Chapter 10 - The Grand Ancestral Worshipping Ceremony (1/2)

Day after day, Ye Chen practiced Thunder Emperor Technique without fail. His Celestial Chi had broken through yet another rank barrier and ascended to the Fifth Stage on the sixth day since the last clan meeting.

“Finally! The Fifth Stage,” Ye Chen muttered as he revolved the Celestial Chi within his body. With his Celestial Chi more strengthened than before, Ye Chen could now maintain his Primordial Thunder Body form to last at least ten seconds, which delighted the young man. After all, ‘Ye Kongyan’s currently at the Fifth Stage too, was he not?’

Taking the purity of the Celestial Chi circulating in his body as well as his mastery over the Primordial Thunder Body— the Ye clan’s most secretive technique— into account, Ye Chen was finally assured of the certainty in prevailing over Ye Kongyan.

It was a feat of its own to achieve the Fifth Stage, this was evident in the number of people who had actually attained it within the entire clan. Despite its thousands of members, only two hundred people had ever managed to reach this Stage. Hence, these fighters also doubled up as the combatants of the family. Subsequently, being able to attain the Sixth Stage before they turned eighteen was even considered a testament to one’s acumen for martial arts because failing to do so before eighteen dramatically plummeted your chance of ever reaching higher Celestial Chi stages in the future as your meridian channels succumbed to an age-induced stasis.

Of course, as his body had previously been baptized by the mystical Celestial Chi courtesy of the Flying Dagger, Ye Chen’s body was now perpetually in the Pure Yang State. In other words, he would continue to be perfectly apt for martial arts cultivation regardless of his age.

After reaching the Fifth Stage, the speed of Celestial Chi deposition 1 began to decelerate. However, Ye Chen was far from anxious as he knew cultivation was never about forcing the speed of Stage Advancement. Instead, he remained dedicated to training, developing his Celestial Chi with Thunder Emperor Technique in tandem with practicing the Primordial Thunder Body, Rumbling Thunder Burst and Roaring Thunder Fist.

Despite him improving his martial art skills at such great measures, Ye Chen had remained humble and continued to train as hard as he could at every possible moment. The hardships he had endured during those three years when his meridian channels were damaged had forged a mind of precocious maturity.

Meanwhile, for most of the Ye clansmen, these few days had been a bustling period as they basked themselves in the preparations for the upcoming Grand Ancestral Worshipping Ceremony.

The clan may have fallen into financial distress but one could never forfeit the necessary grandeur befitting a grand ceremony for their ancestors. Even clan members who had been stationed out of Ye castle for a myriad of family businesses had gradually returned home in droves. Among these homecoming clansmen were Ye Chen’s two elder brothers.

None of Ye Chen’s brothers had attained the Sixth Stage before they reached eighteen. Hence, their Celestial Chi had only remained at the peak of the Fifth Stage. Not showing the promise of being exclusively talented in martial arts, the brothers were stationed outside, their delegated jobs concerning the House of Ye’s mercantile affairs.

They had wanted to visit Ye Chen the first thing since arriving home but Ye Zhantian had intercepted. Unbeknownst to them, their little brother’s meridian channels had already recovered. Hence, in order to protect Ye Chen, Ye Zhantian had banned anyone from seeing the young man. The lesser the number who knew about Ye Chen’s true status, the easier it was to have the secret kept.

Truthfully, Ye Chen was far from being the only one who had been training for the upcoming match. Everyone who was eligible to participate in the match for the title of Successor Patriarch had all been training themselves with much dedication in the hopes that they could subvert expectations on the day of the match itself.

After a period of extensive ceremonial preparation, the day had finally come for the House of Ye— the Grand Ancestral Worshipping Ceremony which was held once every five years.

The central plaza was already packed with people on the morning of the Grand Ancestral Worshipping Ceremony. In the middle of the crowd stood a gigantic, towering altar where freshly butchered poultry, prepared by a dozen clansmen, would be laid down as offerings to their ancestors.

