39 Chapter 39. The clan meeting

"Huh.." Alfred curiously called out in surprise as a loud vibration sounded from his clothes. He reached into his robe's pocket and brought out a small silver badge that was glowing resplendently.

"What's that?" Leo asked confusedly as his interest was immediately caught by the little object.

"This is the clan's badge, it is glowing right now because there is a meeting being called by your uncle Aron," Alfred replied and his face then turned stern as he solemnly spoke, "There must be a clan emergency. Leo, you will have to walk home alone, I wanted to celebrate today's results with you but I need to leave now."

Leo suddenly smiled as he realized what the meeting might be about, "Wait! Take me with you, I have something to tell uncle Aron."

"Fine..." Alfred replied helplessly as he knew that Leo would constantly harass and complain about this if he was rejected.

About two minutes later, the duo arrived upon a large round dome-like hut that was built from brick. Its outer wall was painted with bold boring grey color and the entrance was guarded by two strong metal-reinforced dark oak doors.

They walked in as they opened the doors and saw that everyone was already there and they were sitting in a horseshoe formation, calm yet slightly confused expression was visible on their faces as they loudly conversed with each other. The clan head was been sitting in the middle of the horseshoe, he had his hands clasped together on the table as he slightly leaned forward.

Seeing Alfred and Leo take a seat, Alfred began to speak, "Now that the grand elder is here, this meeting can officially start. I have two main issues for today. The first issue is regarding tthe mysterious treasure hunt that occurred today. Does anyone know who did it?

Silence filled the meeting hall as everyone began silently thinking over who it could possibly have been.

"What treasure hunt?" Alfred confusedly asked as he broke the silence.

"Uncle, you see, in the evening, there was a man dropped off in the clan field entrance and he had a note, Wade and I followed the note and it took us to the clan entrance where we found his son extremely badly injured. Wade threatened me and will probably be here soon to demand an explanation."

"I would like to speak uncle Aron," Leo's voice sounded as he stood up, requesting permission to speak from Aron.

"Go ahead," Aron agreed curiously. What could a child possibly have to do with such an event?

"I was the one who set up the treasure hunt," Leo declared as a sneaky sly smile appeared on his face.

"What?!" Aron exclaimed in surprise, "explain."

"Well, it started during the evening, me and Aurora were just making food in the grand elder's area when the Weaver clan head's son, Dan, came out and met us with a man following closely behind him and around the island were six other cultivators who were hiding from view," Leo began explaining.

"Haha! How stupid! Clan head, you cannot possibly believe him, how could anyone get into the grand elder's territory?" an elder mockingly criticized as he laughed.

"Quiet!" Aron immediately shut him out as he raised his hand authoritatively and looked at Leo and spoke, "continue."

"They came in and asked if they could join us for dinner but we rejected them. Then they wanted to take Aurora by force, so I knocked them out and decided to strike back with the Weaver clan. It seems like Wade Weaver already knew this and had this planned. His son spoke like it was already planned. He said that it was initially planned for your son so that they could take that top spot in Sapphire city but since Aurora appeared, they had to change their plans."

"Hahaha! What a great made-up story! Those men were people at gathering stage realm, how could you, someone who decided to not take the test possibly knock them out?" the elder spoke out in contempt again as he did not buy Leo's story at all.

"Elder, I can see that your cultivation is at middle-emission realm, you are nowhere near the same talent as uncle Aron, if I am honest I don't truly care about your opinion and if you believe it or not," Leo plainly replied as he looked at the elder.

"You!-"

"Ok! Let's put that topic to rest for now, I shall move on to the next topic, affinity results. Uncle, I'm sure you have heard of Leo and Aurora's results?" Aron spoke as he looked towards Alfred.

"Yes, I have. I am extremely happy about Aurora's result. And I was planning to force Leo to do the test again at night but this came up," replied Alfred with an indifferent expression on his face, seemingly not caring about the recently high tension incident.

Aron nodded and smiled. He had expected the grand elder to do this, there was no way that he would possibly let Leo off.

"Grand Elder, everyone in the clan is quite curious about the identity of those two could you please tell us more about them?" a voice rang out in the silence.

The voice came from Adam, one of the clan's elders who had an extremely close relationship with the elder who had just argued with Leo. He had a cultivation of stage one refinement realm and was in his forties, making him an extremely respected person in the clan.

"Ok. It's about time I tell you guys anyway. As you all probably should've heard, Aurora is my adopted granddaughter. And as for Leo here, he is my daughter, Ava's son," announced Alfred as he tousled Leo's hair.

A silent atmosphere of extreme shock flooded the place as everyone could not believe what the grand elder just said. They had initially thought that Aurora and Leo were kids that the grand elder had taken pity on and decided to take care of. But now, it seemed like the relationship was more complex and intricate than they had initially thought.

"Grand elder, how is it possible?" Adam responded with another question in confusion.

"Ava had survived this whole time and fell in love with a commoner. In fear of me disapproving of their relationship, she had settled down in a village."

"Grand elder, you mean that she got together with a peasant?" the elder's voice asked out in surprise.

"Yes, they were born in the village and their father was a villager so I guess that that makes them peasant," Alfred answered plainly.

"You must have them change their surnames immediately, grand elder. If news floods out that the Decan clan has peasants as it's clansmen it will terribly affect our reputation," spoke out Adam in a very unsatisfied tone as he could not bear the thought of being associated with peasants, even if they were talented.

