CHAPTER 3

Jang managed to get himself to full mast again within half an hour before inserting himself into the soft wetness between Flower's legs. Although it was quite enjoyable, the

strain of being a 35 year old man with suppressed cultivation was begining to rear it's ugly head. After finishing inside her, Jang exited Flower's room much earlier than planned and quit the entire establishment after just one more drink.

As soon as he stepped out of the establishment he felt like a hand that had been squeezing his lungs was suddenly taken Off. Even after spending more than 20 years as a cultivator, the sheer difference in a cultivators body and abilities was something that still never failed to induce a sense of wonder in him.

Jang enjoyed the feel of the air rushing into his lungs and the way his strides carried him effortlessly over terrain that would have left a mortal gasping for breath. where an average mortal could hope to live a maximum lifespan of 70 years before succumbing to illness and death, a vapour stage cultivator like him could hope to live around 120 years. If he could somehow manage to advance to the condensed Qi stage, then it would increase to more than 250 years. At the next stage of having crystal Qi, one could expect to easily live well north of a millenium. Jang had never actually heard of anyone dying of natural causes once they had crossed over to the divine heart realm.

In the early days of his cultivation, Jang had been certain that he would one day reach the peak of cultivation and become an immortal. He walked closer and closer to the imposing walls of the cloudy mountain sect, which covered the entire valley of a mountain so high and so constantly been covered in clouds that no one he had ever talked to had seen what was it that lay at the summit.

It had only taken a few months at the sect for Jang to be disabused of his dreams of granduer and lofty ambitions. What the stories he'd heard about cultivation in his small village had failed to mention just how resource intensive cultivation was. In theory, cultivation was the process of absorbing and integrating the heavenly energy that descended on earth into one's dantian and achieving strength through it.

In practice, the process was anything but simple. for starters, only a certain amount of energy fell from the heavens that couldn't keep pace with the amount of cultivators vying for the same energy. This had led to the formation of sects which controlled a certain area. The sects, over countless millenia, had perfected the methods to use artifacts and arrays to maximize the efficiency of cultivation. There were countless wars and skirmishes that had been fought over the years to gain control of land and artifacts by the sects. They might all have just fought till there was just one sect standing, had it not been for the regular demon incursions. The more powerful demon incursions from the central continent had even wiped out entire sects overnight.

Thankfully, there hadn't been any major demon incursions in the past millenia, just minor ones like the one that wiped out Jang's own village when he was little.

Jang flashed his sect badge at the guard station and he was let through without a fuss. On his way to his room, Jang passed a large dome shaped building. An involuntary sigh escaped his lips as Jang thought back to the first time he entered the cultivation hall. Technically one could cultivate anywhere, but if Jang were to sit down outside the cultivation hall and tried to absorb the heavenly Qi, he would be unable to progress a single layer in a hundred years. That was because the sect's cultivation halls were set up with artifacts and complicated arrays that directed almost all of the heavenly energy into the cultivation hall.

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Even this large and grandiose cultivation hall could only absorb a small amount of energy since it was for the outer disciples of the sect who were in vapour Qi stage. The access to the cultivation hall was controlled by sect tokens or coins which were issued, supposedly based on your merit and the services you provided to the sect. Once, someone gained access to the sect hall, the speed with which they could cultivate depended on their talent. which was characterised by the amount of nodes in the dantian they could activate simultaneously. so, someone with good talent and a willingness to serve the sect should be able to progress their cultivation purely based on merit.

In practice, the amount of services you could do for the sect was based on your level of cultivation and to progress in cultivation, you needed more tokens, which you could only get by performing more services. And the vast majority of cultivators, like Jang were born with average talent. Jang was fairly certain that if everyone in the outer sect sat down to cultivate, unaided by any artifacts, they'd all be cultivating at the same speed.

Jang had understood early on that it was a system that was designed to favour the sect Elder's children and members of powerful families and clans. While someone like Jang, who was unaided by any backers in the sect could hope to get about 10 hours a week in the cultivation hall, Zhao would be able to get close to 50 hours. And taking into account the probable fact that his family would have furnished him with artifacts that helped with exciting more nodes in his dantian, Zhao probably was cultivating at a speed that was 10 times more than what Jang was capable of.

This was what had allowed Zhao to outstrip Jang in his cultivation and reach the late stages of vapour Qi stage and almost ready to ascend to the next stage, while Jang had been stuck in the early stages without making much progress.

As far as Jang knew, there was only one other way to gather heavenly energy other than using the cultivation hall. And that was to go out and kill demons. While it might sound good on paper, the mortality rate for vapour Qi cultivators like himself on the frontier was so high that practically no one was willing to go there. The situation had gotten so bad that the sect now had no more volunteers who willingly went to the frontier from the outer circle. To combat this problem, the sect had now taken to sending all Vapour realm cultivators above the age of 40 forcibly to the frontlines.

The official explanation given for this was that this would allow the struggling cultivators an oppurtunity to progress further in their path. As always, this was just bullshit to hide the fact that the sect had no value for people over 40 years old who couldn't even break through to the condensed Qi realm. So, rather than just getting rid of these disciples for being a drain on sect resources, they were sent off to die as fresh meat for the grinder in the frontier incursions.

Jang was walking down the corridor that led to the rooms which he inhabited before pausing in front of a door that was two doors down from his own. It was the room that used to belong to brother Peng, before he became another victim of sect's forced conscription in the endless war against the demons. Brother Peng had also been a sect outsider like him and hadn't actually managed to break through to the next level before he turned 40. He was called into service more than 6 months ago and Jang hadn't heard from him since.

With a mortality rate that exceeded 98%, the sad truth was that he would probably never hear from kind brother Peng ever again.

Balling up his fists as he continued walking, Jang reached his room, his buoyant mood after fucking flower moon having long evaporated. Jang decided to go to bed to try and get up early to get some time in the cultivation hall, hoping for a break through that just wasn't forthcoming as of now.