Ever since I had found out about the presence of the Hero of the Flame, I had been getting this highly uncomfortable sensation in the back of my mind that gave me the impression that I was under some sort of a countdown. Countdown to what, I did not know, but it was most likely something bad.
My fears about the instability of the world were confirmed when Lingfeng brought me a comprehensive history book that was as thick as a pillow and heavy as a sack of bricks the next day. It briefly recorded all of the events that had occurred during the last 5000 years. Compared to the other mumbo jumbo cultivation scrolls, the book author had kept things simple. I had to give bonus points to the guy, it was pretty easy to understand what had happened during the last few thousand years, at least in this part of the globe, by looking at what had been written inside of the book. It was almost like looking at a long-ass Wikipedia article.
The part of the entire planet where I now resided, was a continental shelf that was similar in scope and length (if not larger) to Earth-Asia. The current three major Empires that littered the land on the left hand side of the “Asian” continent had been carved in the semblance of the Three Kingdoms from Earth-China’s history, probably adopted from the “Romance of Three Kingdoms” by the system. Which meant that there was an ever going conflict between the three Empires. The provinces which were set at the borders between the Empires would get constantly invaded, ransacked and fought over, and their ownership would get swapped from one Empire to the other every 20 years or so.
Each Empire had a mortal Emperor, for all they pretended to be “heavenly”, that would usually claim lineage to one of the “true immortals” from the Major Sects. The eunuchs, Emperors and the Nobility of all of the three Empires would constantly usurp, betray and kill each other at every given occasion. There was not even one single Emperor in the whole thick book, that had died of old age.
There had rarely ever been a period in the entire length of the book where a dynasty had persisted for a decently long enough time.
If the three Empires were to be compared to a clover-leaf foil on the map, then currently the Ming Dynasty occupied the northern petal, the Han the Western petal and Qin the Eastern petal. They had nothing to do with the Earth three kingdoms of “Wei Shu and Wu” anymore, because the dynasties had swapped names so many times that it was hard to count.
The only thing that was slightly more constant was the presence of the Major Sects. The Major Sects usually kept themselves away from secular affairs, and the lands they owned, which were usually the size of two or three large provinces, would seldom get invaded, and even then, only by strong rival cultivators.
Even though they were much stronger at persisting against the fluctuations of power, even the Major Sects had found themselves getting ransacked or destroyed a few times during history, but for very short periods of time. After the conflicts were over, ownership of the sect-provinces would change hands, the Sect would be rebuilt again, albeit under a different name or leadership, and would continue on existing in one form or another.
The main reason for the perpetual existence of the Major Sects was in fact, their locations on the map. All of the Major Sects were based around tall mountains that were filled with an abundance of spirit stones, Spirit Springs and Spirit Veins. Since the spirit stones were a very important resource in the cultivation world, it was natural that the best places where you could find them had been hogged by the strongest of the cultivators.
There were nine “Heavenly Sects” in existence, and they were somewhat uniformly spread across the Empires, with 3 per Empire.
They also sort-of came with an elemental theme attached to their names:
-The “Cinderspring Sect” was the “Fire Sect”, and was based around an ever smouldering partially-dormant volcano. They owned many mines including many active Spirit Veins, and exported heavily their regular and rare types of ores, cut spirit stones and Firewater, which was a “local speciality” item from their volcano that was very commonly used as an “ingredient” in crafting useful potions. Their volcano was also a very “hot”(pun intended) tourist attraction-site because of all the hot springs along the mountain side. It also sounded like onsen-heaven to me.
-The “Heaven-Piercing Nail” sect was the ”Earth Sect”. They owned the tallest mountain in the Eastern world, hence the name, which was an abrupt spike of continental crust that had jutted upwards under the continental drift pressure, resulting in a mountain chain that literally seemed to “pierce the heavens”, since the tallest peak easily went through the cloud cover. The spiky mountains were also home to a lot of very rare ores and precious gems, which made up most of the Sect’s exports.
-The “Silverlake Sect” was the “Water Sect”, and was based around a series of Spirit Lakes and smaller Spirit springs. The sect also venerated the Moons and their phases, which were said to power the Spirit Springs in the first place. Because of all of their Spirit Lakes and Spirit Springs, which were renewable resource-creation sites for spirit stones, they owned an abundance of high quality spirit stones which they exported as already cut all over the place, and were probably the richest sect around in that department.
