Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Suddenly the place was in a great uproar.
The guests on site stood one after another and looked to the same direction. The lord of the Jiang Mansion, Jiang Wentian, namely Jiang Chen’s grandpa, was walking towards them slowly.
Most of the people of the Jiang Mansion hadn’t seen him in almost half a year. He finally showed up on the big day of the year, looking healthy and in fine fettle, which was quite soothing.
Jiang Wentian greeted the guests one by one and sat down at the main table.
Jiang Chen saw Gao Yue’s meaningful glance and walked over to greet him.
“Chen, are you feeling better now?” A bright smile lit up Jiang Wentian’s ancient wrinkled face. He mentioned neither the Black Dragon City nor Jiang Chen’s father.
Jiang Chen understood his intention and wished him Happy New Year.
Jiang Lu, Jiang Jian, Jiang Feng and other disciples of the Jiangs’ came forward one after another to wish Happy New Year to the elders.
Then Jiang Wentian stood up to declare the start of the banquet.
They had a hearty meal. Everything smelled so delicious that young kids were tempted to start eating without the permission of the adults.
“Jiang Feng, did you learn anything new in the institute in the past year?” Jiang Wentian asked.
Jiang Feng felt delighted. He answered with pride, “Grandpa, I’ve achieved the peak of the preliminary stage and I think I will achieve the middle stage of the Gathering Yuan State soon.”
“By then my elder brother will be a powerful person even in the Jiang Mansion!” Jiang Jian added right away.
“Good!”
Jiang Wentian nodded with satisfaction. He suddenly glanced at Jiang Chen and said with pity, “How great it would be if Chen hadn’t been injured.”
Jiang Feng wasn’t very happy to hear this. He said, “Jiang Chen hit the bottleneck of the Condensing Qi State before. It would indeed take him lots of time to break it through. Even if he hadn’t been injured, it would have taken him more or less one year.”
“Jiang Chen achieved the Gathering Yuan State in less than half year even after he was injured. How would it have taken him such a long time?” Jiang Lu argued.
“Didn’t you just achieve the Gathering Yuan State? And it didn’t take you much time?” Jiang Feng said with satire.
The arguing of the young generation made the elders laugh.
The Second Elder said, “So, let’s start the annual evaluation to see who is the best.”
In a second all of the disciples turned pale. The annual evaluation was what they were looking forward to, but they also felt nervous about it.
The annual gathering wasn’t only to have a meal together, but also to see the progress of the young generation.
That was why Jiang Chen had tried so hard to achieve the Gathering Yuan State.
“Wonderful. Let’s start. Fetch the bow of the lost souls here!” Jiang Wentian ordered without asking others’ opinions.
The bow of the lost souls.
It was a unique weapon that only existed in the Southwind Ridge. It didn’t have any lethality, but could detect how strong one’s soul was.
How strong one’s soul was would decide how fast and how deep he could apprehend a martial method and a martial technique.
So the bow of the lost souls could detect one’s talent.
This was something unusual, since talent meant everything for the people living in this continent, but by far there didn’t exist a way that could ascertain one’s talent with 100% accuracy.
This was like gambling on stones. You wouldn’t know whether a stone was a gem or trash until it was cut open.
A man would have to practice and be judged by the time he spent practicing and his achievements.
However, everyone wanted to know how great his talent was and how far he could go beforehand.
Many powerful forces also wanted to find out a way to detect one’s talent so that they could pick out the more talented ones to train.
The disciples of the Jiang Mansion would shoot with the bow of the lost souls. The farther they could shoot, the stronger their souls were.
Murong Feng and Li Lie, the two disciples of the Swordquest School, had never heard this kind of thing. They only got to know this story when people of the Jiangs beside them explained it to them.
Murong Feng was a gorgeous woman. She had a beauty that the women living in the mountains didn’t possess. She was graceful, but also very lively.
She was in a close-fitting dress, which had already attracted much attention.
She said, “Tools used to detect talents are very rare, and most of them don’t have a high accuracy. It’s quite surprising that I will see it in a place like the Hundred Thousand Mountains. And it looks so amusing.”
“Let’s buy one when we go back. I want to show it to the elder and see whether it works or not,” Li Lie said.
“Sure.”
The Swordquest School also possessed a talent test tool called Skyquest Sword. There was ware pattern carved on the blade, which made it very difficult to draw the sword from the sheath. So one’s talent would be decided by how much he could draw the sword from the sheath.
…
There were more disciples than the bows. So they had to take the test in turn.
The disciples were standing with the bow of the lost souls holding in hand, and were trying to aim for the porcelain bottles hanging in the air. The closest porcelain bottles were three hundred steps away.
Most of them chose to shoot the closest targets, since if they chose the farther ones and missed the target, they wouldn’t get any points.
Only confident ones would choose to take the challenge.
For example, Jiang Feng. He got into the Cangnan Institute, so he must have a good talent.
He shot a handsome arrow. The arrow blew shrilly, ripping apart the sky, and shattered the porcelain bottle that was eight hundred steps away.
The whole Jiang Mansion was astonished. Jiang Tianxiong was very proud to see this.
“Very good.” Jiang Wentian nodded with satisfaction.
“It looks fun. Let me try it.”
Jin Jie suddenly walked to Jiang Feng and extended her hand out with no intention to ask his opinion.
“Sure.” Jiang Feng handed the bow of the lost souls to her.
Jin Jie didn’t rush to shoot the arrow. She played with the bow a little first, tried to pull the bowstring back, and then put an arrow in the bow. She was so confident that she aimed at the target that was one thousand steps away.
Her slender arm drew the bowstring to the limit and the arrow then flew out with a whoosh. The porcelain bottle that was one thousand and two hundred steps away was shot.
“Wow!” Many people were shocked.
“Eh? Looks I can shoot farther.” Jin Jie was so excited that she was about to shoot the second arrow.
“The Jiang Mansion isn’t a scenic spot that you are visiting. Everyone only gets one arrow every time. Even if you want to play around, you have to respect the rule here.” Jiang Chen walked to her and felt anger for this woman.
He was the son of the Over Cloud Palace in his previous life, but he had never been arrogant because of his noble identity.
Jin Jie was behaving like the descendents of those upstarts. They had some deep-rooted bad habits.
“How shabby you are!”
Jin Jie curled her lip. Jiang Chen didn’t leave her a good impression. She rolled her eyes at him, gave him the bow and said sarcastically, “You’ve never tried this, have you? What’s your result for last year?”
“Eight hundred steps.” Jiang Feng answered.
He couldn’t understand why Jiang Chen could get such a good result before. After knowing that Jiang Chen had the holy pulse, he felt relieved, since at the same time he was informed of the robbery of the holy pulse and the tragedy of the east courtyard.
“Let’s see whether you can break my record.” On hearing that Jiang Chen’s record was four hundred steps closer than hers, Jin Jie showed an extremely bright smile.
Jiang Chen took the bow of the lost souls and thought of the record of his father, which was two thousand steps. That was quite impressive for him.
The previous Jiang Chen used to make that record as his target.
“Let me help you achieve it.”
Jiang Chen drew the bowstring and put the arrow in the bow. He aimed at the porcelain bottle that was two thousand steps away.
His movement attracted some attention. Jiang Feng sneered at him, “Don’t forget that if you can’t shoot that far, your arrow will reach nowhere and you won’t get any points.”
The farther the distance was, the more difficult it was, since in that way not only the distance but also the accuracy represented the strength of his soul.
Two thousand steps away, the porcelain bottle was only a black spot.
