Chapter 3:The recruitment platform

Hundreds upon hundreds of people were standing in dozens upon dozens of neatly arranged each tipped with a sanctioned heaven's chosen master.

They were standing or sitting as they waited for the prospective entrees to come up to them.

This is where the ascension for regular cultivators happened.

How?

Taking in the vital essence of any of the masters they approached. To that end, the male masters had their penises out in the open while for the women it was their breasts. When a mortal came up to them, they were given the usual spiel about joining the sect before telling them to consume the vital essence directly from the source.

And that could be seen as young men and women latched on the tit or cockhead of their respective masters.

The first consumption was free, giving everyone a chance. But one had to have a very high innate potential, such as being born to cultivators, for a single drink of vital essence to be enough. But most needed multiple gulps and that was not provided for free.

Samuel could only shake his head at the way the sect tied regular cultivators to them. Every extra helping required ten years of service to the sect or one hundred tier-1 essence stones up to ten times. Which was the average requirement for one to awaken their potential

Only rich mortals could afford the price of the essence stones and most chose to make themselves subservient to the sect, and the bulk of that will be serving the sect for their entire lives. Only people at the rank of essence condensation or above could comfortably live past their first century.

Then there was the tiny line at the edge where the really hardcore youngsters stood, there were less than twenty of them total in this massive crowd, and for good reason.

Heaven's chosen masters were almost always born into it, commonly from parents who were masters themselves or sometimes from regular cultivators. But given cultivators rarely if ever had children, one could understand their scarcity.

But unless the family had some hidden dormant bloodline, a master will never be born to mortals. But that did not stop a select few from trying even if the cost for failure was their lives.

The mortals in that line chose to risk it all for the chance at a greater form of power. Walking the path of a master.

Samuel felt slightly nostalgic at the memory of his own attempt at this brutal practice. Unlike the sexual nature of the rest, this one was just a master shoving an extreme amount of pure base essence into your soul, hoping to either awaken it or shatter it entirely.

Normal people could not appreciate what shattering your soul meant. It was the absolute destruction of all possible futures you could have taken after death. All for the .01% chance of breaking through. Of course, there were the mandatory 100 years of service to the sext if you did survive the death sentence.

Samuel was incredibly lucky to even be alive right now, and he pitied all those who were about to commit this form of effective suicide. But he would not deny them their chance, everybody had the right to walk their path.

Who knows? Maybe another master will emerge from this.

Coming to the end of his thoughts he floated down to the platform.

He was not sanctioned to be here and would not be paid anything even if he managed to awaken a few mortals.

But that was not the reason for his presence. Masters sometimes came here to see the masses and privately recruit disciples directly from a crowd. The reasons varied from master to master but it was a common enough practice that nobody questioned his being here.

He stood on the enchanted marble flooring taking in the masses as he tried to think of a plan of recruitment.

The disciples close to him gawked and many, especially the women, were staring at him with barely disguised desire. Some even gulped.

Nobody could blame them either. Samuel looked like he was carved by the gods themselves. Perfect pale skin with no blemishes, angular face with piercing mismatch of red and blue eyes. Perfectly combed black hair that completed the regal look. An ornate red and blue robe signified him as an elder instead of a normal master.

Samuel did not always look this handsome, above average at best. But every ascension of cultivation rank diminishes your physical flaws while enhancing the pleasant features. Even an ugly man would look handsome after three or four major breakthroughs. So at six, while his basic looks were considered above average, he was very eye-catching.

This was even after he suppressed his presence such was the veracity of his physical attractiveness. Despite being a recluse he could identify attractiveness but he did not care about it. Though beauty and cultivation were often directly related.

He was far more interested in their potential, looking good was merely a side effect.

Both his eyes started glowing as he activated a powerful universal ability a cultivator gains when they break through into the origin spirit realm. The essence circuits in eyeballs blazed to life as he activated soul sight.

Immediately the scene in front of him changed, all the physical forms washed away and what remained was the soul within. Each was in the form of a gaseous flame with a vast range of shapes, sizes, and colors. Those who knew what they were looking for, could see the latent potential that existed in each soul.

Lucia hated this ability, with the argument that it did not take into account one's strength of will or intellectual capacity. This was also mirrored by the Heaven's Climb sect which allowed anyone and everyone to try.

While he understood the reasoning, it was still a very quick way to find cultivators to be.

But given that out of the 1892 souls he bared witness only 21 showed powerful potential, he could understand why this method was not popular. Out of everyone here, he expected around 300 cultivators to be awakened which was around 15 times the amount that showed guaranteed potential.

But he had his list which he divided even further.

All the men were out. Lucia was the only person he was comfortable sharing vital essence with for the longest time and it shifted his sexuality to purely women. The norm was being attracted to both but it was not entirely uncommon to be only attracted to the opposite or even the same sex. Since masters were so rare, they were always spoiled for choice.

The number was reduced to eight.

Since he only wanted to dip his toes in this system he cut that number to one.

This one was by far the strongest soul here and it belonged to a beautiful woman.

Said woman was currently being poached by another master.

Thinking it was no harm to try, Samuel decided to try and throw his name in as well.