Chapter 52: The Road Upward III

Halven explained the screenings more clearly the next morning.

He was sorting damaged practice weapons beside the training yard while recruits repeated drills under the increasingly cold autumn sky.

"Why the guard?" Joe asked.

"Better odds."

"Because rural recruits may have missed birth signs?"

"That's one reason."

Halven set a cracked spear into the repair pile.

"The guard doesn't collect completely random people. Most recruits who become useful martial practitioners already possess enough spirituality to sense and cultivate Blood Energy."

Joe remembered Edwin's explanation.

"And every Root holder has at least that."

"Yes."

"So, every person with a Spiritual Root could have begun as a martial cultivator."

"Correct."

"But most martial cultivators still have no Root."

"Correct again."

That changed the screening mathematics.

The magistrate was not spending resources testing random people from market streets.

The guard had already produced a crude first filter merely by recruiting martial-capable people.

More importantly, those people often came from exactly the places where a subtle vision was easiest to miss.

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Testing them remained a gamble.

It was simply a better gamble.

"Then you're mostly looking for the quiet cases."

Halven glanced at him.

"What do you mean?"

"The ones whose Root didn't make them obviously unusual as martial artists."

Halven gave a small nod.

"Mostly."

Joe continued thinking through it.

"If someone's birth sign was enormous, the magistrate might hear about it early. And if their spirituality passively made Blood Energy unusually easy for them, they'd probably become known as a martial genius even if the birth sign was missed."

"Someone would usually notice."

"So the people who reach adulthood without anyone knowing are more likely to look ordinary."

"Exactly."

The guard was not primarily searching for children like the famous one sent to the state capital.

Those cases announced themselves too loudly.

It was searching for Root holders whose lives had given nobody enough reason to look.

"Two discoveries in one screening sounds good, then."

"It was good enough that the magistrate suddenly became much more enthusiastic about screenings."

Joe smiled.

"Successful gambling encourages more gambling."

"Something like that."

"Why didn't the first man receive the same investment as the one who reached the state round?"

Halven laughed quietly.

"Because finding a Root doesn't make him younger."

Joe waited.

Halven understood what he meant.

"By the time a guard gets discovered, he may already be eighteen, twenty, twenty-two. We already know how quickly he cultivates with normal resources. We know whether he works hard, how his foundation looks, what realm he reached, whether he handles Blood Energy well."

"So the Root is new information. The person isn't."

"Exactly."

The slower of the two discoveries had still become valuable locally.

Families noticed him.

His future improved.

But nobody at the state level had apparently considered it worth pouring enormous resources into pushing him rapidly through multiple martial realms.

The second discovery had been different.

He had already progressed unusually well before anyone knew he was rooted.

That gave officials evidence that the martial road would not consume endless resources merely to bring him to the point where the Root mattered.

"So he entered the Decennial."

"Yes."

"And reached the state capital."

"Yes."

Joe thought about that.

A rooted infant represented possibility.

A rooted twenty-year-old came with evidence.

"What does the guard get if one goes far?"

"Recognition. Merit. Sometimes better resource allocations. Sometimes favors or opportunities for the officers involved."

"So the screening really is a lottery."

"A very boring one."

"With better odds than testing the entire population."

"And somebody else owns the testing artifact."

Joe smiled.

"Best kind of lottery."