Path starts here
The sun rises in the sky, the sun ray brilliant. The fog was very thick buy was passable; the sharp rays of sunlight pierced
Several 100 youths of 15 and 16 year-old youths gathered in front of the clan pavilion. The Zhao clan was located in the northernmost part of sun city, along with the Xuan clan of the south and Qing clan of the west of sun city which was inside of the misty forest. The ascension ceremony was going to be conducted at a valley owned by the Zhao clan inside the misty forest, the valley contained a nine storied pagoda that contained sharp tilted roofs and golden needle at the top; it was heavily guarded.
Before the pavilion square,and in the pavilion was the shrine of the Zhan ancestor memorial tablets. Every generation of clan head had lived in the pavilion. With every major ceremony or big incident, the clan elders would gather and discuss meetings here as well. This was the entire Clan central authority
"Good, all of you are punctual. Today is the Ascension Ceremony; it is your life's great turning point. I won't say much, just come with me." The one responsible at the moment was the elder of the academy. His beard and hair were white he looked old but one could feel vitality radiating from him and he was in high spirits as he led the young teenagers into a circle with mysterious carvings surrounded by 4 pillars facing east, west, south and north each of the cardinal direction each statue had with each each it own etching on it the east pillar had a etching of a dragon, the west pillar had a etching of a white tiger, the south pillar had a etching a vermillion bird and finally the north pillar had etching of an entwined tortoise and snake each etching had special meaning the dragon and The vermillion bird represented Yang and the white tiger and entwined tortoise snake represented Yin.
Zhao Yan looked at the 4 pillars as it lit up with a bright white light and shot into the sky and suddenly the inscription gleamed brightly, the light that emerged from the pillar stopped and The group of youths made surprised and amazed noises at the sight of this, the Academy elder suddenly spoke sternly as he looked at the youths, he had seen this every year with the youths and was tired of this but you could see a small amount of excitement as this was year was special as there was lot impressive youths in this bunch and there was another reason as well.
Follow me The Academy elder shouted at the youths as walked into the bright circle. Zhao Yan smiled "This will be useful to me later on" Zhao yan thought as he followed the elder into the white glowing circle, if one observed the glowing white circle carefully they could see that the circle was a formation of all 4 beings etched onto the statue but somehow the the circle felt incomplete and was mismatched Zhao yan looked away as he from the white circle and towards the dot of bright light that growing brighter and brighter as it flashed constantly it expanded until it filled the circle suddenly and bright white flashed and the bunch of youths and Academy elder disappeared from the pavilion square and appeared in a shrine located in the valley.
The Youths were extremely surprised by what had just happened "what the hell happened" "did we transport another location" "where are we!" some screamed as they looked around, some went to puke outside,The academy elder looked at them as smiled "it's fine to puke after all this is the first time you're experiencing transporting to another location it can be a little disorentating and confusing, you're lucky in fact in the previous batch of students some of the them experienced their mind splitting in half and they bled through their seven offricie" Academy said all this in a cheery voice which caused the youths to shiver in fear.
Academy elder suddenly looked at the youths in a serious expression "Now bow done to our ancestors and thank them for their hard work, it was because of them and their sacrifice that we were able construct the transportation circle" he said as he bowed done onto the floor as his forehead touched the ground and the rest of the youth followed in suit, Zhao yan looked at this sneered in his mind as he followed suit "These people are truly hypocrites, in my past life when some arrogant young master destroyed this place out of boredom and blamed it on me they has prosecuted me and made my horrible situation even worse and I was discriminated even more".
The Academy elder got up after a few minutes and the rest of the youths followed suit all getting up all of them contained a reverent expression, Zhao Yan looked at this in contempt but he knew this could be useful to him somewhat later on. Now the academy elder shouted "follow me we are going to the nine storied heavenly pagoda" as he started walking towards an empty and desolate path that was surrounded by trees in all directions, the youths followed the Academy elder through the desolate path surrounded by trees.
Zhao yan completely blended with crowd as he followed the elder "Things are going exactly as my past life, my final confirmation will be my talent rate if it is as I expected then it will be final conformation that me arriving to past did not change the future or otherwise all my plans will be completely useless." Zhao yan thought as he followed silently with a cold expression on his face,
he looked forward and he saw his cousin Zhao kei at front with a extremely reverent expression his face " I was mostly prosecuted by him" Zhao Yan thought as he looked at Zhao kei with a cold and indifferent expression " he thoroughly discredited me and went out of his way to make my life a living hell and trying to sabotaging me at every point, I almost died a few times because of him the first time i was chased by bunch of demonic beasts because of him and had to hide inside a demon carcass that was lying around was barely managed to survive as the corpse was rotting and demon beasts avoided it.
