Chapter 1799 — Snow Valley, Part One
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
The earlier patrolman, number 15, hurried back to Snow Valley and sought an audience with the elder on duty, only to be told by other disciples that the Valley Master had at that moment convened all the elders in the council hall, and that the elder on duty had gone as well. If he wished to see the elder on duty, he would have to wait at the door of the council hall.
Patrolman 15 knew the rules and dared not intrude. He came to the door of the council hall and stood respectfully to one side, waiting for the elder on duty. There were other Snow Valley disciples present as well, likewise come to seek audience with other elders, and like him they waited in silence.
At this moment in the council hall sat five people of differing ages—some appeared quite young, others showed the marks of great age. In the seat of honor sat a young woman in her twenties, and beside her an old woman who looked to be seventy or eighty.
Of these two, the younger was Snow Pear, the current Valley Master of Snow Valley, and the old woman beside her was Snow Valley's Grand Elder. The other three—two men and a woman—were Snow Valley's three Heaven-Rank elders.
Snow Pear was twenty-eight this year and had only recently broken through to the Heaven Rank, while of the other elders the strongest had reached but the middle Heaven Rank. Throughout all Snow Valley, apart from the Grand Elder, a formidable expert at the peak of the late Heaven Rank, no one else had attained such a height—and this was what worried Snow Valley most.
As one of the four great ancient sects, Snow Valley had once been glorious, once at its zenith. But with the departure of the previous Valley Master, decline had set in, and the two great water-system schools of inner cultivation, once able to ride abreast with the Ice Palace, had come to suffer a gap between generations.
What especially troubled Snow Valley was that the Ice Palace had actually found an inheritor—said to possess the rare ice-cold constitution. This made Snow Valley feel unprecedented pressure. Snow Valley was indeed one of the four great sects of old, but the Heaven-Rank Assembly judged present strength, and cared nothing for how glorious one had once been.
So finding an inheritor of suitable constitution had become Snow Valley's foremost concern.
Of course, it was not only Snow Valley: all the ancient sects of the five elements were searching for inheritors of their own. For only an inheritor could open Cloud-Rank Island and enable experts at the peak of the late Heaven Rank to cross that barrier...
The Ice Palace and Snow Valley were both water-system sects. Though Snow Valley bore the name of snow, what its disciples cultivated was the mist system; and for a water-system inheritor, the mist, water, and ice inheritors all had to be present together before the conditions for opening could be met.
Snow Pear's constitution could only be called an ordinary yin constitution. Though hardly first-rate, it was already the finest in all Snow Valley—otherwise she could never have broken through to the Heaven Rank at twenty-eight. For a Heaven-Rank practitioner, that age was already extraordinary.