It had been several weeks since John accessed the old testing ground where he and his cohort were made. Despite the bubbling ideas to improve the process, new recruits had yet to make an appearance. The hurry-up-and-wait grated John's patience, but he was able to let it go for now. The Sect Leader was quite literally a mad man, he shouldn't have expected anything else. Still, he couldn't just sit back and cultivate with so much work on the horizon. Instead he threw himself into building his Weird fortress in the woods.
John made use of his underlings--it was difficult to call any of them friends now, hauling building materials in huge bundles of fine timber, barrows of large stones sometimes carried by two disciples or three, depending on their strength. There were pile and piles of gravel to various sizes, and so, so much sand. Really it was all quite fine from a mortal perspective, but to a cultivator he was basically building a kingdom from trash. There would be a time for finery later, when things were more established out here.
The compound was truly a marvel of formations, it grew to accommodate the new cohort overnight, pavilion houses springing up like so many weeds. Even so, the observation there felt suffocating to John these days, and he seldom slept there. For a long time he preferred his garden in the Inner sect, only a private entrance away. Now he stayed out here as much as possible. Cultivating by the private spirit spring was a luxury he doubted many cultivators got to experience. It made up for the shoddy construction materials.
Speaking of his old garden and the new spring. John decided to bring along Mark, now that he wasn't around as much to watch him. John dumped his statue unceremoniously into the spring itself. It had taken two days of work to open the entrance enough to drag him in. The opening had a wooden door now, and one large building was being constructed right on top. The cave would become a hidden basement for cultivation and secret dealings. Opening it wider made the effect of the natural formation less efficient, but it still hid from a cultivator's spirit senses. Mark's cultivation had something to do with petrification and he naturally cultivated like a stone. Slowly. John had the relative luxury of spreading out a web of his own qi to capture and refine the ambient qi, but Mark only seemed to absorb qi that came into contact with his 'skin.' Well, the spring would make sure of that. Mark would be in for quite a shock when he broke through. John missed him as a second in command.
Conrad, Ben, and Chloe were closest to John, but there was a degree of separation for all of them. Conrad saw John as leader and rival. He was good hearted about it but John didn't get the sense Conrad would ever seriously try to vie for dominance--though even thinking in those terms felt awkward. Ben was ever stuck in his own workshop, slaving away at experimental pills and energies. John needed that expertise but Ben was much more interested in the work than the implications for his fellow Weird cultivators. Chloe was complicated. John and her had a relationship for a time, but it quickly became clear that it was not healthy. John was flattered by the direct interest she showed, but there was little love on either of their parts. Even if they made an attempt at it. John could see he was simply desperate for something normal after his abduction. Even though the sex and intimacy was all new, it was all new in a normal way. As for Chloe, John wasn't sure but there was a strong sense of possessiveness on her part. She treated John like an object that belonged to her, far past even extreme jealousy. It interfered with his leadership, especially after he accepted that mantle. The final nail in the coffin was Chloe's necessity to dual cultivate in order to progress. John simply couldn't keep up, Chloe would need a large number of partners to cultivate quickly. There were always more willing partners after John set her loose on the general sect population.
The primary pavilion above the cave would serve as the primary fortress, with living space, workshops, and important gardens, but the rest of the surrounding forest was being quickly transformed into a series of partially enclosed gardens. John's version of the Butterfly Dream was still the most aligned with nature, and he still had the most experience of the group in gardening, so he was responsible for setting up the plants themselves. It was a bit tedious and a bit simple. John didn't have the skill to replicate the better gardens in the Core or even Inner sect, but he did his best. Lots of Weird qi grass, various shrubs, tubers, wild herbs, and saplings. Anything Ben had been able to modify and anything found naturally containing Weird essence was utilized. It was not enough on it's own and so he supplemented with 'mundane' qi plants. Sadly his own crystalline peach sapling had to stay in the Inner sect for now. He wasn't confident in moving it, but he had prepared a place of honor for it in the center of the Fortress. John hoped that he would awaken a disciple with a specialization in gardening. A real cultivator's cultivator.
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John was working for some time when he spotted an unusual commotion. Unrecognized disciples were dashing down the mountain toward him. John carefully controlled his expression but he internally cringed when several of his underlings threw conspicuous glances at the half built Fortress.
"" Senior Left Hand! "" the two younger disciples were shouting seriously and respectfully, though he figured he was only a small handful of years older than either boy. His outsized position caused a lot of headaches when trying to stick to etiquette.
"Yes Disciples?" John questioned them when they were close enough to avoid the necessity of his own shouting.
One struggled to catch his breath, the other choked out between breaths: "You. Are needed. At the front gate. Urgently!"
John had been waiting for a message like this, calling him to the front gate for the first wave of new disciples. Something in the disciples' eye's gave him pause however.
They were afraid, John realized.
Much more than he would expect from a frightening encounter with a high ranking sect member, even the Leader himself.
"Let's go." John commanded and took off at a neck breaking speed. Weeks of labor had fine tuned his new strength. His demonic steel bones could take serious punishment from the strength of his milky white muscles. He flew up the mountain, sometimes literally as pseudopods of silken qi reached out to grasp the ground or tree trunks, flinging himself forward even faster. The outer disciple messengers were left behind, slack-jawed.
When seconds might count, it took John several minutes to speed through the back mountains, through the door in the Inner Sect and blast down the streets and stairways toward the Outer sect. It was quite rude to act in such a way, but the sect appeared deserted. An alarm must have gone out. Moments like this made John dearly wish for a flying technique or artifact, but he wouldn't gain the ability until he finished his foundation at least.
The Outer sect was the biggest, but thankfully the entrance was relatively close to the gate of the Inner Sect. Streets out here were not deserted, John could hear commotion ahead. He continued blasting forward, to the shocked and angry Outer disciples it must look like he was being propelled by sheer determination and a blurring of limbs.
John arrived to chaos at the front gate. Neither the Sect Leader, Gaius, Elder Catherine, or anyone else of high rank was here. There was a--
"What the fuck!" John couldn't help but exclaim! There was a high ranking Core Elder at the scene, drooling. Standing still and drooling in place, utterly helpless and equally useless. Thousands of mortals were streaming into the sect at this very moment. It was utter chaos, a stampede of bodies running in every which direction, splitting into crowds of hundreds that poured into every street. John thought the shouting was deafening, and that's when he heard the screaming.
Heart-wrenching screams as lives were snuffed out, just beyond the gate. With little time to think, John leaped up and suspended himself just above the crowd. Once again making a mockery of true flight, he couldn't get much higher than this on his false spider's legs, but he still bound toward the front gate above the heads of the crowd. Finally passing through the gate, the true surroundings of the Sect opened up before him. Hundreds of Demonized animals had massacred the mortals, easily a thousand dead, probably more as the ground ran in rivulets of blood. John spotted a dozen or more demons shoving corpses down their gullets whole. Definitely more deaths then.
Perhaps some cultivators didn't care for the lives of mortals, but John was not quite so removed from them yet. It was only a year or so ago that he had decided to cut ties with his family in order to avoid this exact kind of disaster. John spotted a handful of other disciples, mostly Outer but a few Inner, trying to fight off the crowd of beasts. They were largely failing, their qi and attacks slid off the natural Weird qi like rain off a roof.
John's heart burned with a righteous fury, and he leaped into the melee.