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1,000 credits.

“How much to buy an identification ability that will let me understand techniques up to at least this level?”

5,000 credits.

Was it worth the cost? I had bought the mental library ability to be able to store any technique I saw for later usage. That library lost a lot of value if I had to run to the System every time I wanted to know what a technique was. I wasn’t keen on spending so many of my banked credits this early, but I knew the ability would eventually pay for itself.

“Confirm a purchase on that ability for me.”

Confirmed. Cost 5,000 credits. 7,040 credits remaining.

What I gained was not knowledge of how to identify scrolls. It felt more like a mental button I could press. I looked at the scroll Elder Mu had given me and hit that button.

Expanding Yang Mantra, Peak-Yellow Rank 2 Cultivation Technique, Fire Qi, Effects: Makes one less friendly and more aggressive. Makes one more suspicious of others.

It seemed like this was the sect’s answer to the problems caused by their Rank 1 cultivation technique. If a disciple proved himself, they would receive a Rank 2 technique that would balance them out mentally. It seemed highly unlikely the effects would truly cancel each other out, but the opposing impulses should at least help regulate each other.

My problem was that the Rank 1 technique I had cultivated no longer had the enhanced naiveté of the original. While the friendliness and aggression might balance out, this technique would make me more suspicious.

That wouldn’t be a terrible thing, I decided. One of my goals was to learn more about what was going on between the sect and the Su Clan, and being more suspicious of the people around me might be of benefit in this. Additionally, my enhanced soul strength had been rather effective in limiting the impulses from my cultivation technique. So, being more suspicious of people would be good, but I had to remember to point those suspicions only in directions I had facts to support.

Cultivation technique settled, the next step was deciding how to proceed with cultivating it. In the past, I had studied the Mid-Yellow Rank 2 technique on my own and, after a few lifetimes, was able to cultivate it to Martial Master Peak. I would much rather cultivate this new technique properly the first time. This meant that I needed to find someone to teach me.

Finding a teacher was a little trickier than in the past. I would need significantly more contribution points to pay for someone I could trust to teach me well, and I would need a way to gather said contribution points without arousing too many suspicions from other factions. Elder Mu had provided a solution to both of these problems, Deacon Ma.

Instead of visiting the regular halls to buy and sell, I was to contact Deacon Ma directly. He would provide me ingredients and I would turn them into pills. We would not be exchanging contribution points or gold. I was paid nothing, but when I needed something, there would be no cost. When the deacon, or possibly the elder, felt I had made sufficient contribution to be given a lesson, for example, then I would be given a lesson.

This completely off-the-books exchange was not my favorite way of doing things, but at least I understood what I was getting myself into. At any rate, none of this actually broke any sect rules, so if I decided I wasn’t getting fair compensation, I could try to join one of the larger factions.

Thus, instead of focusing on raising my cultivation I first had to concoct a series of pills.

I spread my alchemy activities out across the various workshops in the city. For one, arriving to concoct pills only once every other week would make me more forgettable, but more importantly it would give me a better chance to observe the activities of others.

From my talks with Elder Mu, it seemed clear that there was no back door to become an outer sect disciple. He couldn’t just promote me. I had to go through the regular competition. This told me that while there may be a few who slipped in through unconventional means, their numbers would be extremely limited.

Why was this so important?

Only five new outer sect disciples were chosen each year. The lifespan of a Martial Master was 200 years, while a Martial Grandmaster could live to 300. That would limit the maximum possible size of the sect to only 1,500 people. Even adding in a few more who slipped through, the sect couldn’t have more than 2,000 members. Of course, this only counted the alchemy branch, but in my mind, the alchemy and fighter branches were more like two separate sects.

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This city housed nearly 100,000 people. If 98% of the people in the sect were in this city, it would be impossible for the politics and factionalism of the greater sect to not impact the daily lives of the people here. This city was a massive workforce of alchemists producing a substantial number of pills daily. How did the factions decide how those resources were split? Was there any evidence of it in the city?

At first, I thought finding such evidence would be a lost cause, but it turned out the method of competition was staring me right in the face all along. The city held regular competitions between the nominal disciples across the city every month. Of course, I knew this. I had participated in such a competition before, but what I didn’t take notice of before was where the competitions were being held.

There seemed to be two distinct arrangements. Most of the competitions were held somewhere in the middle of a grid section. These seemed to be intra-factional tests to see who in a given faction’s area would be worth nurturing. A few, though, were held at the border of sections controlled by two different factions. These inter-factional competitions could be related to resource distribution, or really, they could be for anything. However, I was convinced that, whatever the prize was, it was important.

