I had left a few weeks after one Su Clan training camp and was returning a couple of weeks before the next, this meant that I had been gone from my new clan for nearly eight months. While this was a pitifully short time for me, for the young members of my clan who had yet to even reach their second decade, these eight months probably felt like an eternity.
I was well aware that any number of problems might have cropped up while I was away, but this was, in essence, a test. Before leaving, I had provided them with all the resources they would need to survive while I was gone, and they had numerous activities to keep them busy. Aside from training the newest recruits, they could practice cultivation, martial arts, or their professions.
Yes, they were young, and yes, they were inexperienced, but if they couldn’t maintain at least the semblance of a stable society after only eight months alone, it was unlikely that they would be able to survive the years of seclusion that were required of cultivators.
So, my heart was filled with a combination of eagerness and dread as I returned to Mount Jiang to see how things had progressed in my absence.
Near the end of my climb up to the side of the mountain, I began hearing the sounds of yelling and battle above me. Worried about what might be going on, I hastened my ascent.
Upon cresting the edge of the plateau, the sight that greeted me was far different from what I had imagined. A large, wooden arena had been constructed in the middle of the plateau, and two young Disciples were ruthlessly assaulting each other atop it. Around the edge of this arena, others had gathered to cheer on these fighters.
As they fought, the Disciples didn’t hold anything back. They used their full strength and attacked each other with deadly intent. However, because their cultivation levels were both only at Martial Disciple 3, and because their skill levels were equally matched, neither of the boys were ever in any real danger of death.
I considered stepping in before things got too out of control, but I didn’t want to do so until I had a better understanding of what was going on.
The match ended with one boy lying on the wooden arena with a broken arm and severe internal injuries. The other boy was still standing, but his condition wasn’t much better.
I was ready to step in if this boy moved to finish off his downed opponent, but it didn’t come to that. Once it was clear that he had won, the victor backed off and headed out of the arena.
At this point, a slightly younger Disciple rushed forward and stuffed a pill into the downed boy’s mouth. The Rank 1 Healing pill did its job, and the boy slowly started to recover. However, it didn’t take long for me to see that this pill wasn’t nearly as effective as it should have been. This single pill wouldn’t be enough to heal the boy, and even with several of them, his recovery would take at least a week.
This made me frown. Martial contests were common in this world, and while this one might have been more violent than most, I felt that it was still within acceptable levels. However, if the clan’s alchemists were feeding people tainted pills, there would need to be a reckoning.
Still, I held back to observe a little longer. The boy wasn’t given another pill immediately, so I could gather a bit more information before taking action.
Once the injured boy was carried off the stage, a muscular youth with short-cropped black hair bounded up to take his place. With an evil glare, he homed in on another boy in the audience.
“XuLang, get up here and face me, you coward. If I don’t teach you a lesson today, then my name isn’t BieWang!”
The boy in the audience, XuLang, began backing away at this, but BieWang didn’t want to let him go.
“Grab him, throw him up here!”
The youths in the audience seemed intimidated by the boy on stage, but they didn’t move to restrain his target.
Just as BieWang moved forward, intent to haul the other boy on stage himself, a voice echoed out across the assembled group.
“BieWang, what exactly do you intend to do?”
The boy on stage froze, and a look of irritation and anger appeared on his face.
In a flash, a new person appeared on the stage, and even though he was filled with rage, BieWang still gave this newcomer a deep, respectful bow.
“Senior Brother NiangBa, you don’t understand. XuLang, he—”
NiangBa waved a hand, cutting the boy off mid-sentence.
“The arena has rules. You cannot force someone of a lower cultivation level to fight you. Not only are you two levels above XuLang, you are also cultivating a Low-Profound technique. If you wish to challenge him, reset your cultivation base and fight him properly. I will not allow you to use your cultivation to bully someone!”
A grimace appeared on BieWang’s face, but he bowed his head.
“Yes, Senior Brother.”
Seeing BieWang take a step back, NiangBa nodded his head.
“Good. If XuLang violated the clan’s rules, report him to the enforcers. If you simply do not like the man, then fight him honorably. I don’t want to have any more problems with you, understood?”
ShouLi was the first to speak and try to explain things.
“Patriarch, after you left, things were calm for a few weeks, but it wasn’t long before some of our newer members started causing trouble.”
I nodded at this. During the previous year’s training camp, I had been a bit less selective with who I had recruited. This was both to increase the size of my clan at a faster rate and to give the older recruits a bit of a challenge in training them. There was no question in my mind that those who had been here for over three years would be able to handle brand-new Disciples in a fight. The challenge was for them to manage things without completely suppressing the troublemakers.
ShouLi continued. “At first, we each tried to handle things separately, sticking within our own camps, but this started causing tensions when Disciples from different camps had disagreements. We knew things had to change, so, after talking it over, we decided to implement a leadership model similar to the one used by the Su Clan.”
