguang had already arrived at Nine Cauldrons Peak.
Because Su Yaoxue's advancement would make her the first of the Nine Cauldrons Sect's new generation to reach the Void-Piercing Realm, a considerable crowd had gathered from across the whole sect. Li Hanqiu and Li Qingshan, both senior figures of the sect, were present as well.
The moment Yaoguang arrived, every gaze fell on him. Without Li Hanqiu needing to say a word, the assembled cultivators gave a fist-and-palm salute and called out in unison, "Greetings, Sect Master."
Yaoguang raised an open hand. "There's no need for ceremony."
"Sect Master." Li Hanqiu, Li Qingshan, Lou Yuyu, and the others came forward, each of them visibly moved. "To think the Nine Cauldrons Sect could see such glory on the North Sea Star."
"It will only get better from here," Yaoguang answered with a smile.
Then his gaze met Su Yaoyu's, and as he saw the trace of worry in it, he smiled again. "Don't fret. Nothing will go wrong."
Having reassured her, he turned to Su Yaoxue. "Well then, are you confident?"
"I will certainly reach the Void-Piercing Realm," Su Yaoxue said with absolute conviction.
"Good. If you do, I'll preside over your Void-Piercing Realm celebration myself." Yaoguang encouraged her, then brought his hands together. "Alright, begin. Go become the foremost of the Nine Cauldrons Sect's younger generation."