章 22: Does... Does The News Anchor Have Depression?

As Lin Songmei and Yan Mingqing made their first step on the path of cultivation, the world outside continued to move.

Everyone who had taken the aptitude test had entered their new sect. Things were beginning to settle down. However, at this time, a few of the cultivator-exclusive media agencies, agencies run by cultivators that only could be accessed by other cultivators, began to move.

They wanted to report on the most famous new disciples, get comments from their masters, while also maintaining their reports on famous rising stars.

As the market was dominated by a few media agencies, all the others having been quashed underfoot, these media agencies began to request statements from large sects about their disciples.

The Starlight Lake Sect was no exception.

In fact, because they had taken in a crazy four direct disciples in one year, the media was sending as many requests as they could. For the media, this was an occurrence more rare than a meteor falling out of the sky and hitting them, and if they could actually meet with these new disciples? They wouldn't mind taking an entire meteor shower!

However, this was when the Starlight Lake Sect's robust Public Relations department began to do their work. Because the Starlight Lake sect was one of the four biggest sects in the world, they could strongarm the media all they'd like and they'd have to sit there and take it.

To maintain their reputation as open and transparent though, the PR department decided they'd release a short profile on each of their new direct disciples, releasing them while also getting some short quotes from their masters.

It was a win for both sides, so why not?

Liu Xueli was sitting at her desk, it was cluttered from the amount of trash she had left on it. Xueli didn't have time to care about it though, she was hunched over the desk, a never-ending stream of profanities leaving her mouth as she wrote an essay about both of her disciples.

Crushing another can of an energy drink into a small ball and throwing it behind her, Xueli was outraged! The PR department wanted her to write an essay about each of her disciples so that they could choose one or two sentences to release to the public! What unfairness was this?!

Xueli chugged another energy drink, crushing it and tossing it onto the massive pile behind herself.

She didn't need them, they wouldn't affect her at all, but the taste was refreshing.

As much as Xueli cussed the PR department though, and wished that all they ate for the next month was dog food, Xueli recognized the critical importance of her work. Right now was the height of the media frenzy season! Any cultivator-exclusive media agency would eat the news up, even if it was just a picture of a strand of hair!

In fact, just recently, with the breakthrough of Ma Sicheng into the core formation stage at such an early age, the media had already come knocking on the sect's door, hoping for a chance to do a spotlight interview on the sect's three brightest up and coming stars.

They were turned down for a plethora of reasons.

The biggest being that one of the three, Wang Baichuan, was out adventuring at the moment.

The media, of course, didn't care, and kept up their relentless badgering, but the Starlight Lake Sect had no intention in budging... so everything was normal.

Throughout this time, Songmei and Mingqing spent most of their days just... hanging out. Learning some breathing techniques to best intake Qi from the air, working out, reading some books, and enjoying life in general.

With the two of them, they both had a fair bit of knowledge of what was going on, Mingqing more so than Songmei, but the two of them had listened to their master's rambling for what felt like hours on end.

At this point, if Songmei and Mingqing both went through memory loss, the one thing they'd remember was that Xueli despised yet respected the PR department with all her heart.

...and that she definitely was 'very young'.

As the days passed, the media, after many, many rounds of badgering managed to get some tidbits of information about the four new disciples. With that, each media agency began to write a storm of articles, each day, there'd be more articles than your thumb had endurance to scroll through about various young prospects!

One article, written by a famous news reporting company by the Daoist Times, went viral, topping several websites and forums.

Scrolling through her own terminal while it was in a handheld form, Songmei craned her neck to look at Mingqing. "Daoist Times is that one news reporting website, right?"

Absorbed in a fierce game, her fingers flying across the keyboard at lightning quick speed, Mingqing, without looking up from her own terminal that was in a form similar to a laptop, replied with a short, "Yeah."

Although Mingqing seemed to be in the middle of the most important online match in the world, a short glance at her screen would reveal that she was just grinding a certain bricklaying game...

She really needed to catch up! Other players were well-established in this game already, she needed to lay her bricks faster...

Songmei and Mingqing were living worry-free lives, life was good. Until 'school' started, they could just sit, leaning against the wall that was between the doors to their rooms, staring at their picture-perfect courtyard while lounging around all day.

Back to the Daoist Times though, Songmei was curious, she had noticed that a certain article had been trending recently in the cultivator-exclusive networks she had gained access to once becoming a cultivator.

[STARLIGHT LAKE'S NEWEST RISING STARS! GENERATION OF UNPRECEDENTED TALENT?!]

Snorting at the title, Songmei applauded the Daoist Times, they were amazing at fluffing up these titles...

Opening the article, she noticed that there were... an amazing number of comments. Moreover, as the Daoist Times had a short episode they'd release everyday about the latest news, the article's content had an entire episode to itself! The episode being put at the top of the article for easy viewing.

Songmei was curious, were these just normal human news anchors reporting this stuff?

Boop.

[Welcome to the Daoist Times live news reporting broadcast!]

Songmei's eyebrows rose, as a large logo flashed across the screen, the smooth voice of a woman rang out, welcoming the viewers. The quality sure was high...

The screen changed, the logo disappearing as two anchors appeared on screen. Songmei's jaw also continued to drop, the backdrop was... gorgeous to say the least, it seemed as if the studio was situated at the top of a tall mountain, empty nature behind it, showing flowing rivers, a dense forest, and several beasts roaming in the background.

Both of the anchors were exceedingly attractive, Songmei in her mind, applauded the Daoist Times, they really knew all the tricks to bring in a large audience.

Of course, this was after a short... admiration... of the female anchor.

The male anchor opened up the broadcast, turning towards the other anchor with a smile.

[Did you know? I recently bought myself a nice bottle of wine!]

With the male anchor's words, the female anchor turned towards him as well, striking up a conversation.

[Oh? Why did you buy yourself more alcohol?]

[To drown my unending sorrows of course!]

Songmei coughed, the joke was... bad, to say the least. Songmei swore she heard everyone in the studio have a visceral reaction, she wasn't surprised though. Mingqing had already told Songmei a little bit about the Daoist times, and their tradition of opening with an atrocious joke apparently was quite famous.

It was so bad though...

With the joke over though, and a round of laughter ringing out from her terminal, Songmei focused once more as they dived into reporting.

[Our dear viewers, we know the cultivation world is vast, full of dangers, full of things to be discovered! But we always need a dose of fresh blood don't you think? This is going to be the first episode of a four episode dedicated series on information about the new direct disciples of each of the four great sects!]