When I first arrived on the Nine Rivers Continent, my soul was transported into the body of Su Fang, an orphan boy from the Su Clan, the undisputed rulers of the area known as the Western Wastes.


    I spent several short lives trying to become a worthwhile disciple of this clan, but at every step, its unrepentant ruthlessness shone through. When I couldn’t cultivate, I was killed. When I cultivated poorly, I was killed. Then, after showing even the slightest bit of promise, I was enslaved.


    At no point did anyone step forward to try and teach me how to do better. They were only willing to throw me a scroll for a worthless technique and tell me to learn on my own. If I didn’t, if I had even the slightest problem in learning to cultivate, they killed me.


    It was a terrible place, and after I escaped, I had no desire to return.


    However, two things had drawn me back.


    First, the Su Clan had been instrumental in shaping my early years in this world. Su RuDi, a low-level alchemist, enslaved my mind and forced me to spend 80 years concocting pills for him while making me focus on repaying the ‘debt’ I owed him for all the ingredients I used. The situation had drilled into my head, into my soul, a need to repay my debts, and I needed to repay my ‘debt’ to Rudy.


    More importantly, to advance to Martial Sovereign, I needed to cultivate karmic energy generated from cultivators connected to my bloodline. It was possible for me to change my bloodline and join a powerful new clan, but from what I had been told, that process seemed to be permanent. If I joined a new clan, I would never be able to leave it, no matter how many times I died.


    Part of me could see value in attempting this. I could join a powerful force, prove my worth, and be showered with the energy and resources I needed to advance. I could try this, but if I did so, I would always be an outsider. They might assist me to benefit themselves, but they would never care about my advancement for my sake. I would never have an opportunity to ascend to the peak of whichever clan I joined, and that meant I would never have the opportunity to ascend beyond it.


    Even with the drawbacks, this path may hold a certain allure if I were a normal cultivator. However, I had to consider my future. I wasn’t just living one life. I was living a constant sequence of lives. Did I want to have to worry about rejoining a new bloodline and proving my worth every time?


    No. If possible, I wanted to create a path of advancement that didn’t rely on outsiders. I wanted to extract the best seedlings from the Su Clan and transform them into my own Sovereign clan. By using a combination of my storage space and memory orbs, I could make a clan that would be able to grow across timelines and not be reset whenever I died.


    Secretly building a Sovereign-level force while ensuring that it wasn’t detected and destroyed by the rulers of this continent would be challenging. It would be the work of centuries. That was okay. I had the time, and when I was ready, there were those both in the Wastes and outside of it who I knew I could count on for support.


    However, before anything else, I needed to reacquaint myself with the Su Clan. I had lived in its training compound for centuries, but I barely knew anything about the place or the clan that ran it. If I wanted to claim their best disciples as my own, then I needed more information. So, I decided to spend at least one life as a proper member of the clan to gain a better understanding of how it functioned.


    After a quick review of my notes regarding my early days in this world, I found that I would be taken away to have my affinities tested in three to four hours. Before that happened, I needed to have a solid plan for what affinities I would display and what blessing I would claim to have received. To make such a plan, I needed a better understanding of what the Su Clan considered ‘normal.’


    Reaching into my storage space, I pulled out a Rank 3 Shadowed Soul Pill and swallowed it. This pill would completely hide me from anyone below the level of Martial Lord for an hour and a half. While it was still possible for formations or special skills to break through this concealment, I doubted I needed to worry about anything like that.


    Once hidden, I opened the door of my house and stepped outside.


    <hr>


    After more than a full hour of waiting, the gate of the residential area still hadn’t opened. This made me a bit nervous that the effects of my pill would run out, so I took a second one just to be safe.


    Finally, after a full two hours had passed, the gates opened, and a young woman stepped through. She was only 19 or 20 years old and was dressed in the dark brown robes of a servant. Walking as quickly as she could, she approached the house closest to the gate and bowed to its door.


    “Master ShouDu, it is time for your evaluation.”


    She stood there, bowed, for several minutes. I could sense a growing agitation in the woman, but she didn’t dare to move.


    As she was nearing her breaking point, the door of the house opened and a pompous-looking boy in a bright red robe with golden embroidery stepped through. A lock of his long hair was done up with a golden hairpin that looked like a small crown, and the way he carried himself made it appear as if he believed himself to be the master of the entire world.


    “What took you so long? Take me to see uncle at once.”


    The young woman gave several quick bows. “Of course, young master, of course.”


    The woman turned and hurried back to the area’s gate.


    “Slow down, wench! How dare you make me run!”


    She turned and gave a quick bow.


    “Yes. Sorry, young master.”


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    As they departed, I stealthily slipped through the gate and followed them.


    When we arrived at a smaller courtyard that contained only a single opulent building, Su ShouDu turned to the young woman who had been leading him and slapped her across the face so hard she was knocked to the ground.


    “Tell Eunuch Pang to send someone prettier next time. I hate looking at you pathetic wretches.”


    With a snarl, the jackass turned and entered the building.


    At any other time, I might have thought that his behavior was the effect of a cultivation technique gone wrong. Here and now, I knew that couldn’t be the case. The boy hadn’t even started cultivating yet. He was just a born and bred bastard. The only explanation I could come up with for his actions was that he saw how cultivation-mad people acted and decided to imitate them.


    It was a disgusting situation, and I wanted to do something about it, but at the moment, I was on a mission.


    Leaving the young woman behind, I followed after the ‘young master.’


    <hr>


    The room we entered was mostly empty, but this emptiness helped draw my focus to the marble pedestal at the center of the room which held an affinity testing orb.


    An elderly man with graying hair dressed in a turquoise robe stood behind the orb, and a middle-aged man in rich blue robes sat on a dais at the back of the room. To my left, a scribe sat at a table, taking notes.


