Now that I was looking for it, the constant focused attention on me was even more obvious than Hu and his cronies trying to wear me down. Instead of unnerving me or bothering me, this relaxed me for the very simple reason that it was always either confused, fearful, or both.
For someone who thrives off fucking with people, that might as well be pure ambrosia.
Some of the eyes didn’t have the patience to figure out why I was so confident and tried repeatedly to dissuade me by picking fights so I would offer them a spar and then trying to hurt me in new and creative ways, but that just made the other eyes more worried as I took my beatings with a smile and practiced my calligraphy while I was bedridden.
They didn’t know it, but I’d discovered a way to make my calligraphy work as a cultivation aide as well, so I didn’t mind being laid up for months and losing exorbitant amounts of points to the medics who cycled through and were always happy to have a congenial patient.
The trick was actually stupidly simple. I would just paint a word with the totality of the ‘dao intent’ that I could impart into it, meditate on the painting, my own comprehension, and my grasp of my comprehension. A month or two later, I’d paint the same word, repeat the process, and then meditate on the change in my comprehension.
It sounds like one of those ‘eh, maybe sometimes it’ll help’ exercises, which it is. But then you go and apply it to a concept like Comprehension or Teaching or Study. Then, quite abruptly, you’ve got a built-in recursive loop that is highlighting the missing aspects of the concept for you to turn your attention to.
Needless to say, bottlenecks of Dao Comprehension were rather low on my future concern list. And I was reasonably sure that I was alone in discovering this hack by simple virtue of the way that imparting insight was taught as always being a senior/expert-to-junior/apprentice dynamic. The concept of learning from your juniors was almost a thing, what with individual insights being dependent on the individual, but the idea that you could teach yourself was so overlooked that it didn’t even get mocked.
Void learning for the win!
Old Go seems to have caught on that I’m doing something with my ink, as he has been carefully evaluating my intent scrolls to assign them appropriate values. Vocally, he’s of the opinion that I have a future as a mid-high grade instructor ahead of me.
What he hasn’t done is comment on the manuals I handed to him for the servants exchange. He skimmed one when I handed him the stack and explained that I wanted to lend a hand to my fellow commoners, then he told me that he’d add it to their list at 25 points because while useful, it wasn’t anything special. But nothing had been said one way or another since.
Sweet heavens do I love exploiting conceited eyes.
Naturally, having realized that everyone thought I was running an information network, I started running an information network. So I knew that not only had the servants gotten the memo that I was behind the new manual, they were telling each other that I was building up a fighting force to do something big.
They couldn’t agree on whether I wanted to make my own sect, take over the Yellow Fang, purge the nobles, cull all the demon beasts, or just sacrifice everyone who takes my teachings so I can ascend past the sect masters who hold a nebulous peace against each other. But they knew that I wanted them strong, so they were sharing the manuals among themselves as they kept working toward the primer.
And just like I hoped, my clarification on the process of forming the foundation was allowing the ones who risked trusting me to both get a head start on the process and to benefit from a faster rate of growth. Not enough to draw undue attention, but enough that they should start catching up to me as I reach the end of the Body Refinement tier.
At that point, with any luck, the paranoia of my detractors would be spread out among us so that I can work through the Qi Condensation tier without meeting a sudden and tragic end. And without that luck, it’d still be easy enough to use them as decoys whenever I had something particularly sensitive going on.
Between that and making sure that whenever they’d be tempted to interfere, my eggs were suitably dispersed among my baskets, I was fairly certain my reach would keep growing as long as I survived whatever they aimed at me.
“Hey Guang! It’s time for your asskicking!” Hu’s croney, Jung Si, yelled as soon as I crested the stairs to the smithy.
I smiled with a sigh. I’d known this was coming. It was kind of inevitable with my having caught up to him at the end of last month, so now he could issue the challenge directly.
Combined with the fact that his temperament wouldn’t allow him to tolerate a common-born surpassing him, he was clearly hoping that my neglecting to offer him a challenge while he was feeding me contribution points was a matter of fear.
Oh well, I knew the auxiliary income was going to dry up some day.
I scanned the swiftly assembling crowd for a friendly face and spotted one. “Senior Fan!” I called. “May I impose on you to hold my bag, in case this ends poorly?”
