One Last System

"Senior, there is no need to get so heated about this topic!" another elder said right as Arganar was about to leave the place.

His attitude was in the direct contract to the 'fuck you and leave me the fuck alone' behavior represented by the man behind the tournament's organization.

"Who the fuck are you?" Arganar scoffed as he looked at another Elder.

There was no badge anywhere on the man's robes that would indicate his involvement with the tournament.

In fact, outside of being a normal Elder, this man didn't wear any honors, making him one of those useless leechers that simply took the benefits of the job without contributing to the sect in any way or form.

"I don't have any official job," the man replied, most likely noticing how Arganar's eyes ran through his attire. "But in practice, I'm one of the few that manages the tournament," he stated before throwing a quick look deeper into the lodge.

"I believe you have already seen the reason why we have to work hard to keep this entire thing going," he added before releasing a deep sigh.

'Did the sect really deteriorate so much?' Arganar thought, recognizing the situation.

It wasn't something that he ever encountered personally, but it was an occurrence that he learned by studying the history of other organizations.

When the official jobs became nothing more but profitable spots to sit on, when the lower ranks had to step in and do the job of others, the sect where it would happen would reach the point of its saturation.

Or, in normal, less philosophical terms, it would step onto the downward slope of falling apart due to corruption.

"So?" Arganar asked as his face darkened a little. "Can you tell me how did this tournament deteriorate so much?" he specified his question. "What happened to the old, traditional rules?" he added.

The supportive Elder only shook his head before looking down.

"It was all part of a scheme to fix the situation," he finally said after taking a moment to gather his thoughts. "The current organization," he nodded his head towards the deeper parts of the lodge, "attempted to stop everyone from exploiting the defeat-points system. And for a while, it worked," he explained.

'That makes sense, so far,' Arganar thought.

The insider trading of the defeat points was the bane of the old system. Something that was extremely hard to deal with and nearly impossible to fully stop.

Back when one's ranking of the tournament would still be decided both by the position they ended up at and the number of opponents they defeated, it was a massive problem when disciples would trade spots.

In a sense, it was the first sign of corruption within the sect. A type of gauge that the elders of the old used to measure whether it was the moment to step in and fix things now or in the future.

"But isn't the current system even easier to exploit?" Arganar asked, pointing out the obvious flaw in the explanation.

"It is," the jobless Elder nodded his head, a look of grief appearing on his face. "It was the decision of that fucker," he said, once again casting a glance deeper into the lodge. "He claimed that if we can't stop the insider trading, we might as well just make it even easier and ignore it," the Elder explained.

"How are you going to explain the fact that all the other teams ganged up against a single one?" Arganar asked, finally pushing the discussion towards the topic that he was truly interested in.

After all, no matter how bad the lower locations of the sect turned out, as long as they didn't stop the promising disciples from advancing, then everything would be more or less okay.

In the end, this was the sole purpose for the outpost like the one he was in right now. To find people capable of breaking through the initial struggle of cultivation, proving that they are worth being groomed.

"That's exactly why I advised not to get too heated about that topic," the Elder said, raising his eyes.

'Is he happy that he can explain something?' Arganar thought, stopping his face from expressing the doubt that suddenly filled his soul. 'And if he is happy to explain now, why wasn't he like that when we talked about the state of the sect?'

Initially, the jobless Elder managed to lull Arganar's attention down. Yet, surprisingly, when he suddenly turned energetic, Arganar's interest peaked.

"While it's just a guess of mine, I believe it's a conflict on the sponsored disciples against normal disciples plane," the jobless Elder said, turning around and resting his back against the wall.

"The reason why I didn't watch the entirety of the tournament was that I went to investigate. Apparently, two teams joined just an hour before the tournament started," he said, bringing forth a piece of information that Arganar was formerly ignorant about.

'The guys that Mia jumped ahead to deal with?' Arganar thought, his mind connecting the dots of what he saw with the dots of what he just heard.

"So they want to bully her," Arganar muttered, looking down as he immersed himself in his thoughts. "But it doesn't make any sense!" he suddenly exclaimed, raising his eyes at his counterpart.

"Sir?" the Elder got pretty confused about Arganar's sudden outburst. "What doesn't make sense?" he asked.

"Mia, the girl leading the one team that everyone ganged upon, is already in the fifth realm," Arganar pointed out, refusing to elaborate any further.

'If he doesn't understand the implications behind this, I will see this entire place sacked and burned to the ground,' Arganar thought grimly.

This was the baseline of what he could ignore and what was an unforgivable oversight.

Because the notion of half-advancing was lost in this location, then this place no longer served its main purpose of sourcing and then filtering talents!

"Wait, she is fifth already?!" the Elder jumped up, nearly hitting his head against a cornice protruding from the wall.

"That's right," Arganar nodded his head. "You claimed that it's a conflict between sponsored and non-sponsored disciples," he echoed Elder's earlier words, only for a smirk to form on his lips. "But by reaching the fifth stage, she is already a level above the sponsored disciples of any kind!"

"Wait a second, sir," the Elder raised his hands as if trying to stop the beating coming his way. "Doesn't she need to reach the sixth stage to become an inner disciple?"

'That does it,' Arganar's eyes exploded with fire as his rage shot through the roof.

Everyone knew that by becoming a sixth-stage cultivator, one was applicable to become an inner disciple of the outpost and an outer disciple of the lower headquarters.

The thing was, just like on the eighth and ninth stage, the burden of breaking through the fifth one was immense. The number of cultivation resources necessary to do so was so mindboggling no unaffiliated cultivator could ever achieve it on their own.

This was the very reason why a fifth-level disciple was a valued one. The entire institution of the outpost was created to find those capable of reaching the fifth stage and then grooming them beyond that.

'And from the looks of things, people here don't even remember how it works,' Arganar thought, his fury shooting through the roof.

"Not really," he said out loud, keeping his raging inferno of emotions behind a calm, cold facade. "By becoming a fifth-stage cultivator, the sect considers her to be a quasi-inner disciple already. And that means..." Arganar cut his explanation short.

"That she will receive the formal backing of the sect," the Elder replied, his face whitening as he realized the oversight. "The resources, scrolls, techniques... Even direct teachings from the Elders of the sect," he listed out in a low voice, each word putting another stone to the burden that weighed him down.

"In other words, she truly became a disciple of the Tuxi sect," Arganar stated, raising his chin as he looked down at the Elder.

It wasn't necessarily that man's fault. There was a chance that this Elder was just desperately grasping at straws to keep the sect he worked in together.

'It's sad, but even if he is innocent, it won't stop me from sacking this place,' Arganar thought grimly, looking at his counterpart with a small sense of pity.

"Now, since you are the one dealing with the organization, I hope you can give me whatever she won," Arganar said, finally changing the topic.. "After the display of the sect's corruption, I don't really think she would ever see those resources she and her team won."