With the arrival of late autumn, the Red Leaf region welcomed its most beautiful season of the year. Red blanketed the mountains and fields, and even the buildings in Red Leaf City were painted red, setting one another off delightfully.
Yet this red was not garish. It was the vibrant red of nature.
The annual Autumn Appreciation Banquet began.
The Autumn Appreciation Banquet did not bar ordinary Daoist disciples from attending, but with two or three thousand people present, it was difficult to ensure that everyone could be close to the center of the banquet.
The basic arrangement, on the Dao Academy's enormous Dharma Demonstration grounds, placed the elders with the highest realms and standing and their juniors in the center, followed by those whose elders had come but were not of particularly high realms. Last came the vast majority of student disciples whose elders had not attended.
Generally speaking, if a Profound Connection cultivator from one's family attended, there would certainly be a seat in the center. Plates of melon and platters of fruit-the refreshments were unimportant. What mattered was status.
Most student disciples had commoners for ancestors. Those born into cultivation clans were a minority, after all, and those with elders who had entered the Dao were naturally fewer still.
No one complained. This was simply how the world worked. Those who could sit in the center had earned it through their own efforts; no one succeeded through luck alone.
Hou Niao's table of four was naturally also in the center, and as close to its heart as possible. He did not mind where he was seated, even if this arrangement might have been deliberate-held up as a lustrous pearl, only to be exposed as a grain of rice?
He did not think these visiting Heaven-Connecting Realm cultivators