When the next contestant came forward, Yang Qing's eyes narrowed with hidden glee. It was a young man with a heroic bearing and a handsome appearance. He had short blonde hair and emerald-green eyes. His face looked like it had been sculptured by the finest materials at the hands of a talented craftsman.
He held a pure white silver spear in his hand as he walked with a sense of confidence and calmness about him. His cultivation base was at the third stage of the foundation establishment realm and he did not seem that far away from forming his fourth pillar. Though Yang Qing didn't have his palace sense and could therefore not confirm it, he felt like the young man had quasi-gold-grade pillars. These were blue-grade pillars that had motes of gold radiance in them. When he was breaking through to the core formation realm, provided his foundations were good, he had a good chance of forming a gold core if he put enough effort and had sufficient guidance and resources, which was something he was guaranteed to have at the Institute.
The blonde-haired student's name was Mu Li, and from the eyes he was getting from the students especially those of the female gender, he seemed like a popular person within his class.
"Instructor Pan, how did he perform in his entrance examination?" asked Yang Qing using a secret voiceless incantation since he couldn't use his palace sense to communicate.
"He was first, and he finished by a large margin at that. He had already developed spear sense at the time and even though he was only at the beginning stages, he was armed with a blue-grade spear art.." answered Instructor Pan.
"Why was he sent to the blue grade test? With his achievements, he had met the standards for the gold grade test?" asked Yang Qing.
"The choice came from the preliminary evaluator, which at the time I didn't understand, however, after interacting with him these past few months, I could understand why. You should already have a sense of it, right?"
Yang Qing paused for a bit before answering as he deeply studied the blonde-haired youth making his way to the center of the arena.
"Mmmh, so that's why...Considering who he is coming up against, seems like you've judged right now is the best time?"
"Yes we have already created a plan for him, should last six months.."
"SIX!!" Yang Qing yelled in shock
"Forgive me for the outburst, but six, won't he break?!" he added.
"After four months, we already know his threshold and how far we can take it as we add a little at a time.."
"Excited as usual.." thought Yang Qing when he detected a hint of expectation and delight in Instructor Pan's tone.
Yang Qing had a sympathetic look as his gaze fell on the contestants below him.
"There's no one better than Guo Feng to be the catalyst, I guess..." Yang Qing said as his gaze fell on the opponent that the blonde-haired student would be facing.
His opponent was a slender-looking elderly man with a white beard that had reached his chest, that was perfectly straight, and white hair tied in a bun with a few loose strands hanging on his forehead.
The elderly-looking man had an indifferent expression on his face as he stood in a ramrod posture. It gave one the sensation that a mountain could fall on him and he would not bend for even an inch.
Yang Qing couldn't help but sigh when his gaze fell on the elderly man. Every Institute student for the past seventy years knew him.
"He looks just about ready to form his core.." Yang Qing muttered to himself.
The elderly man's name was Guo Feng and he had once been a core elder of a declining rank 4 sect by the name of the Enduring Rain Mountain sect. The sect had a rich history having stood around for almost 45,000 years, which was considered extremely long for a rank 4 sect and the reason it survived that long was because it once had an early-stage domain expert in its helm at some point in time during their history.
However, despite having an early-stage domain expert, the sect still fell into decline. The early-stage domain expert once explored a dangerous ruin and he ended up getting corrupted with one of the objects stored within that ruin, which he brought back to the sect.
The corruptive effect of the object left him in a paranoid and frenzied state. When it started, its effects were small like small outbursts here and there, nothing too serious, getting triggered by the smallest of things, micromanaging every little thing, then it progressed to violence when he attacked his personal disciple for fear he was scheming against him then it moved to the elders and the fights were no longer just fight where he injured the opponent but he started killing them.
That was the point where the sect members could not adopt a wait-and-see approach,]. They acted as they feared the domain expert who was their supreme elder at the time had been corrupted by a parasite or through some insidious means of a fiendish expert skilled with manipulating the soul.
After investigations, they managed to find the root of it, which was the object the supreme elder always had on him, which was a jade sculpture of a double-headed vulture that had two irises.
However, even if they found the cause of it, they could not separate their supreme elder from it, as he was the strongest cultivator in the sect, with the remaining two supreme elders along with the sect master being at the peak stage of the palace realm. But because of their long history and the connections they built up, they managed to draw in the help of a friend of the supreme elder.
Working together, they tried to suppress and restrain the supreme elder, however, the statue reacted when it detected the danger to itself and the supreme elder. The statue boosted the abilities of the supreme elder who managed to injure the domain expert they had called over. Seeing the situation turning for worse with the statue attempting to corrupt them and the domain expert they had called over, the higher-ups of the sects which were nine palace realm experts and fifty late-stage core formation experts, triggered a forbidden art to try and subdue their supreme elder long enough for the domain expert to act.
The forbidden art was deployed successfully and they did manage to subdue their supreme elder and the statue in the process, however, things didn't go as they had expected because the domain expert they had invited over, took advantage of the opportunity they had created to flee.
With no help, the higher-ups were forced to maintain the forbidden art, had they stopped it early, all they would have gotten was a few serious injuries that would have taken a decade or two to heal but without a domain expert, they were forced to push the forbidden art to the extreme which meant sacrificing their cultivation base and lives, and to make sure they succeeded all remaining core formation experts within the sect jumped in to add more power to the art.
Their sacrifice paid off because they managed to suppress their supreme elder long enough for him to gain a brief window of clarity. The supreme elder used that window to destroy the statue which proved more difficult than anyone from the sect had expected as it required the the supreme elder to sacrifice his life and also borrow the power of the forbidden art to destroy that sculpture.
That history lent credence to the saying birds die for food and men die for treasure. The Enduring River And Mountain Sect, lost almost everything that day. Their core power died all in a single moment, their facilities, core legacies, and treasures got destroyed in the process too, and their foundations got hollowed out, all in a single instance.
A sect that had a domain expert, thirteen palace realm experts, and over a hundred core formation experts, lost all of them because of a cursed treasure.
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