I was meeting with the apprentice first, an inner disciple, Dong Wenyan. “Greetings,” he replied with a short head nod. I stood up and greeted him as well. “I was told you wanted to speak about a force array?” he asked and sat down. An array was another name for a formation. There might have been some minute difference, but I hadn’t picked up on one yet.
“Yes. Something to increase the downwards pull all objects experience, and possibly inwards force as well. The goal is to generate force energy.”
“That sounds simple enough. You would want a tenfold crushing array. Often used for traps. I would smooth out the output to something like three-fold to make it last longer. I could probably get you a day per spirit stone. The array itself would cost 500 sect points.”
“May I ask why that price?” I asked, and Dong Wenyan nodded.
“Materials and my time and testing. I am guessing you are going to want to stand in the array.” I nodded at this. “And don’t want to die. Testing is very important, and also expensive. I would use a level 1 array plate and level 1 etching acid. A higher level would allow you to use level 2 spirit stones, but the price would be 6,000 sect points then.”
“Would it harness force energy?” I asked.
“It should. The tenfold crushing array applies an immense amount of force to a person caught inside it.” After asking a few more basic questions, I thanked Dong Wenyan, who left.
An array plate was about the size of a king size bed, heavy and thick. As an inner disciple, I could have the array set up in the formation hall as long as I was using it. Once I was done, I could sell the materials for some sect points to recoup my investment.
The next meeting was with a sect member and formation master, Jiang Chen. “Junior greets senior.” I stood and bowed when she entered the room. I explained my request to her.
“You want something specific? Energy type arrays are complicated. You can’t just use something like a trap array or another array. Energy type arrays are unique like this. You need containment and a stable boundary. Other arrays often ignore this. So, while there might be a spike in energy, it will quickly bleed out. Even if extended for a period of time, it would be like pouring water into a sieve. It would all just run out.”
I nodded at this, and she kept going. “The best option would be to use a crush furnace array as the base design and go from there, since it is designed to help forge with force. I am guessing you are considering using this for your elemental attunement?”
“Yes, I am senior Jiang Chen,” I replied, and she was thoughtful for a moment.
“It could work, but you would need a tremendous amount of force energy. Also, counter force energy, so it could be increased even more. That would mean a second array around the first array. Well, I have two options for you. The first option is the cheap option.” I listened closely.
“It would involve a single array, a strong boundary, and lots of force, which you could adjust slightly. But there is only so much your body can take, even with cultivation. Since I could use an existing design, I would say 800 sect points and could run half a day on a level 1 spirit stone,” she said.
“The second option would be a dual array of opposing forces. This could allow the amount of force to increase inside of the formation without crushing you. This would be complex and a brand new type of formation that would require research and a lot of testing to ensure there were no accidents. It would cost 3,000 sect points and could run half a day on two level 1 spirit stones. It would take two to three years to develop.”
That was a huge price difference. I thanked the senior, and she left. I had three options. Well, there was a clear difference in understanding and quality with Jiang Chen compared to Dong Wenyan. That was a lot of sect points, regardless.
Well, I had time to gather them up. I made notes after the meeting about what they said and would ruminate on this for a long time. What I really needed was a lot of sect points, but the only thing people wanted to buy were cultivation resources. To learn to make those types of resources required years of work and investment.
I wasn’t going to cheap out on something like this, as I liked the idea of force a lot more than earth. However, I also needed to cultivate. I was making excellent progress in restructuring my cultivation, but I had a lot more motes to collect and then align.
Even with the reward promised by Elder Li Fu, it didn’t feel like much. I needed to increase my sect point income and looked into it. The fastest way were sect missions, but those all fell to sect members at the fourth stage.
Since missions would involve combat, which meant techniques, they just weren’t possible before then. That meant I needed to have a service I could provide within the sect. But the only things priced over 1 sect point a day were personal consultations or cultivation resources. No one would want to consult with a disciple.
Members could earn points from their lectures, but not disciples. No one would take a disciple seriously or want to be lectured by one. Formations and alchemy were both massive investments in time and sect points. Decades of investment. There was no demand for non-cultivation goods since they were provided free of charge to the sect.
I would need to leave the sect to get money. But the rules for leaving were complicated. A person needed to have 100 sect points put away and no strikes against their work for the past year. Then they could get 30 days off per year at most. If you went past that time, a sect elder would hunt you down and kill you, no exceptions.
