The Stepping Stones

16th Generation Saintess(New Arc)

A sect is a massive machine. It's not up to a single individual to make it work. From basic education, discipline, and determination, it's a sect's responsibility to make its disciples conform to its teachings and ideals.

There's also a certain sense of freedom that one has in a sect. As youths, it's very natural that they have their internal hierarchies and hot-blooded competitions and as Elders, all we need to do is make sure there are no accidents or death and we're all set.

To any sect, whether it be a small one with a hundred members or a heavenly sect with branches across the universe, the mission center is the oil that runs this machine and makes it work. Our revenue, vitality, and stability come from these very missions.

But at any point in time, the missions in the outside world are limited and internal ones, that are given by our Elders or Chief disciples, although serve to motivate the disciples to make no difference to sects as entities.

Therefore, there are annual and decennial sect competitions at every place that provide disciples an opportunity to showcase their talent.

Through these competitions, we determine our rankings in a particular area and hope to attract more missions due to our ranking. Basically, that's just how it works, but there are a lot more things that influence people's minds when they choose a sect to give missions to.

For instance, a sect that has a track record of completing all its missions without any issues might receive a lot more low-level missions even in its decline than a new sect that wanted to bulldoze through ranks based on their sheer power without building any trust and connections with the clients.

Of course, the situation would be very different if the difference is far too wide between the two sects but among equal forces, there's always another competition running in the background, much more important than the annual public tournaments.

This, in a way, can also be called a fight for resources. So, to progress ahead, there are alliances and partnerships among sects of somewhat equal standings.

This is a mutually beneficial relationship, therefore, generally speaking, unless a sect is confident of soaring through the heavens without any help, they would form alliances to protect their interests in an ocean of wolves.

Now, there are a lot of ways alliances can be forged, at times through formal treaties, at times through friendship within the leadership of the two sects, and so on.

Our sect, for instance, chose the way of marriage. Every generation, we choose the strongest disciple of their cohort and give them the title of 'saint' or 'saintess'.  It had become a custom of our sect to have then betrothed to sects with Chief or Legacy disciples of the opposite gender.

In the path of cultivation, love is a rarity. Ironically, the primary reason for that is, in a bid to increase their power and improve their strength before their lifespan runs out, they need to put in their best efforts, which leads them to miss out on the chance to enjoy such earthly feelings. 

Therefore, most of the time, the Saints or the Saintesses agree on their own. It's akin to the sect being their parents and arranging their marriage, with everyone sharing the benefits of their union, and with this arrangement, they also don't have to waste time going around searching for suitable partners.

Now for 23 generations, this system worked fine, but the 24th generation Saintess almost made it fall apart.

So before we get to the story of that bi*ch, let me narrate the story of the 16th generation Saintess, who was the most hilarious of them all.

At that time, the sect had wasted a momentous amount of energy and resources to help her find a groom, and in the end, we had managed to luck out.

It all began in the External Court, where the outer disciples of our sect live. The number of outer disciples that we have at any point in time is around a hundred thousand.

Among all of these people of similar age groups, you would need to perform extraordinarily in sect competitions, events, and perform dangerous missions to make your name known before becoming an inner disciple.

Usually, that's how we found the Chief disciples and saints of each generation but in the case of our 16 generation saintess, we found her through a... scandal.

She had been caught doing, ahem, indecent acts in public... numerous times and her taste was quite heavy as well, as in, anyTHING would work.

At that time, we weren't too aware of her cultivation talent, all we knew was that an External Elder had died while performing obscene acts with an outer court disciple.

So when we brought her for questioning, we had imagined that she would be some sort of old harlot with a dual cultivation technique, sucking the life essence of men to replenish her own.

We prepared to prosecute her, we were prepared to interrogate her, we were even prepared to execute her in case we found more unsavory things about her.

Our sect leader, the 15th generation Saint, sat on his luxurious futon as two inner disciples brought her in.

We were all dumbfounded when we first saw her, she was just too... beautiful. With the perfect curves and an adorable face, we were sure that this wasn't someone who merely 'looked' young, she was indeed young.

After some basic inquiry, we were all looking at her with perplexed gazes. Unlike what we had expected, she didn't practice dual cultivation techniques at all. She was just... very sensual.

And which single disciple would refuse the special request of an almost perfect woman in her 20s. We quickly became enamored with her.

That was when we found out about her strength as well. She wasn't hiding it. She just didn't care enough to show it to anyone since everyone in the outer court was too weak to her and this strength, she possessed without even having access to higher tier resources and manuals that inner court and Core disciples have access to.

Punishing her was very difficult, especially, when she made sure we weren't going to endanger her life and opened up, teasing us while we discussed the apt punishment for her.

'Oooh, seniors, please spank this bad girl.'

'Eh Senior, why is your face red like a monkey's butt?'

'This handsome sect leader, would you kindly teach this naive young disciple a dual cultivation technique?'

'Senior are you going to choke me eh?'

Technically, since everything she did was based on mutual understanding and with consent, she didn't break any rules, but how could we let her go when she was disrespecting our presence by moaning and teasing us.

We were exasperated and... aroused.

And so as her punishment, we decided to put her on house arrest. She wasn't allowed to leave her cultivation abode for 2 years.

We thought, with a buffer gap like that, her focus might divert from improper acts to cultivation but...

The next day, I decided to go around her abode and teach her... something...anything, ahem, yeah, only to teach her.

But what I didn't expect was, there was already a bunch of 'teachers' camping out of her abode, arguing about whose turn was it to go next.

"Elder Liu, don't make me spill the beans. The events from 10 years ago would come to light if you don't let me in."

Elder Liu sneered, "Go ahead, Elder Huang, I would also like to tell everyone how your wife and disciple had an 'untimely death'."

"Stop it, you two, how about we let the Sect Leader decide?"

"Vice Sect leader, do you think we don't know how you and Sect Leader can share the same pillow and underwear?"

"How rude!"

Looking at this arguing bunch, I had an urge to slam my face on a wall. At that time, I was also merely an elder. There was no way I could've survived their ganging up if they found me sneaking.

So I did the honorable thing and... waited in line.

The Sect Leader soon came out with refreshed face, fixing his robe, a bit of pink tint remaining on his face.

Under our jealous gazes, he nodded his head and flew away. After that, the line kept growing behind us and we became realized a fact, if we don't have skin as thick as a mask, we needed to wear a mask when coming here.

And so this went on for some weeks. The 'maiden' we put on house arrest now as close to as our wives. 

She also managed to learn the Dual Cultivation technique from the Sect Leader as her cultivation progressed leaps and bounds.

In two months, she acquired the title of the Saintess, and much to our jealousy became 'familiar' with the Core disciples as well. 

Every day, there would be one or two lovestruck fools present at her gates, begging and pleading her to keep them. This became a ritual to remind us every night to bury our emotions and enjoy the 'ride'. 

An elder had even chased his wife away and spent all his life savings to buy gifts for 'our' 'saintess'.

We were happy of course, to have saved money. It was funny and horrifying at the same time, how love could infect a man so deeply.

2 years later, when her name and reputation as the Saintess of our sect was solidified, we remembered something that we had been delaying for a long time already, the issue of her... marriage!