G. Tolley
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Chapter 447 – Life 117, Age 17, Martial Master 3
🕑 Added 2025-12-09 01:39:45 +0000 UTCGuiding twenty-four children through the Broken Spear Outpost was like herding a flock of startled birds. None of them had ever left the city of their birth, so they stared at every stall, cultivator, and beast-drawn carriage with open curiosity. Their chatter, all of which was in Western Han, only made things worse. Anyone with eyes could see that these children weren’t locals, and trying to dress them up as such would have only caused problems.
Fortunately, I had already set the groundwork needed to explain this.
Our new Disciples had come from an isolated farming community. Like the rest of us, they were the descendants of cultivators from the Nine Rivers Domain who had come to the Heroes Domain looking for a fresh start. How did they manage to appear at the outpost without being listed on any carriage manifests? Simple. My blessing.
The Bureau would, of course, find this suspicious—especially since we couldn’t say where, exactly, these children had come from. Ultimately, though, such suspicions were irrelevant. We were following the Bureau’s rules, and that was all that mattered.
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Once everyone was registered and safely back at the villa, we sat our new recruits down in the inner courtyard, and Meng LuYao took her place on the small platform in front of them, her expression calm and composed.
“In the Heroes Domain, most people do not cultivate the elements that you are familiar with,” she said, unstrapping her guandao and lifting it for all to see. “Here, cultivators use the qi of weapons. Within the Amorphous Blade Sect, we cultivate guandao qi.”
Drawing a combination of guandao qi and light qi, Meng LuYao released a brilliant beam of energy that shot from the edge of her blade and carved a deep furrow into the earth—right between the two rows of Disciples.
Sliding her weapon back into place, Meng LuYao’s gaze swept across the seated youths. “Unfortunately, most of you do not possess an affinity for the guandao. We have plans to address this, but they will take time to implement. For now, most of you will need to focus on other types of energy.”
At her signal, YuLong and I stepped forward and began distributing scrolls to the eager Disciples.
“These contain a Low-Yellow cultivation technique for your highest affinity,” she continued. “You have three days. At the end of these three days, I expect all of you to have broken through at least once. Fail, and you will be punished. Exceed this standard, and you will be rewarded.”
Pulling together several strands of light qi, Meng LuYao formed a series of glowing arrows above the courtyard. “Elder Fang has prepared Qi Gathering Formations to assist you. Follow these arrows to the formation that matches your qi type. If you have any questions, you may ask, but your scroll should contain all the information you need.”
Seeing bewildered looks on several faces, I couldn’t help but sigh.
Meng LuYao’s test was anything but fair. With each recruit possessing wildly different affinities—both in element and in strength—there was no meaningful way to compare their results. The world wasn’t fair either, though. Our Disciples were bound to face off against enemies with greater talents, stronger blessings, and higher levels of cultivation. Better they learn how to confront inequality now than suffer for it later.
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When the three-day timer was at an end, the first to emerge from seclusion were the two members of the Suba family: Suba HaoRong and Suba KangRong. Having grasped the essence of this test, they charged forward recklessly and used their mid seven-star earth affinities to advance all the way to Martial Disciple 8. Their foundations were terrible, but this didn’t matter. They had accomplished their goal.
Right behind them were Ye Sheng and Bao Ming. With low seven-star wood affinities, these two only reached Martial Disciple 7, but they had done far more cleanly than the Suba cousins.
With no one else having even reached Martial Disciple 5, these four wore matching expressions of pride and arrogance. What they failed to understand, however, was that this only meant they had started with the highest affinities—not the greatest talent. That honor went to Shi Zhang, a young man whose entire blessing had been used to boost his talent with the guandao. At the moment, he only possessed a low nine-star metal affinity, but given enough time, he would be strong enough to rival YuLong.
He wasn’t the only one with promise, either. Every other recruit had received some sort of unique ability with their blessing, but they had also received enough of a boost to one of their talents to make reaching Peak Grandmaster an inevitability. All they needed to do was convert those talents into the proper affinities.
