The shockwave of the event was almost as sickening as the following sensation of being observed. I am unsure how clearly other realms felt it, but the Cracking of the world sent a shiver down my growing soul, like it was doused with cold water. Even now, I can feel a sickness deep in my spiritual body, almost like a fever. Such sequelae are unthinkable at the heights of Nascent Soul, and yet it is undeniable.
The OBSERVER sent a scan through, as far as I can deduce, all of reality as cultivators know it. I have no insight to the Void or the far reaches of this plane, but the scan was similar to spiritual sense on an supreme scale. Deductions based on its intensity suggest it could cover the entire plane. It is only similar to spiritual scans in the intensity and sensing nature of the sweep. Dissimilar is the sense of wrongness that accompanied it. My own body is yet free of the corruption, but many things became infected--if only I had known the corruption was coming, much could have been saved.
Plant life is the quickest to change, especially spiritual plants. Whole sections of our farms were destroyed to keep the infection at bay. After several weeks of continual culling, I ordered a complete sweep of the sect by the elders. Luckily, lesser cultivators are able to sense the corruption once it's established, even if they didn't notice the event. Most of the sect territory has now been reviewed and cleansed as necessary.
---
Weeks have passed and things are worse than I could have imagined. Where it started with plant life, it is obvious now that the corruption spreads. Several elders and hundreds of disciples showed evidence of corruption. Paranoia, hallucinations, madness. It was a difficult choice but they needed to be purged. The loss of the elders is not easy, already there is instability within the hierarchy. New factions have emerged that fight for control. I cannot abide such internal strife and yet I cannot afford to let the sect be destroyed. I may have to do this on my own.
---
Testing is well under way. I've had agents take extra mortals alongside genuine candidates for the sect and funnel them to me directly. Initial results are quite shocking. Almost every single mortal is susceptible to the corruption, no matter their talent. They can quickly get into the shallowest depths of cultivation, almost all die shortly thereafter. More experimentation is needed.
--
I pulled the threads available to me. Traditionally awful spiritual roots perform best, so I started focusing on them. Experiment's bodies quickly fail before the corruption takes them completely, so I began strengthening their bodies before exposing them. I made the first batch of successful experiments but they're still quite unstable. They need a guiding method. I'm testing out existing scriptures now. In several new batches, perhaps I will have a result capable of advancing.
-----
John dropped the notebook. The sect leader left extensive notes about his human experimentation, John couldn't stomach to read the notes about his 'batch' though. The Leader was a remarkably thorough man for someone engaged in throwing away hundreds of lives so casually. There were tell-tale signs of the man's decreasing sanity though. In the later enteries his writing became more frantic and less legible, though moments of lucidity poked through the veil.
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Whatever it was that spooked the sect leader at the start, it must have been so profound as to send him careening into insanity. That was a tough thing to accept. John wasn't spiritually awakened when it happened so he couldn't say for sure whether the reaction was overboard or not. None of the other cultivators seemed to be affected. John's own experience with demons... He had initially thought everything was just a vision--a terrible nightmare brought about by the nature of the Butterfly Dream Scripture. John could no longer deny their influence on the real world.
Each instance was terrifying in the moment, but gained a dream-like quality when he was passed it. They were like a recurring nightmare that he awoke from and could shake off given a little bit of time. Perhaps it was just a self defense mechanism on his part. Either way, John didn't want to dwell on it. He had little control over what happened in his advancements and not advancing was no longer an option for him.
John was disturbed by the amount of Weird corruption going on in the background. The Sect Leader had mentioned several outbreaks that John had no knowledge of, some of which happened while he was already in the Sect! The pressure to raise more generations of Weird cultivators was ever higher. John needed to synthesize a method of creating new disciples from the Leader's notes and his own experiences. He couldn't afford to use the method the Sect Leader was working on. While John and his cohort made strides in creating useful Weird Cultivators, the sheer amount of pills and time needed to make them would not keep up with the need. Not to mention that very few mortals could withstand such circumstances. But perhaps willing disciples might have the right fortitude? John might need to make some tests of his own in the coming weeks. Luckily there were empty notebooks he could use.
Johns current plan was to intake disciples and run them through a series of training exercises before pushing them to the limit and introducing the mind altering drugs necessary to initialize the first dream. It would take longer but John hoped the success rate would rise with the initial investment into each cultivator.
First, to address the strain on the body. Rather than forcefully drag the candidates up to standard, they would need to endure a harsh training regimen in addition to mortal pills. This will get their bodies refined to the peak of a mortal's possibility while also reinforcing their mental endurance. After that would be periods of introspection, self-denial, and instruction on the peculiarities of the Butterfly Dream. John wanted to try all the things the Sect Leader had ignored in their third encounter. Sensory deprivation chambers, inducing fear through qi pressure, psychedelic drugs, illusory arrays. Anything that can get new disciples used to unusual states of mind can prepare them for the visions to come.
John suddenly had a stroke of brilliance--new Weird disciples needed a lot of space for these activities but they didn't benefit much from ambient qi. He could use them as an excuse to build a new official space in the sect, outside of the traditional Outer, Inner, and Core areas. Getting away from the rest of the Sect would allow him to avoid troublesome surveillance, and if he played it carefully he could embezzle construction funding to create the stronghold he envisioned. Truthfully, being made Left Hand of the Sect Leader meant he didn't expect any real difficulties or surveillance from the higher ups any more, but there was trouble on the horizon. The insanity of the Sect Leader did not simply evaporate, he is highly unstable. The Operator faction was a fair-weather ally at best, John could imagine many situations where that alliance became a shackle.
Worst of all, if the Sect Leader's writings could be trusted, demonic corruption was already on their doorstep. When they came knocking, It would be best to have somewhere safe to hole up.