The Feng Clan had three big celebrations every year: Founding Day, Memorial Day, and Ascendance Day. As its name implied, Founding Day celebrated the founding of the Feng Clan.

The Primary Meeting Hall was beautifully decorated with red lanterns for good omens, yellow strings for prosperity, and white poles to symbolize the staff the clan's founder had wielded before he took to the spear. Nine tables with nine seats each were organized in a square, leaving an empty area in the middle for some parts of the Ritual. The main table with the clan leader and all seven high elders—the empty seat belonged to Shen's mom, who had passed away last year—was elevated behind two of the other tables.

Most of the festivities happened outside, but the most important clan figures enacted the Ritual of Founding in the Primary Meeting Hall at the exact time of the clan's founding.

Shen had been training as the next Keeper of Knowledge for five years already, ever since he was six. Though that position was the most important in times of great crisis, they were a clan living a golden age as the Third Seat of the Eternal Empire. What crisis was there in their future that they couldn't face? Thus, the current Keeper would sit by the third auxiliary table and Shen by the fourth. Even that standing was only allowed to them because of the Founding Day. On any other day, they could only sit by a guest table if invited.

Keeper of Knowledge Feng Ting and her disciple, Feng Shen, symbolized the very foundations of the clan in the Ritual. They had the honor of being the first to speak—even before the clan leader himself. They were to recite the Foundational Knowledge, which comprised twenty-one books, miscellaneous cultural knowledge, and some unwritten secrets—the latter of which wouldn't be spoken.

At eleven years old, Shen was considered more than a child yet less than an adult. That was the age when he was supposed to start learning social interactions and dealing with the people who mattered. With care, he would be taken out of his shell until, five years later, he finally became a proper man.

Keeper Ting had done well to him in that regard. She asked him to recite only the first chapter of the very first book, nothing more. Since it was at the beginning of everything, he wouldn't even have time to get more anxious by waiting in front of everyone while she spoke.

Yet, she had misjudged his anxiety.

Shen was having trouble even looking to the sides. He was used to staying in the library as the unhopeful cripple, not being the center of expectations!

He usually hid behind his father, either physically or figuratively, but he couldn't anymore. At eleven, it would shame his father to have raised a boy who couldn't leave childhood behind.

So Shen found himself standing in the middle area, beside Keeper Ting. He had no recollection of how he had gone there. Everything was moving way too fast for him.

Keeper Ting was known for her straightforwardness. She wasted no time with theatrics or pretending to be more important than she was. Her role was to open the Ritual with words left behind by the founder's firstborn and nothing more, and that's the role she would play.

"When the founder declared this very soil his land," she thundered, "he offered his descendants but three books. When he emerged victorious from the Twelveth Cultivator War beside the Immortal Emperor and helped found the Eternal Empire, he established the Foundational Knowledge and the position of Keeper of Knowledge. I come today to honor his wisdom and memories. Disciple Feng Shen, start."

The Ritual of Founding was the simplest one, and its opening was its most direct line. It symbolized the simplicity from which the Feng Clan had come. To forget one's roots was to forget oneself.

Shen didn't hear a single word of hers. He was looking for support in his father's eyes yet found only cold indifference. He panicked, the world feeling way too big for someone as small as him.

"Disciple Feng Shen, start," Keeper Ting repeated with a hint of qi in her voice. The words all but forced their way into his mind through his stupor. Shen heard them and obeyed, reciting the first chapter of the first book as ordered.

The most shameful moment of his life followed.

Shen stuttered multiple times, always getting corrected by the Keeper. After he finished, he looked silently to the ground while his master recited the rest of the Foundational Knowledge with perfection, not a single word wrong.

As soon as she finished, she fell to her knees, slapped herself in the face three times, and prostrated herself on the ground in a kowtow.

"This one begs forgiveness for failing to properly teach this one's disciple," she said.

Yet, when Shen looked up in surprise, everyone's eyes weren't on her but on him.

Her dishonor was her own. She was supposed to take into account her disciple's anxiety and prepare for it. It was always a leader's fault if a subordinate performed much worse than expected. Yet, it didn't take away his own dishonor in failing to meet even the most base of expectations.

The look of disapproval in everyone's eyes, including his father's, would stay burned in his memories forever.

