After resolving the issue with Manager Liu, my time in Dragon Gate City became much more relaxed. Zhong had disappeared, so neither SuYin nor I had any more problems with him or Gao.
With threats to my life eliminated, I had the ability to freely explore the city and surrounding areas, but after a few small excursions, I no longer had the desire. There were no forgotten ruins or mystical forests to explore, just endless fields of low-level herbs. While there were a few options for entertainment and relaxation, I allowed my cultivation technique’s mental effect to keep me focused on my advancement.
This life, I remained dedicated to the timeline I had laid out. Every other year, I advanced two steps and brought Mei and SuYin up with me. With Mei, it was simple. I could easily help her form her meridians to the same level as mine, so we advanced in sync, and shortly after I reached Peak Master, she did as well.
With SuYin, it was more difficult. She wasn’t able to give me control of her qi like Mei could, especially when it was within her body, so I had to guide her to be able to advance herself. Her final meridians were always slightly off, so she needed time for her qi to settle, but with the refined technique I had provided, that still only took a few months. She started behind us, and I slightly rushed her to cultivate faster to catch up with the schedule I had set. It may have been unfair to the girl, but I needed her to reach Grandmaster before the year I turned 29, so we had to speed things up. While the quicker pace may have slightly hurt her foundation, it was still leagues ahead of other Masters I had seen.
After we had all reached Peak Master, the only thing left was finding a suitable cultivation technique for all of us. The only Rank 3 technique I had brought back with me was the Mid-Profound dual-element technique for myself. I had nothing for Mei or SuYin. Right after I started teaching them, I began searching the Pavilion library, but they didn’t have Rank 3 techniques that felt like suitable complements for the ones I had already given them. Instead of worrying only about mental effects, I was beginning to understand that different cultivation techniques created different ‘flavors’ of qi. The fire qi I was cultivating now felt ever so slightly different than in previous lives.
My understanding of this effect was limited, but I knew I needed to find techniques that were a good match to their particular variations of wood and water qi.
I put in requests for manuals that might work, as well as a few other Rank 3 techniques to fill out my library, but it seemed like I wouldn’t have much luck. They needed to requisition the books from the main branch, and I hadn’t yet established enough clout to make that happen. Secretary Jiang and Manager Cai had no such limitations, though.
After dealing with Manager Liu, Jiang had given me my rewards. I was upset with them, but the reward… it calmed me down quite a bit. It at least showed that when they used me, they were willing and able to provide proper compensation.
The bag he gave me contained only five techniques, but they were the epitome of delivering coal in winter. First were the Rank 3 versions of the techniques I had given the girls. Not simply techniques that would fit, but the ones designed to work best with the techniques they already had. These felt like they were nearly reward enough to me since they were exactly what I needed, but the other three techniques were beyond anything I could have dreamed of receiving.
The three manuals formed a set of Warrior Tier cultivation techniques, letting someone advance from Disciple 1 to Peak Grandmaster. They were single-element techniques for cultivating earth qi. If I wanted to become a formation master in the future, I would need to cultivate earth qi, so I had been looking for quality techniques in preparation. What made these particular techniques special, though, was that they were a set of Peak Earth-Rank techniques, a complete set of Warrior Tier Peak Earth-Rank cultivation techniques. Even if it was for a qi type I didn’t currently use, the research value of seeing what would make a technique ‘Peak Earth-Rank’ was immense.
Reading through the Rank 1 technique, I found that it was not too dissimilar to the Profound techniques I had used previously. The primary difference was that where the Profound technique used dozens of acupoints, the Earth one used hundreds, 361 to be exact. I wasn’t sure, but what seemed to make the technique Earth-Rank was a method for dealing with the interference I had experienced when trying to cultivate through multiple acupoints. I couldn’t use this until I started over again, but it gave me hope for further developing my techniques.
If Cai had the pull to get me a set of Peak Earth-Rank techniques delivered to the Wastes, she wouldn’t be stuck here herself, and there was no way that anything I did was worthy of such a lavish reward. No, this was a gift from her backer.
Manager Cai said she wouldn’t report me to the Pavilion, and based on our conversation, I tended to believe that was true, but no one who reached a high level in such a cutthroat world would be a complete idiot. When she sent Perfect Rank 3 pills and asked for cultivation techniques in return, especially right after, if Cai was right, there had been a suspicious surge in karma, it would have been obvious what was going on. Maybe no one would come find me directly, but I was on someone’s radar.
