Hunter Pavilion

Biodata

Organization

• Ranks and identities — Branch heads can be White Masks, while elders wear faceless masks and are at least late-stage Sun Moon cultivators. Members ordinarily reveal their identities only to their direct superiors 430 431 444.
• Branches — Ancient-city branches sell information and goods. Formal members may oversee communications and inventory while hired residents handle reception and routine work 403 430 437.
• Recruitment — The Pavilion recruits across races and approaches promising geniuses. Its Human Realm operation permitted recruits at Gray Face and Colored Face rank, but not Black Face or above 374 431 444 469.

Services and Tools

• Intelligence and tracking — The Pavilion sells information, including target locations. It quoted Dao Cheng ten drops of Sun Moon essence blood for one hour of precise tracking of Su Yu 382.
• Trade and commissions — Its branches buy materials and sell goods; it also accepts paid assassination and protection jobs 403 430 445 482.
• Hunter Heaven Ranking — The damaged ancient artifact supports the Pavilion’s rankings and monitoring. Targets can be sensed after their auras are collected and entered; missing fragments limit its functions 408 553.
• Sub-rankings and atlases — Sub-rankings let customers receive notices and conduct transactions. Members use atlases to contact the Yellow Department, while masks connect them to superiors and subordinates 431 444 460.
• Masks — Xuan Jiu’s White Mask conceals his aura and identity, communicates with the Pavilion, and displays assessments of observed beings. A voluntarily transferred mask can pass an identity to a new wearer; a wearer’s death instead shatters it 430 431.

History

The Pavilion existed in ancient times as the Celestial Monitoring Pavilion, an organization associated with King Wen and charged with monitoring the heavens. Its leader, the Supervisor of Heaven Marquis, later used the Hunter Heaven Ranking and fostered conflict among ranked geniuses; their deaths could provide feedback that helped repair the artifact 504 556 605 610.

In the Battlefields of the Heavens, the Pavilion operated through rankings, intelligence sales, trading posts, and masked agents. Its ability to reveal locations made it useful to clients and dangerous to those it tracked 357 382 403.

The Pavilion subsequently sent twelve elders and eighty White Faces into the Human Realm for intelligence gathering and trade. The operation met immediate resistance: one elder and eight White Faces died on its first day. Su Yu, using the identity Xuan Jiu, took charge of its work in Great Xia Prefecture 444 445.

Under Xuan Jiu, the Pavilion distributed sub-rankings, recruited cultivators, and became unusually direct in its violence. Its forces killed numerous Sun Moon experts and pursued the Wen Mu Stele, a prize important enough for the Pavilion to enter a contest it would normally have treated as an intermediary 452 467 468 475.

Later fighting and defections devastated its leadership: the Earth and Xuan department heads, North Tower Master, and Chief Enforcement Elder died, while senior figures split from the Supervisor of Heaven Marquis. He then moved to remove absent and Human Race elders, leaving the Pavilion active but internally divided 602 605 611.