Ye Zhantian and others of similar stations had already occupied their designated seats around the perimeter of the altar. There were sixteen of these seats. Out of the fifteen, two of them belonged to Eighth Stage fighters while the rest were in the Seventh Stage. These high-ranking fighters cum high council were the central support of the entire clan. Right in the middle, flanked by these fifteen chairs, was an empty seat.

Ye Chen and others of his generation were standing behind the higher-up’s seats.

“Hello, Brother. How’s your health?” Ye Chen’s middle brother, Ye Mu, who was older than Ye Chen by five years asked. He had not been able to attain Celestial Chi Sixth Stage before eighteen, so Ye Zhantian had sent him off into Donglin county to take charge of the Ye clan’s trading business. Years of experiencing the outside world had given a touch of serendipity in Ye Mu’s natural gentleness, which reflected in his intriguing countenance.

Ever since his return to Ye Castle, Ye Mu had wanted to visit his brother but to no avail. Now, as he looked at his youngest brother, Ye Mu’s eyes were warm with concern.

Ye Chen’s chest felt fuzzy when he heard the care in Ye Mu’s tone. He nodded and said, “I’ve gotten a lot better.”

“I knew it! There’s nothing in the world that can defeat you, is there? Oh, here! A little something from your two big brothers!” Ye Chen’s eldest brother, Ye Peng, affectionately pulled Ye Chen closer to him as he pushed a silk-covered box quietly into his hands. Being the eldest brother of the three, Ye Peng had always been the most honest and dependable. In fact, he frequently doted on his two younger brothers.

Ye Chen had tried to push the gift back to Ye Peng, yet he found his big brother to be quite persistent. In the end, Ye Chen opened the silk-covered box and found that there were two Chi-amassing Pills in it.

Ye Peng and Ye Mu have never been very well-endowed despite being merchants. They must have been living a frugal lifestyle in order to save up enough money just to trade in two meager Chi-amassing pills.

Ye Chen felt a pang in his chest. His two elder brothers may not have visited him frequently but they had never once forgotten about him.

“Big Brother? I don’t need Chi-amassing Pills anymore…”

“Oh, hogwash! You need a lot every month, don’t you? Hey now, we are brothers! Don’t you dare be embarrassed about accepting a gift from your big brother!” Ye Peng replied earnestly.

“I-I…” Ye Chen wished he could just blurt out ‘My meridian channels had recovered!’ but there were too many people around them. Ye Chen could not possibly risk telling them the truth right this instant.

The warmth emanating from his two brothers made Ye Chen realize the true meaning of brotherly bond. He looked at the silk-covered box sitting on his palm and lapsed into a brisk period of silence. Then finally, he gripped the box and placed it inside his inner pocket, a place where he could keep anything safely. In the young man’s eyes, this box contained more than just two Chi-amassing Pills!

“Chief! The Former Chief has returned!” A clansman dashed to their attention, his face illuminated with excitement.

“Our uncle has finally arrived.” A smile surfaced on Ye Zhantian’s face as all of the Elders stood up and cast their eyes down from the altar where the rest of the clan had been standing. They watched the sea of people slowly but surely part into two sides as they ushered an elderly man toward the top of the altar. The elderly man, donning a soft grey robe, had hair that had long grayed into a snowy white, yet he emanated an equipoise of vigor as he strode toward the altar with a nimble, flight-like gait.

“Former Chief, glad to see you!”

“Former Chief, we bid you a good day!”

The clansmen around the elderly man quickly gushed their earnest greetings in glee as he walked past them. Among the entire Ye clan, the Former Chief, Ye Changxuan, was seen as nothing less than a God in flesh and blood; the blessing and the protective spell that had kept the family from being subsumed by other powerful clans. Being the only Ninth Stage fighter in the family, his status as the Ye clan’s apex martial art savant served as a warning to all other clans out there. Without the Former Chief’s presence, the family could not have survived in this society by relying on Ye Zhantian and the rest of the Elders alone.