No One Knows of This Youth

The young man in the bamboo hat asked, "Does the Heavenly Selection require one to give their identity?"

His voice was very flat, like water, a calm and rippleless pool of water. However, if someone of truly powerful cultivation were present, they might be able to hear that this was not water, but ice—an ice that had been frozen for ten thousand years.

The distant crowd was in an uproar, no one having expected this person's response to be so cold and unswerving.

The Heavenly Selection seemed to refer to the heavens making a choice, but from its rules, one could see that it was really about one's strength. Whether one won through the protection of the ancestral spirits or through one's own strength, one's identity or background were not required. All Heavenly Selection ceremonies since time immemorial had never required such a thing.