So, it wasn’t like I could spend time on businesses instead. The sect wanted people focused on cultivation, not mundane matters. Members were allowed to leave, since they were viewed as competent and trustworthy, and elders could do whatever they wanted for the most part as far as I knew. But disciples were limited.
Also, no one would give up sect points easily. They were too valuable for that. Each one represented a day of labor. I was only okay spending them since I could gather motes while I was working. No disciple could really afford anything or would invest into something other than their cultivation, and I couldn’t make something that interested members or elders.
No wonder why so many cultivators targeted other cultivators and went demonic. I considered how that would even work. No one would say, and there was no information anywhere about the process. I could understand killing someone for their motes, but how would it work after that?
Oh, I was being an idiot. They would refine the human element or human energy for their channels. Since cultivators have energy in them, they would hunt down other cultivators and refine them. No idea how it worked in the higher levels, but I could see demonic cultivators turning other cultivators into pills and using those pills to enhance their own cultivation.
Well, that put an entirely new twist on learning to defend myself and why the sect didn’t want people leaving for long at the earlier stages. Demonic cultivators would struggle at the bottleneck as well. The more they killed, the easier they would be to find and hunt down. With the bounty paid out on them by high-level sects, they were clearly a menace.
It just took a person realizing this and then deciding to kill to progress. It wouldn’t help much in the second stage, but a demonic cultivator could stack up on a lot of motes by killing many people. This was another reason to look at me suspiciously with all the motes I had.
That still left getting a lot of sect points. There was no easy way, so I would have to build them up myself and look for jobs that I could cultivate while doing. I would also earn about 40 spirit stones per year from Zhou Holding Company Limited. I still had 30 spirit stones on me and another 67 stored away.
What I needed to do was get through the third stage as quickly as possible. I would want high-quality force energy in large quantities. Looking at the records, it would take five days to make each channel if someone was being given resources in large amounts. At two spirit stones per half a day and 1,302 channels, which would take 13,020 spirit stones.
But level 1 spirit stones and an array would only reach the second level of elemental attunement, Aligned. I would need level 4 spirit stones to get Perfect. That would never happen. Just that amount in level 1 spirit stones was immense.
That would take 325 years at my current income, which was unacceptable. I needed a better chamber and to get more out of a single spirit stone, but that drastically increased the initial price. I didn’t want to pay in spirit stones either, since I needed those for my cultivation. The sect price was 2 sect points for a spirit stone, while only getting 1 sect point for a rank 1 spirit stone.
It was a complete scam, but I couldn’t call it out. Also, the time I would need to spend to get 3,000 points was way too high. But it would take me a lot longer to learn formations myself and I was already spending my time on cultivation. I needed passive income.
That led me back to the original problem of the sect being the worst place for a business and to earn sect points unless you were a member or an elder. They were the only ones with income they were willing to spend, but I had nothing to offer them.
They also were holed up or not in the sect. I needed some tournament or hidden realm to earn some treasures and vast sums of wealth, but there was nothing. If there were hidden realms, no one would share such things. Even if they couldn’t use it, they wouldn’t share it. And tournaments were too dangerous. No one held tournaments and gave out resources to other sects.
Status was determined by the number of elders one had and then the number of immortals. No one would waste time or resources on a tournament where cultivators could die. The smart sects just wouldn’t send anyone and preserve their strength. The tournament organizer would lose strength from the cost of prizes and the fallout of hosting such a disaster.
Cultivators took the long view and didn’t like immense amounts of drama. That was a big reason everything was so static. All the people with ambition, lucky, and smart all became cultivators and focused on cultivation. By the time they got so far, that was the only thing left in their brains and they would not think of much else.
I also couldn’t get a loan. No one would ever take that risk or would think it worthwhile. That was even more true with my cultivation plan being what it was. While people wanted me to succeed, they didn’t believe it was possible.
Finding treasures in the wilderness was also impossible. They would be guarded by rank 4 beasts, who had human level intelligence and were far stronger than me. I suppose I could hunt down beasts to earn money, but the risk was incredibly high.
Still, it was a possibility. If I took time off, it would be tight with the 30-day limit per year, but it was doable. I could hunt down a level 3 beast during that time. That would be worth 100 level 1 spirit stones if I got its spirit core.
