John stood before an unassuming door in the Core Sect region. It was easy to miss if you didn't know it was there, and was seldom trafficked. Luckily John had a jade journal to guide him here. The door opened with a strong push, swinging nearly silently on stone hinges. The view from the threshold was breathtaking.
Something about the Rainy Cloud sect always felt cramped to John. Between the suffocating surveillance and machinations of the sect Elders, to the low clouds, and the curtain of misting rain. The entry to the back mountains stared down a huge and open valley, flush with forest and vegetation. A temperate rainforest absolutely carpeted the mountain range, clearly adapted to the special climate the sect maintained.
John was exploring out here to look for opportunities, both for himself and for the other Weird cultivators. Stepping through the door, he noticed the first problem.
The door was a portal in more than one way, John felt the slight drag of a formation across his skin when he passed the threshold, and the outside of the sect proper was significantly less dense in qi. It was obvious once he experienced it--the sect concentrated qi from across the entire territory into the Core Sect, and to a lesser degree into the Inner and Outer sect. If the density out here was slightly under the Outer Sect, there would be little benefit to any Cultivator surpassing Qi Condensation.
Still, John reasoned there was a benefit to having a space outside the Sect, even without the benefit of incredibly dense ambient qi. There was lots of room for individualized gardens, for example. And John did expect to have a large number of Qi Condensing disciples anyway. He continued down into the valley.
Walking through the barely tamed wilderness was a real novel experience after months and months trapped in the Sect. It had been close to a year since John ventured out with Kai. The Sect had a way of getting stale after a time. The break in scenery was welcome. The vegetation alone was quite different from outside the formation walls. Rather than spindly trunks and squat conifers, the forest was lush with broad and towering deciduous. The broad leaves filtered the light and rain in gorgeous patterns, John found his gaze drifting skyward almost against his will.
The sunlight was another welcome surprise. The rainclouds were truthfully a formation construct, converting ambient qi into water qi to hammer down on the sect proper. Out among the mountainside there was still predominantly rainy, but it waned to a drizzle and even opened to blue sky in sections. So peaceful and reserved was the space that John was tempted to settle down for a time and cultivate. Unfortunately for him, he was immune to normal bouts of enlightenment now, and the needs of his people were a greater demand than his personal relaxation.
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Having explored most of one valley, John was ready to begin searching more pragmatically. He did one more pass over the initial area, taking a keener eye to the opportunities before him. The ambient qi was doing interesting things at the bottom of the valley; there were eddies and vortices in its distribution, though it was hard to point to any driving force. Many of the plants appeared to be semi-spiritual. While that was great for any future construction projects, it was not enough demand on the ambient energy to make such complex patterns, and there was no obvious true spirit plants. The rain carried some qi, but it wasn't as pronounced as it was back in sect civilization.
John kept an eye on the phenomenon, but nothing more could be found here. He pushed on to several other valleys and continued the search. Despite the change in scenery, John found much of the same. Semi-spiritual plants and trees in a thick rainforest. Many of those plants had potential in the use of curated qi-gardens, but it would take some experimentation. There was next to no food sources, which posed a problem for any long term operation. Absolutely no large animal life, and only a handful of birds fluttering around the trees. On the other hand, there was basically no indication of insect activity. If hunting was not possible, perhaps the Weird disciples could farm for food, John had some doubts though.