So Shen started crying, then slapped himself three times, kowtowed, and begged for forgiveness too.

A period of heavy silence followed. Only Shen's sobs could be heard. Then the powerful voice of the clan leader came.

"This is the Ritual of Founding," he said. "It is not for us to forgive you, but for our ancestors. May you make peace with them yourselves when you meet them in the afterlife."

Harsh words. Shen and his master were given no forgiveness. They would live knowing they had shamed themselves in front of the past and current generation.

"Go to your seats," the clan leader ordered, and they obeyed.

Shen didn't stop crying the entire Ritual, which passed by him in a blur.

As soon as the Ritual was done, Shen's father called him to a private place and hugged him. Then, Feng Yang looked at his son with austere eyes, though there was a hint of warmth in them.

"You're not a child anymore, son," Feng Yang said. "You might be a mortal until we find a way to heal you, but your position means you're already judged by cultivators' standards, and cultivators should always be in control of themselves and their emotions. Failing to do so is a weakness, and showing weakness is the same as inviting an enemy to strike. If you have to cry, do it in your wife's arms behind closed doors, for love is the one weakness we're all excused for. Crying anywhere else is a liability and a dishonor."

After that episode, Shen would shed only a few tears before remembering that episode and stopping himself.

Until today.

Today, Shen remembered it yet kept crying with abandon.

He had never felt so alone before. Even when the other children in the clan grew powerful while he was fated to be carried around by servants, he had always had his father's care. Even when he failed as a martial artist, he found his place as a Keeper of Knowledge trainee. Even as death approached, he had known he would die among his own.

Now he had nothing and no one.

He chuckled, self-deprecatingly, at the irony. He had wanted to become a cultivator all his life, but now that he had it, he'd rather go back to being powerless.

Shen still had to confirm his conclusion about the downfall of cultivators in person after leaving the tutorial, but honestly, he could feel the truth deep in his bones. At the very least, people should've known about the Eternal Empire. Their ignorance was proof enough of the Empire's absence, and nothing could explain both that absence and his father's absence in Shen's cave.

Shen cried harder.

What made everything even worse was that he had been training for exactly such a situation. If the clan was on the brink of extinction, the Keeper of Knowledge was the single one everyone was supposed to protect no matter what. Their knowledge was the seed that would sprout the Feng Clan from the ashes, like a phoenix reborn that would fly proudly and take its rightful place in the skies. Shen hadn't memorized everything in the library, but the Foundational Knowledge was in his mind, and everything else could be reacquired in due time. The Feng Clan could be made anew by his hands.

Yet, he had never been trained for the fall of his entire civilization.

Cultivator culture was gone. Could he, alone, train mortals into the intricacies of cultivator etiquette and responsibilities? Would mortals even care to learn cultivation when the Guardian System could provide a much easier and faster way to grow powerful? Cultivating was more than strength, but it would be hypocritical to say no cultivators were in it just for the power. Mortals, fickle things that they were... would they care about honor at all?

Shen let out another primal roar of anguish.

In the end, what did it matter whether mortals were honorable? He was honorable—or at least was doing his best to be—which meant fulfilling his duty. Why did it matter whether his task was impossible? His responsibility was to do his best to accomplish it, no matter his personal thoughts on the task. His father had named him Keeper of Knowledge to protect him, but it didn't change the fact that the position came with responsibilities, and now he had to meet his fate.

But not here. Cultivation required mortals willing not to use the System in ways that made them incompatible. He doubted he would find anyone like that in the tutorial, and it wasn't even the right place to do it. Before starting his mission, he had to find the ancestral home of his people and search for their Last Will. As long as no mortal had gotten lucky, it would be buried there. It would contain the instructions of the last Clan Leader to whoever survived.

Still on his knees, Shen turned to the East. It was time for the Ritual of Ultimate Grief.

Shen recalled the day his father had come to him to tell him his training as Keeper of Knowledge would start. The first lesson had been given by the clan leader himself.

"The Ritual of Ultimate Grief is the very first thing you learn, and its name is straightforward. It is the ultimate grief to lose one's entire clan. What is a tree without its roots? What is a building without its foundations? What is a child without family? Many see only internal politics and needless struggle in a clan, but they forget the protection and prospects it brings."