“For twenty points, sure!” the ever-mercenary woman laughed.
“I thank you for the vote of confidence then.” I smiled back as I handed her my sack and her asking price. Then I turned to my indirect cash cow. “Very well, brother Jung. I accept your challenge.”
He shot forward, daggers out and ready to ‘accidentally’ hit my vitals, as I leaned back and countered with a straight kick and a pair of hardened wooden dowels that my foot blocked from his sight.
After all, I liked his poisons even less than I liked being stabbed. The wood, on the other hand, was past caring about that.
To his credit, he realized something was wrong just based on how his strike didn’t bite into my thigh, and was retreating before my follow-up axe kick hit the ground.
To my credit, however, retreating is not good enough in the face of my ‘ragdoll’ motions and my kick threw me after him with a haymaker to draw his attention away from my other hand darting for his throat.
Yeah, being thrown around since I met this guy has given me an interesting relationship with the ground. One that apparently doesn’t really have counters in the traditional sense.
He managed to block my larger blow on reflex as he took the blow to the throat. Not enough to take him down, but enough to piss him off as he retaliated with a flurry of strikes to my guts.
While forgetting that close quarters was my favorite place to play.
My elbows came down with the force of a beast’s maw, disrupting his flow just enough for me to then spring back up and slam a fist into his face.
The follow-up knee to his chest as my momentum took me upward settled that the fight was over, but I landed on his elbow for good measure.
The medics liked actually having something to do, after all.
Once he was done screaming in pain and the gambling in the crowd had settled, I knelt down next to him to rub salt in the wound.
“I must thank you, brother Jung. For your wonderful teachings on Pain when I arrived, and for the abundance of training partners you’ve arranged for me over the past several years. I’m not sure I could have fought this well without your expert guidance. When you’ve recovered, I would be honored to share a meal with you.”
Then I retrieved my bag from sister Fan and made my way to the smithy to start the month’s project.
After all, I’d finally earned the privilege of working with Qi-folded steel after years of practicing making the stuff. Master Smith Ho Yin was an exacting woman who despised that I kept rising to her challenges, and kept trying to deter me from pursuing crafting for fear that her family’s prominence would fade if a common-born artisan arose.
The only -and I mean only- reason I was allowed to advance at all under her was the surprisingly genuine regard she had for meritocracy because of her family’s insistence on actually being the best smiths the sect could contract.
Needless to say, our political dance was far more intricate than most of the ones I actively participated in. Among other things, she was outwardly very encouraging. So much so that my less astute peers thought she was taken with me.
Something that more than one martial brother commented on and was set to chopping wood with the servants for weeks. The sect had previously been using it almost as fast as it was available. Now we had a surplus.
“If it isn’t Disciple Guang!” her voice rang out as I entered. “Fearless and bruised as always, I see.”
“Master smith Ho.” I greeted her with a bow. “I wouldn’t dream of denying you the pleasure of watching me struggle.”
“Ha! Best struggle well enough to earn a second chance then! Make a fool of yourself and I’ll have to relegate you to material processing!”
It is so very difficult to keep a smirk off my face sometimes.
“Naturally. Shall I begin, or am I yet lacking some guidance?”
She didn’t hide the glint of irritation in her eyes before answering “You’ve studied full well. Get to processing your ingots and if your finished blade is any good, you can purchase Beginner techniques to move ahead with.”
I bowed in gratitude and moved to an available workstation. Time to put my recursive comprehension trick to use and make a blade worthy of battle.
---
“You’ve felt like you needed to repay me for a boar?” Senior Hing asked incredulously as we shared tea.
“Indeed. The boar allowed me to leave home without lingering concerns over my filial duties to my parents. I would not be the man I am now were I thus plagued.” I answered calmly. This was a risky move, for entirely different reasons than provoking the Ho family.
His face barely reflected the remorse I’d jabbed at, but his eyes glanced over to the pile of repayment I’d laid out for him. “Even so, this much?”
“I admit, my initial thought was to grab a boar and three years of normal spirit stone consumption and declare that sufficient, as my sense of value would dictate in normal circumstances.”