"They do not want their surnames changed. I have let them keep their current surnames," Alfred helplessly replied.

"But-"

'I have spoken already!" Alfred spoke out, stopping Adam from continuing his loud disapproval.

An eerie silence fell but was quickly erased by the clan head as he continued, "Ok. Now that the identity of the kids are now known. This brings us to my first topic, resource allocation. As we all know, Aurora has a legendary pink grade talent and she also has all primary affinities. The allocation would have stayed the same but now with her appearance. I want to think if we should reconsider. What does everyone think?"

"Clan head, I think that we should send her to a sect. Our clan does not have the resources to treat her properly. And we would spend too much if we teach her here. There will not be enough for the rest of us. I think we should spend most of your resources on our pure clan children."

"Never! Aurora will not be sent to a sect. I will not have past mistakes repeated again. Why don't we have the other boys learn from sects instead?" spoke out Alfred in sudden anger.

"Grand elder, please think rationally. Aurora has a pink grade affinity. This is extremely rare. She would be able to get into any sect if she wanted. Whereas for our sons and daughters, they don't have the same talent. They wouldn't have any attention placed upon them. So it would be best for all of us," replied Adam in an extremely rightful tone as a few elders nodded in agreement.

Alfred did not have anything to refute this. If Aurora did indeed go to a sect, she would be heavily cared for, which would mean that she would be given enough resources. It was a win-win situation on paper.

"Interesting… Does anyone else have any other suggestions? It seems like everyone wants to go with " asked Aron as he looked around.

"Wait," Leo's childlike voice rang out as he stood up. Immediately, everyone's curious eyes turned and looked toward him.

"I have another suggestion the will be better than what the elder has just offered," Leo spoke out as a serious expression appeared on his face.

Hearing this Aron's body grew lightly more relaxed and he was quite glad, he did not want Aurora to be sent to another sect and wanted Aurora to grow to have a deeper relationship with the sect.

"Ok, let us hear it."

"I only have one proposition for Aurora. I would like me, Aurora, and Lex to stay in the clan for the next six years. You don't have to waste any resources on her during these years. And after that, then we will leave on our own accord from the clan and have no more ties with this clan. It seems that you all seem to hate the thought of peasants being in the Decan clan. And I don't particularly like this clan because of it. You have partially insulted my mom and father by doing so it's all up to you all," spoke Leo in a very mature and speech-like manner as he brought forward his proposition.

Aron and Alfred immediately shuddered in surprise and grief as they could not believe what Leo had just said. This was particularly harder for Alfred to take in.

"Haha. I like that proposition. It works too," agreed Adam as he haughtily laughed as he only considered the benefits for his son who was in the same generation as Leo and Aurora.

Put in an extremely disastrous position, Aorn looked towards Alfred for help but after seeing him just plainly sit down and do nothing, Aron was crestfallen as he had only one option now and it seemed to be Aurora's choice as well, he stated, "It seems we have reached an agreement. Leo's proposition will be used. It seems both opposing parties are agreeing to this. The clan will house you all for six years and once you leave after that, you will have no relations with the Decan clan and be out of the clan for good."

Hearing that the problem was solved and that there was no reason to bother arguing about it, Leo stood up and slowly walked to the entrance, and just when he was about to leave, he turned around and warned to everyone warmly, "Now that we have finalized that I don't mind showing you all how I did it. But now I demand that everyone from this clan except the Uncle Aron's family refrain from interacting with Aurora too much. She often brings problems around wherever she goes."

And as Leo said that he revealed his middle gathering realm cultivation as a massive emission of magical energy flowed out from his body and he left, not bother to see or mock the elders.

'The clan might have just lost an extremely important talented pawn that could've become a queen,' Aron thought as he saw Leo's cultivation.

Leo walked out of the hall and was about a minute away from making it to the island when he suddenly stopped in his tracks as he looked up to the sky.

"Mother, father, I hope you can understand my decision. I had to do this to protect this clan, even though I quite dislike most of them," Leo spoke out to the sky as he paused there gazing at the beautiful stars that flickered countless times each second.

"Grandfather, can you please come out? I don't think I can hide this from you anymore," Leo suddenly turned to a particular direction and spoke out.

"You! How did you find me?" asked Alfred in amazement as he walked out from the treeline.

"I could sense and see you," replied Leo, "but that's not the issue I want to talk about. Grandfather, I thank you for taking us in but the people in this clan have hate towards commoners and Aurora deeply hates that treatment. Even if they disagreed with my choice then we would still have left anyway."

"What about your cultivation?" Alfred asked as he tried to convince Leo.

"Don't worry about that. We have three black ranked arts and a few white rank arts," Leo replied with a simple smile.

"Wait, what!?"

"The sect that was destroyed was destroyed by us, please don't ask me any more questions," added Leo as he began to walk again.

"What!?" Alfred was lost and his mind was completely muddled. He laid there for a whole five minutes, trying to figure everything out. How could a pair of five-year-olds take down a sect? Each sect had at least an emission realm cultivator. If news of this were to break out then this would break the order of strength in this world.

That night ended with Alfred in complete shock as he was having a completely hard time digesting the news. He didn't stop Leo any longer. He simply walked back to the meeting and told them that he believes what Leo said was true and that story was not fake. And the meeting ended that night in another half an hour.