What caught my eye was that the reward for the individual winner was given out by a deacon from the opposing faction. This seemed to be a method devised to both bring wealth into the fold of the winning faction while also dissuading the more skilled participants from competing in the future. They likely wouldn’t compete if they had everything they needed.

While this research into politics was potentially useful in the future, my main focus was on making pills to earn a lesson from a knowledgeable teacher. It was over two months before Deacon Ma finally arranged a meeting for me.

I would be having a lesson from an inner sect disciple in one of the regular training rooms.

The disciple was already waiting for me when I entered the training room.

He was a lean, young-looking man with long hair wearing a sky-blue hanfu robe without embellishments. I assumed this color correlated to inner sect disciples.

“Please take a seat. Deacon Ma has asked me to teach you how to cultivate as a Martial Master. While my knowledge is incomparable to one of the elders, I am a Peak Master working on breaking through to Grandmaster. I should be able to answer any questions you have.”

“Thank you for your guidance, teacher,” I said with a slight bow.

“Just call me elder brother.”

“Yes, elder brother.”

He did not give his name, so I did not ask.

“Advancing your cultivation as a Martial Master is all about forming meridians in your body,” he began. “They guide the flow of qi around the body. Meridians are like blood vessels made of strands of qi woven together. The warp and weft of these qi strands affect how efficiently the qi flows through the body as well as how easily it can leave the meridians at desired points.”

He held up a hand and channeled his qi and weaved it into the form of a very basic meridian.

“You want to cultivate Peak-Yellow meridians. The main difference between Low-Yellow and Peak-Yellow meridians is in the structure of the weave of the meridians. A Peak-Yellow technique forms significantly stronger meridians. Rank 1 and Rank 2 cultivation techniques need to be paired. If the Rank 1 technique’s level is lower, you will have a hard time utilizing all your qi. If the Rank 2 technique’s level is lower, then you risk damaging your meridians if you pass too much qi through them.”

He passed a burst of qi through the meridian in his hand. The fragile weave of qi in the meridian burst apart.

“Before you start forming your meridians, you should practice by making simulated meridians outside your body. This will allow you to gain a better understanding of what you are doing wrong and what you need to do to fix it. Creating these false meridians is more challenging and taxing than creating the real ones inside your body, so if you can master this skill, you should end up with pristine meridians.”

He held up his right hand and quickly weaved strands of qi together into a tube once more.

“This is a crude example, but it is what you need to do. Go ahead try it.”

I held up my hand and began to channel qi. It was difficult to stabilize it into the woven structure. As he said, this was much easier to do when the qi was inside my body. After a few minutes, I showed him my result.

“Terrible,” was his evaluation. “If I’m being fair, it’s very good for a first attempt, but if you try to use something like that as an actual meridian you will just be crippling yourself. You need to focus a lot more on keeping the spacing of your weave even. The gaps between each qi thread should be perfectly spaced. The thickness of each thread also needs to be uniform.”

He pointed out numerous places where there were obvious problems.

“This is just down to practice. Practice making meridians over and over. Each time, check the consistency of your weave. Do not actually form a meridian until you can do it perfectly. However, that’s the minor issue. Let’s talk about the bigger problem.”

He held out his hand and formed an oversized practice meridian in his palm.

“This is what you are doing. Look at the qi strands. They are round. This is what you will find in Low and most Mid-Yellow techniques. Forming a meridian from rounded threads makes everything easier, but it will leak like a sieve. It’s good enough at low qi levels, but it’s nearly worthless if your Rank 1 technique is at even just High rank.”

He dispersed the qi in his hand and formed another example meridian.

“This is what you should be doing. The qi strands are more like flat ribbons. This allows you to completely seal the qi in the meridians and makes them significantly stronger. When you want to expel qi, you curl the ribbons of the meridian at the point you want to expel it. This makes it so qi will only leave your meridians at the point you choose. These are harder to form and take more work to control, but if you want Peak-Yellow meridians, this is what you have to do.”

He dispersed his energy once more and looked at me.

“That’s not much, but it’s all I can teach you. From there, it all just comes down to you practicing enough to be able to make the best meridians possible. Work with practice meridians, and when you are confident, start forming real ones. Just remember to take your time. If you rush at any step, you could form a useless meridian, and the best-case scenario there would be spending a long time to destroy and recultivate it.”

With that, the disciple left me to practice on my own. His entire lesson took less than fifteen minutes. Sure, he told me everything I needed to know, but it made me miss lessons where the teacher needed my money as much as I needed their help.