The Sect Leader System-Chapter 239: The Jig Is Up

Yuan Yaozu could practically smell the coming battle in the air. It would be today. Early.

While not possessing any technique for divination—if such a thing existed—he’d always been sensitive to tidings, and his every instinct told him that the Jade Chameleon cultivators would arrive soon.

Still, Yuan Yaozu strolled toward the Rising Tide Sect’s Contribution Points Shop in no hurry even though the sun was well past the horizon. Until mere days ago, he’d been preparing to enter secluded cultivation to expand his life in service of the sect. Now, he had a real chance of advancing his cultivation, and he had a lot to consider.

His previous evening had been instructive in many ways, not the least of which was his visit with Kang Ya-Ting’s precious granddaughter and her two friends, Chao Su’s core disciples.

They had all told him about their experiences with the Trial Pagoda, warning him of the strangeness of the blue box and telling him all he had to do was select the correct option and the pagoda would take care of everything else. The key for passing the test, they said, was persistence. As far as they knew, one couldn’t be truly hurt inside the pagoda, and it seemed to give infinite chances to pass its trials. So far at any rate, no one had been kicked out unless they chose not to proceed.

It all sounded easy to Yuan Yaozu. Too easy.

If the pagoda could indeed propel a Golden Core cultivator like him, one who had been stuck at the peak of the realm for centuries, into advancing to Nascent Soul, the value of the treasure was literally incalculable. He personally knew dozens of cultivators who would give anything they owned or could beg, borrow, or steal to use it.

Such a benefit should come at an enormous cost.

He’d hinted at that drawback with the juniors, and they had assured him that Chao Su had to pay a price for some of the benefits. A price. For some of the benefits.

What price? What did it cost him to pay it? Which benefits cost and which were free?

As well as potentially being the most valuable such structure Yuan Yaozu had ever heard tell of, the Rising Tide Sect’s Trial Pagoda was also the strangest and most powerful.

And therein laid the problem.

He actually liked Chao Su. The man seemed sincere in caring about his sect members and was overall a likeable sort. More sincere and grounded than most in his position.

But personal feelings didn’t inform a cultivator’s decisions. The fact was that Chao Su was not at a higher realm such as Nihility as Kang Ya-Ting suspected. The sect leader hadn’t even reached Nascent Soul yet. At best, he was peak Golden Core.

Yuan Yaozu didn’t look down on his fellow sect elder for failing to detect the ruse. Whatever Chao Su used to block sensing his level was absolutely superb. Standing next to him, even spiritual senses honed over many centuries felt nothing, like the man was simply a mortal. Combined with the fact that Kang Ya-Ting hadn’t been around nearly as many high realmed cultivators in his much shorter life as Yuan Yaozu had been, the inability to see through the deception was quite reasonable.

As for how he knew? Many things. For one, Nascent Souls carried a metaphysical weight about them that Chao Su simply didn’t possess. Another was that Chao Su didn’t carry himself like someone who had the physical enhancements of a reformed body should. Instead, he carried himself exactly as a Golden Core who also used Body Cultivation would.

Of course, both those traits could be faked. Maybe he worked hard on control to suppress that metaphysical weight. Maybe he practiced for centuries to move as if he were still a lowly Golden Core.

Until late in the previous evening, Yuan Yaozu had remained undecided. It wasn’t until he’d used his spiritual sense to observe the sect leader in his study that the situation had been clarified.

Yuan Yaozu had been, as a matter of course, keeping a close watch on the sect leader’s actions. Chao Su had relocated to the fourth floor of the sect’s Administration Hall, an area that seemed to serve as his personal chambers, cultivation room, and study. The entire area was exceptionally well warded with formations. Only a true expert with centuries of experience could have penetrated his spiritual senses through the barrier without raising notice.

Fortunately, Yuan Yaozu was that good and had that much experience.

A bubble of qi popped into place around the room the sect leader was in, and he began moving quite rapidly, producing greater spirit coins in seconds that should have taken minutes.

The phenomenon revealed that Chao Su had access to a technique utilizing Time qi, which was an impressive feat especially given all the other aspects he’d been witnessed using. The interesting thing, though, was how many greater spirit coins Chao Su could produce in the hour he spent in the time bubble, about eighteen hundred. Which was the equivalent of more than eighteen million qi used, depending on the efficiency of his technique. So say twenty million units of qi.

When the bubble popped, there was little atmospheric qi remaining, which made a lot of sense. The problem with using Time qi was that one had to separate the space one was in from the rest of the world, meaning no qi could get in to replenish what was being used.

Yuan Yaozu judged the dilation of the time bubble to be about ten to one, which meant that Chao Su could only consume a maximum of around two million qi per hour. An impressive amount, far more than Yuan Yaozu could have used.

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That quantity was way too little for a Nascent Soul, though, by at least an order of magnitude. If Chao Su had truly reached that realm, he should have been able to utilize a minimum of ten to fifty times that amount. And Yuan Yaozu saw no reason for the man to sandbag his production of coins. He was expected an attack the next day. The more coins he had available, the better.

Maybe any one of the three pieces of evidence could be explained as Chao Su hiding his strength, but all three? No one was that good of an actor, especially if they didn’t know anyone was watching.

Yuan Yaozu was firmly convinced that Chao Su was only in the Golden Core realm, meaning he had exactly zero chance of defeating two strong Nascent Soul cultivators with untold amounts of combat experience.

Which left Yuan Yaozu in quite the quandary and was why he was taking his time in making his way to the Trial Pagoda.

