Song Xuanfeng, Meddling in Others' Affairs

In the blink of an eye, another three years had passed.

On this day, in Mujiao Town at the foot of Funiu Mountain.

As the Song Family's biennial Spirit Root Testing Assembly had arrived once more, dozens of mortals from all parts of the Song Family had gathered early in the morning at a huge plaza several hundred zhang wide on the eastern side of town. Quite a few more were still hurrying anxiously toward it.

There were adults and children among them. They stood in the plaza chatting and laughing boisterously, every face bearing a trace of joy, their gazes repeatedly drawn to the stone platform at the center of the plaza.

By the time the sun stood high in the sky and nearly several hundred people had gathered in the plaza, a group of mortal innate martial artists finally approached from nearby. They surrounded the stone platform, preventing the mortals attending the ceremony from getting too close.

Immediately afterward, several Qi Refining Cultivators with an air of immortality about them strode onto the stone platform. One of them delivered a string of auspicious formalities to the many Song Family mortals below who had brought their children for spirit root testing, then announced that Mujiao Town's Spirit Root Testing Assembly for the year had officially begun.

There were now nearly a hundred thousand mortals in Mujiao Town. Each Spirit Root Testing Assembly drew several hundred children of suitable age. To speed up the testing without allowing any mistakes, the family had arranged for three cultivators to oversee the assembly at once.

An eight- or nine-year-old boy standing beneath the platform watched children his age walk up eagerly one after another, only to leave with disappointed faces. Frightened, he asked his mother beside him, "Mother! Why are so many people