For now, though, Martial Disciple 2 was sufficient for Meng LuYao to begin her lecture on sealing acupoints. A few of the weaker cultivators struggled with this, as their cultivation base wasn’t yet strong enough to create a serious imbalance. They would learn in time, though. For now, we just needed to ensure that the stronger ones didn’t succumb to madness.
Once the lecture was finished, Meng LuYao had everyone use the memory orb containing the Southern Yue language. Then, she distributed Energy Expulsion Pills to destroy their unstable cultivation bases.
That done, she began teaching them how to cultivate properly. And, once each recruit reached Martial Disciple 2 with a reasonably solid foundation, she handed them off to Kan and YuLong to begin their training in martial arts.
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Following the example set by the Nine Rivers Sect, I wanted every member of our sect to develop a basic level of martial proficiency. They didn’t need to become elite warriors, but if they were ever in danger, they needed to be able to hold out long enough for someone to reach them.
Once again, Suba KangRong distinguished himself. Blessed with enhanced perception, he could not only see and absorb everything that Kan and YuLong demonstrated, but he could also read his opponents’ movements with uncanny clarity. He lacked the raw strength and muscle memory to truly challenge either Kan or YuLong, but against his peers, he was nearly unbeatable.
His cousin, Suba HaoRong, wasn’t quite so fortunate. His blessing allowed him to create a sentinel—a stationary clone that was capable of detecting nearby enemies, even those hidden by illusions. Though highly valuable, this blessing did little to enhance HaoRong’s combat abilities, leaving him to struggle through YuLong’s lessons alongside everyone else.
The only Disciple who was even close to keeping pace with KangRong was Shi Zhang. He lacked KangRong’s perception blessing, but Shi Zhang’s exceptional talent for the guandao was nearly enough to compensate for it. He wasn’t able to read attacks as clearly as KangRong, but his reflexes were sharp enough to keep pace when everyone else was left far behind.
For the first several months, our recruits split their time between cultivation with Meng LuYao and combat training with Kan and YuLong. Those with a talent for the guandao slowly developed a basic affinity with their weapon, and everyone simply adjusted to their new life in the Heroes Domain.
Meanwhile, JiuLi and I were busy in our respective workshops, doing everything possible to earn enough contribution points to pay our rent.
As a First-Class Sect, gathering contribution points was infuriatingly tedious. The system had been designed to prevent one or two individuals from funding an entire sect on their own. The Bureau wanted every member of our sect to contribute to its continued success, proving that all of our members could contribute.
So, once our new Disciples stabilized their cultivation bases, JiuLi and I pulled aside everyone who wanted to learn a profession and began training them. Kan and YuLong took care of everyone else, significantly upping the difficulty of their combat practice in preparation for missions outside of the outpost.
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The group that joined JiuLi consisted almost entirely of members of the Shi Clan, most of whom were interested in helping her pursue her goal of creating high-quality, refined hemp clothing. Two of these Disciples had been given blessings that proved particularly useful. One could extract dyes from plants with remarkable efficiency, and another could weave unusually fine threads without needing to worry about them snapping.
She was also joined by the two unaffiliated members of the Su Clan. The Su youths weren’t particularly interested in refining clothing, but they did want to learn to craft their own weapons. This wasn’t JiuLi’s forte, but the fundamentals of refining were the same regardless of the final product, so she took them in and taught them what she could.
The more complicated issue was the group from the Shi Clan that wanted to learn about formations—specifically, formations that could be applied to JiuLi’s clothing. To design a suitable formation, they would need a solid understanding of the garments they would be working with, but they also needed to learn the basics of formations, which JiuLi couldn’t teach them.
It was an awkward mismatch, but in the end, I decided to leave these would-be formation specialists under JiuLi’s care. My hope was that, by learning the basics while surrounded by JiuLi’s craft, they would develop an intuition for how formations might enhance clothing in ways that conventional formation training never could. I stopped by occasionally to offer guidance or correct misunderstandings, but for the most part, I let them explore the field on their own, with only a few books on introductory formations for guidance.
