Jiang Ding gazed at the Nascent Soul True Lords kneeling in submission beneath the ninety-nine steps.
All he saw was a sea of black heads, not a single face.
To the right stood the Tushan Maids.
Spring Maid Chun Jian, Summer Maid Shang Gong, Xun Wind Maid Hei Louxi, Dong Xue Maid, Lightning Maid, Thunder Maid...
Over these seventy years, the Nine Great Maids had finally been filled out. Including Gong Caiyu and the other political-work maids and deputy officers, the Tushan Maid Squad now had a total of seventeen Nascent Soul True Lords.
The reason so many of them had advanced was, first, that the cultivation technique practiced by the Tushan Maid Squad, the <Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Wind, Cloud, Thunder, Lightning, Sun Ninefold Dao Canon>, was a top-tier Canon-grade Cultivation Technique that aided in breaking through bottlenecks;
Second, these maids had all been peerless talents and outstanding figures from across the Northern Plains. Their innate gifts, wills, and Dao Hearts had originally all been first-rate; they had merely lacked a ladder upward. Then they had undergone the bloody tempering of the Royal Court War, returning after a hundred battles.
Third, there were the vast opportunities within the Royal Court Blessed Land that Shuoyang Heavenly Monarch had left behind to nurture his own bloodline.
Shuoyang Heavenly Monarch had prepared countless contingencies for his bloodline descendants, built toward the goal of an empire enduring for ten thousand generations and a family bloodline never ending. His reserves of opportunities had been abundant, and in the end, they had all benefited these women.
With all three combined, it was simply the right time, right place, and right people. Only thus could so many Nascent Soul Realm maids have emerged one after another within merely a few centuries.
This was Jiang Ding's imperial