He had sworn an oath witnessed by the heavens to protect the Rising Tide Sect and its members. There wasn’t a lot of wiggle room in that pledge. There wasn’t meant to be. When he’d made the promise, he’d expected the dominant Chao Su as described by Kang Ya-Ting to be able to easily—well not necessarily easily—take care of the Jade Chameleon cultivators.

In that case, Yuan Yaozu’s pledge made a lot of sense. Chao Su was so powerful that he’d be able to hold the valuable Trial Pagoda against any reasonable force thrown against him. His biggest need was a second powerful cultivator, one who could both back him up and provide defense when and where he wasn’t available.

Yuan Yaozu was more than willing to provide those services, considering the price he was getting in return. Win-win.

The knowledge he’d recently learned had turned everything on its head, though. There was no scenario in which Chao Su could hang onto the Trial Pagoda. It was too valuable. Once word truly got out, the factions would risk anything and everything to obtain it. Being a newly minted lone Nascent Soul charged with defending the sect in that situation was a death sentence.

Yuan Yaozu had given his oath, though. That oath had been witnessed by the heavens. Breaking it, too, was a death sentence.

But he hadn’t taken an oath to be speedy in his trial taking or in getting to the pagoda. If the fighting were all over by the time he emerged, that happenstance was in complete compliance with his oath.

Yep. No hurry.

All he really had to worry about was the aftermath. In an ideal world, he’d step out of the pagoda a new Nascent Soul to find the two Jade Chameleons in control of the territory but injured with Chao Su unfortunately dead. Between Kang Ya-Ting and the new power of the Poison Claw Sect—Yuan Yaozu—they’d take control of the Trial Pagoda and relocate it to the main sect grounds with all due haste.

It was a risky move. A bold move. But no bolder than they were already making. If the Trial Pagoda could somehow actually do what he believed it might be able to do, he’d be the fifth Nascent Soul for his sect. The other three factions only had four.

The Poison Claw Sect Leader had signed off on the plan on the basis of five Nascent Souls plus Chao Su being so intimidating that none of the others would move against them. With Chao Su dead, though…

Their only hope was to get the pagoda back to the sect and start churning out Nascent Souls as quickly as possible. There were two other elders bottlenecked at the peak of Golden Core, so in two days’ time, the sect could have seven. Seven versus twelve, four from each of the three other factions. If they holed up in their sect branch behind their Grand Defensive Formation with seven Nascent Souls, they should be able to hold out long enough to move other cultivators through their bottlenecks, progressing the highest ones a minor realm at a time until they had eight and then nine and then ten and…

That could work. It had to. They were taking a huge gamble today.

Yuan Yaozu sighed. He was taking that gamble, not the sect. His decision and his responsibility. With what he now knew, he should refuse to take the trial or, perhaps better, deliberately fail. But then the Jade Chameleons would gain control of the pagoda.

Honestly, there was no chance he’d do either of those things. He’d been striving for centuries. There was no way he was passing up the opportunity to advance.

No matter how slowly he tried to walk, the path eventually took him to the Trial Pagoda. With a sigh, he put his hand on the orb as he’d been instructed, and just like the juniors had said, a blue box popped up in his vision.

He ran his hand through it a few times, but the motion didn’t disrupt it. And even with his superior spiritual senses, he didn’t detect any qi usage, Illusion or otherwise.

Strange. But then again, Trial Pagodas were anything but normal, and he had no reason to believe that one not to be even stranger still.

He read the notice.

Welcome to the Trial Pagoda, Allied Sect Elder Yuan Yaozu. You have the choice of one of the following trials:

Advance Cultivation or Technique

Add or Modify Qi Aspect

Improve Spiritual Roots

“Esteemed Trial Pagoda, this lowly elder wishes a trial to improve cultivation from the peak of Golden Core to Nascent Soul.”

The first box disappeared to be replaced with a second one.

Selection to Advance Cultivation to Nascent Soul requires an expenditure of sect resources and approval from Sect Leader Chao Su.

Contacting Sect Leader Chao Su.

…

…

…

Sect Leader Chao Su says, “Advancing to Nascent Soul is more expensive than I was anticipating. Do your absolute best to pass on the first try. I may not be willing to give you a second chance.”

Yuan Yaozu was stunned. Not from either obtaining permission to take the trial or from Chao Su’s admonition. No, it was from the very unexpected knowledge he’d just gained, knowledge that flipped all his plans, once again, upside down.

The juniors hadn’t described in detail exactly what the boxes would say, only advising in general terms and saying that the process was so intuitive that it wasn’t possible to mess up. So he honestly hadn’t concerned himself with the specifics. After all, if those juniors could do it, so could he.

The implications of those messages, though, could not be denied. The pagoda, for all appearances, reached out to Chao Su for permission for the trial taker to proceed, indicating a much closer relationship between the pagoda and either the sect or the sect leader than Yuan Yaozu had anticipated. If he had to guess, he’d say that Chao Su had soul bound the pagoda.

If that suspicion were true, the pagoda would cease to function if Chao Su died.

Depending on the odds of whether or not the sect leader had bound the treasure, it was possible, if not probable, that, upon Chao Su’s death, the Trial Pagoda would become worthless, losing all its value because it would no longer be able to propel cultivators past their bottleneck.

Yuan Yaozu could not let that happen. The future of his sect depended on the treasure. He had to finish his trial before the Jade Chameleons killed Chao Su!