The others had also been assigned to solo missions, though they were far closer to the sect.

Chen Yu had been assigned the same mission this time as he had been last year, though this had been within his expectations.

When news had reached the group that Tang Ze was being assigned to a faraway outpost, Chen Yu had been shocked along with the others.

Why were they sending Tang Ze so far away? Not only that, but it was a mission usually given to those at the Qi Refinement realm. Tang Ze wasn’t even at the Qi Condensation realm yet, so this seemed doubly odd.

This was clearly some form of retribution - though for what, he couldn’t really fathom.

There was the incident with Tang Ze crossing into the women’s side, but in his opinion, that wasn’t that much of a major breach. Not to mention that all of them had been punished for that, not just Tang Ze, but Tang Ze was the only one who had been sent far away to a remote location.

As for the incident with the martial arts dojo - even Elder He Xuan didn’t seem to be so mad about it, so what gives?

Maybe it was just because Tang Ze had no deep foundations within the sect, and was also in his probationary period that they were so made at him?

There was also his complete lack of cultivating ability that caused many people to look down on him.

The thing was that Chen Yu was underestimating how petty the prefects could be sometimes.

They had made up their minds about Tang Ze being a problematic new recruit, and wanted to try every legal method in the book to throw him out. However, they had been unable to do so.

But if they couldn’t do that, they could try to make things as miserable for Tang Ze as possible, in the hope that he would voluntarily leave.

Chen Yu sighed. Regardless of how they felt about things, there was little that they could do.

At the very least, there was a silver lining to all of this in that Tang Ze couldn’t be stuck in that outpost forever.

There was a certain ratio of group to solo tasks that Initiates had to do, so at most Tang Ze would be away for a month.

Also, Tang Ze had the benefit of being able to fly there quickly and get back, so he wouldn't be wasting as much time as someone else would who’d have to walk or ride all the way out there. That allowed him to depart for the mission a lot later than he otherwise would have, and would also let him come back earlier too.

In all of his time in the sect though, Chen Yu hadn’t heard of a Qi Condensation stage cultivator getting a mission usually assigned for Qi Refinement stage cultivators. However, even if it wasn’t typical, it was not against the rules - Zhang Long had dived into this aspect to see if he could help Tang Ze, but hadn’t really found anything.

They all had to basically give up and accept whatever fate had in store at that point.

So what was Chen Yu’s task during this time?

It was one that he was especially suited for, which is why it was only natural that the sect had assigned him to it once again.

Although Chen Yu was at the fourth minor realm of Qi Condensation along with Yin Tiang, and Zhang Long had run ahead of the two of them by two minor realms despite being two years younger than either - realms were not everything when it came to fighting.

Especially when it came to the lower realms of Qi Condensation.

Before Tang Ze had joined their group, Chen Yu had been quite confident that if it came to one-on-one fights, he was the strongest and would be able to beat any of the others.

That was because Chen Yu had a trump card that the others simply did not.

Chen Yu was the youngest of four brothers, and yet, his family had poured a disproportionate amount of resources into him. The baby oil had just been a part of this - he had had access to teachers and the like as well as anything that his parents thought could’ve even given him a hair’s breadth worth of advantage over his peers.

Most of this money had been a huge waste - even Chen Yu felt like that was the case for much of it, but he couldn’t blame his family.

Despite being technically in the line of Imperial succession, they had nothing else that could really give them a leg up when it came to this world.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

After all, they were so far down the list when it came to succession that Chen Yu was sure the list only went so far into detail so some bureaucrats could keep their jobs maintaining it - they got virtually no benefits from the same.

There were many times when it had come as a hindrance, however.

People dealing with them suddenly assumed that they were swimming in money and would jack up the prices of things two or three times.

There were also some jobs and opportunities that they could not avail of simply because they would be seen as ‘beneath them’ despite the fact that they were in all practical terms no different from an ordinary family.

For example, because they were not within one hundred ranks of succession, they still had to pay taxes! So they didn’t even get a reprieve from that.

They also had a financial penalty in the sense that there were things that his family had to do to keep up appearances - including making a certain amount of charitable donations to the poor or hosting certain events. Not all of these things were necessarily negatives - though it all did strain their finances.

Chen Yu and his brothers all knew they had to put forward their best efforts to keep the family name afloat - though Chen Yu had essentially bore the entire weight of his family’s expectations since the moment he was born.

