The Feng Clan, Zhang Clan, and Huo Clan were all in good relations. The gyaru gang saw the male members from the other two clans as potential Daoist partners. While the girls were chatting among themselves, their elders were slowly getting impatient. They didn’t come here to find potential partners, but to showcase their clan’s power and superiority.
The girls soon got to it, while their elder encouraged them by giving them a smack on the head. The current elder that was responsible for the Feng ladies, wasn’t anyone that the Zhang Clan members knew. The Matriarch or the granny elder that everyone was familiar with wasn’t here either. Soon the bells started ringing and the girls began passing with flying colors. The clan was mindful enough to not bring anyone with them that wouldn’t be able to pass the first strength test.
Zhang Liu looked with interest at the girl that he had a short encounter with, moved up to the stage. He didn’t think that she would be participating in the test, but there she was. She walked over slowly, making everyone take in her rather cute facial features. The bouncing of her chest only added to the neck-craning that most of the youths were doing now.
Feng Nuana arrived at the large bell, which made her look even smaller. She looked quite fierce, like an angry puppy. Her eyebrows furrowed and her palm moving closer to her own body as she took a wind up. A gust of wind was produced the moment she smacked the large bell with her small hand, producing quite the amount of dinging sounds. The added wind pressure made her skirt dance around, the boys from the side just gawking.
“Ding…ding…ding…ding…ding…ding…ding…”
The treasure stopped at seven strikes, which caught the attention of many participants as this was the highest number in their age range. This was already a power level of someone at the peak of the late stage of foundation establishment. This girl was twenty-one at most, so this was quite the feat.
“Big sister Nuana is the best!”
“She is the pride of our Feng Clan!”
“Yay sister Nuana!”
The girls cheered out loud while the other clans and sects looked at the tiny girl preforming the feat of strength. The girl in question crossed her hands over her quite voluptuous chest and stuck it out proudly. She moved her head up high and took in the praise that the other clan members were giving her, looking quite satisfied. Before coming down from the stage her eyes met with Zhang Liu’s and she gave him a little wink.
‘Are all those Feng women like this?’
Zhang Liu looked around the area to the other girls, but he grimaced some more due to the overuse of makeup that made the girls kind of unappealing. The short one at least looked decent enough and her skin wasn’t as dark as the rest of the others.
‘Master said that jade-like skin wasn’t all that great… but I’m not sure about that…’
The female cultivators all made the cut, for now, all of the cultivators from the Huo clan and the Feng clan had made it through the first test. But they were in the minority as shortly after they left the stage, the other participants started failing.
“Get ready, you will be taking the test, don’t embarrass the clan!”
The Zhang Clan youths stood at attention as they were the next in line. The clans that followed after the Feng Clan weren’t doing all that great. Their members were mostly at the four or three bell range, some of them couldn’t even get past two. This was probably due to the lower quality of their cultivation techniques.
“Show them why we from the Zhang Clan are on the rise, young warriors!”
The elder gave the youths some inspiring words. They were still getting underestimated by the other big families in the area, but this would soon change. One of the youths moved on to the stage, but no one was really paying that much attention as people were interested in the more powerful clans that took the test at the beginning. Though even from them, there wasn’t a young master that broke past six chimes and Feng Nuana was still holding the top spot.
“I’ll go up, first brothers and sisters.”
The youth with the sword-shaped eyebrows decided to make his move, he would show that even he a regular member of the clan was quite gifted when compared to the other families. He looked at the person that was standing next to the measuring treasure, it was a man that was wearing quite the long robe and a long hat. The man was old and had a scroll in his hand, on that scroll he had all the names of the Zhang Clan members that would be participating in the test.
“You may proceed.”
He noted the name of this clan member while yawning slightly. It was the middle of the day and these workers didn’t really have any time off, and there was still a massive line of people after this still waiting. He didn’t really care about this average clan, half of these people would probably not make the cut or just barely make it in at three chimes.
“Ding…ding…ding…ding…ding….”
He looked at the bell that started ringing, there were clearly five times that it rung and that would put this youth in the talented bracket. This was quite surprising for an average clan like this. The man with the scroll noted the number of bell sounds next to the youth’s name, thinking that they probably had their most notable junior member start it off.
“Five, not bad… next…”
The young man with the sword eyebrows moved down the stage and another one with a similar blue robe moved up. His palm started glowing in blue color before it descended on the measuring apparatus.
“Ding…ding…ding…ding…ding….”
“Oh… five again…”
The elder official wrote down the name and test results again and watched as the blue-robed youth moved down the testing area. The youth looked dejected, making it seem like he was expecting a better score. Five was already quite high in the man’s opinion, so why as this youth like that?
The man figured out why the young male looked sad, as following him his other clan members took the stage.
“Ding…ding…ding…ding…ding….”
“Ding…ding…ding…ding…”
“Ding…ding…ding…ding…ding….”
“Ding…ding…ding…ding…”
The youths continued having stellar results apparently they were all above a regular foundation establishment cultivator in the early stage.
“Is the measuring device broken?”
