The people of Qiongzhou now had to register at the local Dinghuang Prefecture before beginning cultivation, pass through the Heart-Cleansing Pool, and then contemplate the Human Emperor Scroll before they could formally set foot upon the immortal path.
The so-called Heart-Cleansing Pool was a magical artifact used to verify one's bloodline. Drip blood into the pool, and the proportions of Desolate and human blood would be clear at a glance. When the Dinghuang Prefecture system had first taken shape, anyone whose human bloodline accounted for less than seventy percent was not permitted to cultivate.
But by now, this rule had all but been abolished, and few people cared about the Heart-Cleansing Pool's results anymore.
For one thing, there were already very few Desolate People in Qiongzhou with less than seventy percent human blood. Even someone like Zheng Lingxi, whose Desolate traits were highly pronounced, actually had a bloodline purity of around eighty percent. As for Wu Ming of Wuyang Village, his purity exceeded ninety percent. Five hundred years ago, he could have been called a fine, iron-boned, upright man.
For another, those scions of great families who prided themselves on their noble and pure bloodlines had not gotten satisfactory results from the Heart-Cleansing Pool in many years. Certainly, in a century-old family like the Liu Family, direct-line descendants often had purity above ninety-five percent... but when even villagers from Wuyang Village possessed ninety percent purity, how could a mere ninety-five percent demonstrate nobility?
Yet no matter what they tried, further purification proved impossible. Whether through marriages with people from other prefectures or alliances between local powerful families... once bloodline purity reached a certain threshold, it became impossible to raise it another step. Sometimes, there were even absurd cases where two people with ninety-six or ninety-seven percent purity had children whose