She gestured around the group. “Liang is the head of the enforcers, Mo is in charge of the workshops, NiangBa runs the arena, GuiMing manages the residential area, and GuiAi manages the mortal businesses.”
I cocked my head at her. “And you?”
She hesitated. “I... I’m in charge of coordinating these different groups.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest as I thought through the situation. It was clear that ShouLi had become the group’s leader, and if everyone was satisfied with this, I wasn’t going to rush in and change things, but that was only if things were working out as well as she implied.
My biggest worry was Liang and his enforcers. I could respect the need for some type of law enforcement, but who watches the watchers? Whenever anyone was placed in a position of power, it was all too easy for corruption to follow, and without strong guardrails in place, these enforcers could become nothing but thugs.
Still, I would give them a chance to prove themselves before rendering a verdict.
“I understand. Now, let’s talk about the specifics of the situation.”
During this initial meeting, ShouLi and the others laid out the various rules that the six of them had agreed upon. Most of these were based on instructions I had originally given them previously, such as not consuming non-Perfect pills, but others related to things that had not even existed before I had left, like the arena.
After getting the basic rundown of how things worked, I spent the next week skulking around the clan and watching how it operated.
NiangBa’s rule over the arena was somewhat ruthless. He had spent the last two years focusing only on cultivating earth techniques, and he had used all of his contribution points to boost his earth affinity as high as possible. With his affinities and natural talents, he had been able to cultivate a Peak-Earth technique to Peak Disciple, and he was by far the most powerful person on the mountaintop besides myself. He used this strength to enforce an iron law over what happened in the arenas, and no one was willing to question his judgment.
Mo’s rule of the workshops was far less tyrannical, but that didn’t mean anyone would question his rulings. Without clear guidance from me on how to handle formations, refined items, and talismans, he mostly encouraged these craftsmen to store their items until I had a chance to appraise them. Instead, Mo mostly dealt with assigning workshops and judging whether a pill could be used or whether it had to be destroyed.
GuiMing and Liang both seemed to be handling their jobs well, and I didn’t notice any problems during this brief observation period, but this was mostly because there were no real issues for them to deal with. Everyone was on their best behavior immediately after my return, so there was no need for law enforcement, and everyone had long since settled into their accommodations, so there wasn’t much to do in the residential block either.
GuiAi’s control of the mortal businesses was what gave me my first real shock.
I had stocked the warehouses with plenty of food before I left, but this food was mostly just an assortment of dry goods, such as rice and flour. While this was enough to keep people from starving, some of the residents wanted more variety in their diets, and since the rocky soil of the mountaintop wasn’t very good for growing plants, they had needed to come up with another solution.
So, after consulting the other leaders, GuiAi had worked with a group of wood cultivators to build a temporary stairway down the side of the mountain. The sect-protecting formation kept this stairway hidden from outsiders, but GuiAi still insisted that it be dismantled when not in use so that no one would stumble upon it by accident.
Using this stairway, a group of Disciples descended to the base of the mountain and set up a small, hidden garden. As the surrounding peat was filled with abundant energy and nutrients, these vegetables grew at an impressive rate, and GuiAi’s team was soon able to provide the settlement with an additional source of fresh food.
I commended her work, but this staircase made me worried about Disciples going out on ‘adventures.’ However, after a bit of consideration, I decided to just let it be. I had warned them all of the dangers of the surrounding territories, and I had no desire to keep anyone imprisoned here. If anyone decided to go off on their own, then that was their decision to make, and they would have to bear the consequences of it.
My only note was that we needed to make a rule to prevent this stairway from being deployed within the first two months of a new cohort of recruits joining us. I didn’t want anyone to have any accidents because they were new to the place and didn’t yet understand its dangers.
In any case, ShouLi and the others would soon be advancing to Martial Master, and at that point, descending the mountain would become commonplace. We needed to implement a few new relevant guidelines anyway, so we might as well figure out how to make this stairway both safe and useful while we were at it.
Still, looking at the pitiful Rank 1 formations that the Disciples had used to try and hide their garden made me scoff. With Grandmasters in the area, such formations would do nothing but draw unwanted attention. I wiped them away and then used my wood qi to move things around a bit so that the garden blended into the natural environment without the need for a concealing formation.
Once my inspection was complete, I began distributing contribution points.
I awarded the entire leadership team with 20,000 points for work they had done while I was gone. After the fact, in private, I awarded NiangBa an extra 10,000 and GuiAi another 5,000 for their work in their separate areas. I would wait until I had more information before giving any additional rewards to the others.
Even without any bonuses, 20,000 points each was already enough to shock them all into silence. It was enough to stay on the Essence Gathering Formation for nearly two weeks straight, and they would have needed to cultivate from Disciple 1 to Peak Disciple 200 times to earn so many points on their own.
They were all extremely happy, but their excitement made me want to chuckle evilly. 20,000 points was a lot for a Disciple, true, but their time as Disciples was almost over.