Hong Kong.
Kai Tak Airport.
Ge Huang, a flaxen-haired woman with a high ponytail, took a deep breath and led a large group of Huang family members into the departure hall.
Guided by airport staff, the group headed towards their designated private aircraft.
Walking almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Ge Huang was an androgynously beautiful man with an identical high ponytail - his gender almost ambiguous at first glance. He comforted her:
"Don't be so nervous, Little Ge."
"It's just a routine transport mission."
"Sorry, Elder Brother. I'm too tense." Ge Huang immediately apologised in a hushed voice.
As the second young miss of the previous Huang generation, she considered herself unworthy.
Doted on by elders in her youth, she had chased after some penniless boy to Japan to open a restaurant for so-called love, then defied the Huang family's warnings by using IVF technology to give birth to Lingyin Huang. These successive actions nearly gave the old patriarch a stroke while subjecting her Elder Brother, Cheng Huang, the family head, to relentless criticism from the elders. The family, already declining due to a lack of suitable candidates for the divine artefact and waning bloodline power, descended into chaos.
This would have been just another case of a foolish woman's love-struck antics.
But then, Lingyin Huang manifested the mark of the divine artefact Void Spear, becoming its chosen bearer.
This was disastrous!
Throughout history, divine artefact bearers were always those whose bloodlines most closely resembled the ancestors'. Their offspring would almost certainly possess second-generation bloodline purity.
Meaning any child born to Lingyin Huang would inherit ancestral talents equivalent to the second progenitor.
Such lineage leaking outside was unacceptable not just to the Huang family but to Ge Huang herself.
Having witnessed the Huang family's gradual decline from its former glory, Ge Huang understood all too well her father's lifelong regret at failing to inherit the divine artefact - and precisely what Lingyin's existence meant.
Having already caused her loved ones so much suffering, Ge Huang could no longer allow her rebellious streak to continue. She chose to return to her homeland with her daughter to formally acknowledge their ancestral roots.
Although her husband's opposition led to their divorce, Ge Huang gritted her teeth and completed the ancestral rites, even changing her daughter's surname back to Huang.
But now, Ge Huang truly couldn't discern what was right or wrong in all this.
Who could have imagined that after formally acknowledging her heritage, Lingyin Huang would secretly sign up for the SDS's internal assessment – and actually get selected?
Ge Huang knew full well this involved Kirika Tachibana's scheming, that cunning woman. Yet seeing her daughter being just as wilful and disobedient as she'd been in her youth left Ge Huang both exasperated and amused.
"Didn't you elope with Dad back then? How can you scold me now?"
"I just chose my own husband. You said I could pick, so I chose the strongest one. What's wrong with that?"
Hearing Lingyin say this made Ge Huang's liver ache with anger, yet she had no recourse.
Then matters spiralled completely beyond Ge Huang's – indeed the entire Huang family's – expectations.
The Hidden Management Department of the SDS extended an olive branch. Luo Shu, regarded as the government's only publicly acknowledged Demigod, personally designated Lingyin Huang for the assessment.
Now they couldn't even claim Lingyin was being wilful – everyone had approved it, leaving no room for reversal.
Ge Huang was certain Kirika Tachibana had orchestrated this. That Director of the SDS's Operations Department, her former junior, specialised in poaching talent.
Countless SDS executives had been lured into the organisation by Kirika's wiles – she was practically a maniacal talent hunter.
Given the choice, Ge Huang wouldn't want her daughter working under such a person.
Yet the current Huang family couldn't afford to antagonise the SDS, that towering behemoth at the height of its power.
Moreover, the clan elders fully endorsed this arrangement.
To them, trading the daughter of the disgraceful runaway woman for the SDS's support was an incredibly advantageous deal.
With near-unanimous approval (except from the clan leader's faction), they privately represented the Huang family in accepting the proposal.
Under these circumstances, unless they revealed Lingyin's status as a divine artefact candidate, there was no stopping those greedy, foolish relatives.
But could Ge Huang expose Lingyin?
She didn't dare. Even her elder brother, Cheng Huang, and their father disapproved of such an action.
The Huang family had no shortage of rivals in Hong Kong, let alone across Southeast Asia.
