“After months of searching I’ve finally managed to catch you, Meng Hao”
The tenth patriarch of the Wang clan gloats as he gazes over his bound captive.
“If it wasn’t for this sea weakening me I would have found you months ago, you should feel proud; no prey has managed to elude me for so long before.”
Meng Hao remains silent, his killing intent reaching new heights. If he could so much as twitch a muscle he would be able to spit out the sword he obtained in the bridge of immortal treading. He can’t even so much as breath, making rotating his cultivation base extremely difficult.
“well enough talk, knowing you if I carry on for too much longer you will escape, somehow make a break through allowing you to sever your spirit and come back and kill, or at least seriously wound, me.”
Without any further words spoken the patriarch used a secret technique to turn Meng Hao to ash, his possessions falling into the turbulent waters of the Milky Way Sea below. The patriarch quickly grabs up the 9 nascent souls before they could escape.
“Finally, immortality is within my grasp.”
1 day ago
“Greetings fellow daoist, I smell a storm coming. Best dock soo—agh! Why!?”
I cut down the cultivator who I let onto my boat after they hailed me earlier, something about wanting to give a fellow rouge cultivator a warning or something like that. I quickly strip his boat, a small thing with pretty young wood, of all valuables and good wood, letting the rotting bits drift out to sea to inevitably sink. I then stripe the corpse of its cloths and bag of holding, which is rather empty, only about 300 spirit stones and a couple basic flying swords.
My name is Barthamis, but my friends, if I had any, call me Bart. I was born to two non-cultivator parents in the slums of a city on a small island, the entire island made up the city. Roughly about 90% of the population was non-cultivators, or at least that was what I was told. When I was young I was never able to leave the property of our house, so I never had very many friends. The only friend I can remember was a gruff old cat that lived in the neighborhood, he had a habit of mauling me unless I fed him, well until my father came home from work one day and saw it attacking me. My father proceeded to kill it with his already bloody knife.
My mother would always say not to kill people. Not to me or anything, she would say that to my father, who would go out every weak and break into someone’s house before killing them. He would then steal all the valuables he could carry and sell them to one of his connections; we would survive off the money, usually about half a gold piece, which was a lot for the slums, for the entire week. Once he even managed to kill a cultivator, supposedly he had been seriously injured and incapable of putting up a fight. My father then sold his bag of holding to the first cultivator he saw, for a gold piece. That night was the first time I tried crab, and I loved it, I decided then and there to become a cultivator if the chance arouse.
My mother usually didn’t complain about the danger of my father’s profession for long though, he would usually have more carnal cravings every time he came home, which my mother had no qualms about satisfying.
Ultimately my life was rather boring, no one to talk to except my parents, and occasionally my grandparents when they came over, which would always excite me. My grandfather was a carpenter and would teach me how to make small boats out of wood just like the ones he use to make at the docks. This was how I developed a hobby of making small wooden boats.
Unfortunately this life didn’t continue forever, one day the person my dad tried to kill happened to be hosting a cultivator, who didn’t take kindly to the death of his host. Upon realizing his mistake my dad ran back home, where the cultivator caught up to him and killed both my parents and my grandparents before noticing me. When he say me he took pity on my and tossed a Qi condensation manual to me. I wasn’t shocked by the fact that my parents were dead, I knew it would have to happen eventually, considering my father’s line of work, and it wasn’t the first time I had seen someone murdered in front of me.
That was about a year ago, I was fifteen then and I am sixteen now. After studying the manual I managed to break through into what was described as the first stage of Qi condensation. I then went down the docks and asked for some wood, I was given three slightly rotten logs, some cloth, and some worn ropes, which I fastened into a makeshift raft and sailed away.
I’ve come a long way since then, the first major dilemma I had was whether or not to kill people to earn money and other commodities like my father did. I knew that I would struggle with this dilemma until I chose to kill people, so I did. Every time I did I would make sure to thoroughly strip everything of value and would build up my boat with the wood from theirs.
Currently my boat is pristine, aside from the recent bloodstain on the deck; I keep it clean so as to more easily get other rouge cultivators to let their guard down, making them easier to kill. It has grown a lot in the last year, as have I. I am currently in the 6th stage of Qi condensation, the only reason why I got so high in only a year was because of an event that took place during a storm, a lighting strike hit a cultivator that was flying through the air, the cultivator crashed into my boat, breaking the wood of the deck in a few places, also knocking me out.