-The “Floating Mountains of Tzun Sect” was the “Air Sect”. They were based around a strange formation of 13 huge-ass mountains that unnaturally floated in the air all of the time. How the hell that was possible, I blamed it on magic or some sort of room temperature superconductor-ore that the system had intentionally left buried at the base of the mountains. They specialised in wind and flight techniques and were the source of a very rare ore that made any weapon lighter when added to the alloy mix.
-The “Philosopher's Pill Sect” was the “Wood Sect”. They were based around the easternmost mountain chain which ran along the seaside, and they were getting constant rain, warm winds and nice weather from the deep sea current that was ascending from the equator and brushed past their shoreline. This resulted in a veritable heaven for Spiritual Plants to thrive in. They specialised in anything and everything alchemy and plant related, and the Sect was considered to be “the alchemist's heaven on earth”. Of course, their exports relied heavily on this aspect, but nobody in the world could challenge them nor complain about any shoddy craftsmanship, since all of their goods were top tier and went through a lot of “quality assurance” scrutiny before being sold.
-The “Forges of Bamm Sect” was the “Metal Sect”. Their mountains hosted a large assortment of metal mines, from the most common to the most ridiculously expensive ores, and the Sect also specialised in smithing their own ores, and was considered to be on top of the list, if not even THE best smithing guild in the world. The dwarves from the West side of the world tended to disagree with the above statement, so a crafter’s rivalry between the two sides of the globe had been going on for thousands of years. Their main export was their crafted weapons, and sometimes the occasional rare ore that was not used in metalsmithing.
-The “Sect of the Sun” was the “Light Sect”. They were situated in a place called the Golden Mountains, because the damn things were so full of actually exposed gold ore, pyrite, silver and copper veins that they shone reflectively in the sun. The most amusing fact was that the Sect seldom mined their own gold deposits, since the Sect of the Sun was a Buddhist Sect, and was filled to the brim with monks and ascetics that wanted to have nothing to do with the riches of the world. Their Sect had very few items in the way of exports, but they were extremely well known and commonly hired around all of the three Empires for their astounding healing arts and exorcism proficiency. Helpful pacifists and stout believers in the “righteous” way of the world, there was nobody that really hated these guys or even bothered them.
-The “Black Hand Sect” was the “Shadow Sect”. They were based around a bunch of gloomy mountain peaks called the Bloodspring Mountains, where it rained most of the year, with random cold and cruel downpours washing the red-hued iron-rust clay deposits from the peaks, making it seem like blood was pouring down the mountainsides almost constantly, if you were to look from a distance. Their trade was based around the arts of assasination, infiltration, thievery, and information exchange, which meant that they were constantly thriving, seeing how there was always some sort of Noble, Emperor, or even pesky Hero that had to “accidentally vanish” from the spotlight.
-The “Nine Heavens Sect” was the “Spirit Sect”. Their mountains had no defining features to speak of, and possessed an abundance of all types of resources in an equal sort-of distribution, but the rumors said that the Sect had been built right on top of an actual Spirit Gate that led to the Spirit Realm, and that’s why it was so rich. Their main specialty was Spirit Beast Taming and Enchanting. They were commonly used for transportation, since they owned the largest population of flying beasts-of-burden out of all of the Sects, plus they were also renowned for their Enchanting arts, which could add extra modifiers to weapons and armor by imbuing them with “fake” battlegear spirits that could enhance or guide the user better.
The Major Sects each possessed heavily-built defences, and if you considered all of their disciples as a Fighting Force, then all of them had their own “private standing army”.
They were a very tough egg to crack without major sacrifices, so there had been very few times in history where the invasion and destruction of one of the Major Sects had become the only alternative.
Usually, the Major Sects would “fight each other” through posturing and shows of power, usually in the forms of martial tournaments, or through proxy-support wars around the edges of the provinces. And by proxy, I mean the minor sects, which were usually offshoots or side families of the main ones. The minor sects, which usually resided around the borders between the Empires, were usually used as cannon fodder or as a wall against the invaders from the other sects.
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Even though they knew what their position was, the minor sects still chose to fight over the ownership of their lands, because resource spots good for cultivation were scarce enough to be fought over. Even the discovery of meagre new Spirit Spring would send the neighbouring sects into a frenzy and cultivators would start killing each other for the ownership.
