Recruitment of the 9 sects

Upon arriving in the square Fang Qiu was quickly greeted by a see of bobbing heads, there were tens if not hundreds of thousands of youths gathered here with hopeful faces. I failed to become a disciple of the myriad sword sect twice already this time I'm definitely getting that spot! A proud looking 18 year old youth next to Fang Qiu exclaimed. Similar stories could be heard all over but that didn't stop those people from trying, these were the 9 great sects of the phoenix empire after all!

Fang Qiu soon managed to make his way over to the recruitment site of the pill cloud pavilion and armament sect upon which an elderly man quickly asked him for his name, age and cultivation level. "Fang Qiu, 16 years old, 1st stage human realm" a hint of pity flashes in the elder's eyes upon seeing the confident eyes of the youngster with the white mask. Kid, i advise you to try again next year lest you embarrass yourself, the lowest cultivation realm that gets accepted in the 9 sects is 3rd stage human realm after all and those kids are oftentimes not even 16 years old. Fang Qiu fully understood this reasoning but he was after all not a normal human, if he had not worn the mask the elder might have just dragged him to the sect himself. "Thank you for your advise elder but i would still like to take the trial" the elder gave the youth another good look before giving him a token which had his info on it upon which Fang Qiu bowed and left. "next!"

Fang Qiu quickly reached the testing grounds with the token where an endless stream of sad and crying youths left with the occasional screams of happiness whenever someone passed the examination and became an outer court member. The examination was very simple, an elder standing next to a glowing ball would accept the token and tell you to inject your spirit qi into it. The ball is a high ranking spirit tool capable of sensing people's talent! The talents were divided into tiers with human being low talent, earth being talent worth investing it and heaven being demon level talents. One had to be at least an earth rank talent to be accepted in the 9 sects which was not that uncommon, the 9 sects each accepted thousands of disciples every year after all the thing that was horribly difficult though was to get accepted as inner or core disciples, to become an inner disciple one had to have heaven level talent for that sect's main focus and to become a core disciple one had to have a great talent for that sect's main focus which for the pill cloud pavillion and armament sect is refining talent. Bit on top of that to become a core disciple one also had to have a high cultivation base for their age which meant great talent in refining but also in cultivating. To put in perspective how difficult it is to become an inner or core disciple one could look at the amounts of disciples the 9 great sects accepted each year. The 9 great sects accepted thousands of outer core disciples each year who would be inner disciples in normal sects at the very least, yet they each barely accepted 100 inner core disciples and less than 5 core disciples each year! This goes to show how difficult it is to start out as an inner or core disciple.

Fang Qiu soon saw the crowd split up to let a youth behind him pass, from the whispers around him he learned the youth was called sun Qiang and his dad was an elder in the pill pavilion, which was the biggest pill store in the capital! Sun Qiang quickly noticed the crowd opening up for him which made him feel even better, he felt like he might just become a core disciple at this rate and make the whole crowd look up to him! Just when he was thinking all these things he realised his way forward was blocked by a first stage human realm youth who likely didn't know about him. He didnt let this affect him though and tapped the youth on the shoulder, "excuse me little brother would you mind letting me pass?" Fang Qiu was stunned, where was the arrogant young master voice line like in the novels? Wasn't he supposed to push me aside and and act arrogant and condescending so I can smack his face in a few minutes?? It appears the real cultivation world isn't filled with arrogant young masters after all Fang Qiu thought to himself but obviousely he wouldn't create trouble when there wasn't any so he just let sun Qiang pass.

At the testing grounds the elder responsible for testing people's cultivation talent's eyes lit up. As expected the son of elder Sun of the pill pavilion is finally taking the entrance examination. One only had to be of the age of 15 to take the examination and Sun Qiang should have been able to pass when he was 15 with ease. He decided to wait 2 years on purpose to improve on his own first before stunning the entire academy with his talent! Many people expected Sun Qiang to have at least heaven rank talent for pill refining, of course the talent being measured by the spirit tool here was refining talent, if Sun Qiang were to go to the myriad sword sect to test his talent he might very well just be a human rank talent because he is not talented at the sword. That is also why the 9 academies still managed to recruit so many disciples each year because most student have a talent for only one of the 9 sect's criteria. With the 9 criteria being sword talent for the myriad sword sect, ice element talent for the mystic ice palace, refinement talent for both the pill cloud pavilion aswel as amarment sect, body cultivation talent for the golden body sect, taming talent for the beast sect, fire element talent for the sun pavillion, bloodline talent for the nine dragons sect and life or healing related talent for the ying yang pagoda.

After Sun Qiang made his way up on stage the elder quickly announced "Sun Qiang 9th stage human realm 16 years old" many of the crowd couldnt help but think they heard wrongly, 9th stage human realm at 16? What kind of freak is this kid!

The elder soon asked Sun Qiang to place his hand on the orb upon which it began to glow with dazzling colours. "Sun Qiang heaven rank low tier refining talent! An elder from both the pill cloud pavilion aswel as armament sect quickly made their way over expressing their interest to accept Sun Qiang as a core disciple! Although it was expected considering his results, many people in the crowd were still amazed by what they witnessed, this might be one of the only moments they could see a core disciple up close in their entire lives! Many girls were even throwing jealous looks at Fang Qiu wishing they were the one Sun Qiang spoke to. In the end Sun Qiang chose the pill cloud pavilion which was to be expected. After all, his father was a renowned alchemist in the phoenix empire.

Sun Qiang then took a seat in the viewing stand on the side of the accepted disciples and was quickly swarmed by his junior sisters trying to get in his good books.

After about a hundred other people quickly went up Fang Qiu quickly went up. Many people were initially quite interested in the boy with the white jade mask because most people wouldn't hide their identities, after all participating in the disciple recruitment of the 9 great sects was a glorious thing. But upon seeing he was only a first stage human realm cultivator many people instantly lost interest and continued talking with those around them. After all it has been many years since someone over 16 years of age with a first stage cultivation base got accepted in one of the 9 great sects.

He soon came up to the spirit tool and was told to place his hand on the tool upon which the elder's eyes suddenly lit up and he immediately took a second look at the youth with the white mask. Fang Qiu h...heaven grade high tier talent! The entire crowd suddenly froze, did they just hear correctly? You could even hear some people scream out after pinching themselves to make sure they weren't dreaming.

Soon after a massive uproar started in the test area of the 2 great sects, a talent with heaven grade high rank refining talent had not appeared in over 100 years, after all for every heaven grade mid rank talent there would be 100 heaven grade low rank talents and for every high grade talent there would be 100 mid grades... the 9 academies barely accept 1 heaven grade mid rank talent altogether every year and the academy that got the talented disciple was usually the one that the other 8 academies were jealous of, but now there was a heaven rank high grade talent right in front of them? There might not even be one for every 100 heaven rank mid grade talents and yet it just really happened right in front of their eyes? The elders of both refining academies both quickly activated voice transmission talismans and not even 10 seconds later 2 majestic auras could be felt approaching from the sky. Many people could feel an invisible pressure enveloping their bodies and upon seeing the 2 people up in the skies many even instantly knelt down.