Their current stability relied entirely on numerical superiority and their Wind Arts' reconnaissance capabilities earning official recognition.
Yet only branch families held these official positions – the main lineage avoided government service to preserve family traditions.
This imbalance gave branch families disproportionate influence. If Lingyin's candidacy became known...
The branches would likely force her into breeding with some clan youth to produce a second-generation prodigy, while enemies would send assassins in droves.
Ge Huang hadn't brought her daughter back to become a breeding machine. Her brother and father refused to let their granddaughter/niece sacrifice herself for the branch families' ambitions.
They'd rather Lingyin establish a new Huang main lineage elsewhere than risk exposure.
So, against the SDS's talent poaching, they truly had no countermeasures.
She even had to personally go to the airport to hand over the dowry—a batch of Spirit Liquid—to the SDS personnel.
Bloody hell, just thinking about it was infuriating.
Not only was she losing a daughter, but she also had to send cultivation resources. And after all that, everyone in the family except them was cheering about how much they'd gained.
What gain? You call this a gain?
Losing a daughter and wasting money—Ge Huang was so furious that she could kill those relatives and scatter their ashes to the wind.
Yet Cheng Huang suppressed his sister's impulses.
"Little Ge, look on the bright side. At least he's one of our own people, so the bloodline isn't being diluted."
As he spoke, Cheng Huang patted his sister's shoulder reassuringly and joked:
"Who knows? Maybe we'll have a Japanese branch of the Huang family in the future."
Hearing this, Ge Huang's face darkened:
"If that's how you think, I'll be blunt. I reckon we might as well abandon the Hong Kong main family and move to Japan instead. After all, in this family, the only ones who truly treat each other as family are just us few."
To her surprise, Cheng Huang actually considered this seriously before hesitantly replying:
"Well... we'd have to see whether that nephew-in-law from the Hidden Management Department is worth the investment, wouldn't we?"
Ge Huang was stunned. Was the family head seriously considering starting anew?
Her brother's attitude left her utterly exasperated.
But upon reflection, it made sense.
Due to years of conflicts on the mystic side, the Huang main family now consisted of just one old man, his two children, and a granddaughter. The powerful branch families, having gained influence, showed no mercy.
Worse still, they'd recently framed the main family by claiming a branch family's illegitimate daughter was actually the deceased second young master's only child, to legally inherit everything from the main family.
The crux? This illegitimate daughter had a boyfriend who was a first-generation contractor bonded with the Spirit King.
This situation left Ge Huang completely baffled.
Had her father discovered this earlier, he might have gritted his teeth and accepted Tsui Ling Huang as his granddaughter for the sake of the first-generation contractor. But the branch families had uncovered them first.
This led directly to the core conflict: the inheritance of the Huang family's main lineage.
In Ge Huang's view, as a candidate, Lingyin Huang stood no chance against Tsui Ling Huang, who had the backing of a contractor.
This wasn't something the Huang family could decide—it was the will of the Spirit King.
Once the Spirit King had chosen the contractor, the Huang family was no longer the representative of Wind Arts families. Instead, the descendants of that man named Kazuma Yagami would become the new standard-bearers of Wind Arts.
Thus, the Huang family truly had no choice in the matter. Neither the main nor the branch families had any room to manoeuvre.
Under these circumstances, for those of the main family destined to be phased out, rather than obsessing over the Huang family's interests, it might be better to simply start anew.
After all, with an SDS high-ranking official and a Demigod powerhouse as a son-in-law, as long as these few members of the Huang family were willing, it wasn't entirely impossible to rebuild from scratch.
In an instant, Ge Huang was flooded with thoughts, though it wasn't the place to discuss them openly.
Just then, her conflicted emotions aside, Ge Huang was finally led by the staff to meet the handover party for this batch of resources.
A young lady with long black hair, wearing a white eyepatch, who seemed like a sheltered noble daughter.
Though surprised by the other party's youth upon confirming her identity from the staff's introduction, Ge Huang extended her hand and said:
"Ge Huang of the Huang family."
The eyepatch-wearing girl responded with a sweet yet dangerous smile:
"You may call me Tokisaki."
Kurumi Tokisaki had arrived in grand fashion.