This, of course, set the bells of alarm ringing inside of my head. The “Blue Mountain of Books” Sect was a minor one under the Nine Heavens Major Sect, and even though it was placed in a relatively “safe” area of the map, it still bordered two other minor sects of the opposing factions. There had not been any major conflicts between these three neighbouring sects in the last 30 years, so it was about time that something catastrophical would happen. Getting to see my current safe haven getting wiped out from the map was not something that I wanted to witness.
Therefore, before the sect could even get destroyed because of [insert whatever system narrative reason here], I would have to milk it off for all of the possible resources that it could give me. Therefore, I had to become a promising candidate and shining example of a student that could even be sent to the main sect for training.
That was easier said than done. There were very few cases when a student had been so exceptional inside of a minor sect that the Major one had come and had “poached the goods”.
Which brought me back to my major dilemma. I still had no idea what cultivation was actually about. If you could just go out there and kill monsters then level up through that method and then become a Godlike monster hunter and Boss slayer, then what was the point of cultivating anyway?
The answer came from Lingfeng, which had explained to me that compared to Normal Experience that was gained from hunting monsters, Cultivation Experience was gained from drawing in the energies of the Heavens, so by cultivating your mind and your body, you would increase your lifespan by a significant amount of time.
When compared to a Western human Hero, which would already be middle-aged by 50, and would die around 100 years old, Eastern cultivators would be able to live for much, much longer, from a minimum of 500, to up to thousands of years. It is the main reason why the peasantry thought of them as "Immortals".
Of course, just because they were ABLE to live for thousands of years, it did not mean that they actually MADE it that far. They were only a handful of people that could claim that they had been alive thousands of years ago, and even fewer that were ACTUALLY Immortal.
In truth, most cultivators would die because of the pointless conflicts that occurred between the Sects and the Empires in the East.
I did not want to become the victim of such conflicts, so I had to build up my own personal power to a level that was at least decent enough to allow me to run away from such pointless wars.
Therefore, I began to make a list of my priorities:
1: Finding a way to heal myself.
I simply refused to become a character which could not replenish their own hit points in some way. The quickest way to die is to run Out-Of-Health, duh! Therefore, I began to look for techniques that focused on healing the body using Qi from the way of the medicine, alongside with trying to find some vampiric/leeching/life sucking techniques of the offensive inclination from the magic variety of schools.
Normal Qi healing would be useful for out-of-combat situations, where I would have enough time to cast the seemingly complicated and costly healing spells. On the other hand, leeching spells would be reserved for the middle of the combat, where I would sustain myself with the resources robbed from my enemies. This was basic game logic 101.
This led me to my secondary search:
2: Having a way to NOT die from diseases, poisons or magically induced afflictions like debuffs or curses.
This was a hard thing to tackle, since it included a much wider variety of damage sources. The problem was compounded extra by the existence of magical diseases or magical poisons on top of the “natural” ones.
As far as diseases went, a large amount of the mortal population was already very likely to die from one variant of the common-variety widespread diseases before the end of their natural lifespan. As far as I had noticed, hygienical practices were not something that people knew about in this world. The peasants were dirty and unwashed, and they exposed themselves to a myriad of sources of infections on a daily basis. Insects like fleas, lice, ticks or bed bugs were found everywhere. The rat population was running rampant. It was no wonder that most of the poor folk caught something that they could not out-heal in the end. But dying from one plague or another was so common among the peasantry that nobody batted an eye when someone kicked the bucket because of getting sick.
It was just one of those common facts of Life.
I would not become one of those victims, in a world where magic could basically solve any problem. It was absurd not to try and find some way to cure those diseases by using some sort of cleansing spells or alchemical concoctions.
A secondary problem of similar nature came from poisons. Poison is such a general term, that it's hard to cover all of the nuances of the substances which can be called that. The art of killing other things using poison had such a long history and broad scope in the East, that there were people who solely specialised into this kind of a job like the Poison Masters. A Poison Master could be anything, from the hidden assassin under your bed, to the innocuous apothecary or the vermin-exterminator next door.
Also poisons, if administered in the right quantities, could even act as curing agents.
That was not a living apothecary or physician in the world that had not dabbled even a little bit in the arts of poisons in search of curatives, it just came with the territory.
