As Olivia led Yone to the ID card station, he observed the scene of staff diligently handling paperwork.
Although he respected their seriousness, it was not the life he desired.
Yone yearned for power, the kind that could control life and death, and more importantly, protect him from dying a second time.
His ultimate goal was to seek clues to immortality, a concept he doubted cultivation alone could offer, despite this world's advanced strength compared to his previous one.
They stopped at a compartment where Olivia sat behind a desk and asked Yone to sit across from her.
The desk was equipped with various unfamiliar objects: a strange blue box with a dark gem in the center, an item holder with lines of Qi running into the desk, paper files, a pen with a red glow, and other mysterious items.
"Please place your palm here and inject Qi into it," Olivia instructed, pointing to the blue box with the dark gem.
Given Yone's status as a cultivator, Olivia opted for the faster identification process designed for cultivators, which required him to inject Qi into the gem.
As Yone followed her instructions, the gem lit up, and several writings appeared.
Olivia nodded and with curiosity, remarked, "You're at the 2nd layer of Foundation Establishment, can you tell me how you withstood Darius's aura?"
She had been curious about this since the incident but waited until now to bring it up.
Yone, appearing unfazed, responded, "So what? A person's strength isn't only determined by their cultivation base."
Olivia glanced at him, impressed by his insight, and then continued her task, noting, "Hm? Low-grade talent?"
Yone rolled his eyes at Olivia's comment, "So what? Talent doesn't matter much if you have the right cultivation technique and enough resources. It just slows you down a bit."
Olivia nearly choked at his response.
'Arrogant brat,' she thought, restraining herself from saying it out loud. 'It's easy for him to talk like this, with a heaven-defying cultivation technique and endless resources from his clan.'
She sighed, feeling both frustration and pity. "Do you even know how much an ordinary cultivator has to suffer just to get a decent technique or enough resources to speed up their cultivation?"
Yone paused, realizing he might have overstepped. "No, but I can imagine how hard it is," he said, then added sincerely, "Sorry, I forgot how difficult it can be for others. I misspoke, Branch Leader."
Yone sincerely apologized with a straight face.
He obviously knew such things, he was just acting as a real young master of a hidden clan that didn't know much about the hardships of ordinary cultivators.
Olivia's irritation subsided upon hearing his words,' Even with his shrewd brain, he is just a kid who just came out to explore the world, he doesn't know much about how harsh life is.'
She understood that Yone going out alone to explore the world with a singular hidden guardian as his protector is most likely because his clan noticed his lack of real-life awareness and ordered him to go out and gain experience.
It was a common practice among powerful families to do that, which sects used to their advantage and brought in these individuals to strengthen their backing and power even further, while also gaining new geniuses to fight for them in the future.
"Come with me please" Olivia stood up directing Yone to follow her. They walked to a room that had a big rectangular, crystal.
" Place your hand on it to check your affinity" Olivia explained.
'What is affinity?' Yone inwardly wondered but didn't say it aloud to not appear as a clueless country bumpkin.
He was from a hidden clan after all!
" You may already know your affinity since you are already a cultivator, but protocol says you have to do it, to complete your identification," Olivia explained...
'Seems like the three tests used in the village back then were in reality only the first step,' Yone thought,' They most likely call kids separately later to check their affinity and other things, especially the high-talented ones.'
"Ok," Yone nodded.
As he was placing his right palm on the big rectangular crystal. Yone watched as the crystal shone with white radiance until no colors whatsoever appeared even after several seconds of waiting.
"No affinities, you are a weapon master," Olivia said, her face flashing with shock for a split second.
Even though cultivators with affinities and weapon masters didn't differ in strength and led to the same path, she was still a bit surprised since weapon masters were rare and few in between.
'Weapon master? That's not quite right.'
Yone knew that he had no specific belonging to any of the two paths.
The Armend System enabled him to access all different kinds of techniques and resources from the armend he devoured from the people he killed. Thus, Yone was confident that such restrictions didn't exist.
"Anyway, follow me".Olivia said.
She directed Yone to a waiting room, where Yone sat for about a couple of minutes before Olivia returned.
"Sorry for the wait, here's your ID," Olivia said handing a white scroll over to him.
Yone collected it, looking at the strange scroll, before Olivia told him to imprint it with Qi.
Immediately he did that, the scroll shrunk, until it was as small and solid, radiating Yone's Qi signature.
"When you reach new realms, visit any identification branch and they will update it for you" Olivia explained.
Nodding his head and thanking her, Yone left the building stepping outside in the bustling sound of merchants selling their goods and people bargaining with stall owners for better deals and lower prices.
Looking left and right, Yone spotted Sara in front of a building that sold jewelry.
She was next to two men, one of them was middle-aged wearing a green light armor of high quality.
The other was an old man wearing a white robe, his long white beard and mustache made him look like those old monsters which Yone was greatly familiar with.
'Everything is going according to plan,' Yone smirked as he headed towards where Sara stood.
Olivia inside the building watched his departure figure with a hesitant gaze.
She had been tempted to ask about his clan but decided against it.
Ignorance is bliss!