When I came to the storm had passed and the cultivator was meditating on the deck. A quick at his cultivation base told me that there was no way I would be able to kill him and keep my life, so I didn’t.
After a brief discussion, during which he claimed to be a furnace lord of the violet fate sect of the southern domain, which was total BS, the southern domain is a myth, like immortals. Of course I didn’t say anything, as he could easily kill me. When he left he gave me something called a foundation establishment pill, which I consumed after he left. Three days later I came out of meditation at the peak of the fifth stage of Qi condensation. A month later I broke through to the 6th.
Back to the present. After fully looting the now dead cultivator’s boat I came up with about one thousand spirit stones worth of magic items and materials. A decent sized haul, I’ve had bigger, and smaller. After sorting all the magic items into various bags of holding have below deck I begin to clean the bloodstain up off the deck, with a little help of a technique I acquired from one of my victims, the technique dissolves blood into sea water at an incredible rate, making clean up quick and easy.
After the deck is clean I set about replacing worn down bits of wood with the new wood I looted. After an hour of searching I find three spots where the wood needs to be replaced, leaving me with a lot of extra wood to use. As I can’t think of anything to use it with yet I store it in one of the countless bags of holding I have set aside for wood.
At around this time I notice that the winds have all but stopped, I wasn’t worried about that though as I have a technique that allows me to put wind in my sails, literally speaking. Now that I think of it most of my techniques are completely useless in combat, but it doesn’t matter, I have many techniques that are useful in combat, like one that creates a large gust of air at a small point, enough to knock a cultivator off of a rocking boat.
I keep sailing for a while, windless days are good for me as it makes prey easier to find. In the end I manage to kill 2 more cultivators that were stranded in the middle of the sea, a really good haul for one day. A little after the last kill the winds began to pick up again, and with a vengeance. Within the time it takes incense stick to burn it was a massive storm, the largest one I had seen in my year of being a cultivator. While it is the largest storm I have seen, it isn’t my first storm, that one ended in a disaster, I know what to do to survive and prevent loses. I seal up everything below deck, nothing can get in, and nothing can get out. This technique is extremely draining for me; I always teeter at the edge of unconsciousness every time I use it. Before I can fully lapse into unconsciousness I strap myself to the mast using some magic rope that I obtained a while back, despite my best efforts I have yet be able to even damage to rope. I quickly lose consciousness.
I woke up a bit latter, I have no idea how long it actually was, the storm continues to rage on. I see two people floating in the air above me; I can barely make them out because of how far up they are. Suddenly one of them starts to fall. 3 breaths latter I see that what is falling isn’t a person, but rather cloths and a rather fancy looking bag of holding, my mouth waters just imagining how many spirit stones are inside.
I manage to pull the bag of holding into my hand before being smacked in the face by a fish, causing me to lapse into unconsciousness again. This time when I came to the storm had died down I was clutching the bag of holding in a vise like grip. After a quick visual inspection of the deck I see that it is in shambles, the bag of holding temporarily forgotten, I untie myself from the magic rope and get a better look at the damages. The mast snapped off about a head above where my head was, it’ll have to get replaced, a little more than half of the boards making up the deck were ripped up, but nothing below the deck was harmed, tossed around due to the rocking waves yes, but not harmed. All in all the damages will take about two days to repair, not the worst damage I have received in a storm.
I toss the bag of holding I obtained below deck to be sorted latter and grab a bag of holding that is full of wood before getting to work. I cut down the mast, it is useless now, and throw it to the sea before getting a spare mast out of my bag of holding, which can store roughly half the wood I will need for the repairs. An hour later the mast has been successfully replaced, were I mortal it would have been impossible for me to replace it on my own. After further examination I decide that it would be much faster to just rip up the entire deck and replace it, keeping all the useable wood of course. Doing things this way will allow me to finish repairs in as little as a day.
The repairs go off without a hitch and a day latter my boat is as good as new. Now it’s time to check that bag of holding. The first thing I notice is how big it is; it could easily fit an entire fleet of ships with plenty of room to spare. The second thing I notice is how much stuff there is inside of it, I have no words to describe it. The third thing I notice is simple; there is not a single spirit stone in the entire bag, not a single one. I mean with how powerful this guy was he had to have had tons of spirit stones, maybe he kept them in another bag?
