the $\sim700$ CCCP sources with 2MASS counterparts are spatially concentrated towards the edges of the Carina molecular clouds. Three prominent source groupings are seen: members of the Treasure Chest cluster, stars within the Trumpler 16 cluster, and stars at the interface between the rich Trumpler 14 cluster and C$^{18}$O core \#10. The latter region also has a dense grouping of $MSX$ mid-infrared sources. These groupings of absorbed X-ray sources are likely to be very young stellar objects. In contrast, out of $\sim2800$ hard CCCP sources without 2MASS counterparts (Figure \[fig\_acisno2mass\]$d-f$), $\sim2000$ are evenly distributed across the CCCP field and are likely extragalactic candidates. This number is in satisfactory agreement with the number of simulated AGNs ($2500$ from §\[contaminants\_agn\_section\]).

Soft CCCP Sources\[unobscured\_section\]
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In this section we consider all CCCP sources with X-ray median energy $MedE < 2$ keV. Figure \[fig\_aciswith2mass\] presents all CCCP sources with available 2MASS counterparts. Panel $a$ ($MedE<1.1$ keV) shows that only 40% of the sources are spatially concentrated in the ridge of famous young stellar clusters in Carina (including Trumpler 15, Trumpler 14, Trumpler 16, Treasure Chest, and Bochum 11 [@Feigelson11])[^8], while the majority of the sources are relatively uniformly distributed across the CCCP field of 