    When ShouDu entered the room and saw the man sitting on the dais, he gave a slight bow of his head.


    “Uncle.” His words hid a trace of disdain. “I have been kept waiting for far too long. Let’s get this over with.”


    The man at the back of the room didn’t rise to the bait and gestured for the elderly man to begin the examination.


    “Place your hand upon the orb and insert your qi.”


    ShouDu strode forward arrogantly and slammed his hand down on the orb.


    At first, nothing but a chaotic mix of lines appeared, but after ShouDu exerted himself, the image of a stone appeared. It started as a rusty red color, but after brightening twice, it dulled and became beige. Then, it brightened twice more.


    Once ShouDu was spent, the elder nodded his head and smiled. “High seven-star earth affinity. Very impressive. An affinity worthy of a true scion of the Su Clan.”


    ShouDu straightened his back and raised his chin.


    The elder examined him up and down. “What is your blessing?”


    ShouDu let out a pleased chuckle. “I have been blessed with superior strength. It is already enough to break stones apart with my bare hands.”


    The elder’s smile slipped slightly, but he still nodded in acceptance. Then, he turned to the scribe.


    “Su ShouDu shall be given the Rocky Ground Mantra. A suitable technique to display his newfound physical might.” The elder gestured to a room on the right. “Young master, please.”


    ShouDu stuck his chin even higher in the air and walked into the side room where another scribe was sorting through various scrolls. After accepting his technique, ShouDu left, but I stayed behind. As stealthily as I could, I tapped a finger on each of the scrolls in the room, sending them all to my mental library. A quick check showed that the best on offer was a Low-Profound technique, but I didn’t let that stop me from copying everything into my mental library.


    Once that task was complete, I returned to the hall where the elders were waiting for the next child to appear. I quietly took a seat in the corner of the room and studied the situation. Both elders were Martial Grandmasters, with the older man at the orb being a Grandmaster 5 and the man at the back of the room being a Grandmaster 7. The scribe off to the side was only a Martial Disciple.


    I didn’t recognize the elder at the orb, but the sight of the man at the back of the room struck a chord in my memory.


    After flipping through my notes, I found out why. He was Su YuanFei, the Second Elder of the Su Clan and the brother of the clan’s patriarch. He had teamed up with Rudy and was one of the men responsible for the clan’s destruction. He had also been responsible for torturing me after claiming that I was part of a plot by the Grand Elder and the Fourth Elder to poison the clan’s Disciples.


    ShouDu had called him ‘uncle.’ Did that mean he was the son of the patriarch?


    I took a step back. No, that information wasn’t reliable. It was knowledge from 80 years in the future. At the moment, YuanFei and his brother might only be the sons of the current patriarch, and ShouDu might be his grandson. The infighting from the ‘past’ may have not yet begun.


    Su Clan politics was something that I could potentially use to my advantage, but it wasn’t my focus. I didn’t care about taking over the clan. I only wanted to steal their disciples. So, I refocused on my mission as another child was brought in to be tested.


    I sat in that room for over an hour and made notes on the names, affinities, and blessings of over three dozen children.


    Something that surprised me was that at least three-quarters of the people who came in weren’t sure what their blessings were. Some had vague ideas, but others were completely clueless. This ran counter to what I knew from past experience. I had thought everyone received some form of innate knowledge about their blessings, but that might have only been because of the people I had surrounded myself with. With most of these Disciples being the dregs of society, it was possible that the Earthly Dao hadn’t seen fit to grant them such knowledge.


    Of those that did have a grasp of their blessings’ effects, only a few had anything worthy of note, and those were mostly slight physical improvements. After the events in the Nine Rivers Sect, such blessings interested me as a research topic, but most people in this world considered them rather worthless. Slight physical strengthening would do nothing against an opponent empowered by qi.


    The affinities of these Su Clan Disciples weren’t any better. At least, not on the surface. Nearly four out of ten were evaluated as having zero affinity, though I suspected that just meant they had multiple affinities. Three in ten had a nine-star affinity, and nearly all the rest were in the low eight-star range. Only a handful had anything better, and only a small few could claim a seven-star affinity.


    As for their elements, over half had earth affinities, and the rest were mostly spread between water, metal, and wood. There was almost no one with a fire affinity, and the highest I saw only had a mid nine-star affinity. No one showed any signs of an affinity with any of the secondary elements.


    If fire affinities were so rare, then the Su Clan’s territories had to be lacking in fire essence. Since the Twin Mountains Sect possessed a pool that could increase a person’s fire affinity, I had a decent idea of where all that essence might be going.


    As I watched the youths test their affinities, I also studied the process of using qi before opening one’s acupoints. A person’s energy was still contained within their energy body, and it was still coming out through their acupoints. The only differences related to the quantity of qi one could extract and how difficult it was to do so. After an hour of study, I was confident I could easily adapt the affinity masking skill I had previously developed and use it as a Martial Disciple 1.


    My Shadowed Soul Pill was wearing off, so, satisfied with the information I had collected, I snuck out of the building, returned to the residential area, and re-entered my house.


    Then, I pulled out an affinity testing orb from my storage space and practiced sending it energy at different affinity levels. This took a few attempts, but I quickly got the hang of the process and was able to simulate any single-element affinity I wanted as long as it was lower than my true affinity with that element.


    Not long after I mastered this skill, a middle-aged servant wearing a dark brown robe opened my door and looked at me. He attempted to maintain a mask of neutrality, but I could sense the disdain in his eyes.


    When he spoke, it sounded as if he believed himself a superior giving orders to an underling.


    “Follow me.”


    I stood graciously and exited my small house. It was time to see what future I would have with this Su Clan.