Chapter 224 – Life 73, Age 32, Martial Grandmaster Peak

The next day, the Disciples came to meet me in front of the Affinity Hall, and I guided them all inside. As they entered, I gestured to the new pedestal that stood to the right of the entryway.

“You should all recognize this. It is an orb used to measure one’s affinities.” They all nodded, easily understanding why such a thing would be useful. “What you may not know is that the Su Clan uses these incorrectly. This may have led you to certain misconceptions about your current affinity levels.”

Most of the Disciples took this news in stride. It meant little to them other than that they may have higher affinities than they thought. ShouLi, however, was a bit more shocked by the news. As an elite disciple and a member of the clan’s main branch, she likely had a better understanding of what this news could mean if the clan found out about it.

Knowing who could best demonstrate my point for me, I gestured for Mo to step forward.

“You were told you have zero affinities, correct? Try again and see what your affinities actually are.”

Hesitantly, Mo stepped forward, placed a hand on the orb, and channeled his qi into it. After only a few seconds, two symbols appeared, a stone and a metal ingot.

Seeing that no one understood the symbology, I explained. “A mid nine-star metal affinity and a high nine-star earth affinity.”

Mo was elated by the news, but I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed. I was hoping his zero affinity had been hiding a true uncut gem.

After Mo, GuiMing stepped forward and was shown to have only the peak nine-star earth affinity he was already aware of. Then, GuiAi tried her luck and was rated as only having a high nine-star earth affinity. Following them, ShouLi stepped forward and gave the best showing of the lot of them. She had the low seven-star earth affinity that she already knew about, but she also had a mid nine-star water affinity and low nine-star affinities for metal and wood.

Finally, Liang stepped forward and placed his hand on the orb, eager to see what his true affinities were. The results were, again, disappointing. He only had a lone mid nine-star earth affinity. As he moved back to join the others with a sullen look on his face, I couldn’t help but frown at the results.

The best hidden affinity anyone had revealed was only mid nine-star. That was far below what I had hoped to see. Was this why the Su Clan didn’t test affinities properly? Had they just decided that it wasn’t worth the effort?

In any case, while the results were a bit unfortunate, they wouldn’t have too much impact on my goals in the long term.

With everyone having had a chance to check their affinities, I gestured toward the formation that would assess their qi purity.

“When you advance your cultivation in the future, come to this formation. It will check the quality of your breakthrough and award you points based on the purity of your qi.”

I gestured for GuiMing to step forward and showed him how the formation worked. When the test was complete, it showed his account had been credited 127 points based on reaching Martial Disciple 4 with less-than-ideal qi purity. I then increased his total to 420, 180 for reaching Disciple 4 and 240 for trying to save Liang previously.

“Today, I am going to give everyone a full 60 contribution points for their breakthroughs, but in the future, you will need to be careful with your qi purity or you will start to fall behind your peers.”

I then ran everyone through the formation and adjusted their contribution point totals. Then, I explained the rules for the Essence Gathering Formations and how they would now cost one point per minute to use.

Finally, I gestured to a large tome on a table against a side wall.

“This is a ledger where I want you to record how much time you had to spend to increase your affinities to increase. This will help us learn how much time we should expect such breakthroughs to take in the future.”

I then showed them the first page of the ledger where I had written down expected multipliers for how long each additional level of an affinity should take.

“As you can see, I expect that advancing from a peak nine-star to a low eight-star affinity will take approximately ten times as long as acquiring a new low nine-star affinity, but this is only an estimate. It needs to be tested. When it comes to raising affinities, there are still a lot of unknowns, and I want your help figuring them out. As such, each time you correctly record the time you spent advancing an affinity in this ledger, I will award you an additional 20 contribution points.”

As that was all I had to show them in the Affinity Hall, I guided everyone to the Technique Hall and showed them the bookcase that now contained 36 brand-new memory orbs.

“Liang, you don’t have a technique right now. Step forward and place your jade on the side of the bookcase.”

He did so, and nine of the alcoves containing orbs lit up. Eight of them were for the Low-Yellow techniques of various elements and one was for the Mid-Yellow earth technique.

“You may choose any of these nine techniques. Just touch the orb, inject it with your qi, and you will learn everything you need to know. You will then need to cultivate it to Peak Disciple. After that, you can return here, reset your cultivation base, and choose a new technique.”

I looked around at the group. “As I said before, if you wish to receive a Rank 2 cultivation technique, you must first advance to Peak Disciple with a perfect foundation. This can only happen if you are using a Peak-Yellow technique or better. Use your time with these simpler techniques to learn to cultivate better. Using these techniques will give you the experience you need to cultivate more complex ones, and cultivating them well will earn you time in the Affinity Hall to make things even easier.”

I took out a scroll for a Low-Profound technique and showed it to them.

“Instead of jumping straight to Rank 2, you can also continue practicing more complex Rank 1 techniques. You will have to learn these techniques through scrolls, which will be more difficult, but if you wish, you can attempt to master Profound- and even Earth-Rank techniques this way.”

