By the time Bruce got back at six A.M. I had completed another two batches of cleansing pills, crafted an object to assess a person’s cultivation talent, and was thirty minutes into using his one hundred kilo punching bag as a speed bag while Restricting my chi to the lowest level it could be at and still move the bag. After he pulled the Batmobile into the cave Bruce came to the training room and paused the playlist I had found. I had no idea who this religious rock band that was named after a cooking device was, but I liked them.

“So, what did you learn?” He asked, and I paused to catch my breath, then Restricted my chi as low as I could make it go.

“I was offered ten thousand if I brought in a Foundation potential cultivator or metahuman, and ten times that for each rank above that.”

Bruce paused for a second, surprised at my statement. “I take it you want to use that as a way to infiltrate the ring?”

I nodded. “But, as this is time sensitive, I’m only giving myself three nights to finish the mission. Hence why I’m trying to prepare as quickly as I can.” There was a dull pain in my chest as my middle dantian started to exceed its maximum pressure. While it was very difficult to permanently damage it using this technique, if I overdo it my cultivation will be broken and I will have to start over from late Cleansing, something I can’t afford to do now.

Bruce nodded. “That means that you’ll need to take one of the boys with you as your presumed kidnapping victim.”

“Hence why I made this.” I walked over to the table and uncovered a round, polished, piece of jade about the size of a fist. “If you touch this, it will glow with a color based on your cultivation talent level and a brightness based on your chi multiplier. Red for Cleansing, Yellow for Collection, Green for Foundation, Blue for Nascent, Purple for Immortal, and White for Ascended.”

“What is a ‘Chi Multiplier’?” he asked as soon as I was finished.

“Oh,” I paused to think of a way to explain it. “Well, it’s part of the way we tried to quantify the chi abilities, along with physical multiplier, mental multiplier, and spiritual multiplier. I approximately have a physical multiplier of zero point five, a mental multiplier of zero point one, and a spiritual multiplier of zero point zero one. My Chi multiplier is ten. This means that for each unit of chi my body has past the first one, I get a 50% increase in strength and physical abilities, a 10% increase in mental abilities, and a 1% increase in spiritual abilities. The chi multiplier means that whatever level of chi I need to breakthrough to a level, I need ten times as much for the next level. Since I tried to get to Foundation as quickly as I could, I finished Cleansing at ten, and Collection at one hundred. I currently have around one hundred and twenty. So my physical strength is normally about sixty times what it should be.”

“Then Chi Multiplier sounds like a bit of a double edged sword, making cultivation take longer but giving you larger energy reserves when you get to that point.”

I nodded. “I would like to go back to the beginning. Break my cultivation and restart from what I know now. I could probably get back to Foundation in a month, but would have a much larger reserve and purer elemental chi, thus using less chi when I cast spells. There might even be a few tricks I can use to increase the other three multipliers. Since I don’t have the time to do that, though, I’ll have to settle for what I can do, which is increase my ability to amplify my body with chi in short bursts and work on my physical statistics. I never seriously practiced martial arts or worked out, preferring mind cultivation and the study of magic to body cultivation, so my body is pretty weak, which means that is probably my best path to getting stronger at this point.”

Bruce nodded. “In that case, I’ll let you get back to your workout.” He turned back on my playlist and started to change out of the suit. “I have a shareholders meeting at eleven, if you think you can make it.”

I nodded. My dantian was in intense pain, so I let up on the restriction a bit, but still had a hard time moving the punching bag. “I would like to talk with you, the boys, and even Alfred and Dick if they want to get involved in this, so I can test everyone. If we can do that at, say, nine AM, I can start the boys and Dick on their training routines before we need to leave.”

He nodded, sent Dick a text to bring him here by nine AM, and went to bed. He had gotten so used to working through the night that even a two hour nap could refresh his body enough to function at full. And being in the late Cleansing stage as he was made that two hours of sleep even more refreshing.

I skipped breakfast and, at eight fifty five everyone started down the steps, Dick and Alfred had even decided to show up. I explained the situation to them, and how, if they were willing, I would need one of the boys to play the role of my victim. I then brought out the assessment stone and explained its function to them.

Alfred said that, while he was willing to support us in the preparation, he was an old man and therefore wouldn’t be joining in the fight. As he was over eighty years old, he was mostly interested in cultivation for the health benefits. I promised to teach him several anti-aging techniques once this was over and he was at the appropriate stage. While I he couldn’t completely stop aging unless he became an Immortal, he could slow it and relieve most of the symptoms, and even just reaching the end of the cleansing stage would help with most of the symptoms.

The others were enthusiastic to help. Not that Bruce showed it, but I could tell he was determined to get to the bottom of this case and stop the perpetrator.