The second time I was almost killed by him in a competition even though I had won there was some cheating and i had become disqualified and he and his men beat me up in an ally, and finally i was chased down by him and fell down a cliff but this turned out be a fortuitous encounter, when i got up i was bleeding from the head and was in cave located presumably at the bottom of the cliff.
The underground cave was beautiful, stalactites sparkling with the colors of the rainbow. This light shone on my face, the neon hues was gorgeous.there was a spring flowing continuously. It was pure white in colour and its texture was like that of milk. I saw this and immediately realized it was the sea flow spring and there were many medicinal herbs, which i used to heal my injuries and barely survive and by some miracle the medicine had improved my constitution as well. Turns out that the cave was Quan Xi Lan's true inheritance. Quan Xi Lan was a great demon immortal. The name immortal was given to everyone who increased their Qi sea to "Black Qi sea ". Quan Xi Lan was a very famous grandmaster immortal. His speciality was making and inventing new treasures. He had left more than 78 inheritances but only 8 were true inheritances and only 2 were grandmaster inheritances.
This was an true inheritance and this was where i found my talent and constitution increasing treasure but at that time i didn't not know it was inheritance and failed to fully explore it and had just left it as it is and also i did not know that the items that i had found where talent and constitution increasing treasure only during my slave years that i found about the treasure abilities and was able to escape due to them."
Zhao Yan quietly followed the Academy elder as bunch of eerie noises came from the woods the students shivered upon hearing these noises as they did not know what lurked in these woods, suddenly a demonic beast popped out of nowhere and blocked the path of the Academy elder and the youths it looked like a monkey with red scars all over its eyes and had black hands it was massive, it over two feet tall and excluded a terrifying aura that stunned the youths and made them unable to move, however stood their ground bravely and looked at the demonic beast with courage in their eyes,
Zhao Yan stood there with a blank expression on his face as he knew the demonic beast wouldn't hurt him or any body as it was tamed beast sent by the clan to test the courage of the students and their willingness to fight and so that they could see the potential of the student as only talent was not enough as even if you had talent but if you were coward and refused to do anything your talent would be useless,
The academy elder smiled at seeing students seeing in fear and some standing their ground he pulled out his hand from cloak and waved it an inconspicuous manner suddenly wind blade shout from the direction of his hand and sliced the demonic beast in half it's blood splattered everywhere and some even fell on the students however even though the Academy elder was the closest to the beast there seems to be no blood on his clothes, it seems that there was some kind of invisible shield protecting the Academy elder,
The Academy elder smiled and looked at the students "don't worry it's mere red eyed masquerade it's low level demonic beast it's no match for me" he said with smile on his face, the youths gulped in fear as they looked at sliced corpse of the beast which now was dead, it had no expression of fear on its face as normal beast would it didn't even know the attack was coming and died in a surprise, Zhao Yan looked this sneered there was another reason that clan had done this was to instill fear of demonic beasts into the youths and make them dependent on the clan by showing the power of the clan and making therefore more loyal to the clan which makes them less likely to defect or betray the clan. Zhao knew all these were tactics he would often use them when he had started his own sect.
The Academy elder suddenly spoke in aloud voice "come on hurry up otherwise we will be late" and started walking with a increased pace, the students suddenly walking faster after the elder Zhao walked at leisurely pace and when he arrived near the split demonic beast that everyone had avoided out of disgust and fear, Zhao yan dug his hand through the corpse of the beast and pulled out and small orange coloured ball from its corpse "even though its a mere low level demonic beast it core is still useful to me at this stage and this core is somewhat different from the normal ones as well" Zhao yan thought as he put the core into a pouch that he had brought along he also dug out the beast eyes and placed them into the pouch as well and went after the elder.
Nobody had seen what Zhao yan had done as they were all too busy chasing after the elder and Zhao Yan successfully had taken the demonic beasts core and eyes.
For the rest of the day no more incidents occurred and the chased youths chased after elder and they finally reached the nine storied heavenly pagoda, the youths were incredibly tired by chasing the elder but elder did not seem tired at all it would seem that he did not even a break a sweat by doing this.
When Zhao Yan finally arrived at pagoda he looked at the gold needle at the top "my path to immortality starts now!" He thought as his usual cold expression morphed into smirk.