That was because Chen Yu’s birth had been special.

In this world, certain talents and techniques could be passed through bloodlines.

Chen Yu was descended from the Imperial Family, by a number of degrees of separation of course, but they could still trace their lineage to the founder of the Raswatian Empire.

He was called the Emperor of Five Attributes.

He was a Hinayana realm cultivator, though it was said that his strength could somewhat reach a shadow of what the Mahayana realm could achieve - not that many knew what it was exactly that the Mahayana realm could do given that there were only sparse tales of people who had reached that far. No one in the Raswatian Empire’s history had ever become a Mahayana realm cultivator. As a matter of fact, they had no reliable records of anyone becoming a Mahayana realm cultivator even outside their empire’s history, but if such records had ever existed, it was likely that they wouldn’t have stood the test of time.

Regarding the first emperor, it was thanks to his mastery of the ‘Five Attributes’ that he had united the warring states at the time and placed them all under the rule of a single iron fist.

The Five Attributes were - One, to strike as fast as lightning; two, to be as swift as the wind; three, to be as strong as a mountain; four, to be as tough as steel; and five, to be as calm as ice.

These attributes manifested themselves into various techniques, and the attributes themselves were carried through his bloodline. People descended from him would occasionally be born with the ability to use one of the Five Attributes.

No one currently alive was able to utilize any of them to the full ability of what the Emperor of Five Attributes could, and with time as his bloodline diluted, fewer and fewer people were born with the ability to use them.

On very rare occasions though - there might be people born with not just one, but two out of the Five Attributes. Thirty-five thousand years ago, a person had been born with three out of five of them, though the Imperial Family at the time had feared their rise and had them executed once they were only twelve years of age; before they could get powerful to the extent that they could become a major threat to their rule.

It just went to show that in this world, sometimes, it was best to keep your strength hidden!

Chen Yu shuddered as he thought of the cruelty of that decision - thankfully times were now different, and such a thing wouldn’t have likely been permitted in this day and age.

After a hundred thousand years of diluting bloodlines, it was now quite rare to find someone who was born with even one of the Five Attributes.

So you can imagine how happy Chen Yu’s family had been when he had been born with one of the Five Attributes - he had number four of the five attributes; to be as tough as steel!

His parents had thrown a grand party at the time of his birth as they had been unable to contain their joy at the time.

This was a powerful defensive attribute, and could be honed into various techniques.

Ever since then, Chen Yu had bore the weight of his family’s expectations on his shoulder.

Not to say that everything had all been bad because of this, he had been given quite the bit of favoritism from his parents because of the same.

He could get away with things that his brothers couldn’t and he usually got his way when it came to conflicts - to the point where his brothers nicknamed him ‘Little Emperor’ because of this golden child treatment.

His parents also tried to give him anything that they felt might give him the upper hand later in life - the baby oil had been an example of that. Something that was likely useless, but they were willing to try anything that might give him even the slightest bit of an edge - much like some parents back on Earth would have their children listen to classical music when they were just a few months old in the hope that it would help them become smarter later in life.

Speaking of such bloodline abilities though - Chen Yu highly suspected that Tang Ze’s strange potential to draw powers from fictional characters he was ‘cosplaying’ as (as Tang Ze described it, a term for what he was doing) was also some kind of bloodline ability. Just one that he had not heard of before.

Tang Ze was strangely distant whenever asked about his family for some reason - which Chen Yu found odd. It wasn’t like Chen Yu was particularly interested in Tang Ze’s heritage, it was just one of the first things that people would ask about in this world. After all, people usually identified themselves first with their family, then with their village, and after that with their sect. The two of them already belonged to the same sect, so that left only two things to inquire about.

From what he could tell though, Tang Ze seemed to talk of his mother and father with no issues, though when asked about siblings, his face would suddenly become cloudy and his mood would become gloomy.

Chen Yu wasn’t sure if it was because Tang Ze didn’t have a good relationship with his siblings or if something tragic had happened - as it was, he was sure that Tang Ze would tell them when he felt comfortable.

Chen Yu had no desire to meddle into other people’s affairs, especially if they might make someone uncomfortable.

And it looked like Tang Ze had enough problems on his hands without being given extra stress.

“Young Master Chen Yu, are you ready to begin?” one of the farmers asked, snapping him out of his reverie.