16 News Has Arrived

Now with his plans back in motion, Feng decided to place himself in closed door cultivation with his new partners.

Feng continued training until he reached a bottleneck within his cultivation one year later. His partners also reached bottlenecks at the third rank of cultivation. Feng was only one level away from breaking into the fifth rank while his partners were one level away from breaking into the fourth rank!

Coming out of his room with his cultivation partners surrounding him closely, Feng met with his senior disciple Mao. Mao was at the fourth cultivation rank and Feng told his disciples that those who reached the fourth cultivation rank would be considered their seniors.

Many changes had occurred within these three months where Feng was in closed door training. Mao updated him on all of these changes.

To start, Mao explained to his master that due to the circumstances surrounding the fact that a township nearby was being threatened by bandits, they decided to ask their township for protection.

This meant that half of Feng's disciples chose to move to that township to take it over, while the rest remained here to await further orders.

This was acceptable to Feng, because it meant that no bloodshed needed to happen for them to take control of another township. This also meant that no one would feel threatened, since they only controlled two struggling townships.

The other piece of news was that the banquet led by Violet back in the city was successful, but not many sects caved to her invitation to join the Dual Cultivation Sect. This was pleasant news to hear from Feng, even though, the event could have been more successful with himself present.

Currently, the Dual Cultivation Sect was now ranked number eighteen within the city, but its growth seemed very stagnant at this point in time. The top three sects within the city did not give any room for Feng's sect to grow, but did not actively push them down.

To Feng, stagnant was better than annihilation, but, he still wanted the best case scenario to happen. However, Feng was still pleased with Violet's negotiation skills.

Recalling all of his disciples back to their headquarters within the township, Feng took a head count and was extremely pleased with what he saw.

Out of the one hundred disciples, all of them were now at least of the third cultivation rank while twelve were of the fourth rank.

What also surprised Feng, was that the twelve cultivators who were of the fourth rank, decided to each take six disciples of their own within both cities.

Though, there were not many cultivators to choose from for those disciples to take some of their own, they were still able to have all of their disciples to cultivate to the second cultivation rank.

This was impressive because Feng now had seventy two cultivators of the second rank, eighty three cultivators of the third rank, and twelve cultivators of the fourth rank all under his control!

Due to his bottleneck, Feng decided to start strategically setting up small squads to send out on missions.

With five squads finally made, Feng gave out a simple order. Due to so many small bandit camps scattered, he wanted to absorb them into his sect one by one to improve their overall strength.

Like this, Feng would finally take the first step towards taking over these lands!