People were quite confused.
They had saw the true immortal's reincarnation open up the door. Then as they tried to rush to the door to break through it. They were then attacked!
Who was running through them like a maniac?
It was the Yuanle Buxiu! The real owner of the inheritance...
"Didn't he just go in?"
Yuanle Buxiu got to the door, he didn't even bother to say the password as he directly opened the door. Stepping inside it.
The door then vanished along with the steps.
"..."
Everyone felt regret that they weren't able to snatch the inheritance away! That was a true immortals inheritance.
But they were also confused how that person earlier was able to say the password to open up the door. But they were sure that person was toast.
Whoever tried to steal his inheritance would have to face the wrath of a true immortal in his own dimension! Some felt shivers down their spine thinking about his fate.
Technically, Tho Awa was destroyed by Yuanle. But it wasn't with malicious intent, he was doing a favor to John, since that person would get hunted down either way.
John could of used his technique Reckless Abandon. But he was saved the effort.
He was still surprised he was killed so casually after becoming 'friends'.
But he supposed that Yuanle knew that he would be fine, so it wasn't all that insane.
He was also thankful for the technique 'Soul Domain'.
He began to study the technique in his sea of consciousness.
As he was ordered to go over the battlefield and bring the corpses of those in his sect back. So that the families could have proper burials.
The core formation expert that had been assigned to his group had actually died! Most of his team was wiped out. Out of the 26 people in the group. Only him and one other Qi Condensation cultivator survived.
This was the case for most of the groups formed. Well, it was mostly those in Qi Condensation that had died.
The outer sect became quite empty from this day onwards. This caused the sect to open up recruiting again to get some fresh blood.
John was busy cultivating and studying 'Soul Domain' in his room. But he was again, interrupted. Who was it this time? It was an elder! The task manager, a nascent soul expert.
"You are John right? I see that you've collected a decades worth of allowance, but you haven't taken on any missions?"
"This whole time, you've been living free off of the allowance for the outer sect disciples."
John frowned.
"So?"
The elder also frowned.
"The sect now needs your service. We know you just came back from a traumatizing event. But you are the strongest outer sect disciple left. We are ordering you to recruit a hundred new outer sect disciples."
John did some math in his head. Generally, being born with spiritual roots was a one out of a thousand chance. This was based off data from experts.
The odds of getting tested and having spiritual roots was much smaller as sects didn't often take in new blood. This was one of the reasons it was hard for John to initially become a servant family to cultivators early on.
Now that a lot of the outer sect disciples had died, they were willing to recruit some new blood to keep the sect lively and have people helping to maintain it.
If John had to bring a hundred new recruits, that meant he would roughly have to go through a hundred thousand people.
The technology of this world wasn't developed in the direction where people could efficiently live together, so there weren't many cities.
He would likely being going to each town individually.
Those generally had around ten thousand people.
He would need to go through probably over ten towns.
That was if they recruited people of all ages.
But they likely were only recruiting people 16 years and younger.
This meant he would probably have to visit thirty towns! That mixed with traveling, and the time it took to organize the testing events. He was looking at over 3000 hours of labor at minimum. Not accounting for travel and organization.
The elder gave him some words of encouragement and then told him that it wouldn't be without reward.
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"I have talked with those in the artificer department. They have crafted you a flying artifact that can hold two hundred people! With this artifact, you should be able to quickly travel between towns and efficiently recruit new blood. You won't have to worry about being attacked by bandits or scavengers. As our sect flag is on the artifact."
"You will be the pilot! The plan is for you not to return until you have reached a hundred or more recruits. This artifact is quite expensive and we obviously won't be giving it to you, it is just for use during this assignment. But I have talked with everyone, and they agreed that this is a decent amount of work. So we will be giving you a spatial ring. This will hold all of the spirit stones needed to fly the artifact. Yes, you will be able to keep the ring."
John immediately felt better upon hearing that.
He was given the ring right there, and told how to bind it to himself.
He pinched his fingers and let blood drip on it.
"Your blood... so much vitality! It is good to be young."
"Indeed."
"You will have a week to learn how to pilot it, we will have experts to teach you. During this time, make sure to get adequate rest and be in the best state!"
John now had two spatial rings.
The first one he acquired from that place from the chaos realm that didn't require him to use blood to bind it. The second one acquired from the task manager that did.
John spent a week familiarizing himself with the controls of the flying artifact. It reminded him of a plane, but it seemed to be able to hover quite easily. It could stay in place and stabilize itself like a helicopter despite being able to accommodate two hundred people.
John realized a problem right away though.
"This is too much wealth."
He complained to the task manager, telling them about the risk of getting robbed. He was just Qi Condensation. They should let at the very least a core formation tag along.