“What else do you think I’ve even done? It was just an afterthought anyway.”
“Not a matter of what you’ve done, nor anything I want you to do in the future.” I shook my head. Time to commit. “I would like the honor of calling you uncle, even once.”
He tensed like he was about to strike me in rage before catching himself and shaking his head. “You know how I feel about family then. Why would you ask this of me?”
“Because you have been better than you learned, and I deeply respect that. More, I feel you should be honored for the way you willingly enabled so many of my fellow former servants to leave their families in good conscience.”
His lips curled in a snarl. “Who’s slandering me?”
“Facts. You hide it well, and nobody else even suspects a thing, as far as I’ve heard.”
“Why shouldn’t I just beat you into silence?”
“There’s a third type of honoring family.”
“What?”
“Honoring the good family with service, praise, and riches is ideal. Honoring the poor family with duty, honesty, and sustenance is good. But for the family for whom honesty is slanderous, sometimes all one can do to honor them is live well and let the world assume the family contributed.”
He stared at me incredulously for several long minutes.
“What are you saying?”
“That you’ve honored your family further than they’ve earned just by being better to others.”
His eyes misted up for a minute before he slumped. “How the hell do you know what that feels like?”
Good, the Intent resonated clearly.
Sadly I couldn’t get away with answering, so I let him stew for a few minutes. Finally he sighed. “What would calling me uncle even do at this point?”
“Allow you to admit that your filial duty has borne fruit.”
“I’m not an idiot, Guang. Nearly everything you do sends ripples through the outer sect that impact the inner sect. What would this do? What’s your ploy?”
I nodded in resignation. “You’re not wrong that this also serves my scheme, but not in the way I’ve set the different houses off balance. If I’m right, and you’ve been strangled by heart demons resulting from your own departure, then others will see that my ‘touch’ is not limited to the common born. That will set the more cautious nobles and Elders onto the back foot while spurring the overeager to act in ways that I’m prepared to exploit and punish.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Heh.” he chuckled after a minute. “That’s clever. Aiming to force the Ho into adopting you?”
“Sadly, no. Any family that shelters me would doom themselves in short order. I’ve only dodged the attempts on my life thus far by being a singular, squirrely bastard.”
“Too bad. It’d be great to see Ho Yin have to cope with that.”
“Worse, some of the family Elders have been pushing for a marriage instead. Two of the recent attempts on my life were her arrangements.”
“Bwahaha!” He busted up, stress palpable but relaxing. “She’d beat you into an anvil inside a week!”
“And that’s if I made it to the wedding.” I chuckled. “No, far more survivable all around for them to be put off by my antics so that they feel like they’re dodging a disaster.”
“That makes sense. What’s your end goal, anyway?”
“You ready to laugh at me?”
He nodded with a smirk.
“I just want to cultivate in peace. Keeping a veil of chaos going while I make it through the early stages is genuinely just to keep my undeclared enemies busy.”
He stared incredulously for a moment. “You’re upending the noble blood rule and risking a sect war in pursuit of peace?”
“No, that just sort of happened, honestly. I’m deliberately manipulating the people involved in pursuit of peace.”
“Just sort of happened?”
“Yeah, organizing the servant revolution was just me trying to get ahold of the primer without being maimed. I didn’t even know about the old schism when I did that.”
“It’s true then? You’re just an abberant?”
“Yep. Never had a mentor, wouldn’t have done well under one anyway.”
“And you count me as your greatest benefactor.” he finished circling around with an exasperated sigh.
A portentous-feeling silence gradually filled the room and I waited patiently for it’s breaking point.
Finally he scoffed and stood up. “If you want to be my nephew, you need to be able to hold your liquor. Come on, I know a good place.”
---
“Say Guang. I hear you’re approaching the Qi Condensation realm here soon.” Sister Fan shifted the dinner’s focus from our settling chatter.
“Yeah! What’s the plan there?” Brother Kesa, ever eager, demanded.
Brothers Tun and Lee and Sister Fu Qing (whose name was not a pun here, no matter how many times I heard it as one) politely raised eyebrows as well.
“More of the same, really.” I smiled. “Elder Tong’s growing particularly restless, and I’ve heard that he finally managed to read my manual properly.”
