It had been a long time since John picked out the Lethal Bite Spear manual from the Sect Library. For months he had held onto it waiting for a time when he had sufficient contribution points to start cultivating it. That time was now. John had occasional stints of using the manual for the most basic of exercises; running, squats, pushups, stretches, were all included in the front material of the manual for practice, but to truly learn a martial arts technique, it was better to start by learning from a master.

Lars was Johns master. Lars was a middle aged man with a salted beard and hair, despite his age he was ridiculously fit, often practicing shirtless in the stone yard. On his first visit, John didn't see any other disciples there to train, but over the weeks he noticed several dozen, usually only stopping by. Many of those other disciples wielded weapons other than the spear, but apparently Lars was best known for his spear techniques. Either way, John approached and asked to come under Lars' tutelage.

It was relatively expensive, contribution point wise, but John was tired of fighting bare handed, bare qi or flesh handed anyway. The first thing Lars had John do was run. It was also the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, really it was just endless running for the first week. Internally, John complained that he had spent so much time running recently and surely no more was needed. Cultivating kept one's body in shape even if you weren't a body cultivator, so it's not like John needed a ton of conditioning.

When confronted about it, Lars deadpanned that running would improve his relationship with his body, improve his reflexes, and minutes more rambling about the positive effects of running. John eventually sighed and just kept running, he should have expected things would start out like this. It was just like stories from the army, told by the old men of his village. Anyway, after a week of running Lars finally promised to show him some spear techniques. It was only at this point that Lars even bothered to ask for John's manual to review. It took him less than a minute to scan through it and hand it back.

From there, John drilled for several hours each morning. Lunges in all directions, leaping attacks from all sorts of positions, drills on how best to compress qi for lunges and leaping attacks. Very little time was spent on any other kind of attack, though John learned the basics of slashes, sweeps, and blocks. The Lethal Bite spear was almost entirely dedicated to offense, modelled after the fatal lunge of an attacking snake. The twin bladed spear he used to train with also lacked some of the versatility that a traditional winged spear had that made cutting and slashing techniques more feasible. Reading ahead in his manual, he would eventually learn qi techniques to sense weak points in an opponents defense, pierce through defense, and other powerful options for real combat.

John also spent some time practicing similar movements with qi-forged blades. As John had come to understand it, very few cultivators were able to attack with qi directly the way he could. It had been an advantage in all of his fights so far, and he intended to hone it. Mostly he was able to generate the blade heads to thrust from various angles. He didn't bother with handles, the manipulation of his silken qi was enough to generate a lot of force. Eventually he would pick up a claw technique to work on his closer range options and train that into his qi fighting. For now, training the basics was it.

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A couple times over the weeks, John spotted Lady Song eyeing him hatefully from afar. Especially when he was working on his garden. She would stand under an eave across the courtyard, peering into the entrance of his garden. He figured she was rather annoyed that he beat up Ye and landed him in Jail. John didn't understand the two of them. He had no quarrel with Lady Song or her family initially, Fatty Wang just happened to be the one to act as his escort during John's first sect mission.

No matter what they had said, Song and Ye just didn't listen to reason, acting willfully and making a lot of assumptions about John's motivations. While that had left a bad taste in his mouth, the real offence was Elder Song screwing him over to such a degree when he messed up. John made the best of the situation--the tree could have died in any number of alternate scenarios, but the punishment was excessive. It annoyed John that Elder Catherine and the Sect Leader were so clearly making allowances for the Weird kids in all areas, but he still had to deal with the regular rules thanks to Elder Song's interference. The sect would conveniently ignore crisis after crisis that put lives in real danger, but couldn't be bothered to waive his debt for him. It rankled a bit that John really deserved some of that debt though, maybe he was just used to the benefits given to him despite the dangers.

Come to think of it, Song and Ye probably felt the opposite. The sect had stepped on their toes by allowing John to work in the garden despite the status quo the Outer disciples had going. Still, such a minor slight didn't deserve the explosive reaction John and Wang had received, and John couldn't find it in him to forgive them. Actually, it probably annoyed Lady Song to no end that John had a 'personal' garden to draw qi from in the Inner sect when all the other gardens were managed more strictly. There was no precedent for disciples cultivating in the Inner gardens, lest they interfere with the carefully maintained plant formations and damage the valuable crops. Inner Disciples were expected to perform missions and pay for their time in the specialized buildings.