First I placed my hand on the Stone and it glowed with a green light about as strong as a cell phone flashlight. “Around ninety five percent of the people in my sect were Foundation Stage talents, with all but a few of the rest being Nascent. That doesn’t mean that I can’t get past the Foundation stage, only that at the end of it I will hit a bottleneck that will be almost impossible to break through without external help. So if you score low, don’t worry. I can figure out a way to get you past that bottleneck through alchemy.” If nothing else, there was something called a ‘blood talent pill’ that we captured the formula for from a sect of demon cultivators. If I made it with my blood it would weaken the bottlenecks of anyone below my talent level. I then passed the stone around.

First was Damian, who shined with a blue light a bit brighter than mine. “Nascent talent, twelve chi multiplier” I said. “Interesting. Tell me, do you have immortal blood in your veins? Usually such talent is because of a special bloodline.”

“I wouldn’t say Grandfather was a proper immortal, but he was close.” he said, then handed it to Tim.

With Tim it glowed a dull yellow. “Collection talent, five chi multiplier.” I said, and Damian started laughing at him, saying that the test proved Damian’s superiority.

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“Don’t worry about it.” I said to Tim. “I’ll teach you a few tricks for overcoming high-stage fighters at a lower stage.” He nodded, but I was sure he looked a little down about it.

Next came Dick. The stone glowed much like it did when I was holding it, but a little bit brighter. “Foundation talent, eleven chi multiplier.”

Then he handed it to Bruce. The stone gave off a variety of colors and brightness before settling on a dull blue. “Nascent quasi-talent, four chi quasi-multiplier”. I explained that rarely a person would get miniature bottlenecks along their path. Depending on how they broke through, their chi multiplier and whether there were future bottlenecks at that level could change. Bruce appears to be one of these. While he would have to work much harder at reaching higher levels, he wouldn’t have solid bottlenecks like the rest of us.

I then handed each person a bag of cleansing pills. “Your first training method is to reach the peak of cleansing, so I will need you to take those pills as often as your body can handle it. When I get back, I’ll make a sports drink for you, so you can avoid physical exhaustion and keep going. Once you no longer sweat black or gray, you are at the end of the Cleansing stage and can stop and recover. I won’t teach you how to break through yet, as doing so might hinder further progress, but I will teach you how to use chi to enhance your physical or mental stats, as well as techniques for improving your capacity. After that, I will give each of you a relic that can help you on the mission.”

I was a bit surprised that Bruce was letting me take the lead on this training, but it made sense when you thought about how he knew nothing about the subject and had sought out multiple martial arts masters in the past.

I lifted weights until it was time to get ready for the meeting, took a shower, and got dressed, relying on my enhanced recover from my chi to deal with the fatigue of the workout. I even took a cleansing pill before stepping into the shower, and washed more than just dirt and sweat off of me.

After letting him out in front of the Wayne Enterprises building I pulled into a space in the parking garage and closed my eyes. I focused on improving the purity of my elemental chi, starting with metal. In this place the metal chi was strong, so I drew it in until I was full of chi, then started re-purifying the chi that was inside of me, lowering that amount. The whole time my dantians were under enormous pressure so that they would slowly expand. This way I was able to get my chi up to 6% purity instead of the 5% of when I started. That might not sound like much, but increases in elemental chi purity lead to exponential improvement in the performance of spells which used it. The twenty percent increase in purity of my metal chi might translate into a forty percent or greater increase in the power, or a thirty percent or so decrease in the amount of chi used to perform the spell at the same level.

After an hour and a half I received a call from Bruce on my cell phone to come pick him up, pulled around, and we went back to the manor.

That night I started making recovery elixirs and pills, for the recovery of chi and the acceleration of the body’s healing and blood production. If we were going to engage in intense combat training we would need these. I was only able to make Cleansing and Collection level pills and elixirs due to the quality of my materials, but they should be enough as long as no one received a fatal blow.

That night I put on my Soul Blade outfit and went on patrols. I focused on the Asian district of the city, attacking several groups of criminals. If anyone saw me, they would see that I was conquering rival gang’s territory, consolidating power. By the end of the night I had the cooperation of two minor gangs, a total of thirty or so members. I curbed some of their worse activities, freeing the few trafficked humans one group had and having them focus on their illegal gambling and drug dealing instead of the prostitution, theft and protection rackets. I would have let them maintain the prostitution, but none of the women were their of their own free will. Now they would protect the neighborhood so that the locals wouldn’t rat them out to the cops. It was far from an ideal, but as long as I was playing a supervillain it was the best I could do.

I hired a few of the ones that were used to growing weed to grow spirit grass and spirit rice, offering them fifty per plant for the grass, for up to one hundred plants and one hundred per kilo for the rice, no limit. This way I could have an alternative source of the valuable materials in case the other guys betrayed me. I would provide a small number of cleansing and healing pills to these gangs as special rewards, insuring their loyalty. I wouldn’t be teaching them to break through to the Collection phase, and would only teach them even basic chi manipulation if one of them showed promise with alchemy, as the ability to feel and manipulate chi was needed for proper alchemy, but this would give me a territory to operate out of when I needed to be a supervillain.