There were obviously also many ways to cure poisons using magical means, besides having the actual chemical antidote to the poison.
The templars, crusaders and paladins from the Western world, as well as our local Buddhist monks and ascetics were quite renowned figures for their “immunity” to poisons and magical afflictions, but that was actually just false rumors. They only had much stronger cleansing spells, granted to them by their classes or deities.
Which led me to my third search, which was a way to get rid of magical afflictions. If all of those holy men could just twiddle their fingers and chant some stupid prayer or sutra to get rid of all of their magical and physical afflictions in the blink of an eye, then why could I not do the same?
There had to be some similar spells that were available to the “general public” which did the same thing, since having to shave myself bald or wearing the Tabard of the Sun and converting everybody in my path was something that I could not see myself doing. No way in hell! Sure, I could imagine myself becoming a healer of some sort, but in no way would I ever become a religious fanatic.
I had been born as an abomination against creation and all of the Gods in the first place, if I were to judge myself based on the scriptures of the holy men from both sides of the world. Therefore, the best way for me to avoid detection was not to get noticed in the first place.
This led me to the next item on my list:
3: Having a way to conceal myself.
Stealth skills and ways to obfuscate your presence were an actual thing in this world. They were usually based around smart deployment of illusion spells, most commonly of the mind, light or shadow attributes, that would allow you to become virtually invisible and undetectable to all the people around you, when Mastered to the highest level.
Of course, because they were also very commonly used in guerrilla tactics or scouting during warfare, there existed a whole school of thought dedicated especially to just countering such stealthy maneuvers.
Therefore, the next thing I would have to obtain would be:
4: Having a way to run really fast and escape traps or encirclements without taking any damage.
The first type of skill would have to be some sort of sprint/dash basic run-speed increase modifier, and I could bet that I would not have to look that hard to find such a skill, since they were quite common.
The second type of skill would have to be some sort of snare removal or outright snare immunity, if possible. This could prove much harder to find, because it offered a huge advantage to the caster if used properly. The ability to shrug off all slows, to ignore getting trapped, webbed or glued in place could easily change the flow of a battle in one’s favor. These sorts of skills were quite commonly found on high level “boss” mobs, which accentuated their danger-levels by a lot.
And the third type of skill would have to be an outright obstacle-ignoring kind of skill like a blink/teleport that allowed you to instantly move yourself to another spot, or the phase-shift type of skills that allowed you to walk through walls or similar objects.
I didn't even know if teleportation was a “thing” in this world until I asked Lingfeng about it, and he confirmed that there were indeed some forms of instant-transportation out there, but that they were all very high level or very prohibitively costly to use.
These sorts of skills were probably very rare or required a much higher level, but I still thought of them as “mandatory” to have in a “full build”.
After considering how movement skills might affect me, I also decided to add two more items to my “must find” list, and those were:
5: Having a way to avoid falling damage.
Even if did manage to find some sort of a instant-movement skill, breaking my bones after I used said skill because I blinked off a cliff or something similar would of course, be fucking stupid. Dying to GRAVITY was silly! Therefore, I added the search for some sort of “slowfall/feather” or an outright straight fall-damage avoidance skill to my query list.
And when talking about a similar environmental hazard, then this one would be next:
6: Having a way to avoid drowning, if I ever fell into water. A swift-swim skill would also be welcomed.
Having some sort of a diver’s bubble or even water-breathing skill would also open much larger areas of the map for exploration. I could bet my nonexistent hat that the seafloor was littered with unexplored ancient temples and dungeons of all sorts that nobody has conquered yet.
And these were just some of the basics, barely enough for survival in my opinion.
I had to expand the scope of my knowledge, and that meant lots and lots of different scrolls or books.
And those did NOT come cheap.
There was only so much stuff that Lingfeng could smuggle out of the Sect Library by himself.
There was no way for me to gain access to that place until I became an official disciple, but the exams were still some months away.
Of course, there were other ways to obtain books and scrolls, since there was quite a large market for those sorts of things around here, especially since the Sect belonged to the Scholarly Faction. Problem is that those cost a lot of money too.
Therefore, the next item on my to-do list was to get a job and start producing some stuff that I could sell.
It was, of course, a no-brainer that I went with Alchemy.