Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

As the competition concluded without any problems, the disciples and elders of the sect who had joined to watch these seniors of the sect show off their skills, did not react like how most of the participating elders had expected them to react.

Instead of the number of disciples joining the blacksmithing hall and the alchemy hall following the awesome display of profound skill from their seniors, the number of disciples interested in alchemy and blacksmithing instead seemed to see a significant decrease. Lowering the number of disciples joining the two professions, while as an unintended side effect, increasing the number of disciples deciding to join the formation hall to become a formation master and causing the remaining disciples to focus on their cultivation more seriously than they had done in the past.

As a result of this, the already busy Combat Hall of the sect became even busier, as discussions of expanding the Combat Hall soon reached the ears of Elder Song, who was more than happy to allocate some of the sect’s resources towards the expansion of the Combat Hall. After all, the younger generation’s current drive to increase their strength was an unexpected surprise and something that would help increase the overall strength of the sect.

Even though it was not the intended effect he had wanted from the competition, it wasn’t bad in any way… And with the lower number of disciples joining the alchemy hall and the blacksmithing hall, Elder Song found a way to funnel some of the resources that would originally have gone towards expanding these two towards the expansion of the Combat Hall.

In the end, the only ones who ended up losing out were the alchemy hall and blacksmithing hall, who didn’t see the expected increase in disciples joining them and instead just saw the resources originally allocated for their expansion decreasing visibly.

Of course, given that the competition was nothing short of perfect in the eyes of the alchemists and blacksmiths who had taken part in and watched the competition, they couldn’t understand why this was the case.

After all, the group of elders taking part in the competition had all perfectly shown off their splendor and deep comprehension regarding alchemy or blacksmithing. Especially Bai Ning and Qing Yi, who had stood out as the youngest participants during the competition.

However, given that it was a fact that new disciples didn’t rush over to join them following the end of the competition, they still understood that there might have been something that they couldn’t see that ended up going wrong in the eyes of the younger disciples for them to suddenly become so disinterested in alchemy and blacksmithing.

Unable to cope with the fact that the number of disciples joining the alchemy hall or the blacksmithing hall continued decreasing with each passing week until no one showed up any more, one of the elders from the alchemy hall decided to join hands with another elder from the blacksmithing hall to investigate the situation and find out the reason for the younger disciples sudden extreme disinterest in learning the art of blacksmithing or alchemy.

Not that surprisingly, after asking a few of the disciples, they managed to find an answer to their question.

However, the answer was not something they had ever expected to get, as the disciples outright told them that blacksmithing and alchemy were incredibly boring and even completing a single artifact or pill took at least a week to complete. Time these young disciples weren’t willing to give up considering their young age and focus on increasing their cultivation realm.

The week that the first challenge of the competition had taken to complete had given these young disciples this kind of impression regarding blacksmithing and alchemy… And together with how boring the rest of the competition was to those not already knowledgeable on alchemy and blacksmithing was, it made sense that these young disciples ended up growing uninterested in learning more about alchemy and blacksmithing at their young age.

Instead, they would much rather spend their time increasing their cultivation realm and learning how to fight in the Combat Hall.

On that note, the elders from the Formation Hall of the sect had managed to take advantage of the situation while the younger generation were uninterested in alchemy and blacksmithing to promote themselves as a simple profession that you only needed to dedicate a little time a day to practice compared to blacksmithing and alchemy. Allowing them to grow rapidly during the past month while the alchemy hall and blacksmithing hall were still unaware of what was happening.

”Wha- Those formation masters dare!?”

”To think this is the reason for the decrease in interested young ones… Those elders from the Formation Hall… Just wait and see!”

In the end, after learning about all of this, the two elders respectively from the alchemy hall and the blacksmithing hall rushed back to inform their peers of what was happening, both of them filled with rage towards the formations masters who had seemingly taken advantage of the situation to promote themselves while helping spread rumors about the difficulty and time required to learn blacksmithing and alchemy.

All things considered, this matter was already known to Elder Song and a few of the sect’s higher ups, but it was ignored as it didn’t really harm the sect so to speak.

Not to mention, it would also allow the formation masters inside the sect to increase, something that would be increasingly important for the sect’s continued expansion, as there would be a need for a large number of formation masters to maintain the formations of the sect’s increasingly large number of branch sects.

Even with the current size of the Star Shattering Sect, it was already difficult to maintain the current number of formations spread throughout the branch sects, mines, outposts and other areas under the direct control of the sect.

For this reason alone, Elder Song had even decided to personally intervene to some extent by guiding some of the more talented juniors towards becoming formation masters. Hoping that they would be able to help dealing with the problem of lacking quality formation masters that would inevitably pop up in the future.

The fact that the sect was now limited by its status as an ancient hidden sect when it came to expanding its current territory beyond what it was at the moment did come with some benefits, one being that it allowed the Star Shattering Sect a chance to fully stabilize their control over their territory and the different resources outposts in the chaotic region of the fallen Sky Empire.

At the same time giving the newly recruited disciples of the formation hall a chance to grow up.

…

Unaware of the growing conflicts between the formation masters of the sect and the alchemists and blacksmiths of the sect, Xuan Hao was quietly cultivating inside his room back on the Seventh Star Peak for the past month.

”Looks like nobody beyond the Domain Lord Realm entered the city over the past month...”

Opening his eyes at this moment, his eyes shone briefly, as the divine sense that had been constantly monitoring the Falling Star City for the past month quietly retracted.

Although he felt that his previous act as a senior figure above the Dao Seed Realm was flawless in every sense of the word and shouldn’t have been seen through even by someone in the Celestial Immortal Realm unless they attacked him to directly confirm his strength, he was still worried and had thus decided to quietly cultivate while also using his divine sense to monitor the situation of the Falling Star City.

If someone above the Dao Seed Realm ended up appearing, he would know that the Blue Sea Empire had managed to pick up on something and decided to personally verify things even at the risk of offending an ancient hidden sect, something that would only happen if they doubted the Star Shattering Sect’s identity as an ancient hidden sect.

Luckily, it seemed like nothing like that had ended up happening and his worst fears were unfounded.

The strongest person who had shown up inside the Falling Star City over the past month had only reached the Domain Lord Realm. Far from enough to draw any attention from him, as even if they were spies from the Blue Sea Empire, they were far too weak to find out anything about the Star Shattering Sect.

Only if they were in the Dao Seed Realm would they have a chance of noticing something off about the Star Shattering Sect and the Shattered Star Peaks, while those in the Celestial Immortal Realm would almost certainly discover something after investigating the Star Shattering Sect for a bit. Especially when it came to the overall level of the disciples and elders who normally wandered around outside the sect.

Even if it was a hidden ancient sect, it would be odd that all the elders of the sect wandering around outside the sect were only in the Domain Lord Realm, with not a single one in the Dao Seed Realm.