One of the gangs was even lead by a Cleansing stage metahuman with superhuman strength and durability. I kept my strength low enough that I wouldn’t kill him, but high enough that he couldn’t even hit me, and even when I let him hit me to prove a point, it didn’t bruise me. After that, he and his gang surrendered without serious injuries other than a few bruises and dislocated arms and legs.

The next morning I found out that everyone except Dick and Alfred had reached the end of the Cleansing stage, those two being in the late part of it, so I started teaching them actual techniques. First was Restrict, which they should use any time they didn’t need their improved stats, to build up the size of their dantians and their chi reserves. I explained that whenever they broke through to the next level, the state their dantians were in at that point would be solidified and they wouldn’t be able to alter that level any more, only move chi in and out of it, but not expand it or purify the chi in that level. It was as if the dantians had shells built around them, and you couldn’t enter the shell. Even all of the effort I was putting in only effected the third layer, so a good start was critical. I wouldn’t be able to fix those issues until I broke my own cultivation.

Second was Release. This pushed more chi into the body, increasing the multipliers on your performance. Technically, this was a Collection stage ability, but it could be used in a limited manor in the Cleansing phase, pushing chi into specific areas to boost that area’s performance, such as pushing it into muscles to improve your strength or your bones to make them temporarily stronger. Your body wouldn’t be used to the increased levels at first, and you would likely damage yourself if you performed the technique poorly, but we had plenty of healing pills and elixirs just in case.

After everyone was worn out from the training I taught everyone, including Alfred, basic telepathy and telekinesis. These were the first stage of spiritual powers, and not everyone could do it well, but if they managed the telepathy I could teach them to do image training. They would be able to establish a space in their imagination which conformed to all of the laws of physics and their powers as they understood them and meet others with telepathy there, thus being able to train their techniques without physically exhausting themselves, or even training themselves through meditation.

They spent the next two days practicing those abilities. I joined them occasionally, to work on my techniques against such skilled fighters, but most of the last day was spent on the relics I would give them.

These relics, like the fake sword chi one I had redesigned, would do something that the Jade Dragon sect didn’t exactly ban, but which was frowned upon. They would store up chi from the user and then release it on command in a certain form. Among the Jade Dragon Sect it was believed that one should rely on their own strength to overcome challenges, not borrow strength from another person or relic, which is one reason why I didn't simply use pills to advance while there. In this situation, however, we needed to rely on the strength of relics if we wanted to do the greatest good.

On the night of the third day, I presented the relics, one bracelet for each of the five elements. The Metal chi one would let that user launch a lightning attack, the fire, water, and earth ones an attack of their element, and the Wood one would heal the target similar to a Collection stage healing pill. In fact, all of the bracelets let you launch an occasional spell at the middle Collection phase of strength.

As the best performer, Bruce got to pick first. He thought about it, then chose the Wood bracelet. It could, after all, be used on himself to keep him in the fight longer. Damian was next, choosing Fire. Dick went third and chose lightning. As the fourth one, Tim chose Earth. In his opinion, throwing rocks was better than splashing people, even if Aquaman and Aqualad used that ability to great effect. This left the Water one for Alfred, even if he wasn’t going into battle. I had managed to make myself a low Foundation level Sword Chi bracelet like the others, in order to maintain my supervillain identity. I gave everyone a bottle of ten chi recovery pills and a bottle of ten health recovery pills, at Cleansing stage, in case they were injured. I even threw in three blood production pills each.

There was one problem with this. As Damian would be playing the role of kidnapping victim, I couldn’t turn him over with any of this stuff on him. So, instead, I taught him to put things into my storage ring and remove them, then stored all of his things in that ring, placing the ring in the one I had taken off of a captive Black Serpent. When the heroes showed up, I would find him and give him the ring so he could join the fight.

“What if they recognize one of you, or remember your face after you betray them?” asked Tim, and to that I smiled and removed two Collection stage elixirs from my ring, handing Damian one.

“This is an Elixir of Many Faces. It lets you look like someone else for twenty four hours.” I then knelt in front of Damian. “Just hold the bottle and concentrate on what you want to look like. The person will need to be your size and proportions, as any discrepancies will get you noticed and the elixir isn’t that powerful, but make sure you have as solid an image as you can before drinking it.”

He nodded and closed his eyes to focus and the elixir started to bubble. When it stopped he downed the bottle and his face distorted. A few seconds later he looked like a nondescript Asian boy.

“Seriously, you chose him?” asked Tim, and I looked at him quizzically. “That’s what a B ranked child actor that’s in a lot of Kung Fu movies looks like. Damian loves those movies.”

“Shut up, Tim. You promised you wouldn’t tell.”

I laughed a bit. “I don’t think we care if you like Kung Fu movies. I’m actually a Jet Li fan myself.”

“I prefer Jackie Chan myself.” said Alfred, and everyone smiled.

I held my potion, focused my mind and, after a bit of bubbling, I downed the potion, taking the form of my best friend, Yu Bang.