Chapter 787 Ground zero
?Pushing the matter of Bai Chen aside, Yang Qing decided to focus his attention back on the slip. When he left the steering room, per Bai Chen's estimation it would take two hours before they reached the first location on his list, Camel Lake Town in the Sunbirch Kingdom. His target was the sect master of one of the local powerhouses in Hanming province where Camel Lake Town was located. The sect's name was the Scorpion Lotus Sect, and it was a rank 4 sect.
After finishing with the Scorpion Lotus Sect, he would move toward the next target located in Five Peak Valley found in the Moon Pine Kingdom, which just like the Sunbirch Kingdom was a rank 3 kingdom. His target there was the clan head of the Liu clan, one of the five peak factions of the Five Peak Valley which just like its name was named so because of the five peak clans that inhabited the valley.
After the Five Peak Valley, he would then head to the Ember Lightning Flame Forge pavilion in Thousandforge City located in the territory of the Divine Armament Sect, a rank 2 sect. His person of contact was the owner of said pavilion.
Lastly, he would finish at Azure Mirage City located in Snow Dawn Province of the Great Chen Empire which was a rank two empire. His contact in the city was the sect master of the Spring Rain Sword sect.
Despite his extensive list which contained twenty members, he had restricted himself to four visits this time because of the enormity of the distance where those members were located from one another. In the spirit of caution, the members of his network list were spread far apart from one another to reduce someone piecing it together that those organizations were part of an Order Network.
Because of the distance, four was all he could handle for the five-day timeframe he had been given by the Bluefin Escort Agencies. If he flew with just his cultivation base it would have taken longer.
Yang Qing used the two hours left before the first meet-up to finish the list Shao An had handed him.
Next on the list was a blue-grade formation master by the name of Zhu Qing. Yang Qing couldn't help but raise his brows in surprise when he looked at his age. He was 203 years old and he was already a second-stage palace realm expert and a blue-grade formation master and geomancy specialist when it came to the mining of spirit-rich stones and minerals.
His extensive list of proficiencies and achievements was not something that one would expect to see in someone who was only 200 years old, the fact that it was, he was nothing short of a genius-level talent. He was one of the leading talents of the Blue River Star Guadian Manor, a rank 3 organization that had made its bones in formation arrays. It was one of the best within its rank boasting a reputation as one of the best to hire when one thought of laying down blue grade arrays or buying blue grade formation blueprints.
The quality of their arrays and blueprints stood out in the market and it was a reputation that they had held for over 30,000 years. Countless prominent factions around the continent from sects to clans to kingdoms and empires, down to merchant organizations and even the rogue cultivator community all sort their services.
They had a long list of clients that never stopped, and because of the quality of their services, that number only continued to grow. Even with the increasing number of demands and few people to fulfill them, the pavilion put strict demands on those who would be accepted within their ranks, ensuring only the cream of the crop could join them.
With the pavilion having over a dozen blue-grade formation masters, and two or three rumored to be at the cusp of becoming gold-grade formation masters, their ability to attract talent even as a rank 3 organization wasn't any less than that of a rank 2 sect.
Zhu Qing had been one of those talents. He quickly rose through the ranks and became one of the division heads in a short 150 years, and it wasn't long before he was nominated to be one of the talents to succeed the seat of pavilion master of the Guardian Blue River Star Pavilion.
The seat of the pavilion master was rotated every 200 years to promote competition and improvement within the pavilion to prevent its stagnation. Every talent that walked through the doors of the Pavilion harbored the ambitions and hope of one day becoming the Pavilion Master as whoever obtained that title, it was proof that they were the best in their generation.
Talents always liked to outdo one another, and Zhu Qing was no exception to that. That relentless desire to obtain that seat and shoot for the stars and become one of the youngest pavilion master to have ever graced the Guardian River Star Pavilion led him to his doom. To shore up his abilities to the previous masters who were the ones who voted who would succeed the seat, Zhu Qing undertook a task.
A newly promoted rank three kingdom wanted a defensive and spirit-gathering array to be laid out in one of their spiritual herb farms. After gaining a palace realm expert, the kingdom hoped to borrow that momentum and support the creation of another, and one of those ways involved improving one of their spiritual herb farms which was why they did not hesitate to pay the exorbitant amount it would take to hire the services of the Guardian River Star Pavilion.
Those at the Pavilion were surprised Zhu Qing took such a case as he mostly dealt with more established rank 3 organizations and not young ones like that kingdom. Only Zhu Qing knew why he had chosen them. They were the perfect platform to showcase his abilities. In a well-established organization, he would not be able to freely do what he wanted, but in a new one, he could.
Because of his prodigious talent working with formations all the time and the environment he was in, Zhu Qing once got enough enlightenment to create his formation array blueprint which he felt was at the throngs of reaching the top tier among blue grade formations. However, he had not completely ironed out all the details.
When the requisition of the young kingdom appeared, he thought to himself surely this must be it. If he told them he would lay a top-tier blue grade formation at the same expense as a low-tier blue grade one, which was what they had asked for, as a young kingdom with ambition would they refuse it? Surely not and his guess had been on the mark as the kingdom had been ecstatic when Zhu Qing made the proposition.
Of course, Zhu Qing had withheld a few pieces of information from them such as that was the first time that formation would ever be used. They were the ground zero for that formation array.
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