Shen had felt utterly confused. He had been six at the time. His father had noticed it and created a thin little line of qi, like solid hair, and gave it to Shen. The boy took it.

"Break it," his father had commanded.

The boy had been weak, but his father hadn't reinforced the qi construct. Shen had forced it a little, and it had broken.

Then the man had created dozens of lines and gave them to his son. "Break them together," he had ordered. Shen had failed to accomplish it no matter how hard he had tried.

"Alone, you are weak," Feng Yang had explained. "Standing together, we are strong. Remember that, be grateful for the clan, and grieve it if it falls."

Then he had proceeded to explain the Ritual to the boy.

"First, kowtow three times to the East. That's the direction the sun rises from. The sun gives the Light of Life without which humanity wouldn't exist."

The infant mortal had done so in the past. The young cultivator was doing so in the present.

Shen kowtowed the first time.

"Once to thank the Light for giving life to my ancestors," he said, repeating the words his father had once told him. He almost felt as if the man was standing high there, watching over him.

Shen kowtowed the second time.

"Twice to thank the Light for giving life to a surviving seed, me."

Shen kowtowed the third time.

"Thrice to thank the Light for giving life to the future new members of the Feng Clan."

Then he turned to the West.

"In the West," his father had explained, "the Light finds its end. There lays death, the end of everything. All things die, boy. Even the Eternal Empire shall one day cease to be."

To think Feng Yang was also a prophet on top of everything else.

Shen kowtowed the first time to the West, the fourth time overall.

"Once to beg the Darkness to give my ancestors a good afterlife."

Shen kowtowed the fifth time.

"Twice to beg the Darkness to stay away from me until I can build the Feng Clan anew."

Shen kowtowed the sixth time.

"Thrice to beg the Darkness to not ever again be so cruel to the Feng Clan." He cried harder as he said those words.

Then he turned to the North.

"By convention, the North is the Path of Light," his father had explained. "It's the first part of the Cycle of Life and Death, the Path the sun takes toward its end. Unless you've achieved immortality, this is the journey we all tread to our ultimate deliverance. The only question is how you walk this Path and what you leave behind. The sun leaves plenty of life in its wake. What will you leave?"

Shen kowtowed one time to the North, the seventh time overall.

"Once to honor the ancestors who served the clan until their deaths. They strengthened those who came after them. They fulfilled their duty so I could live. May I learn from them."

Shen turned to the South.

"The South is the Path of Darkness," his father had taught, "the second and final part of the Cycle of Life and Death," Shen recalled the man looking up toward the skies. "The Path of Darkness is a strange one. We can see Life going toward its end, but Death doesn't do the same. Rather, Death is a constant stillness. It's Life that slowly sprouts and temporarily defeats its other half in the wheel of Samsara. Yet, we still call it the Path of Darkness. Curious, isn't it?"

Shen hadn't understood a single word of that at the time, and he understood little more to this date.

He kowtowed one time to the South, the eighth time overall.

"Once to beg the Cycle of Life and Death to spit me out of it, toward absolute oblivion, should I fail in rebuilding the Feng Clan."

Then he stood up.

He had kowtowed eight times, not nine. It was a sign of an incomplete cycle—completion would be found in nine. However, he didn't deserve to kowtow a ninth time, for he had dishonored his people in not fighting to the death with and for them. Being alive while they fell was a sin in itself.

Shen would live in disgrace from now on.

It was also a cruel irony that the number eight meant wealth, fortune, and prosperity.

Only when Shen's first child reached adulthood, thus showing his survival hadn't been wasted because the clan would live through him, would he be allowed to kowtow one last time.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He felt like shit, but he couldn't further dishonor his people by crying. Shen wasn't just another member of the Feng Clan; he was the Feng Clan now. He had to show strength at all times, or a show of weakness might be the trigger of an attack that would kill him and end his line with it.

Shen dried his tears and clenched his spear.

His first order of business was strengthening himself as much as he could in the tutorial. He had no idea what the outside world had in store for him, but he doubted there was such a thing as being too strong. He would need strength to rebuild his clan.

That reminded him that he also needed information. Alicia Winter would slow him down, but she could help him understand her world. With some effort, he could amass the fifty thousand points he wanted despite the burden she would be.

Sad, but with newfound determination, he rushed back to where he had left her.