A Brand-New Sun Clan!

After that night...

Sun Bo'an spent three days slowly mastering the five Jade Slips Shi Jian had given him, committing their contents to memory...

On the fourth day, he summoned every member of the Sun Clan who had cultivation to the council hall.

Of the eighteen cultivators, excluding the two children, Sun Mao and Sun Yao, who were cultivating under Shi Jian on the back mountain, sixteen remained.

Nine of them were children who had only recently drawn Qi into their bodies, and all were at the Qi Refining First Layer.

Counting Sun Bo'an, only seven were truly capable of upholding the clan's standing.

Sun Bo'an sat in the seat of honor and assigned tasks to all the cultivators:

"Sun Wanqing."

A female cultivator in her early thirties rose from the first seat on the left and cupped her hands in salute.

She was Sun Bo'an's younger clan sister and was at the Qi Refining Sixth Layer. Five years ago, she had been an overlooked nobody at the Qi Refining Fourth Layer. Ever since their branch rebelled...

For five years, she had neither worked the spirit fields nor guarded the city gates.

Instead, she had plunged headfirst into the third floor of the scripture pavilion, poring over a pile of incomplete talisman-making notes and wrestling with them for four whole years...

With resources supplied to her as well...

Not only had her cultivation improved considerably, but she had also drawn her first usable first-tier talisman two years ago, officially becoming a talisman master.

She had mastered all the low-grade first-tier talismans, such as the Fireball Talisman, Clarity Talisman, Rainfall Talisman, and Illumination Talisman, though these talismans were of ordinary value.

Even so, she could be said to have gained a preliminary grasp of the Dao of Talismans.

"Little sister, the talisman shop in the market town is yours to manage from today on."

Sun Bo'an tossed her a Jade Slip. "In this compiled Hundred Arts Chapter, there's a complete, detailed outline of the standard talisman-making process."

"From making ink and talisman paper to tracing the spirit patterns on talismans, it's more than a hundred times as complete as those fragmented texts you looked through in the scripture pavilion."

Sun Wanqing was cold by nature. She took the Jade Slip without wasting words.

She sent her Divine Sense into the Jade Slip and examined the talisman-making section of the Hundred Arts Chapter. After reading a few lines, her hand began to tremble slightly. She had spent four years feeling her way through the subject in the scripture pavilion, taken countless wrong turns, and used up who knew how much spirit ink and talisman paper, all to barely grasp those things.

Yet they were written out perfectly clearly in this Jade Slip.

At the end of the Jade Slip, there were even three solutions to the problem she had never been able to work out: "the break at the junction between the Spirit-Gathering Pattern and the Spirit-Guiding Pattern."

"Is this the Ye Household's talisman Dao inheritance? I remember the inheritance was scattered and disorganized. Big brother, did you put this together?"

"Take a guess."

Sun Wanqing fell silent and understood at once.

In the entire Sun Clan, the only one likely capable of organizing a second-tier inheritance was the one on the back mountain.

"Sun Changping." Sun Bo'an called another name.

A gaunt-faced, middle-aged male cultivator rose from the first seat on the right and saluted.

Sun Changping was Sun Bo'an's older cousin, a cultivator at the Qi Refining Seventh Layer. He had wanted to learn the art of pill refining in his youth, but the second branch had constantly suppressed him.

With a few incomplete formulas and half a set of pill-refining techniques, he had stumbled along for over twenty years, until they rebelled together and became masters of their own fates.

Only then had he truly become an Alchemist!

Although he could refine only a few pills and medicines-two or three kinds of the lowest-grade Grain Avoidance Pills and Qi-Nourishing Powder-he was still the Sun Clan's only Alchemist at present.

His cultivation was also respectable, and he could become a pillar of the clan in the future.

"The medicine shop is yours."

Sun Bo'an tossed out a second Jade Slip. "Take the alchemy section of the Hundred Arts Chapter home and study it today. Give me a list within three days."

"You need to know which of the Pill Formulas you currently have can be improved, which should be discarded, and which can be added."

Sun Changping took the Jade Slip, his face similarly expressionless, but the knuckles of the fingers gripping the token turned white, one by one...

He had struggled for nearly half his life and gained nothing.

At one point, he had even doubted whether he was wasting Spirit Stones and letting the years slip uselessly by. Now that he had finally achieved his wish and become an Alchemist, he already considered it heaven's mercy.

He had never expected to have a chance to glimpse a higher realm of the Dao of Alchemy!

He was truly fortunate across three lifetimes.

Sun Changping drew a deep breath and respectfully bowed toward the back mountain, then sat back down without a word...

Sun Bo'an continued making assignments.

Law Artifact repair was entrusted to a clan uncle at the Qi Refining Fourth Layer named Sun Tieshan. He was clever and skilled with his hands, and had worked as a blacksmith for mortals before.

It was fitting for him to switch to artifact refining now. In the future, he would also have a chance to set foot on that path!

Formation maintenance was set aside for the time being. The clan had no talent in that field, and it was the hardest to learn, so they could only wait for a promising talent to emerge among the younger generation.

There was no shortage of hands for cultivating Spirit Plants, on the other hand.

The clan had quite a few immortal slaves. The Lin, Ye, and Fang families together numbered exactly sixty, more than enough to tend three hundred mu of spirit fields.

These people were kept entirely in confinement.

Apart from farming, eating, washing, and sleeping, they were not allowed to do anything else. They lived every day under the watch of the Sun clansmen.

The other three older clansmen had no skills, but each had duties of their own.

Sun Xing, at the Qi Refining Sixth Layer, was responsible for overseeing the immortal slaves' daily work in the spirit fields.

Sun Caiya, at the Fifth Layer of Qi Refining, had separately cleared a few mu of medicine fields to specialize in cultivating Spirit Plants and had already become a first-tier Spirit Plant cultivator.

Sun Kezheng, at the Qi Refining Eighth Layer, had considerable cultivation and held the fort at the cultivators' market town at the foot of the mountain.

Once all the assignments had been made...

Sun Bo'an swept his gaze over everyone in the hall and announced one final matter:

"From today onward, all members of the Sun Clan, whether legitimate or born of concubines, whether inner or outer, will receive Cultivation Resources according to the size of their contributions."

Some faces in the hall changed slightly.

"Tending spirit fields earns contribution points, as do making talismans and refining pills. Holding down a post earns contribution points too, as do being a market-town elite, teaching clansmen, turning in spirit items, and so on..."

"In the future, all of these will be settled in contribution points. Contribution points can be exchanged at a one-to-one rate for Spirit Stones, Cultivation Method inheritances, pills, Law Artifacts, cave abodes, and so on."

"Anyone without contribution points, whether their surname is Sun or anything else, will receive only the basic monthly rations. Not one extra grain of spirit rice."

"If anyone objects, speak now."

At those words, the hall fell silent.

Everyone clearly remembered how Old Ancestor Shi had slapped the former clan head to death five years ago. What Sun Bo'an said was what the bear on the back mountain meant.

Besides, there was nothing wrong with the system.

It simply meant they could no longer falsify the underhanded dealings they had conducted in private. Besides, anyone who opposed Sun Bo'an opposed Shi Jian.

No one had the guts, and they all gladly accepted.

From that point on, the Sun Clan underwent a complete transformation and drew a definitive line under its past.