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Regardless, John paid her no mind. All she could do was brood from a distance, and he had more important things to work on. He could take the private entrance back to his pavilion too, so she couldn't confront him in the public areas unless he ventured out, which he did only when she wasn't around to avoid the annoyance. Her other option was to march in here and try to cause trouble, which she actually did once. It went something like this:

She marched in with a huff and shouted "I challenge you to a duel!"

"I decline, go away."

She nearly screamed in frustration, but left. He didn't know why she thought that would work, but he still found himself irritated. Both Lady Song and Disciple Ye acted with such petulance, it quickly wore his patience to nothing. Lady Song couldn't use her connections to retaliate against him because of his special status as a Weird cultivator. Unless he did something that could warrant punishment normally, he was basically untouchable. John didn't know if she had a mind to trash his garden, but doing so would get her punished. Even with her uncle in the Disciplinary Hall, the sect wouldn't let interference with their pet project go.

John tried not to dwell on it, since it just got his blood pressure up. Luckily Ye was still in confinement.

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Kai came along one day to personally invite John to a celebration, Fatty Wang, Jim, Vic, and Saul had all finally completed their advancement to Foundation establishment! Kai was going to throw a party in his new and freshly decorated mansion. John of course, agreed to attend.

As a farmer, John didn't have many very nice clothes. At most he would wear his newest and cleanest clothes for festivals. As a disciple, John only had his sect robes and he figured those would do for all situations. Imagine his surprise when he arrived to Kai's place to find that Kai was wearing an extraordinarily fancy get-up, a black collared shirt with red embroidered dragons and a pair of dark red pants to match, his collar was flipped up and the top few buttons were rakishly undone. The other guys all wore similar, if less extravagant outfits. For the first time in his life, John felt significantly under dressed. It was made worse by the dozen or so gorgeous young women, jade beauties, who wore long gowns that intersected sex appeal and elegance perfectly. Several were laying in Kai's arms, others poured wine or brought around an endless stream of high end dishes for everyone to eat. John was stupefied, some of these girls were Foundation Establishment cultivators, others were Qi Condensation. How did he even get the lower cultivators into the Inner Sect?

John had the feeling he had a lot to learn from Kai.

As the night went on, John sampled a ton of delicious food and drinks. An endless variety of dumplings, saucy meats over rice, incredibly spicy meals, noodles of all kinds. The wines were sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, John could hardly believe that Kai was able to source all this, did he use contribution points to hire chefs? John wouldn't put it past him. For all the serious talk of using special Ice cultivation rooms, Kai sure liked to live large and show off in front of his friends.

During a quieter moment of the party, while the others were talking amongst themselves, John asked Kai about it.

"Is it really okay to throw a party like this?"

Kai looked confused, "What do you mean?"

"Isn't it just a big expense? Isn't that kind of a waste?"

"Guh, straight shooting as always huh John?" Kai grimaced a little bit but it softened up into a genuine smile. "I'll be straight with you too then. This kind of thing--" he gesticulated at everything, "this is just what's normal for me. My dad's the right hand of the Sect Leader, he's one of the only other Nascent Soul cultivators besides the Leader. With my talent, and my family to back it up, there's a good chance I'll make it to Nascent Soul or higher without any real difficulty. Why not enjoy myself on the way there?"

"What happened to all that talk about seriously cultivating and using your leftover points to cultivate in the specialized rooms?"

"I do seriously cultivate, but not all the time, besides," Kai looked around at his buddies having a great night, "this is worth it."

John wrinkled his face a bit, he always felt pressed to get stronger, the demons he had seen were surely just the tip of the iceberg. The Wheel was constantly breathing down his neck, in his mind.

"Still feels like a waste of points, we spent two weeks doing missions just to get them all!" He eventually said.

Kai just laughed, "I don't think you really get it yet. I could have this mansion with just a word to my father, and I can buy an endless amount of points just by using the weekly purchase allotment." He put his hand on John's shoulder. "I did all that because I knew you needed help."

John didn't know what to say, his throat tightened up and his eyes misted. No one had ever helped him like that before. Kai tactfully shifted his focus, toasting to his friends who all cheered, John eventually smiled and rejoined the party.