I then moved on to the second bookcase that had been placed on the opposite side of the room.

“This contains the basic techniques for each of the different elements. They are simple shaping techniques similar to the earth-moving technique you have already learned. You should use them to gain a better understanding of how to use the energies you are cultivating.”

I picked up a different scroll from the bookshelf. 

“The shaping techniques are valuable, but they are not necessarily suitable for all elements. These are techniques to create simulacra elements. For example, this one lets the user create a simulated fire using nothing but fire qi.” I picked up a different scroll. “This one will allow you to create lightning. The earth, metal, and wood versions of these techniques are not so valuable, but for fire and lightning, they are indispensable.”

I hadn’t created memory orbs for these techniques because my supply of blank orbs was severely limited. I only started with 90, and I had already used 40 of them on Rank 1 Yellow cultivation techniques. With the high cost of purchasing such orbs from the System, buying them was impossible, so if I wanted any more, I would have to return to the Nine Rivers Sect.

After giving them a few more details about the techniques, I left them alone to make their decisions without my presence influencing them.

ShouLi walked up to Liang and placed a hand on his arm. “Are you certain?”

He nodded and gave her a wry smile. He didn’t look too happy, but he was following her lead.

Then, he stepped forward and absorbed the Low-Yellow fire cultivation technique.

This somewhat surprised me. Liang had never even mentioned wanting to cultivate fire, so this choice had to have been the result of ShouLi’s influence. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing, but at least he was no longer so focused on only learning the lightning technique.

After Liang made his choice, ShouLi stepped forward and learned the water technique. Then, the two of them went to the Affinity Hall together.

Mo looked at GuiMing. “What are you two planning to do?”

GuiMing gave a soft grin. “We want to get a low eight-star earth affinity first. We’ll look at branching out into the other elements after that. That seems like the best way to start racking up points, right? I figure, focusing on raising a single affinity as high as possible first will let us advance faster and form better foundations.”

Mo nodded. “Makes sense. I need to finish up with my current technique, but after that, I want to try cultivating metal qi. I’d just like to experience the other elements and see if there are any differences between them.”

---------------------------------------------------

The next few weeks were rather peaceful. I spent a bit of time building a small house for myself and then set up a new Cultivation Hall alongside the Affinity and Technique Halls. 

For the moment, this new hall only consisted of five small rooms equipped with Qi Gathering Formations. These formations had no filters in place to limit the types of energy they gathered, so using them would make cultivating a pristine foundation more difficult, but they would allow the Disciples to cultivate much faster than otherwise.

All this construction work made me wish I could change the cultivation technique I was using. I hadn’t seen any real benefit from cultivating environmental wood essence, and being locked into only using wood qi was far too limiting. I would have liked to be able to use earth qi to lay foundations, wood qi to build large wooden structures, and metal qi to add a variety of accents.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel that I could risk resetting my cultivation base and switching to a different technique at the moment. If I did, it would take me more than a year or two to return to my current level, and I needed to be a Peak Grandmaster if I wanted to visit the Su Clan and recruit more people.

So, since I couldn’t cultivate earth or metal qi myself, I started shifting this work onto the Disciples. They would take care of the stonework, and in return, I would give them contribution points based on how good of a job they did. In the future, I would need to expand the contribution point system so that they could buy more than just time with the Essence Gathering Formations, but for now, that was enough to satisfy them.

With the help of the new Qi Gathering Formations, their increasing affinities, and the deeper understanding of cultivation they gained from the memory orbs, everyone was cultivating at a rapid pace. In these short three weeks, everyone had been able to reach Peak Disciple and reset their cultivation base at least once, and Mo had been able to do so twice.

I had told them that if they had any questions about cultivation they could come and ask me, but with the help of the memory orbs, it seemed that wasn’t necessary. However, eventually, GuiAi did come to pay me a visit.

“Patriarch.” She gave me a deep bow as she entered my house. “I would like to ask a question.”

I gestured for her to continue.

“Can we… Can we take a break?”

I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

She shrank back a little, worried about upsetting me. “It’s just… we’ve done nothing but cultivate for four months now. I was wondering if we could… take a break? Go out and have fun?”

“That… What do you have in mind?”

She looked up, somewhat hopeful. “Can we go to a city? Go shopping or just go out to eat? We have food here, but none of us are very good cooks…”

I considered the request. I had moved the group out of Rosehill because I wanted them to be able to journey outside without being targeted by other forces. Mount Jiang made that possible, but only after they were well into the Martial Master realm. Until then, they were basically trapped here, and that wasn’t what I had originally wanted.

After thinking about it, I came to a decision. “25 points per person per day. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go and keep you safe, but it will cost you 25 points per day.”

GuiAi’s eyes widened at the price, but her face quickly broke into a grin.

“En. Thank you, Patriarch.”