Yang Qing pulled his thoughts back when he saw a huge congregation of people below him in one of the towns below him. The town was located in one of the counties of the Blue Lotus Kingdom, it was the White Clay County and was situated on the outskirts of the kingdom next to its border with its former territory.
During his discussion with the King of the Blue Lotus Kingdom, White Clay County was thought to be the ideal location to conduct the joint evaluation since it was at the border thus making it easier for the organizations in the other region to come over for their evaluations.
Yang Qing smiled wryly when he saw the congregation below. Among those present, one group consisted of the king and his entourage which more than likely consisted of his most loyal vassals, while the other group was the organizations he was going to evaluate.
Even though everything seemed harmonious, one could detect a bit of awkwardness between the two groups more so the latter. It wasn't lost on Yang Qing on the weird dynamics of the whole thing, especially in regard to the relationship between the two groups. One of them had settled in the other's territory without their express permission, while the other has to act nonchalant about it because they are not in a position to lay claim over it, notwithstanding how they got it and later lost it in the first place.
But what could Yang Qing do about it? He was short on time, the region outside of the Blue Lotus Kingdom was unruly and despite the awkwardness of the relationship between the two sides, the Blue Lotus Kingdom actually had a rather good reputation with most of the organizations within that territory.
They had regular trades with some of the organizations within that region. On occasion they have played the part of a mediator between two sides that were in deep conflict, they've served as witnesses. Even though the territory wasn't in their hands, one could detect the presence of their 'soft authority' showing itself in the area.
Maybe they were just being good neighbors or they were using a different approach to bring that territory under their control. Whatever the case, their current reputation was what mattered to Yang Qing. With their reputation, it would be easier for him to hold a joint evaluation within their kingdom than in any other place. Those three hundred organizations he was to evaluate, would feel more open and safer coming to the Blue Lotus Kingdom than any other place, even with the awkwardness that came with it.
….
Once Yang Qing landed, he exchanged a few pleasantries with the King and his people after which he was then directed to a small town square that had been evacuated of its residents.
Yang Qing was given free rein of use over the administrative buildings in there by the king, and a few of his royal guards including the commander-general, were left behind to be his aids.
"The Blue Lotus Kingdom seems to be well on its way to a resurgence," Yang Qing thought as his gaze fell on the commander-general.
The commander had the ocean blue hair typical of the royal bloodline of the Blue Lotus Kingdom. His name was Guan Yenshu.
What stood out to Yang Qing about him was his age and cultivation base. At 37 years old, he was already a quasi-palace realm cultivator and from what Yang Qing could tell, he has been there for quite some time, based on the stability of his fluctuations. It didn't seem like it would be too long before an opportune moment came for him to break through.
As for why he was not the king with his talent, Yang Qing could only assume it was due to his personality. He was a person of very few words, even with his men. He was the polar opposite of Prince Wenyan of the Summerfield Kingdom, who wasn't exactly gifted in cultivation but was a natural at interactions whether it was with a servant, or with someone at Yang Qing's level.
But whatever the commander lacked in communication, he more than made up for it, in terms of cultivation and his intuition. He was the only one in the whole convoy of the king to notice Yang Qing's realm was in the palace stage. His pupils trembled in shock when Yang Qing landed with Ellie to meet them.
…
With time not on his side and a lot to do, Yang Qing quickly went through the motions. He explained the rules and guidelines of the evaluation procedure and what is to be expected of those who are to be evaluated.
He only had to do the explanation once since all the organizations scheduled for the evaluation had already arrived even before he came. Close to eight hours had lapsed since he informed the king of the Blue Lotus Kingdom of his intentions, which was more than enough time for them to arrange everything, including getting the word out to those organizations.
The moment Yang Qing started the evaluations, he went on with it nonstop without taking a single break. After 11 hours he was already done with all the evaluations.
Their results had a bit of disparity in comparison to the one he did in Summerfield Kingdom. One of them was, the evaluations in the Blue Lotus Kingdom had more failures from organizations trying to pull something as compared to the ones in the Summerfield Kingdom.
From the list of organizations that came to the Summerfield Kingdom only seven had failed the evaluation and that was inclusive of the sect Su Liwei had used to infiltrate the evaluation. While from the list of organizations that came to the Blue Lotus Kingdom, 104 had failed. Even Yang Qing was shocked by this figure as It was close to half the organizations that he came to evaluate.
Another disparity was in the quality. It was ironic that while the organizations that came to the Blue Lotus Kingdom had the largest number of failures, they also had the highest quality in comparison to the Summerfield Kingdom.
Yang Qing didn't uncover any ancient race bloodline from their lot, like the treefolk bloodline from the Feng siblings, but the heart stone steele did record over a dozen special physiques from within that group. From those physiques there were even a few good ones that could guarantee the owner would atleast reach the palace realm barring any unexpected circumstances and one of them even had domain potential. That physique was the Golden Revolution Cicada physique.
From what Yang Qing knew about it, it granted the user the ability to create clones of him or herself even without stepping into the soul formation realm which was the stage in which someone could attempt something like that and the practitioner would have to be gifted in different kinds of dao such as vitality dao or soul dao.
The physique didn't just stop at creating clones. Those clones had independent thinking from the main body, even if they were still linked to it. The independence even went down to their personalities and they would not inherit the user's cultivation base. They had to cultivate from scratch and they came with different levels of talent that differed from the main body. They could therefore cultivate arts that the main body didn't necessarily have an aptitude for and their insights would be fed back to the main body.
