rule two

Chapter 4: Old Men stuck in their ways shall foverer be done away with by the young

Simply standing there and looking at the female Elder, as she held the illusion Room in her hands and looked at it with a blank gaze was an excruciating experience. And it wasn't only Jin who started getting anxious from the waiting, as after a few minutes even Elder Lung and Elder Qin started exchanging confused looks.

As the few minutes stretched into what must have been half an hour, the two Elders even decided to consider intervening.

"This is ridiculous, the boy must have failed to create a proper illusion somehow. There is no possible scenario in which Flower would take more than this amount of time to clear a Room made by an outer disciple," Elder Lung said with a frustrated growl.

Meanwhile, the number of disciples looking at the examination process from behind the large stone gate had increased.

Elder Qin ran his fingers over his beard as he briefly contemplated. "It is certainly unusual. However, it might be that she is just taking her time due to the supposed novelty of the scenario. Examining all aspects of the combat system, instead of just the difficulty and the fluidity attributes," he eventually said.

The other Elder looked like he wanted to add something to that, but bit his tongue with a glance at Jin.

Perhaps Flower was not someone known for her extensive examination process, or her patience, and the Elder simply didn't want to criticise her in front of a disciple.

If the delay was being caused by the woman being thorough, then Jin would have very much liked it if she could stop.

His knees were slowly turning into jelly.

If he didn't get the promotion he'd be kicked out of the sect and left to fend for his own in this horrible feudalistic shithole these people called civil society.

Thankfully, several minutes later, just as Jin was about to collapse from the stress and Elder Lung began insisting again that they should do something, Flower came to herself with a small shake of her head.

She gave Jin a neutral look and went back to stand next to the other two examiners, still holding the illusion Room.

It was worrying how she didn't say anything, and despite Jin knowing that his illusion Room couldn't have been that bad, her neutral countenance worried him.

"I finished with my part of the testing," she announced. "Elder Lung, Elder Qin." She glanced at both the men. "Which one of you would like to go next?"

"I think you should go first, Elder Lung," Elder Qin said, glancing at the other man. "I don't want to delay this process any longer than necessary and if both of you agree then the exam is over anyway."

It seemed that the Elder responsible for the outer disciples held some sort of tertiary power regarding the examination process. If one Elder said yes, and another said no, then the third would decide. It was a good sign for Jin since he wouldn't fail with just one no.

"All right, I'll do it," Elder Lung said with a sigh, as if he was being forced to do something truly disgusting, other than just following his responsibilities as an Elder of the sect.

He took the illusion Room from Flower and looked down at it almost disparagingly. Jin refrained from clenching his fists, knowing that the act would be caught by the Elder's superior senses.

The man's eyes blanked out, and the illusion Room glowed a violent purple for a moment, signalling that someone had entered it; or, in more scientific terms, had started interacting with it.

An illusion Room worked by connecting the mindscape of the person using it with the scenario inscribed within it. It did not create a miniature version of the user and inflict on them a miniature version of the scenario trapped inside a fancy box. That was just a misconception that some peasants living around the mountain of the sect had about the product being developed there. They told each other tales of how wrathful cultivators shrank people and locked them inside the Rooms sometimes.

The second that Elder Lung was gone, Elder Flower suddenly burst into laughter.

Jin and Elder Qin both gave her concerned looks, but it was only the latter of the two that asked what the issue was.

"Is something the matter, Elder Flower?"

"It's nothing," the woman replied with a small smile. "Just thinking about Elder Lung fighting the monstrosity inside that room. The man's no warrior. What did you call it, Dragonslayer Ornstein?" she asked, turning to Jin.

The young man awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. Dragonslayer Ornstein was indeed not a name that had any particular meaning in this world. Dragons might have actually existed, but they were too powerful to actually be hunted in any capacity. Naming anything dragonslayer was a bit arrogant.

Wyvern?

Maybe.

But, if he was already committing intellectual copyright fraud then he might as well honour the original intentions of the developers, instead of just slapping a new culture-appropriate name on their products and creations.

"I sort of blanked out on the name and just went something. I planned on changing it in case I came up with something better, but I never did and then the time ran out," he lied.

"Well he won't be slaying any dragons anytime soon, but it was certainly an annoying enemy to fight," the Elder admitted with a nod.

"Must have been quite troublesome, if you would go so far as to say that it was annoying," Elder Qin mused.

"It was certainly something new."

"That's good to hear," Jin muttered.