With my sight, it would be easy as well. The hard part would be killing it, but a level 3 beast was about as smart as a dog. The genuine risk was a level 4 beast showing up. Well, a level 3 beast was quite dangerous as well.
I could also technically ask for more time and have an elder sign off on it. Sixty days at a time would be just about right. I would need to go into the deep wilderness as well, where hunting permits and licenses were not required. Elder Li Fu managed the sect affairs for the disciples full time and I think he kind of liked me.
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If I developed a way to more quickly cultivate during the second stage, I could probably ask him for periods of 60 days away from the sect instead of the standard 30 days that were allowed on top of the points. It was a small number of sect contribution points, but that was most likely all he was allowed to offer unless he consulted the other elders and they would say no, since they bet on me.
But asking for an extra 30 days a year was nothing. It would take 5 days of hard carriage riding to get to a remote area, and then another 5 to 10 days of hiking to get deep into beast territory. Then there would be 20 days of hunting. Then 15 days to get back, leaving me 5 days of leeway.
Getting 20 days of hunting was quite good. The biggest hassle would be avoiding a beast tide forming around me from killing too many, but in the wilderness it would be directionless. If I did that near a city, there would be serious issues and I would be executed immediately. But deep in beast territory, it was fine.
Some hunting groups did that, and most didn’t return. The ones that did never went back. It was a desperate move. But I would be a cultivator. I could get information during my visits home from my sponsored team in the next two years.
I would also purchase supplies for my hunting expedition. I would rather buy things from the source than try to go through the sect. Then, once I started cultivating in the second stage, I would prove out the mote shepherding theory and get 1,000 sect points along with extended time away from the sect.
Then I could go out and hunt every year with the aim of killing as many level 3 beasts as possible. If I killed 10 a year, then that would translate into about 100 level 2 spirit stones per year. I needed about 13,000 spirit stones, which would mean 130 years of killing.
That was much more manageable. It would also allow me to reach Focused level of elemental attunement, which was the third level. Elder Li Fu said I needed the fourth level Attuned if I was going to progress at any decent pace in the fourth stage.
Ideally, I wanted Perfect level, but level 4 cores would be scarce and the number I needed was way too much. Well, I would get a grandmaster to design and build a force chamber. It would be expensive, but hopefully one could maximize the quality of force energy. And if it didn’t work out, I would still have a lot of resources for the earth element.
The challenge was getting enough spirit stones from hunting. I would need to take risks. I checked if the alchemy hall would pay for beast corpses, and they did. At the moment, I only had a few shoe boxes worth of space inside my spatial ring, which meant it would only be good for storing spirit stones and nothing else.
Why couldn’t it have fit a house's worth of stuff? Then I would have been able to pack up the beast corpses and sell them. The stronger beasts were fairly large and their corpses drew other beasts hungry to eat them and gain power. That was why killing too many was dangerous since eventually a high level beast would show up and direct them in a more productive fashion.
That was another reason why a level 4 beast was so dangerous, as it could command other beasts. The hunter would become the hunted quickly once one of them showed up. Higher ranked beasts were even rarer and more dangerous.
I contemplated my options. I had envisioned myself as a businessman, not a warrior, and not a hunter. There just wasn’t any other product I could sell, get, or make besides hunting down beasts for spirit stones.
It was an incredibly frustrating position to be in, but it was the only path forward I could see to get the resources I needed for elemental attunement at the third stage. If I was going to do this, then I would do it seriously.
I began looking through the section of the sect library on beasts and taking notes on every scrap of information that could be useful after my daily assigned tasks. My days began with breakfast at dawn, work for 8 hours, fixing the garden paths or sweeping the sect steps while collecting more motes and adjusting my internal mote placement. Then cleaning up, dinner, and then 4 hours in the library studying everything I could about beasts.
One thing I had learned was to move motes into position inside of me, slowly, over a period of time. It was about a quarter of the speed if I focused on the task specifically, but I needed to maximize my time. If a person didn’t have a constant sense of urgency, then they would get nowhere with their cultivation.
I was on track to complete my mote collection by the time I turned 20, implementing the sixfold locking valves and the inverse wave cone meridian designs. I even found two more errors while putting in the valve structures.
The valve designs were incredibly detailed and prone to having the motes shift at the slightest disturbance. It was becoming harder and harder to maintain everything all the time. At least putting in valves made me work out everything.
