?As Wu Mingli and his mother left the courtroom Lin Guiren and his wife still had grim expressions. The last scroll that flew toward Shao Ren wasn’t just the Order handing out a notification, it had much graver implications.

The Golden Bamboo Pavilion had thousands upon thousands of subsidiaries spread throughout the continent. They had various roles one of which was the spread of the pavilion’s influence, with the business they conducted only serving as a tool to further that end.

The subsidiary members had the same role as the outer sect disciples of a sect. They were new blood injected into the pavilion, the same way outer sect disciples of a sect operated, and just like sects, if one of those subsidiaries showed some promise, then their station would be elevated.

They would be brought into the fold and given either the post of an executive or become the branch manager of some of their key branches around the continent. If they continued to improve, they would be made into elders, whose authority across the pavilion was just below that of the founders.

The minimum qualification for an elder was the ninth stage of the palace realm. Every elder at the very least was a late-stage palace realm expert.

The elders were in charge of recruiting and evaluating subsidiary candidates, and it was from within that base that they would try to search for those with the talent to rise up into executives.

The subsidiary phase served as a test for those candidates similar to how sects conducted their tests. A bunch of cultivators would be recruited as outer sect disciples and then they would be given support that was just enough to help them settle and build their foundations and then they would be left to fend for themselves, compete against each other, grow their strength, and at the end there would be a test to see who among them had grown enough to warrant a promotion to the next stage, the inner disciple courts.

The subsidiaries were the same. The Golden Bamboo Pavilion just lent them their name and a few start-up resources, but after that, they were hands-off. Whatever trajectory those subsidiaries followed, was up to them. Whether they thrived, stagnated, got destroyed, or got swallowed, it was up to them, the Golden Bamboo Pavilion would pay them little heed. It would not even avenge them, not unless they got destroyed by an enemy of the Pavilion. In that instance, the pavilion would be forced to act, but anything but that, and they would not act.

The subsidiaries were left to themselves in the wild. The only way to leave the wild and gain the attention of the pavilion was if one of them reached the quasi-palace stage. They were a merchant company, yes, and any true merchant, the one thing the one universal constant all merchants had was they hated making a loss. Whatever they could do to prevent it, they would do it, and in a cultivation world, there was only one sure way of ensuring you would not incur losses and that was to be strong.

Without sufficient strength, no matter how shrewd you were, you would always suffer a loss. If you didn’t have the strength to hold onto what you had, others would always take from you. That fact was why the Golden Bamboo Pavilion graded strength above anything else. Yes, they did offer rewards for other achievements that were outside strength, but those rewards were not true acknowledgment from them.

True acknowledgment would only come if one of them reached the quasi-palace stage. It was only then that they would be considered true members of the pavilion, and the pavilion would do its utmost to nurture them, which involved letting them cultivate in their core grounds and even granting them access to precious cultivation resources.

Shao Ren having already garnered enough accumulations and insights to break through to the palace realm, was in one of those precious cultivation grounds. With one of the founders being an accomplished gold-grade formation master, it went without saying that all their key areas were covered in gold-

grade arrays, including the area where Shao Ren was, presently.

One of those arrays was one of obfuscation, and it could shield the area even from the awareness of a soul formation expert, but Yang Qing’s actions and words, meant that the scroll he just sent was capable of pinpointing Shao Ren’s exact location irrespective of distance, and not only that, the scroll could also breach whatever protective measures they had there, with the same ease. Those gold-grade formations might as well not exist.

That level of exposure where the Order could breach their defenses with ease, irrespective of distance, sent alarm bells in Lin Guiren’s heart. If they could penetrate their defenses that easily, how easy would it be for the Order to attack them?

Yang Qing couldn’t help but gleefully celebrate inwardly. Lin Guiren and the rest, as seasoned old monsters, were experts at masking their emotions, but it didn’t take a genius to guess that his earlier display had left them unnerved. Openly seeing someone breach your defenses was bound to leave someone agitated, especially if said someone was confident in those measures.

Yang Qing gleefully took it all in. He has always been a vindictive and petty person. The debts he owed, he could easily forget them, but the debts he was owed, no matter how small, he would always remember them and record them in his heart.

As he was busy gloating at their misfortunes, he couldn’t help but release a heartfelt sigh as he took in the wholesome sight of the courtroom.

What he did wasn’t something that could be easily replicated. He had merely been a bystander during the whole thing. Two figures had been the ones running the show, and those figures were two of the most powerful treasures the Order had at its disposal, to the extent that both those treasures stood out even against saint-grade treasures. fr𝐰ebnov𝐞𝐥.𝐜o𝗺

Without them, sending the scroll as he did would have been impossible.

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