A week after the Awakening Ceremony, the academy elder gathers fifty seven students and lays out how a Gu Master’s cultivation works. Nine ranks exist, each split into four stages, and a student’s talent grade fixes how far the primeval sea can fill and how high the ranks can climb. D grade tops out at rank two, C grade usually stalls at rank two with only a lucky few reaching rank three, B grade reaches rank three or four, and A grade can climb as far as rank five. Rank six and above are legends even to the elder, and the Gu Yue clan has produced only rank four and rank five masters in its history. Fang Zheng, an A grade talent, sits in the front row drawing envious looks, while Fang Yuan sleeps at a back window, and the class trades gossip about his fall to C grade and his drunk wandering at night. The elder privately writes him off as a wasted investment. ch. 7
Asked about clan history, the elder names two rank five masters: the clan’s founder, and a fourth generation clan head who might have reached rank six if the Flower Wine Monk had not struck him down. The Flower Wine Monk, a rank five Gu Master and a notorious thief among the Demon faction, came to Qing Mao Mountain generations earlier and was beaten into surrender by the fourth clan head. He then launched a sneak attack that left wounds the clan head could not survive. The students rage at the story. Fang Yuan, woken by the noise, wonders where the monk’s remains ended up, since he has searched the village without finding them. He recalls a Gu Master of the clan who once got heavily drunk outside the village, drew a Liquor Worm with the smell of wine, and chased it to an underground hole. The Gu Master found the monk’s bones and treasure inside, a discovery that remade his fortune and cultivation. These few days Fang Yuan has bought wine and walked the village border each night trying to lure the same worm out, without success. ch. 7
Class ends with the elder’s instructions: everyone has learned to sense the aperture’s primeval sea and shift primeval essence, so now each student goes to the academy’s Gu room, chooses a vital Gu, and takes it home to refine. Whoever finishes refining first earns twenty primeval stones. ch. 7
