In the eastern part of Linhui City stood a six-story grand building. Before its gates were two rows of lush, upright trees, their canopies casting a swath of green shade. Between them lay a broad avenue wide enough for six carriages to pass abreast.
The road was paved with smoothly polished stone slabs, painted with patterns in azure and orchid hues, extending all the way to the broad, long steps beneath the building's portico. At the center of the road stood a circular fountain, within which rested a sculpture of a golden-azure flying bird.
Spiritual power drawn in from more than ten earth-radiance factories throughout the city flowed in orderly currents around the grand building. Yet an even greater spiritual-radiance power coordinated everything from within, allowing sunlight to fall with exceptional softness upon the buildings to either side and the surrounding trees and lawns.
This was the residence of the Tong Clan. Since ancient times, members of this family possessing Azure Blood had appeared from time to time. Throughout history, they had drawn the covetous attention of great spirits on several occasions, leading sometimes to cooperation and sometimes to confrontation.
But to prevent their clansmen from becoming vessels exclusively claimed by great spirits, they had found ways to obscure and disrupt their bloodlines. Once a clansman formally stepped through the door of wielding spiritual power and became a spirit master, developing mature spirituality of their own, they no longer needed fear being occupied.
A vessel needed to be a body of flesh and blood that was clear and untainted. Once one possessed spirituality, it was like a sheet of white paper stained with a spot of ink, and would be spurned by great spirits.
The Tong family's reason for dragging things out with Tong Mi was precisely this. Though those