I could envision the entire cultivation structure in my head and exactly what it was supposed to look like, including all the channel paths.
After a year in the sect, there was a day of celebration right before the intake. It was the one day of the year people were encouraged to get out and talk with their fellow sect members, new elders would take over the day-to-day management, and everyone got one sect contribution point and didn’t have to work.
The cooks got two sect contribution points for the day. Even with a day of celebration, the sect was still quite subdued. Juniors were allowed to get away with not greeting their seniors properly as well. The Sect Leader even made a brief appearance, congratulating everyone on another year of cultivation before disappearing.
“Gen! It’s good to see you,” I greeted the man.
“Yuan Zhou. I noticed you in the library. You are quite focused. Solve all your cultivation issues?” he asked me.
“Most of them. I know how I will reach the fourth stage. What about you?” I asked.
“It has been rough for a bit. My reading was not very good,” he said and rubbed the back of his head. “I had to work on that and then figure out my cultivation plan. I think I have it worked out. Nothing as crazy as you,” he replied.
“Yuan Zhou, Gen, I couldn’t help but overhear you talking about cultivation. So have you figured things out, Yuan Zhou?” Wen Xue asked.
“Yes. I am going with a sixfold valve design and inverse wave cone meridians. I am using a triangular reinforcement for the body. Probably earth as my element.” That was a safe plan. Wen Xue nodded at this. I could see my triangular reinforcement concept had caught on and smiled at that.
“A solid plan. You have started Foundation Establishment then?” Wen Xue asked.
“Starting tomorrow. A member signed off on my plan just yesterday,” Gen answered.
“How are things going for you, Wen Xue?” I asked him.
“Slow, but I am making progress with aligning my motes. Perhaps another decade and I will be complete. I am almost scared to ask what progress you have made?”
“I have finished up the valves and am working on finishing up all my meridian designs. When I turn twenty next year, I should enter Foundation Establishment,” I replied.
“You aren’t twenty?” he asked.
“No. I entered the sect when I was eighteen years old. Even though I look like a child,” I said with a pout. Wen Xue and Gen chuckled.
“If you keep that appearance, no one will dare look at you once you enter the fourth stage. A cultivator as young looking as you would scare everyone away,” Wen Xue replied.
“It is a bit of a pain trying to reach things sometimes. But it is all muscle after going up and down those stairs twice a day,” I replied.
“I must admit, I am curious if you are stronger than me at a lower stage,” Wen Xue said. That was how we ended up pushing against each other’s right palms. It was about even.
“Well, you will be unmatched at your stage at the very least. Possibly half to a quarter stage above you as well against the majority of cultivators. But not as good as a body cultivator, from what I understand, and elemental attunement will decide the strength of your techniques. Have you worked it out?” Wen Xue asked.
“Yes. I have a plan that should handle my elemental attunement to my satisfaction.” I said nothing more since I didn’t want people to bother me about my planned hunting.
“Well, I am most interested in how things turn out,” Wen Xue replied. After that we discussed the new intake. They assigned welcoming to the outer disciples as a reward for their hard work and to also settle in the newcomers, since they would most likely be outer sect disciples as well.
The end of the day approached, and everyone gathered in front of the Sect Leader’s mansion at the center of the sect. There, the new elders in charge for the next year were introduced. I noted that Elder Li Fu was still present.
After that, they made announcements about people selecting disciples. No one I knew was picked. I expected nothing like that for myself or the few disciples I knew well. Gen wasn’t that outstanding, and Wen Xue was in the same boat.
They were cultivators, but so was everyone else and it was unlikely they would go beyond the fourth stage. If I had chosen a safe path, I would have been snatched up as a personal disciple. But no one believed in my path of defiance, which was why it had that name.
No one would personally guide me, since I was doing my own thing in uncharted waters. It was unfortunate, but it was the path I had chosen for myself. After the new disciple announcements, that was it.
It was back to the daily grind and sect life. The books about beasts had been quite insightful once I was done reading through that entire section of the library. They had an acute sense of smell and could sense Qi naturally gathering it through the air. They normally avoided each other, unless they were going to mate or there was an enormous source of free Qi like the start of a beast tide.