Surprise flashed across the room and Kesa couldn’t restrain himself. “Doesn’t that mean your plan is foiled?”
“On the contrary. Twenty three years of ascending servants has proven that the manual is a major contribution to the sect’s strength. Now that it’s too late for him to argue that it’s a poison pill, the selfish Elders knowing what kind of threat I am will bring the rest of them into predictability.”
Tun was the first to nod, having helped me plan for this change extensively. But Fan spoke up with “So, first it was important that nobody notice, but now everyone needs to? I’m still not following.”
“Founders.” Tun spoke up. “You know how a house or sect founder always has a slightly inferior foundation to the family, because they take their life’s experience to refine their understanding before teaching their kin?”
“Yeah. It’s a mark of their greatness that they’re stronger than their students despite the difference.”
“If a founder had read the manual, they would have realized it’s worth immediately, and they would have attacked Guang for stealing their secrets, even in the face of proof that he didn’t.” Tun continued. “But now we’ve got nearly two hundred ascendants who’ve read, understood, and benefited from it. And not one of them has copied a family foundation.”
“Wait, were we supposed to?” Fu asked, suddenly worried.
“No.” I smiled easily. “You did exactly as I intended, by tailoring your foundations to yourselves.”
“Indeed.” Tun continued. “And in doing so, you have an advantage that the noble houses can’t ignore going forward. As long as they stick to their tradition of one foundation for everyone, they can’t match that personalized harmony that you have. And with so many of you outperforming noble scions, the Elders are faced with a profound question.”
“Do they stick with their tradition and cripple their families, or do they adopt Guang’s method and admit that he’s right.” Fan finally caught up to my ploy. “Dear gods Guang! I knew you were mad, but this?!”
“And there’s another layer.” I teased, causing the room to turn to Tun, as he was obviously enjoying the explaining.
“Guang’s method is the obvious correct choice. But there’s not a single family or rival sect that will be okay just taking the teachings of an unapprenticed commoner as ‘good enough’. So they’ll try to improve on his teachings. Most of this will just be rewriting his insights in a hand that isn’t so oblique. But what’s the true value in his manual?”
“There were just so many options.” Sister Fu shook her head. “I felt like there were a thousand paths to choose from.”
“Exactly. And if Guang’s teachings are arbitrarily ‘not good enough’, where do the families have to go to get those thousand paths made of ‘quality’ information?”
“You’re forcing them to cooperate or die.” Fan gasped. “If they don’t share teachings with each other, they can’t have the advantage you’ve laid out for them. If they do, they’re going to thrive.”
“And it’s already too late to stop me by killing me.” I smiled. “The manual is already a permanent fixture unless they manually purge all the servants and ascendants, but that would require a full schism war, telegraphing to Red Fist and Silver Spire that they’re ripe for plundering. Their only winning move is to play to my tune, and I’ve made it plenty easy for them to pretend it’s them playing the qin.”
“I swear, if the Sect Master doesn’t adopt you for this, he’s as blind as the selfish Elders.” Lee sighed. “Isn’t this like, literally why he made the sect?”
“Close enough, yeah. But formally acknowledging me before I’ve fended off the dozens of honor duels waiting for me would make it look like I was his plan, and the selfish Elders have options if that’s the appearance. Far better for him to keep pretending he’s not cheering for me in any particular way and to let me keep looking like a force of nature vindicating him.”
“So what do we need to be doing for the next stage of the plan?” Kesa asked again.
“Sharing teachings. Much like you have been.” I leaned back with my almost trademarked easy smile. “The deeper we ingrain that multiple perspectives contribute to deeper understanding, the easier it will be for our sect’s cultivators to acknowledge when they’ve been limiting themselves with narrow focus. It might not be enough for them to actually ask for help, but even having that acknowledgement will help everyone immensely.”
“The various Masters won’t like that one bit.” Fan noted. “And not all of us can study under abuse like you do.”
“True. And you won’t all need to, will you?”
“Do tell.”
“Who taught the first Master?”
I was met by blank stares for a minute before Fu’s face lit up “We teach each other to the level of Master!”
