The sects within the cultivation world were ranked in the following order: Immortal, first-grade, second-grade, and local.
But the cultivation world was made of more than just sects as there were many other notable institutions and factions with their own functions and powerbases.
One such example was the Divine Truth Scouring Abode, the premier information brokering agency. If you wanted to learn certain details or keep tabs on someone, the Truth Abode was your go-to guys (provided you were rich and powerful).
While they openly sold information about second-grade sects, and even first-grade sects to an extent, they weren’t daring enough to do so for information pertaining to the Immortal Sects.
Of course, this wasn’t to say that they flat-out refused to sell information about Immortal Sects, just that they were incredibly selective about what that information was and who they were selling it to.
Under normal circumstances, the Vice Chief of the Divine Truth Scouring Abode, Cai Ling, wouldn’t have been notified about a random disciple in the latest intake of the Treading Infinity Sect. But these weren’t normal circumstances.
Since those joining the Inner Sect of the Treading Infinity Sect were seen as equivalent to ordinary disciples taken in by other Immortal Sects with more exclusive joining criteria, this information wasn’t seen as particularly confidential.
It was certainly wasn’t the sort of thing someone of Cai’s stature would give personal attention to.
Yet here he sat, parsing the jade slip in his hands with his divine sense; he instantly absorbed all relevant information and confirmed it had been tagged correctly.
Every piece of information the Truth Abode received was thoroughly tagged with relevant labels, then entered into their data storage vortex; this system of tagging was how they’d distinguished themselves from their competition and become the premier brokerage for information.
The reason for this was simple: if someone called in centuries later asking for information on the eccentric powerhouse Dong Fu, the Divine Truth Scouring Abode would be able to pull out all information tagged with his name, check your clearance level, and then provide you with an insanely detailed report starting from his very earliest days. No other information brokerage could come close to accomplishing this, neither in depth nor speed.
Although direct information requests were the Truth Abode’s bread-and-butter business, their business department covering standing information requests was the more profitable one. This was where a client would notify the Truth Abode about tags they were interested in, and as long as they kept paying a subscription fee, they would be notified whenever any information was added to that tag.
This had become the main method by which people chased down fugitives and runaways, as well as how eccentric powerhouses efficiently sought out the rare resources and kept up with the world during extended seclusions.
In the eyes of the masses, the Truth Abode had been the one to innovate this business, but the truth was that it had been suggested to them a long time ago by a client, in fact one of the first clients they’d attained after founding 20,000 years ago.
Back then, their founding ancestor had received a request from an anonymous entity, stating that the entity was willing to pay a set amount of spirit stones per month if the Truth Abode agreed to immediately notify them whenever any news about spirit beasts came out.
What made this request noteworthy was how long it had lasted: the client had never missed a payment within the subsequent 20,000 years, supporting the Truth Abode through thick and thin and over time becoming their biggest client by an astonishing margin.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Yet, besides the constant stream of payments, everything else about this standing information request was suspect.
For one, no one in the Truth Abode knew who this entity was. Was it an individual or a group of people? Perhaps the founding ancestor had known, but if he had, he’d taken it to the grave with him as he’d refused to speak on the matter, not even to the sons who’d succeeded him.
Subsequent Chiefs had made attempts to dig into the identity of their mysterious biggest client, but all Cai Ling knew was that they’d never gotten too far before hastily calling the entire operation off.
The reasoning given was always the same - let’s not rock the boat and risk losing our biggest cash cow like this - which rung hollow, true, but also sent a clear message through its undertones of fear
The Chiefs that came afterwards had learnt the lesson from their predecessors’ mistakes and not even bothered asking.
The other strange aspect was that although the client had never missed a payment in many millennia, they’d also never adjusted their request or made any additional requests in that period. Even when they were sent information on spirit beasts, 90% of the time they never responded to the Truth Abode’s information transmissions, and the remaining 10% they showed little more than minor interest, asking a question or two before stopping.
From Cai Ling’s perspective, it was like someone had one day decided to start forking over money for information they didn’t actually care about, and just never decided to stop. And fair enough: wasting money and being no poorer for it was the prerogative of people with fuck-you levels of wealth.
The reason he’d become involved with them was because clients of this size and delicacy required a relationship manager within the Truth Abode, which - given how undemanding they were - was perhaps the easiest role in the world, and one he’d kept up for almost 300 hundred years now.
Having finished checking the information on the Treading Infinity Sect’s newcomers, Cai Ling split the parts about disciple Zeng Fei onto another jade slip, including his physical description, rough age estimation of 14-17, the conflicting reports of fighting either using a uniquely complex spirit beast or a bird-type demon beast, and that this beast (either a pingu or named Pingu) appeared to be capable of using certain martial techniques.
Once it was complete, Vice Chief Cai Ling sent off the jade slip to the client’s address, which was within chaos space that even powerhouses baulked to enter due to the ever-present possibility of space destabilising and killing you before you could react.
In the time Cai Ling went and had tea, many more requests had come in requiring his attention, but such was the life of a Vice Chief.
Still, since his working hours were done for today, he was going to place them aside for tomorrow morning; he was in the process of sorting them into groups when his divine sense felt weighed down by a certain jade slip.
Physically, it looked small and made of stone like a primitive’s attempt at a jade slip. But there was no way Cai Ling would mistake that qi signature for anything else, not when it made his hair stand on end and heart clench from simply sensing it.
Preparing his mental defences, Vice Chief Cai Ling unfurled the VIP client’s response, whereupon he froze.
The response wasn’t anything complex: simply another standing order requesting information on Treading Infinity Sect’s latest Inner Disciple Zeng Fei. What made it stunning was the mountain-load of high-grade spirit stones being offered for carrying such a simple task out. Honestly, it was absurd...
To pay this much for basic details, they better be using this information to stop a world war from breaking out or something, Cai Ling mused. Not that he would decline free money, but it was just that delivering on a request so easy yet expensive made him feel uneasy, almost like he was missing a piece of the puzzle here.
Oh well, whatever; at least his job was straightforward.
While it was true that the Divine Truth Scouring Abode had created the tag on this previously insignificant disciple mere minutes ago, and therefore possessed no further information on him, that wasn’t going to be a problem.
From the moment this much money had been offered, this child’s fate had been decided for him: a backroom deal had been done to open his up life to levels of scrutiny never before endured by any individual in the history of man. Or at least that’s what Cai Ling was willing to do for this sum of money - he was a professional with occupational standards to uphold, after all.
It wasn’t long before the Vice Chief’s orders went out.
All informants in the Treading Infinity Sect were to dig up every single detail possible on this child; and would additionally get paid out a bounty for every piece of information delivered, depending on the juiciness.
The disciple known as Zeng Fei had been placed as a target of interest of the apocalyptic-level, a category solely reserved for eccentric powerhouses who looked poised to begin massacres.
Until today, that was.