Chapter 66: Time to visit the Fallen Sword Sect

The Master of the Recruitment Pavilion of the Golden Alliance Sect strode across the enormous hall. The long sleeves of his robe swayed with each step, and his boots rang sharply against the polished stone floor.

Wherever he passed, the disciples stopped what they were doing and bowed one after another, keeping their eyes on the ground.

The old man’s mind was far away from that hall.

Each of the thirty allied sects of the Golden Alliance Sect had its own secret realm.

The ancestor of the Golden Alliance Sect and the ancestors of the thirty sects had created these realms together, with one simple goal: to nurture the next generation.

They were divine places, built by the greatest experts of recent eras and filled with treasures and trials meant to make the young stronger.

Among the many rewards hidden inside, one stood out above the rest: the Golden Alliance Sect’s Recruitment Token.

Even an ordinary token, like the ones the elders wore at their waists, was extremely rare and valuable.

But this token was on a completely different level.

The reason was simple. Every one of these tokens had been made by the founder of the Golden Alliance Sect himself, a man who had lived tens of thousands of years ago.

Besides their great value, each token held a thread of that ancestor’s primordial Qi.

Whenever a token was recovered, the sect could use that Qi to nourish its sect artifact, the Founder’s Sword.

In other words, those tokens were worth an astronomical fortune... and so were the people who found them.

Anyone who showed up with one in hand was sure to become a powerful pillar of the Golden Alliance Sect. In fact, the sect’s current strongest elder had once been one of those lucky youths.

When he reached a spacious white-stone courtyard, the Pavilion Master kept walking at the same pace.

Then he simply rose into the air, his robe fluttering in the wind.

The cold air up high stung his face for a moment before he landed lightly on top of a tower beside the main one.

A young disciple was already waiting there, holding a scroll.

As soon as he saw the old man, the disciple hurried over and nearly tripped in his rush.

"Pavilion Master..." He bowed deeply and held out the scroll with both hands.

The old man took it and unrolled it. His face stayed calm and serious as his eyes moved down the lines.

A moment later, a sincere smile appeared on his lips.

"The Fallen Sword Sect, huh? It’s been a long time since they sent a prodigy our way," he said, stroking his long white beard.

When he got to the young man’s details, though, his fingers stopped in the middle of his beard, and he was even more surprised.

The young man had an Earth-Level Foundation and a Higher Spiritual Constitution!

If he had been a disciple of the Golden Alliance Sect itself, the elder wouldn’t have been so shocked.

But the boy came from the Fallen Sword Sect, the weakest of the thirty vassal sects.

They didn’t have the resources to raise someone of that caliber. That left only one possibility: the boy’s talent was massive!

A slight shiver ran through the elder. His hands tightened around the scroll until the paper crumpled.

This was good. Very good indeed!

"Pavilion Master, should I ask one of the subordinate elders to get ready to fetch this young master?" the disciple asked, his head still bowed.

"No... prepare my flying boat. I’ll go myself!" the Master of the Recruitment Pavilion said firmly.

The disciple’s eyes went wide. He lifted his head out of pure reflex, then remembered where he was and quickly lowered it again.

He hadn’t seen what was in the scroll.

Only the elders were allowed to read that information. Any ordinary disciple who peeked without permission was practically asking for the death penalty.

Still, from the Master’s reaction, he could only imagine how talented that young man had to be.

Getting a Pavilion Master to leave the sect was not easy—not even the masters of the less important pavilions.

"It shall be done, Pavilion Master!" he answered quickly, pushing down his curiosity before it got the better of him.

Whatever was going on, it wasn’t his problem. He was just the master’s assistant.

The old man didn’t answer. He was already heading down to the courtyard of the Recruitment Pavilion, his eyes still on the scroll.

The token had a very interesting function.

When it touched someone’s blood, it recorded all sorts of information about them: their cultivation realm, their foundation, their strength, and even the size and density of their Qi reserves.

Those last two were what surprised the old man most.

The young man’s Qi reserves were comparable to those of a Golden Core Realm cultivator!

And that wasn’t all.

His skin and bones were extremely tough, and his martial potential was enormous.

The more the elder read, the more excited he got, his fingers digging into the edges of the scroll without him noticing.

Slowly, his lips curved into a smile. He let out a long breath, let his shoulders relax, and looked up at the sky.

The flying boat was already waiting.

It was a simple, fairly small craft, with three private cabins and room for twenty people.

Large ships usually had an open upper deck, just like ocean-going vessels.

This one didn’t. It was fully enclosed and run by powerful magical arrays.

The runes carved into the hull gave off a soft blue glow and a low hum that made the air tremble.

The ship cut across the sky, leaving a bluish trail behind it. It made a gentle turn and stopped right above the old man, and the light gust of wind it pushed down ruffled the sleeves of his robe.

The old man didn’t hesitate for a second. He tucked the scroll into his sleeve and flew up to the boat.

It was time to visit the Fallen Sword Sect.