I quickly go below deck and take all of my bags of holding and put them in the new one. I then go above deck and sit down to meditate, I want to organize the bag of holding and that is going to take a long time, I just can’t stand having things be so unorganized, makes it difficult to get what you need quickly.
Over the next month I test out and organize all of the items in the bag, I even read all of jade slips. There are some pretty amazing items in there, better than any of the items I have managed to obtain beforehand. Some items that do really mundane things, a couple of which will help me make my boat better, like a cloth that gathers the power of the winds to be used latter, and several that would undoubtedly help me out in a fight. With this I think I could take on some of the weaker pirate clans that I have been avoiding till now. I even find many powerful medicinal pills as well as a catalog listing the effects of many of them, the ones I can’t figure out I separate from the rest.
Of course during this time I haven’t shirked from my usual activities, killing a total of forty cultivators within that month, my best month yet. This time I am looking for a challenge, and I find one. Straight ahead of me is a ship manned by at least one hundred cultivators. I attack them and they put up a pretty good fight, but that fades when I use one of these wooden swords to kill their patriarch, who was in the foundation establishment level. After that the fight completely disappeared from the rest and they were easily slaughtered. I systematically strip the ship of anything of value; my little boat is going to get a lot bigger. Turns out there is one survivor, a man I recognize, the one who gave me the Qi condensation manual to begin with. And he seems to recognize me.
“You, you killed them. Thanks, they have kept me prisoner for half a year now, I have no idea why. I made the right choice by giving you that manual back then.”
“You seem to be forgetting something, you killed my family.” Bart
As soon as I say this I begin to smell fear, and a little bit of urine, coming off of him.
“Elder, I’ll do anything, I’ll be your slave if you want just let me live.”
Having a slave would be useful; it would make my life easier.
“Very well, but if you try to sabotage me in any way I will just kill you” Bart
At this he looks like he wants to cry.
“What is your name anyway?” Bart
“Jonathan” Jonathan
“Call me Bart” Bart
“Young master Bart” Jonathan
“That works, I guess.” Bart
Over the next month Jonathan and I kill many cultivators, easily taking out small clans, the benefits of having Jonathan around being readily apparent. We also work on the boat; well it would be more accurate to describe it as a small ship at this point. The number of masts increased to two at it more than doubled in size as a result of our efforts. One day after taking out a particularly tough pirate clan Jonathan makes a comment that I find interesting.
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“With all the magic treasures and techniques you have, young master Bart, you could run a small clan”
Over the month of fighting and working together our relationship became one closer resembling friends rather than a master slave relationship.
“That’s not a bad idea, before we really didn’t have anything to do with the ones who surrendered so we just killed them to prevent them from getting revenge latter. I’ll think about it, but for now I am going into meditation, I feel like I have a chance to break through a bottle neck.” Bart
“I can handle myself at least for a little while” Jonathan
I head to my quarters and sit on the floor in front of a table I made out of some wood and a strange copper mirror I found in the bag of holding, I can’t for the life of me figure out what it does, it sucked up a medicinal pill I put on it when I first turned it into a table and I haven’t been able to get it out.
I take out a spirit stone and start to fiddle with it before placing down on the mirror, I have something to do. At the time I didn’t notice that the mirror had sucked up the spirit stone. First I set up a magical item that blocks sound, so I am not interrupted unless absolutely necessary. Then I pop some high grade medicinal pills I got a month ago from that bag of holding that fell from the sky. I sit in meditation for about a day absorbing all the Qi that flowed out of the pills, by the time I am done I had broken through to the seventh stage of Qi condensation. Frowning, I pop more pills, this time it takes two days of meditation to fully process the storm of Qi that rose up from the pills, and I am at the eighth stage of Qi condensation.
At this point I decide to take a break, I stand up and walk around my room before noticing something, the spirit stone I put on the table is gone. And two medicinal pills are there in its place.
“So that’s what it does, no wonder that guy had no spirit stones, he used them all copying other items.”
I continue to down medicinal pills for a week, any time I ran low on medicinal pills I would duplicate more. I had spirit stones to spare, millions of them, never really been able to use them so they piled up. I was visited by Jonathan the day after reaching the eighth stage of Qi condensation, he was slightly injured from a fight that broke out, and he had come to report his success. I sent him away with a healing medicinal pill as well as a couple magic items that would be useful in a fight and told him not to bother me till I came out or there was a major emergency. After bowing respectfully he took his leave.