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Why send me a complete set of cultivation techniques for an element I couldn’t use? There was no way WuJing was the only person in the Pavilion who realized I took two girls who couldn’t cultivate and was about to turn them into Grandmasters within 10 years. When I requested these techniques, they must have thought I intended to do it again. I wouldn’t be surprised if I stumbled upon a quality set of metal qi techniques placed right in my path in the near future.
Drawing attention like this was potentially something I would need to be wary of in future iterations, but right now, it was what I needed. It had been my plan from the moment I put on these fancy robes and walked into the Pavilion. Be someone those in power would want to invest in.
Now, though, was not the time for worrying about company politics. It was time to advance.
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I lacked the knowledge and experience to improve my Rank 3 cultivation technique as much as I had the others, having only advanced to Grandmaster once, but I still needed to make a few changes to it.
The Peak-Yellow technique I used previously created a dantian that was questionable at best. When pushed to the limit, it was leaky and easily damaged. This was due in no small part to my mistakes in its construction, but I felt the construction method itself could be vastly improved.
This Mid-Profound technique created what seemed to be three dantians in one, each of similar construction to my Yellow-rank technique. The design was for a top dantian connected to wood meridians, a bottom dantian connected to fire meridians, and a middle one that was only connected to the other two. As I advanced, I would need to compress the qi in the top and bottom dantians simultaneously, always keeping my wood and fire qi in balance. This setup seemed nightmarish to create, and it didn’t match with the natural qi flows in my body at all, but I didn’t have a better idea for how it should be done. I would follow this blueprint, experience it, live with it, and try to do better next time. Also, I needed to find more dual-element Rank 3 techniques for research.
Even following this manual as a guide, I needed to improve it to Peak-Profound for it to be suitable to use with my current techniques. I wasn’t sure if my plan was enough to qualify, but it should at least make significant improvements to the structural integrity of the dantians.
Instead of creating a sphere from four pieces and sewing them together, I patterned each of my new vessels off the construction of a beachball. I made two disks for the top and bottom and six slices to form the sides. Two of the slices had holes that were connected to the meridians on the left side of my torso, and two had connections to the meridians on my right. In the middle were two solid slices holding it all together.
I connected the middle dantian to the other two through holes in the top and bottom discs.
This construction had vastly more parts, and even with my higher affinities, it was a struggle. Each dantian had eight parts that all had to be created and maintained before I could begin assembly. The saving grace was that while it was more difficult to manage everything, sewing the pieces together was significantly simpler. The beachball-esque construction method helped everything fit much better. After each dantian was completed, it no longer required my focus, and I was able to rest and then move on to the next without worry.
After several months of hard work, I regained the level of Martial Grandmaster 1 with a vastly superior set of dantians.
After a little practice, I was able to cycle energy in or out of the top and bottom dantians when working with wood or fire qi, but I wasn’t sure what the middle dantian was for. Qi didn’t want to flow into it. I tried to use it as a passthrough, letting my wood qi flow into my fire qi to strengthen it, but that didn’t work, and any of the limited qi that did enter did not want to leave. Eventually, I gave up on working with the middle dantian since I began to suspect it was more related to my advancement to Lord.
After my cultivation stabilized, I found that I only had ten months left before my deadline. At that point, SuYin had to be a Martial Grandmaster, and it would be best if she had been there for several months, possibly even having advanced a step or two in that time.
I didn’t want to start with her first, though. It was easier to help Mei since she could give greater access to her qi. I would refine my teaching techniques on Mei, and only then would I proceed to guide SuYin.
They had both been studying their Rank 3 technique for years, so when I told Mei it was time, she was more than ready. She used the same beachball construction I had, and she did her best to advance without my direct intervention. This was practice for helping SuYin, so I would only take control of Mei’s qi if it was necessary. The process was slower than it could have been, but even though I didn’t control her qi, I was able to act as a stabilizing force for each piece as it was constructed, so Mei only needed to worry about the next step. The final product was far, far superior to my first dantian and was close to the quality I had achieved this time around. Success in hand, I moved on to help SuYin.
While SuYin’s blessing lacked the guiding force of Mei’s, her perfect memory allowed her to place each thread of qi with exacting standards. She didn’t need my guidance at all, she knew exactly what to do. The only help she needed from me was the same stabilization I had provided Mei so that she could focus all her attention on the next step.
With only six months until the deadline, we had all advanced to Martial Grandmaster. While I wasn’t worried about myself or Mei at this point, I provided SuYin with multiple Rank 3 Qi Gathering Pills over the following months. With one month to go, at age 29, she was a Martial Grandmaster 2. Her progress was far beyond anyone I had ever seen at her age in the Twin Mountains Sect.