"We are low on people all around, our sect will be vulnerable if we are missing a single person! You are strong, you survived the battle for the true immortals inheritance despite the odds. I believe you can handle a couple mortals. The flying artifact also has a defensive system, handling foundation establishment cultivators should be easy. If you encounter someone higher, run for your life. But take the flying artifact with you! It's worth more then your life."
"...Alright."
John went to the first town. He only found a single person with spiritual roots... He sighed realizing this was going to take awhile. He had spent eight hours in the town setting up a testing tent and hyping up joining his sect. All to acquire just one person!
The set up alone took eight hours.
The actual testing... he had around two thousand people in the first town that met the requirements. Yet of these two thousand, he roughly spent five minutes on each person. He spent seven days and nights testing non stop.
On the eighth day, he had run out of people to test that met the requirements.
He had underestimated the work. This was likely to be far more then a mere three thousand hours...
The second town he went to was much better. He was able to hype people up by showing off his flying artifact and flying over the town while doing tricks and launching energy. It only took a few hours to build up a huge crowd of people. People wanted to join the sect.
He spent ten days and nights testing at the second town.
He acquired three people this time. Great, he now only had 96 more to go!
By the third town he had a formula down and had gotten used to testing people. It no longer took five minutes to test people and it could be done in half the time. He got five people this time. 91 more to go. He was only getting faster and faster as he continued.
After five days of work, he went to the fourth town.
Three people, 88 to go.
Fifth town, one person. 87 to go. Sixth town, extremely lucky with ten people. 77 to go. Seventh town, one person, 76 to go. Eighth town, three people. 73 to go. Ninth town, two people. 71 to go. tenth town, five people. 66 to go. Eleventh town, six people. 60 to go. Town twelve, five people. 55 to go. Town thirteen, eight people. 47 to go. Town fourteen, seven people. 40 to go. Town fifteen, ten people. 30 to go. Town sixteen, five people. 25 to go. Town seventeen, five people. 20 to go. Town eighteen, zero people. 20 to go. Town nineteen, one person. 19 to go. Town twenty, two people. 17 to go. Town twenty one, three people. 14 to go. Town twenty two, four people. 10 to go. Town twenty three, one person. 9 to go. Town twenty four, five people. 4 to go. Town twenty five, five people. 0 people to go!
In the end of things, he had picked up 101 new recruits, all with spiritual roots, all sixteen years or younger.
He did all of this in about five months.
The mortals that traveled with him were all very happy and looking forward to their bright futures. Being able to fly on a magic artifact was an experience they would never forget.
A majority of them had been with him for over a month. They saw him as quite mysterious. Having no idea he was just at Qi Condensation.
During these five months, he was indeed attacked by other mortals who had no idea what his sect represented. But they were easily killed by him.
His recruits, seeing how ruthless he was, made up their minds not to get on his bad side.
After almost half a year of work, John finally returned to the sect.
He knew everyone personally who he had recruited, he had built up some good will among everyone.
After everyone was given their new robes and monthly allowance. They were assigned to rooms through John.
The environment in the outer sect had changed significantly. Seeing as almost all those in the outer sect were brought in by John. Instead of everyone thinking he was just a cultivation maniac, people thought of him as the shining star that guided them to the world of cultivation.
He was no longer despised.
John didn't mind too much honestly.
Although the environment around the outer sect changed over the next few years.
Since most of the disciples came from John's recruitment campaign.
He was seen as a sort of big brother. Even though he was introverted and didn't hang out with anyone, people saw him as an elder of the outer sect.
People thought he was quite strong to survive the mission of finding the inheritance of a true immortal. In reality he didn't really engage in much fighting during that time. He simply meditated while everyone killed each other. But it was also impressive to recruit a hundred disciples in a mere half year.
He still had low grade spiritual roots. So his cultivation was slow. He didn't dare to use his immortality to skip to peak state using the blue print he had acquired when acting as 'Tho Awa' from drinking the ambrosia tea.
Almost an entire decade went by.
On his 30th birthday... he managed to unblock the last meridian. His lungs! Now with every breath he took, he was gathering a bit of Qi.
It was a bit too fast to become a peak Qi condensation expert at only thirty years old.
For someone with uncommon low grade spiritual roots at least.
John decided to hold a banquet to celebrate and had the entire outer sect invited.
He had nothing but good feelings now from the outer sect. People had long ago stopped disrespecting him. The ones that use to view him poorly had mostly died off or became inner sect disciples.
Not due to anything he did though.
They were just a little too greedy when it came to the true immortals inheritance.
He was congratulated by most of the outer sect. Some of the disciples he had brought in had far better spiritual roots then him. So they had become foundation establishment cultivators in the ten years since then.
But even though they were in the inner sect now, they still made sure to show up to his banquet to congratulate him for reaching peak of Qi Condensation.