Druidic Cultivation | Chapter Five

Gonna keep spamming you guys as I write with my new-book high unless somebody tells me to stop. 

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The girl who walked out was only around the age of ten but was already beautiful. Her skin was jade-like, smooth without imperfections and whiter than the moon. Her face was framed by a delicate pair of red lips and large phoenix eyes. Although she wasn’t matured yet, everyone present knew she would be a great beauty in the future. But that is not what drew Feng Jiao’s eyes to the young woman.

Somebody about her thin frame sucked his eyes in and didn’t allow him to advert his attention. He didn’t share the lecherous gazes of the boys and girls around him, but his eyes shined with a different gleam. For some reason he felt inexplicably linked to her and his spirit synergized with her image, his Qi flowing rapidly without prompt. A heat started below his navel and spread throughout his body which was accompanied by a pinching sensation in his chest.

“Is that Lady Huang, the fourth daughter of Lord Huang? Doesn’t her family rule the entire Willow Mountain City?” A small girl grabbed the arm of one of her friends next to her and started gossiping right away. 

“I thought that she was just one of Lord Huang’s foster daughters. It was never said which of his wives gave birth to her and she came out of nowhere. How could any of Lord Huang’s wives have given birth to such a beauty?” Her friend was quick to confirm the Huang Niao’s identity, but even quicker about calling her background into question. The jealousy of the fairer race didn’t allow them to admit inferiority easily. 

“Everybody says she is going to grow into the number one beauty of Dasenlin and regardless of her legitimacy as a noble she already has countless suitors…” The girl’s words trailed off, causing Feng Jiao to look back at her at which point he made a very awkward eye contact with her. Ah, she was comparing Feng Jiao’s beautiful visage with Huang Niao’s.

The girl stood upon the stage with the head overseer wearing a thin red sheni that accentuated the curves that she hadn’t quite grown into. Her eyes did not leave the overseer as she bowed in respect in preparation for her exam and ignored the crowd’s reactions. Much like Feng Jiao, she had grown up with rumors and gazes following her around everywhere and, much like Young Jiao, she’d grown thick skin and could not care less about the opinions around her. She wanted to get the ceremony over with and leave. 

The overseer injected his Qi into the young girl through her forehead and stimulated her meridians to awaken her martial spirit. Behind the girl a phenomenon began to happen, and an apparition slowly appeared. A red mist parted from her back and formed several shapes before slowly consolidating and becoming more and more lifelike.

Her martial spirit was a dark red bird with a noble appearance, one that looked down upon the commoners from where it stood upon its long and slender legs. It had a sharp beak long enough to pierce through the body of a grown man and fierce looking eyes. Just the way it presented itself reminded Feng Jiao a lot of his deceased friend from his last life, the firebird that stood upon the peak of the world with him and fought back against the heavens. 

With its overly long tail and bright red plumage upon its crown, it struck a very domineering image into the hearts of all present, none more than the overseer whom it was starting down at that moment. A silence descended upon the crown and lasted for several breaths before somebody finally shouted.

“Is that a Vermillion Bird!?” A noble from a very small town, ranked so low he sat near the commoners, shouted incredulously as if even he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. With the pregnant pause broken, chatter burst out from every inch of the spectators. Eventually a loud, arrogant, quaffing laughter cut above the rest of the noise and everybody quieted down as they looked at the man.

A tall man with salt and peppered black hair stood up and laughed down at the crowd. He looked at the noble who had spoken with disdain in his eyes, but the disdain did not translate to the smile that was plastered upon his face. He wore a long black robe that resembled an emperor dragon robe, stylized with a large turtle whose tail was a snake that intertwined around the turtle’s shell and rested above its head. He’d been sitting in a prestigious area but was one of the sects that Feng Jiao hadn’t recognized from his father's explanations. 

“It’s true what they say that even amongst the cows, one can find a dragon. You call yourself a noble but cannot distinguish between a beast and a divinity, laughable! How this backwater country can breed nobles like you and sleeping dragons like this young girl, I strive to understand. Young girl, I would like to invite you to join my Black Warrior Sect.” The imposing man laughed down the noble, ignoring all pretenses of face and trashing him verbally. At the same time, he ignored the rest of the sect scouts there and instantly tried to poach the girl, even before her results were announced. 