The man was starting to worry, did something happen to the treasure. How could a plain clan like this have youths this strong and below the age of twenty-one? His eyes popped out even more after a certain young lady moved up onto the stage. She was quite the beauty with long white hair a patch of black to the side. A lot of people from the side craned their necks, while whispering to each other.
“Who is that… such beauty!”
“What clan is that… I must get that fairy’s name!”
This was Zhang Xue moving up to the stage, her palm already crackling with deep blue lightning energies. It descended on the measuring treasure, a sound of thunder echoing through the whole testing stage.
“Ding…ding…ding…ding…ding….ding”
“Six?… at such an age?…”
The elder that was writing down the results on the scroll gawked, he had the names and the ages of the participants written down here. The age of this young lass was only seventeen and she was already stronger than all of the twenty-year-olds that came before her.
“Only six… I thought I could get seven…”
The cute girl looked a bit glum, she wanted to at least tie for the first place with the girl from the Feng Clan. Still at the age that she was, she was the undisputed champion.
“Good going junior sister.”
She went down from the stage while Zhang Tai moved up, he smirked a bit after seeing the reaction of the people around them. It was time to show them that this Zhang Clan was here do make waves. He gathered up his energies and focused, his palm started shining with water-based Qi. This Qi was far purer than the one his brothers utilized, it soon descended on the bell in question and the chiming began.
“Ding…ding…ding…ding…ding….ding…ding…d….”
The last one didn’t manage to go through, leaving his result at seven and tying it with the Feng Clan girl. Though, people would put him above her at seven and a half as it almost sounded the last one out.
“Hah, that should do it!”
The other clans and sects started to slowly gather around the area that the Zhang Clan was getting tested. The amount of foundation establishment youths that managed to have at least four chimes was staggering and this last one almost produced eight.
Zhang Tai moved down the stage and smirked while looking at Zhang Liu, signaling him with his gaze that he was challenging him. Liu just looked back at him with a smirk of his own. The two were close to each other in strength, but that was only due to Liu not using Zhang Dong’s techniques that gave him stat boosts.
He had learned a lesser version of the technique that Zhang Dong used when he was battling the nascent soul Pride demon. This wasn’t the avatar form and the condensation technique stack onto each other though. Matt had combined the two to produce a much more efficient one for himself, that didn’t turn him into a ripe tomato after draining him of his stamina. His disciple was handed a lesser but still, it let him increase both his strength and speed by an equal amount.
Matt had to give it a grandiose name, so after much consideration, he ended up with ‘Embodiment of the Thunder God’. He added the lesser term to the one his disciple was using as it was weaker and he planned to add a ‘Superior’ or ‘True’ prefix if he managed to upgrade it past the core formation level. The safe way of using this skill with no drawbacks was to only have it increase your stats by a half. But you could also double or triple your fighting prowess with harsher drawbacks.
Zhang Liu wanted to use this technique, focusing it only on his palm along with his regular striking form. He gathered up his energies, the lightning started crackling while everyone watched from the sides. His hand started getting coated by a blue aura, electricity crackling around it and it looked as if his hand had turned into lightning energy itself. The youth had similar looking hair to the young woman that was there just a minute ago. The people concluded that the two were probably siblings as this youth was also on the more handsome side.
Before Zhang Liu’s palm could descend on the bell that would make it produce eight or more chimes he heard something. This was the sound of his grandfather’s voice, getting sent next to his ear.
“Listen Liu, lower your cultivation…”
The youth clicked his tongue at the order, but he wasn’t willing to go against his grandfather’s word. His palm smacked against the measuring treasure in a similar fashion as his sister did.
“Ding…ding…ding…ding…ding….ding…ding”
He reached quite a high number of seven hits still, it was a bit less than what Zhang Tai had managed. It was quite the result though, putting him and Tai along with Feng Nuana at the top of the charts.
“Hah, I win this time little Liu…”
Zhang Liu scoffed at Tai that was smirking at him, he would have gotten at least eight chimes if his grandpa didn’t force him to lower his score. He wasn’t sure what it was all about, from his standpoint standing out was a good thing as it would bring glory to the clan and his master. It would show that they are the best and the strongest around.
While the testing continued into the night, a certain youth with a small gem returned to the large pagoda hotel. He cupped his hands in front of another man. This man was Yang Kai and he had an even larger jewel stuck in his forehead.
“Disciple greets Master!”
“En. So, how were they?”
The man was seated in a lotus position and was doing some cultivation exercises. He wasn’t even facing his disciple while he was talking to him.
“Just as Master expected, they were quite weak. The best one only reached seven, this disciple managed to attain ten the last time he was tested.”
“Mmm…”
The man didn’t reply while his disciple just bowed again and left, knowing well that this was the signal for him to leave. He felt a bit apprehensive of taking part in this stupid festival, but his Master’s orders were paramount. He didn’t have to go through the preliminary round at least, thanks to this being a Dark Palm sect hosted event.
‘Guess those country bumpkins must have made Master angry, but those two fairies looked enchanting. Wonder if Master will let me have them if I perform well…’