The word got out that Ghoto and Mihila had been summoned for questioning. It indicated that the upper echelon of the family have been drawn towards the issue of the pregnancy and they had deemed it important to call for an inquisition. This caused a peak in curiosity about the pregnancy and many people wanted to know the result of the summoning.
In a family like the Ghastorix’s, even those with the weakest bloodline will eventually become transcendents if they work hard. So the family doesn’t consider the transcendent level as overly significant considering their long history.
The Ghastorix family is just a middle-class family that has been established for over ten thousand origin cycles, it is a short history when compared to the large families. A transcendent can only live up to a maximum of an origin cycle, so their significance can be relatively overlooked because of their history.
The family has seen generations of them and there are many transcendents in the current generation, only those who manage to progress or are exceptional will get significant attention.
The competition among the younger generation is fierce, just the opportunity to live within the ancestral city is enough to rile up transcendents. Even though the environment within the city is subpar compared to the ancient battlefield, it is still special within the plane.
The maximum level a plane can sustain is the ascendent, above that is transcendent, this is the major reason races fight each other on the ancient battlefield, for space. They fight so that they can keep growing.
If the descendants with impure bloodlines are fighting for the living conditions within the city; a city that is a replica of the ancient battlefield, you can imagine the competition between those of direct and pure bloodline for the chance to go to the ancient battlefield.
The ancient battlefield may be far larger than any plane but every inch of it is won through blood and strife. For some, the ancient battlefield is their only hope to grow stronger.
This special situation of competition and survival is something every family goes through.
The top brass hardly pays attention to the struggles of transcendents. But then something drew the attention of the council of elders. The council started to pay attention to Ghoto when he became a king 12 years ago.
This achievement was noteworthy to them because it meant that if he doesn’t die, he had a high chance of advancing to the titan level which would mean he would be around for another 90 origin cycles. It was because of the attention placed on him as a promising talent that they found out about his wife’s situation.
At that time, the council of elders found out that Ghoto’s wife had been pregnant for 19 years but they were only surprised. They didn’t think much about it, his wife will give birth to kids of high bloodline purity at most. It wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen.
A bloodline of high purity isn’t much to a group of Titans of law, which is the minimum requirement to become an elder. The elder council within the plane consists of Titans of law that haven’t participated in the trial of heaven for their power level so they knew they weren’t anything special themselves.
That’s why they didn’t think much of the bloodline, at most, it will help people reach their level. Only the direct children of origin gods can rely on their bloodline to reach the level of a sovereign with certainty and that is if the origin god can bear the cost of producing such an offspring.
But then 31 years of pregnancy went by and the woman still hadn’t given birth. Only the children with the purest bloodline take that much time. Now things became serious, they had to find out what was going on with the pregnancy, so they summoned Ghoto and his wife.
Ghoto and Mihila had received the summons. She was eating when someone came to inform them of the summons, she had been eating a lot recently. Mihila could only sigh and accept the summons when she received it.
She had tried her best to hold on but who would have thought that her pregnancy would take so long. 20 years ago, she had felt confident about breaking through to the titan level if given some time, but now, she could feel her body ready to make the advancement. Her body is yearning to advance, If not for the fact that she was still pregnant she would be a titan already.
She had refused to be examined to protect her unborn children but people still didn’t give up. She couldn’t really blame them for their curiosity, maybe now they will leave her in peace if their curiosity is finally satiated. She steeled her heart and decided to get things over with, and in the case that it became necessary she was determined to fight for her kids. It was with this determination that she went with Ghoto to the ancestral hall.
Ghoto felt guilty all the way to the ancestral hall. He felt like he had betrayed his wife. He had wanted to get her pregnancy checked but she refused. Mihila had asked him to trust her, he conceded and agreed. Later on, he had gotten wind that he could be summoned so he could have done something to prevent it, but he didn’t.
He is a king of law, he had been recognized by the family and by his race, and that counts for something in the family. He hadn’t committed any crime, so if he wanted to stop the summons he could have. He may just be an offshoot of the family but he still possessed that much power.
Even if he didn’t have the power to prevent the summons, he has enough freedom to chose not to honor it. Choosing not to honor the summons will cause his unborn children to lose their rights in the family unless they are deemed of importance to the family. His kids will have to prove themselves in the future before they can enjoy the perks that come with being in the family, just like he did.
But he didn’t stop the busybodies that went to complain to the council of elders because he was just like them, he was curious too. He wanted to know what was going on with his unborn children, so he chose to watch silently claims for an inquiry were made.
Mihila doesn’t even allow him to check their status. She always said it will cause complications.
“What could be going on with her?” He often wondered.
It isn’t that he doesn’t trust his wife, he is just being a worried father. And he has been worried for more than 30 years now.
They reached the ancestral hall and found out that there were a lot of people waiting. These people couldn’t enter because they didn’t have the qualifications to. Only some people with authority and those of direct lineage can enter to witness the meeting. It is supposed to be a private summons after all, not a public prosecution.
Ghoto and Mihila walked past all these people without paying attention to any one of them. They could feel hostility, curiosity, and other various emotions directed at them but they didn’t care. The din and noise from the discussions stopped as soon as they crossed the threshold of the hall.
Ghoto held his wife’s hand and said “It’s going to be okay. They can’t do anything to us.” to which Mihila nodded.
Ghoto might be just a son born out of momentary pleasure, but that didn’t change the fact that his father is a sovereign and a grand elder on the ancient battlefield. That means his father had survived the trial of heaven.
The duo approached the group of elders at the end of the hall silently. They passed by the rows of witnesses sitting by the side. The elders sat in a straight line opposite the entrance. One could tell they were Titans from how they looked.
Some of them had fire or lightning flicking within their fur. Normal battle sage monkeys will have normal hair for fur, and the color of the fur will be affected by their bloodline. Ghoto has blue fur and blue eyes because his bloodline belongs to that of the founding ancestor who had mastered lightning to become an origin god and eventually created a royal bloodline with it.
Mihila has normal white fur and black eyes because she didn’t have a bloodline, this will change when she becomes a titan. Every titan possesses a unique body of law that is the seed for the future origin bloodline.
Since Titans have bodies made of law their body gains a certain amount of elemental expression. That’s why the bodies of Titans and those above the level are called elemental bodies but that’s underestimating what they are truly capable of. This many elders sitting together formed a terrifying sight.