“Black Warrior Envoy, you overstep your bounds! This is not your Tyrannical Mountain Nation and you have no place trying to recruit here, you are here as a guest and guest alone!” An elderly man wearing a robe embroidered with a lion spoke against him, offended because it wasn’t just the noble’s face that had been slapped, it was the entire nation of Dasenlin. 

“What is your little Maned Yellow Tiger sect going to do about it, I wonder? If I recall from the last Nine Nation Martial Tourney, you didn’t even place in the top one thousand, how can you speak to the current rank Six hundred with such bravery?” The foreign guest’s tongue was as sharp as the blade upon his hip and he refuted the older man instantly, with a sneer on his face and disgust in his eyes. 

Throughout the entire exchange, Huang Niao paid no attention to the nobles and sect scouts that were arguing over her, treating them like every man she’d had exchanges with for the last ten years of her life. As if they didn’t exist, she continued to stare at the overseer in front of her, a man who was currently breaking out in a cold sweat as he lost a staring competition with a bird twice his size. It wasn’t until she tilted her head and cleared her throat that the crowd quieted down, and the overseer realized he was still doing something. Meanwhile, the Black Warrior envoy squinted down at the girl who did not put his offer in her eyes before retaking her seat. Her indifference had won back some face for the nation of Dasenlin.

The senior overseer coughed and broke eye contact with the bird, at which point the bird made a noise that sounded disturbingly close to a chuckle, before putting his hands up to quiet down the crowd. 

“Willow Mountain City’s Huang Niao. Martial Spirit, beast race. Race is a variant of the Five Plumed Crane, distant descendant of the Vermillion Bird. Starting rank is judged at Peak Core Beast, potentially a Ferocious Beast spirit. Affinity seems to be a High Yang Affinity.” He gave his proclamation out to the crowd and the previously loud reaction seemed mute in comparison to the outburst that happened then.

Everybody present knew what it meant to have a rank nine martial spirit! They were the peak of talent as far as most were concerned, as having anything beyond a rank nine martial spirit usually implied a royal bloodline or a distant independent family sect. It was the first time many of them had seen a martial spirit that was infinitely close to passing rank nine and returning to zero, or rank ten, which was a level entirely different than those before. 

Up until this point, the highest martial spirit grade that day had been a rank seven Three Eyed Black Bear, and that had shaken the crowd enough on its own. Most had been between rank four and six, the realm of Mortal Beast Spirits or Mortal Plant Spirits, with only a few of the nobles failing to consolidate their spirit and being graded as a Failure. The first three ranks belonged to that class. A Grade One marital spirit was a failure to invoke a reaction at all and labeled a Dud. Grade Two martial spirits managed to conjure a martial spirit mist behind themselves, but it would slowly dissipate afterwards, and a Grade Three would conjure the mist and consolidate it into a cloud that couldn’t finish taking form. All three were considered failures who would have no success on the road of martial cultivation and were a blight on noble families and their bloodlines, often destined to be sent to a branch family.

The Five-Plumed Crane let out a shrill cry that resounded around the clearing, which most believed was it expressing its might and bragging to the world its existence. Feng Jiao, however, understood it far more clearly. The clarion cry spoke to his soul and brought to mind his deceased friend, their calls sounding very similar to a phoenix’s cry. The crane was offended by the low ranking and annoyed that the overseer did not grade its bloodline as higher than a mere core formation beast spirit. What he mistook for a five-plumed variant was only a purer bloodline, which the man had not experienced before. 

The sects began arguing with each other over who would have the right to recruit young Huang Niao and intended to pull her into the sect for cultivation before age of fifteen. Not only was a Grade Nine martial spirit almost unheard of outside of royal bloodlines, but she was even accompanied by a high yang affinity! What was yang?

Yang laws were one of the highest graded primordial laws, paired with Yin and only below the laws of Chaos and Order that birthed the universe. They were the fires of youth and life, symbols of the phoenix and femininity whereas Yin were the laws that the dragons lorded over, laws of coldness and might. No matter what grade her martial spirit was, just the high yang affinity alone made her invaluable.

Huang Niao finally turned to face the section of the bleachers that the sect scouts sat upon and cleared her throat once more, ready to address them all at once. It seemed like she was going to choose her own sect then and there!