He glanced at Elder Lung, still immersed in the illusion Room, only to take a surprised step back as the man's eyes opened.

The man snorted and looked at Jin with a complicated look before handing over the illusion Room to Elder Qin.

"As expected, a complete waste of time," he said.

"What makes you say that?" Elder Flower asked with a frown.

"Incomprehensible surroundings, loud music that distracts from the actual combat, an oddly designed enemy. It's as if the illusion was created with the sole purpose of ruining any immersion, and distracting the user of the Room with as much stimuli as possible, to prevent them from actually drawing combat experience from the work," he explained.

"That was the point of the whole thing, to create novelty. By definition, novelty is at the beginning a bit overwhelming." Jin couldn't help but interject, immediately shutting his mouth again when the Elder threw him a smouldering glare, heavenly energy shining in his eyes.

What he'd just said could have been taken as an insult. He cursed internally. Definitely not a smart move. Saying that novelty could be overwhelming was implicitly insulting the man for having a too-small brain to understand new concepts.

Elder Qin sighed. "I guess it's up to me to decide the end result of this exam."

Elder Lung looked at Flower, clearly surprised. Almost as if asking, 'You really passed it?'

Jin was honestly starting to very much doubt the professionalism of the sect that he was now bound to. In what world did examiners nitpick each other's decision in front of the examinee?

This one, apparently.

Also, in what world were examiners so biased? Jin was perfectly willing to admit that his rendition of that particular Dark Souls level was a bit challenging to go through from a simple aesthetic perspective, but it was still clearly visible that the work was quality in its own way.

Novelty was something to be celebrated, not cursed at. Was he really going to experience the fate of Ibn Al-Haytham?

"Going in," Elder Qin reported.

"The combat system was clearly innovative, and the argumentation that we need novel opponents to prepare for demons is very much valid." Elder Flower said back to the other Elder.

Jin didn't know if he had the mental capacity to listen to their argument. After all, he now stood on a precipice, Elder Qin holding his fate quite literally, in his hands.

At least he could trust a man to be purely objective, considering that his reputation amongst the outer disciples was very much that of a fair if strict Elder. The only issue was naturally that if Jin had indeed made an actual mistake,

Elder Qin wasn't going to pass him simply for any sentimental reasons.

"What's the point of fighting someone in an environment that is so decisively out of one's experience that one first dies several times from the distraction of the novelty?" Elder Lung retorted in the background, while Jin continued having his existential crisis.

If he got expelled from the sect now, the amount of fucked that he was could not even be quantified. He would have wasted his initial cultivation pathways on this stupid scenario-generating piece of garbage, only to have a masterpiece like Dark Souls insulted by someone who probably wasn't even as educated as the average American high school student, which was an insult in itself really.

Thankfully, unlike Elder Flower and Elder Lung, Elder Qin seemed to actually be efficient at his job. It was only 5 minutes of pure earth-shattering anxiety that Jim had to suffer before the man exited the illusion Room.

"He passes," the man said clearly and calmly.

The words caused Lung, who had lost the Elder epithet in Jin's internal narration, to throw his hands in the air and promptly storm off. Literally, in his case. He dissolved into a tornado of wind which flew up into the air and up the mountain.

Very dramatic exit.

-1/10 for shit personality.

Jin just stood there, confused. He had been working and thinking only about this exam for seven days straight now with no minute of respite. To have it end in such an anticlimactic manner, the two Elders looking at him expectedly as if they wanted him to thank them or something, made him feel more than any of his other experiences that he was in another world.

However, in a setting like this, there was a general rule one could follow when one got confused.

When in doubt, bow.

Jin bowed at a stiff angle towards the Elders and put his fist in his palm. "Thank you, Elders, for your guidance," he said.

"Well, I haven't guided you in any sort of way, but you're welcome nonetheless," Elder Qin snarked, while Elder Flower simply put her hands together and gave Jim a short nod. As sure a sign of respect as any that he was going to get. Especially from someone of such a comparatively higher rank than his own.

"I must commend you for having created such a unique fighting style. Obviously, it has issues and repetitive instances but perhaps the scenario actually merits an updated version once you have had more time to truly think about how the weight of the lance can be used," Elder Qin said. "About the aesthetics, while I do see what Elder Lung meant, I rather appreciated the destabilisation that such a new environment would have on a warrior. Combat, which is what we're training warriors in, does not generally occur in a comfortable or familiar space. It is rather in an unfamiliar place that warriors die, which is why it's good to prepare them for that. All in all, I have to say that I do not believe your scenarios will find mass appeal considering the difficulty and the feeling of unease such a new environment generates. That doesn't mean, however, that they are not useful and won't help anyone."