I lost track of time after a couple days, it must have been a month since I entered meditation. I was only interrupted once after the first time, and that for a vengeful clan that attacked in the middle of a storm. The problem was easily solved by unleashing a large number of techniques and magic items onto a few small points of their ship, my knowledge of such things having been gained through the experience of striping ships for wood and subsequently using that wood to build my own ship. Of course I hate using this method as it is wasteful, so much sinks to the bottom of the Milky Way before it can be collected.
After reaching the peak of the ninth stage of Qi condensation, maybe a month after starting my meditation, I pulled out a foundation establishment pill. I begin to reminisce about that alchemist from the mythical southern domain who gave me my first foundation establishment pill. Had I known what it was at the time I wouldn’t consumed it, but I was ignorant, I still am, just not as ignorant.
I go above deck to find a dozens of Qi condensation cultivators attempting to siege my small ship, while trying to avoid damaging the ship itself, like they want to gain control over it. I notice Jonathan in a blaze of glory, seemingly narrowly avoiding being hit by techniques and flying swords only for those attacks to hit other cultivators. This type of large scale battle has quickly become Jonathan’s specialty, he developed a technique that allows him to sabotage other cultivators control over their techniques and magic items, that coupled with an incredible sense of his surroundings makes him a formidable opponent in battles like this, I’ll have to get him to teach me that technique.
“Want some help there?” Bart
When I say this all the cultivator’s look over at me and 7 of them are killed by Jonathan while they are distracted.
“Never mind, it seems you have it handled. I can’t be disturbed till I come out again, wouldn’t be able to do anything. Anyway, going to try to break through to foundation establishment.” Bart
After receiving a nod from Jonathan I go back to my room and sit down. I have grown board with meditation, but if I don’t do this now I will have to do it latter. I decide to make the process go as quickly as I can, I pull out all of the foundation establishment pills I have, about ten, nine from that bag of holding that fell from the sky and one that I found on the corpse of one of my victims. I duplicate the nine till I have about twenty total pills, not paying attention to the amount of spirit stones used. After a moment of hesitation I swallow all of them, it hurt going down, but that pain was overshadowed by the agony from all the wild Qi from the medicinal pills, vastly overshadowing my cultivation base. I start systematically subjugating the wild Qi as fast as I could so that the pain would go away. I know on an instinctual level that one miss step here and I could easily die, I was really stupid when I decided to take a bunch of foundation establishment pills, never doing that again.
What feels like an eternity later, but was probably only a few days, I manage to for my foundation. I spend ten minutes just looking at it. Seven cracks, seven. I stand up and walk out the door, and am greeted by what looks like the ending of a large battle, ten people in chains lined up in front of Jonathan. They range from rank two to rank five of Qi condensation, while Jonathan seems to have grown more powerful, now he’s at the beginning of rank nine of Qi condensation.
“it’s like all you ever do is fight, last time I came up you were fighting and now your wrapping up what looks to be a large fight. Not that I’m complaining, the more we plunder other groups the richer we get.” Bart
“Well, you not wrong, I have been doing little other than fighting since last week when you attempted, and apparently succeeded to reach foundation establishment. Decided to cultivate my fleshly body, battle seemed like a good way to do so.” Jonathan
“Now what to do with these captives?” Bart
“I was about to execute them, like normal.” Jonathan
At the mention of execution the cultivators trembled in fear, incapable of speech.
“I was considering starting a clan, as we are now we can only take on very weak clans, and even then only because of the large amount of magic items and techniques that I have managed to gather.” Bart
At this the bound cultivators begin begging to join my not existing clan, speaking about how the two of us are all powerful immortals.
“Your right, this way I won’t be on the bottom of the food chain.” Jonathan
“Welcome aboard, if any of you try to sabotage me in any way I will kill you without a second thought.” Bart
After ten vows of allegiance Jonathan speaks up again.
“There is a small clan’s ship approaching from the west. This one is stronger than anything we have faced before.” Jonathan
“Well, it looks like we will have a trial by fire. Any survivors can stay.” Bart
At this moment the same thought went through the minds of all the new recruits, if that demon could effortlessly destroy our clan how powerful is his master? They all resolved themselves to fight for their lives.