“Precisely. The value of recognizing and honoring a Master lies in their willingness to impart their skill and teachings. A Master who will not teach is no different from an expert without clients.”
“Guang. Do you mean to dismantle every tradition of the sect?” Fan asked incredulously.
“No. The rules against wanton predation are pretty solid.” I chuckled. “But more seriously, yes. Traditions that strangle the sect’s power are everywhere, and the way that selfish cultivators use them to demand that everyone stroke their egos constantly is toxic and disgusting.”
“You hold no respect for Face?” Lee gaped. “What about your own?”
“How often do you see me respected by my detractors?”
He stopped and tried to conjure an interaction where an antagonistic noble born had offered even a token of respect.
“If I cared about fools like them acknowledging my greatness, I’d be stifled in my cultivation by their refusal to look at the mountain.” I laughed. “No, my Face isn’t in anyone else’s Eye. My Face is here, in reality. And anyone who looks upon my works sees it and can build their Face here with me.”
Wide eyes and the sensation of five cultivation circulations pulling on the world around me informed me that I probably needed to address the trap of relying on acknowledgement for growth.
But for now, my friends benefitting from my perspective was one of the best results I could ask for from a discussion where I didn’t actually have a plan.
After all, sabotaging me having an existential purging wasn’t really something anyone could do. I’d just puke on them too.
---
So. Miscalculations are a thing, but I knew that, right?
To explain. The first tier of cultivation is called the Body Refinement tier. The entire process of it is to very methodically build up one’s flesh so it can survive the eventual strain of working deliberately with Qi. A cultivator is essentially a Warped Beast for most of it, pulling in Ki, working it into Qi, and then using both to reinforce the Chi channels that run naturally through the body.
Simple concept, amazingly tedious process, and then when the body has acclimated to Qi, specifically, the cultivator hits a tipping point where the flesh cannot tolerate weakness the way it used to. This tipping point triggers all of the ‘impurities’ of the body suddenly and violently being recognized as toxins, and the body spending up to a week forcibly ejecting them in every way it can.
Not a great sensation, gotta admit. Especially when my reaction to illnesses has always been dramatic compared to my peers. The upside is that my purging, while almost as unpleasant as being mangled for politics, only lasted for a day.
What follows is the Qi Condensation tier. Wherein a cultivator gradually works on replacing the remaining Chi and Ki in their system with the much more potent Qi. This also includes such nuances as ‘learning how, precisely, Chi is produced so you can make it to order for further Qi manufacturing’ and ‘understanding how to feel every strand and pool of energy within yourself’.
You know. Things I figured out ahead of time because I like to study ahead, and as a cultivator, my soul is my study material.
But, as I’m prone to doing, I overlooked a second-order effect of my advanced understanding. That being, the reason that Qi Condensation tier cultivators have such a hard time compared to Body Refinement tier cultivators is because their mind, body, and soul need time to acclimate to working with pure energy instead of focusing on the flesh as an achor, and because it requires a complete understanding of one’s energy field to complete.
Neither of which apply to my overstudied ass.
Yeah. I sat down to cultivate two days after my purge and immediately started rising through the distinct ranks. The ease that I interface with Ki means I’m not being held back by the available natural energy. The production of Chi that’s been in-hand since my prior life, and now appears nearly flawless, means I’m not being held back by simple exhaustion. And the way I very deliberately made sure that my body and energy were both completely accounted for every step of my way through the Body Refinement process means I don’t have holdout niches that I need to account for.
On the bright side, literally everyone else was also caught by surprise as well.
On the down side, that’s a lot of enemies that are scrambling to sabotage me right now.
Fortunately, there’s a beast subjugation excursion that I volunteered for, led by Brother Sung, and all I have to do to avoid most interference in my tribulation as I step into the Soul Core tier is to take that step while I’m out.
After all, despite the insane number of people who dearly want me not to survive and have permission to sic someone on me, Brother Sung and his companions are deeply reputable among the deeper politics of the sect and the houses attached to us. And if they identify an agent of one of the houses as maliciously interfering with me, then even killing me wouldn’t be enough to outweigh the censure everyone else would have to level on them to preserve their own Face.