Cultivating while in the wilderness was not advised, since it would stir the energy. Even moving motes inside a person was dangerous. My entire structure would fall apart while I was hunting, and I would have to rebuild it each time, but I had the pattern etched into my brain. It would be an excellent review as well.
In addition, there were specific baits, lures, and scent disguises that could be made through alchemy with plants that contained specific types of energy. I looked into this, and the sect offered a scent hiding liquid that would last for ten days for 1 sect contribution point.
They considered it a beginner’s application of alchemy. They also made it from the plants that grew in the gardens around the sect to ward off beasts. There was also beast repellent for 5 sect points and beast lure for 20 sect points. They would last for three and one days, respectively.
I winced at the costs. I wanted to save up sect contribution points, not spend them. After a year, I had 290 contribution points saved up from working nearly every day. For my first hunt, I would purchase more than I needed since the products made by the alchemy hall were guaranteed to last for a couple of years.
I would get ten scent concealers and apply one every five days. For some reason, I envisioned myself as the most delicious treat a beast could get and them wanting to eat me with all the motes inside of me. Better to go heavy on the stuff. On top of that, I was thinking of five beast repellants and five beast lures. The alchemy hall also sold flash bangs for 50 sect contribution points. I would take one as well for emergencies.
I was looking at 185 sect contribution points on top of my required 100 sect contribution points. It was tempting not to get all this stuff, but I was not about to risk my life. I had seen a beast in the past and it was quite scary and large. Even if it had only been the size of a small table, that was only a level 1 beast. The more powerful ones were bigger. I needed every advantage I could get.
Mortal weapons made for cultivators were fine. I would request some when I made a preparation trip back to Half Moon City and have them delivered to me in the sect. I would get a sword for close combat and a metal spear. It would be insanely heavy, but that was the point. I could reuse it.
It would be a shame to waste the meat and organs, but I wouldn’t have room in my pack or spatial ring once I unlocked it to carry such things. I would fill it with strong alcohol, jerky, and hardtack mostly. My spatial ring would be for the beast cores or spirit stones.
There was also a water condensing array water bottle for 100 sect contribution points and cost a spirit stone to fill up with water 100 times. That was way too expensive, and I would use a cloth filtration method while in the wilderness and mix in a bit of the strong alcohol I would be bringing. One of those techniques I had read about in the various books the sect had.
Also, a whetstone to sharpen the spear after each kill. The higher-level beasts were tougher and bigger, but they were also fairly mindless. That was why a spear would work on a level 3 beast and lower. They would rush and impale themselves, trying to kill me.
I had even looked into their eating habits, and they ate anything with energy. Over time, all beasts would get stronger by taking in the natural energy of the heavens and the earth. They were an animal that had evolved to cultivate in their own way. That was also why they couldn’t be farmed. Feeding them would bankrupt a person and it wasn’t worth it and the more beasts that were close together, the less they grew.
Supposedly, some sects used level 4 beasts as slaves, but they were in constant conflict with the beasts. While they killed many beasts and got cultivation resources, they were also under a lot of pressure and attrition. But those sects believed that constant fighting would separate the weak from the strong.
The real risk with that method was when an immortal beast came through. They were as rare as immortals on the human side, but they existed. Every couple thousand years, they would show up and smack down a sect hard.
The sect would pull back together or disband. These conflict-oriented sects were much more turbulent than a sect like the Cloudy Moon Sect, which focused on gradual improvement over a long period of time.
That was why there was not a huge focus on beast hunting in the Cloudy Moon Sect. There were people who did it, of course, for the resources, but it was not organized, and you had to go far away from the sect, since they didn’t want to deal with a beast tide nearby.
If a beast tide happened in the wilderness, it would die out eventually as the beasts eventually turned on each other. But if one struck the outer wall of a city, then it would be a battle and the sect would get directly involved. Also, the perpetrators would be punished heavily, either killed or made a debt slave along with their family.
The permits, licenses, and occasional cultivator from the sect were enough to keep things fairly even, mostly. I knew that once my killing operations got going, there would be trouble, which is why I wanted to go further away than required, so there would be no issues when I killed every beast I could find to fuel my cultivation.
Even if the level 4 beasts had human level intelligence, it didn’t matter to me. Even if a cow could talk, I would still eat burgers. Tough luck for the cow, but I wasn’t about to change things. Cultivation was about improving yourself, not going on a diet.