The valley opened up ahead of them on the third day of travel, and Chen Yuan felt it before he saw it — a low hum of thousands of voices pressing against the ears long before the banners came into view.
Jade green. Iron grey. Deep violet. Gold-trimmed black, rippling across the valley floor, each one anchored to a pavilion large enough to house a small village.
Their own banner rode behind the wagon, faded blue, worn soft at the edges — old, but not ashamed.
The camp they settled into sat among clans of similar weight, tents close enough to smell each other's cookfires, far enough from the four great pavilions that the noise from that direction stayed a distant roar. By dusk, word had already started moving through the smaller camps — the Chen boy who couldn't bond a beast for years, finally showing up with one after all. He let it travel.
The opening ceremony began the next morning, and Chen Yuan found a quiet spot near the edge of the Chen camp to watch it unfold.
Zhou Clan entered first, the way they always did — a wall of iron-grey robes parting for their lead genius, broad-shouldered, knuckles scarred pale from years of breaking things on purpose. He didn't so much walk to the platform as claim the ground beneath him one step at a time, rolling his neck once, scanning the gathered candidates the way a butcher scanned livestock. A Verdant Hall recruiter tried a polite greeting and got nothing but a long, unimpressed stare in return before the young man turned away, already bored.
Xian Clan followed, quieter, which somehow drew more attention than Zhou's noise had. Their genius moved like she'd already memorized the whole valley before arriving in it — narrow, sharp-eyed, robes pressed too perfectly to have traveled three days in a wagon. She ignored the recruiters entirely, choosing instead to walk the edge of the crowd herself, pausing here and there the way a buyer paused at a market stall, judging quality with her eyes alone.
Mo Clan came next, trailing the least noise and the most weight — two attendants behind their genius, one of them carrying a chest nobody bothered explaining. He passed the smaller clans' section without slowing, gaze sliding over faded banners and patched tents like a man walking past goods he'd already decided not to buy. Chen Yuan watched him go and felt nothing sting about it. Being unpriced, he was starting to think, had its uses.
Lu Clan arrived last, and their genius wasn't Lu Qingxue — a cousin instead, carrying her same practiced warmth stretched a little thinner over someone who hadn't quite earned it yet. He drifted between recruiters with easy smiles and small bows, working the crowd the way a merchant worked a room full of buyers, never lingering anywhere long enough to mean it.
Chen Yuan watched all four of them settle into their places near the platform — loud and hungry, sharp and unimpressed, wealthy and indifferent, warm and hollow — and found himself sorting them without meaning to, the same way he'd once sorted frostroot from a merchant's crate. Which ones were worth what they showed. Which ones weren't.
By the time the trial's first horn sounded across the valley, he still hadn't decided which of the four he'd end up standing across from first, and some quiet, patient part of him had already decided that not knowing yet was fine.
There would be time enough to find out.