And with the ever-mercenary Sister Fan having already been paid handsomely to ‘betray’ me by explaining my ploy with the manuals, most of them would still be too caught up in being outplayed by a commoner to hire someone with enough degrees of separation to avoid that fate.
Honestly, except for the fact that I legitimately didn’t plan any of this, everything looks to be going according to plan.
(translator’s note. Plan means keikaku)
I paused in my watering and sighed. Some day I’d be able to reference things going well without giggling, but not today apparently.
At least it wasn’t quite as bad as when I had to make up a commoner fable to cover for muttering about Chuck Norris after I won a match with a roundhouse kick. I swear, memes stick around like viruses in the blood.
It wasn’t all bad, at least. The occasional lapses contributed greatly to the general consensus that I was simply a fortunate brand of crazy, which made my enemies hesitate whenever I telegraphed my plans.
After all, when I’m genuinely unhinged enough to suggest to Master Ho Yin that her family elders might just be trying to pair us up because they missed the opportunity to have their crushes forced on them, thus sending them into a full-family screaming match right before my purging to distract her from meddling, it’s a fair concern that any of my plans might bring disaster if they respond predictably.
Incidentally, the screaming match had dragged at least the Fung and the Sang families in, to the amusement of all of my informants.
I finished watering my garden with a small prayer to the heavens that they restrain any ire they held against me for being from another world when I provoke my tribulation, and returned to my shack for my travel pack.
Stepping out, I was met by Elder Tong and bowed despite my surprise. “Disciple greets Elder Tong.”
“Oh good. I feared I would miss you.” He smiled and I felt my mental defense react to his Intent. “Could you clarify something for me before you leave?”
“If it is within my understanding, I would be honored, Elder.”
“Did you already know of the unfounded rumors regarding my friend Elder Raka when we last spoke?”
“Disciple had not heard any slander regarding Honorable Elder Raka, nor Honorable Elder Tong at that time.”
He paused, almost visibly dissecting my words with some manner of truth determining technique. “I see. I gather you have heard some since?”
“Only the mutterings of jealous disciples trying to declare forbidden grapes to be sour. Nothing that impugns either Elder’s image in my eye.” I answered with a serpent’s truth, mostly to see if his arts could tell.
“Hm.” he kept a nearly neutral tone, leaning faintly toward surprise. “So you would still find it desirable to be taken as an apprentice, then?”
“The thought alone remains a great honor, yes.” I answered, amused at the manipulation’s pressure easing on me. “Disciple does regret that his studies of himself indicate that he is an ill fit for apprenticeship in general, however.”
“Ah, I see!” he beamed, more self assured now. “Your style of study fares poorly under guidance, so you don’t wish to malign Elder Raka by finding yourself a poor student. That makes sense.”
And his recovery attempt in 3, 2,
“Then with your impending promotion to Inner Disciple, I shall leave it to you to catch his attention with your talisman work.”
What? No, wait, what?
“Disciple knows of no promotion consideration. Is this a new development?”
“Indeed. Should your meteoric growth of the past week continue for more than another week, it would be a disgrace to the entire sect to not accept you as an Inner Disciple simply on apparent genius. Many of the Elders are waiting with bated breath to see if you successfully form a Soul Core any day now.”
I blinked. That... That wasn’t bad news for me. Especially if I could come off as acerbic enough to Raka’s style to avoid being under his power. But holy shit was this an abrupt ploy shift from the Elders.
“Disciple is honored to receive such consideration from the Sect Elders.” I gaped for lack of a planned response.
He laughed, and despite the mental pressure insisting that it was honest mirth I picked up a tinge of frustration... and what felt like genuine mirth anyway. “Well, we also couldn’t very well ignore that you’ve long been demonstrating more devotion than many of your rivals.”
Well... yay? Maybe damn?
“Either way, thank you for indulging my curiosity, little Guang. Good luck on the subjugation patrol.” He waved and walked off. “I might drop by for tea on your return.”
“Honored Elder is welcome to share tea with me any time.” I invited him, only to see the hitch in his stride indicating that he’d actually grasped that I considered tea a type of lesson/sparring. Probably from the painting I’d given him.
Well, that’s good to know, at least.
Hopefully it doesn’t bode as poorly as it feels.