If we were lucky, they might produce something entirely unique. If not, I would just have to scoop them up and start over with the basics.
Thanks to everything JiuLi had learned during our eight months as a Second-Class Sect, she could now craft simple Rank 1 robes without much difficulty. The clothing barely qualified as armor, and the Sect Affairs Bureau didn’t want anything to do with it. However, we were able to secure permission to open our own Bureau-Approved shop where we could sell these robes for five to ten contribution points apiece.
This wasn’t much, but once JiuLi’s apprentices were up to speed, this little shop would be able to cover our villa’s rent. It wouldn’t, however, bring in enough for us to purchase a villa of our own. For that, we needed a far larger source of income.
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While I personally was most interested in advancing my knowledge of formations in this life, there wasn’t much need for more formation specialists within our sect—aside from those assisting JiuLi in weaving formations into her clothing, of course. A sect only required so many defensive barriers and Qi Gathering Formations. Once those were in place, additional formations were of little use.
In all fairness, this was a somewhat simplistic viewpoint. There were plenty of formations that could prove useful during the Bureau’s missions, everything from disposable attack formations to complex siege formations. In general, though, Kan’s talismans were far more effective for most of these situations. Once he had time to sit down and teach a few of our warriors to create talismans of their own, our sect’s need for formations would shrink even further.
Therefore, instead of wasting time teaching our Disciples how to craft formations, I focused on teaching them herbalism and alchemy. While I wasn’t an expert in Central Continent herbalism, I knew enough to teach the basics, and Ye Sheng’s and Bao Ming’s blessings made the work significantly easier.
Ye Sheng possessed a blessing that could accelerate the growth of nearly any plant, limited only by the Rank of his cultivation base. Unlike qi techniques that could be used to quickly grow short-lived vines during combat, the herbs this blessing produced were nearly indistinguishable from their natural counterparts. The only drawback was that the rapid growth made it far more difficult to maintain the proper balance of environmental energies. Without the support of a powerful Qi Gathering Formation, the quick growth would soon drain the surrounding energies, causing a sharp drop in the herbs’ quality.
Still, these rapidly-grown herbs were excellent for training new alchemists. High in toxins and brittle in structure, they were perfect for beginners who were still learning the basics of purifying herbs. The added difficulty created by such poor-quality ingredients was perfect for strengthening one’s foundations.
Bao Ming’s blessing was the opposite. She could slow the maturation of herbs, giving them more time to absorb energy, dramatically increasing their quality. Unfortunately, though, while such herbs were ideal for crafting high-quality, nine-patterned pills, the Bureau offered virtually no incentive for First-Class Sects to produce such pills. With the way the Bureau priced things, the herbs themselves ended up being worth far more than any pill I could make from them.
Still, after being given a plot of land in the villa’s outer courtyard, Ye Sheng and Bao Ming were both able to start growing herbs that greatly alleviated our need for contribution points. Having grown up around expert herbalists on the Plane of Woody Earth, they barely even needed any instruction on how to do so.
The same could not be said of the apprentice alchemists that I had accepted, however.
Members of the Lan Branch, Sulan DanQing and Sulan YaoQing had both received blessings with the potential to make them expert alchemists. DanQing’s blessing made it so that his qi was far more capable of eliminating toxins than usual, and YaoQing’s blessing gave her the ability to weave medicinal energies together, making it significantly easier to combine the energies of incompatible herbs.
These blessings had immense potential, but DanQing and YaoQing were little more than children. They knew almost nothing about alchemy, and it would be years before they would be able to sell pills for a profit. For the time being, they only added to our financial strain rather than alleviating it.
Still, watching them stumble through their lessons, I couldn’t help but smile. We were poor, and everyone was overworked, but we had a bright future ahead of us.
Comments
ExcitableSpren
He likely doesn't want to send them down pre-established paths. By raising new cultivators in an unfamiliar world, the possibility for innovation is much higher. This is most clearly evident in his decision regarding the Formation apprentices.
Meir Banon
Tftc
Michael Ferguson
No memory orbs? Is this because Fang doesn't have enough information to make them?