Using the back mountain for an endorsed activity was one thing; creating specialized gardens to accelerate the advancement of many Weird cultivators at once--this was an unsuspicious activity. Clear cutting a swath of the forest to grow grains or potatoes, that would gather more scrutiny. John was aiming to create a stronghold separate to the structures of the Sect. Ultimately, he wanted to make an environment that could protect himself, his friends, and as many others as was affordable, from the Sect itself. It wasn't hard to see how things were trending in a bad direction just from the strange behavior of the Sect Leader himself. Perhaps Ben could cultivate a new food source for them by mutating some regular food into a Weirder variety, but John was loathe to do so. John's plans already deeply involved Ben's labor, there was only so much the man could do. At least John's demands of him would increase Ben's cultivation in the process.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
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It was as John was thinking through these problems that he stumbled upon something that truly caught his attention. He was tracing a stream uphill for a while, paying attention to the currents of ambient qi. It had a prevailing quality that marked it separate from the other eddies and breezes of denser qi, it seemed to float downhill along the stream itself. John trudged through thick underbrush for several thousand yards of elevation, tracking the stream until it had narrowed to a bare rivulet. Several times he had to backtrack from different tributaries, trying to find the source that was venting qi and not just water.
Eventually, John found himself staring at a small cave in the face of the mountain. Huge exposed boulders covered a small dark mouth that trickled out water, but practically radiated qi. John really did not want to crawl on his hands and knees to explore this place, probably needing to literally squeeze his body through the entrance just to make it inside... Unfortunately it was his best lead. There were plenty of gorgeous peaks and outcrops that would serve as fantastic stronghold foundations, but ultimately John didn't want that much visibility. Squeezing it was.
John wasn't particularly claustrophobic, but crawling into the cave was extremely uncomfortable. It had been years since John had done any real playing in the dirt, and though combat sometimes meant rolling over or even slamming into hard surfaces, he didn't currently have the benefit of adrenaline and distraction. The hard rock couldn't really hurt him with his cultivation level, but it still jabbed his joints and scraped at his skin. Not to mention how undignified it felt threading his arms through the portal, carefully inserting his head, and inching through the tight rock. Each push forward he needed to exhale just to get enough space for his torso to pass.
After an excruciating few minutes, he flopped into an icy puddle in a slightly larger tunnel, barely big enough for him to crouch. The trickle of water leaving the cave drained the puddle slowly, but there wasn't much to it. The puddle itself was being fed from some bare seeps and drips, coming from even deeper within the mountain. Qi laid thick and stagnant in the air even now, but it wasn't enough to explain the continuous flow that reached the valley far below, he pressed on.
Thankfully, the tunnel never narrowed quite so dramatically as it did on the mountain face, but it did have a few winding turns and low sections that John had to crawl through. He was shuffling through one such low section when the ground suddenly dropped out from under his arms and into a deep pool. The light had long since faded, but John knew this was it! Qi roiled off the surface of the pool with such intensity, it was like standing too close to a bonfire, it stung his senses. Recklessly, John chose to dive fully in, unfurling lengths of silk qi in all directions to measure the depth of the pool and the size of the cavern with his qi sense instead of his eyes. It was a fairly small space overall, but there was a ledge on the other side that he swam toward and pulled himself up. The pool itself was something like 40 feet deep, and trumpet shaped, terminating in a narrow pit of small cracks at the bottom.
Even if John had never heard of a spirit spring before, it didn't take a genius to see its immense value, John couldn't help but let out a laugh at his fortune! As long as he could dam up the spring and keep it from leaking out to the surface, this spring would remain incredibly hidden. Dozens of yards of solid rock surrounded it on all sides, containing the qi and blocking ordinary or spiritual senses. This cave wasn't big enough to serve as a stronghold on it's own, but it would be an extremely valuable resource for the core members of his own little faction, not to mention it could eventually be expanded.
In the coming weeks he would need to organize and expand in many areas. There was truly too much work to be done for one man alone, it was time to fully deputize the other Weird cultivators so they could share his burden. Importantly, John needed to know exactly what was expected of him from the rest of the Sect. He had the brief from the Sect Leader himself, but it was just scratching the surface. He needed to meet with Gaius directly and figure out what the Operators wanted, and he needed to read through the jade journal to get a grip on the minutia of life as the Left Hand of the Sect. Even more important was his personal strength. Without strength, no one would take him seriously and only use him as a tool.
John drove his strands of qi into the spring and drank greedily, while his mind dove similarly into the jade slip.