Ten minutes later the small ship is close enough for us to hail. They come up beside us and we exchange pleasantries before I unleash the wooden swords on one of the two foundation establishment experts, killing him quickly. This was the signal for everyone to attack, which they did with frenzy, holding nothing back. Before they manage to recover from their shock half of the clan is dead. The remaining foundation establishment expert attacks me with a technique that forms a fiery dragon to attack me; I defend myself with a magic item in the form of a small pearl. Crushing the pearl forms a water shield around me, successfully negating the attack. I counter with a barrage of the wooden swords, killing him easily.
The others aren’t faring as well as I am, two of them are already dead, but the enemy was disheartened, for every one casualty for my group ten of them died. I stepped back to watch them fight, and I have to say I am pretty impressed, the now seven cultivators, another one had died, fought with practiced team work. Soon only twelve of the enemies are alive, all of which surrendered, I gave them the same option I gave the others. Two of them decided that they would rather die than follow me, and they did, die that is.
After that I had a total of eighteen followers. Jonathan and I showed them how to strip the ship of its wood as well as how to identify weather a particular piece of wood was reusable or not. The whole process took three hours, a little longer than it normally does because we also had to teach other people.
After we finished striping the ship for wood and other things of value we went back to my ship, only to find that it was a little crowded.
“Should we make it bigger again?” Jonathan
“I have a better idea, let’s build another boat. We have more than enough wood, and if one gets destroyed the loss wouldn’t be nearly as terrible.” Bart
After asking around it turns out three of them has skills in carpentry, these three were quickly elevated above the others in status. we quickly had everyone set to work on building a new large boat on the deck of my ship, with the unskilled cultivators set to work trimming the wood into forms that the rest of us can use under the supervision of one of the cultivators that is skilled in carpentry, not much really needed to be done there as all the wood was taken from various boats and ships so it was pretty much good. The boat was constructed in about a day and a half, raising the fleet size to two.
“Jonathan, you can take seven people to help you man this boat.” Bart
“Thank you” Jonathan
That was how the heavenly winds clan was founded. With the help of the magic items and techniques found in the strange bag of holding that fell from the sky that day we rose to prominence, attacking and robbing almost any clan we came across, anyone with a core formation expert was left alone as I had no way to kill a core formation expert as I am now. I also learned many new techniques, many of which are from the mysterious bag of holding. What kind of person owned this bag before it fell to me? This is something I contemplate frequently, sometimes worried someone he once knew would come and take it from me, other times expectant of the possibilities it presented.
Over the years out numbers grew greatly, we became the scourge of Milky Way sea. Jonathan managed to reach foundation establishment with eight cracks, and I, with the help of that mirror and pills from that bag of holding managed to get a multi-color core, my core Qi being represented by a grand ship. By that time we had a total of twenty foundation establishment experts.
One day a parrot screaming about someone called lord fifth flew by, stopping to screw all the neo-demons of a dragoneer from the western desert who joined us before flying away. We saw that parrot the next day and he quickly became a constant companion, the only person that complained being that dragoneer, but strangely never when the parrot was around, the rest were happy with his presence as he would even help with fighting, causing terror and chaos in the ranks of other clans.
We were exceptionally wealthy; something about robbing entire clans of everything they own frequently brings about large amounts of wealth in the form of techniques, spirit stones, and magic items. When I reached core formation the size of my fleet was 20 small ships, one for each of the foundation establishment experts, one large ship, and my personal ship which was manned by inner sect disciples. The rest were smaller boats manned by Qi condensation cultivators.
I have realized why my father decided to pursue the kind of life he did, I am just like him in that regard. Well, I enjoy the fighting just as much as the subsequent killing, if an opponent is stronger enough to give me a challenge I’ll forcefully recruit them.
As it turns out the southern domain is not a myth. I’ve met a few people from there, and learned a lot. I’m no longer the ignorant youth I was when I first became a cultivator. I will always be ignorant, the day I believe that I am not ignorant will be the day I am truly ignorant. In the future I hope to continue to grow more powerful and make my clan more powerful, after all my clan is like an extension of my own power, much to the hatred of many other clans who have become our victims over the years. I enjoy this life and I hope to continue living it for a long time.