Jin nodded. That had been a very thorough explanation. Also a very fair one. He wasn't able to create a combat system that made perfect sense in such a short amount of time. His level design and architectural aesthetic would also naturally appear odd to people from this world, who did not have the historical context of the gothic period.

He bowed once again. "Thank you, Elder Qin, for your guidance. Perhaps it is better to succeed in a small pond first before losing one's will to fight in the big sea," he added metaphorically, which elicited a small smile from the man.

It was Elder Flower who stepped forward next. "The combat system was very new, and also very difficult to beat on the level of physical restriction I was functioning under. However, it is definitely noticeable that you do not have any resources available to you on how such an opponent would actually fight. After a certain amount of time, I was able to determine a set of movements that I could commit to with a sword, which would elicit a very specific reaction from Ornstein. Since this is very much the death sentence of any fighter, being predictable, in the end, he was not even able to touch me, even though I was functioning at a physical level slightly beneath his. I understand of course that you had to create the whole thing from scratch yourself, but this is still a fatal flaw that we will have to fix. Perhaps it is unavoidable that the fighting style that does not in fact exist will eventually fall into a predictable pattern, however, extensive work should be invested into making the period before this happens as long as possible," she said. She seemed to consider for a second before saying another thing. "If this is the path you're going to walk, I would suggest dedicating a few of your cultivation nodes to more martial purposes."

Jin nodded and bowed once again. "Thank you for your guidance, Elder Flower."

His mind meanwhile was stuck on something else that she had said. 'A fatal flaw that "we" will have to fix.'

He wasn't the only one who'd noticed.

"That is a very direct proposition, Elder Flower", Elder Qin said with a small grin. "After all, you are currently the only true martial cultivator in our entire sect."

The woman smiled beatifically. "Well, being the only one of something does mean that the price of my services trumps the price of other things which exist in abundance," she turned towards Jin. "What do you think? If you're going to be creating combat systems you're going to need the help of the only person in the sect who knows about fighting on a very personal level. In that regard, I'm also visiting the Mad Monks Sect soon. They are known for using staves and if anyone will be able to help you achieve the next level for Ornstein, it will be them. I think it would be a sad thing to see the scenario you've created decay because it was created by a relative amateur."

Jin bowed, for the umpteenth time today. "I would gladly accept such an offer."

Apparently, it was time to ride the coattails.

Chapter 5: Laying the Foundations

Of course, simply because Elder Flower had so graciously offered Jin help that even core disciples would have likely fought to receive; this did not mean that there were not at first several other things to handle.

After all, as surreal as it still felt, Jin had just passed the examination process for his ascension to the role of inner disciple. This meant that he had to be shown his new accommodations, the new cultivation and knowledge resources he now had access to and just generally acclimate to his new standing in the sect and in the wider world.

For this purpose Elder Flower had told him that he should first get used to the part of the mountain he was now inhabiting and to make a plan for his future.

More specifically, she had said that her offer was most definitely not an offer of apprenticeship and that she was simply interested in helping him perfect the combat system used by Ornstein. She was not taking charge of his entire career, as an apprenticeship would have implied.

Jin was quite happy with that. In a way, this was actually the superior relationship to have. After all, he had a lot of his own ideas of what he needed to create. It would be sad if the scenarios he could bring in from his past life would have to be put on hold because he was fulfilling some arbitrary tasks for a master who quite frankly did not have access to such a well of genius as he did.

But first, before thinking of his future projects, before he started meeting the Elder, Jin was planning on relaxing. Elder Flower had said that the visit to the Mad Monks Sect was still a few weeks off after all.

Jin was planning on using this time to familiarise himself with the situation he was now in and to rest his mind. The past week had simply been a blur of work and deadlines, and he wanted to visit the scenario library.

He'd been an avid enjoyer of video games for the past few years of his life; being offered free access to an inner disciple library full of scenarios created with the different cultural contexts might as well have been heaven to him.

But before he could get started on any of that, he had to go through the most dreaded and boring thing of any new entry into an institution.

The orientation.

The guide for this orientation was a wispy old man, who approached Jin after the boy had said goodbye to Elder Qin and Elder Flower and walked through the stone gate, forced his way through the group of inner disciples and politely shook everyone's hand and just generally introduced himself.

Jin would have guessed his guide to be around 75, but because the man was an inner disciple and the cultivation level implied in that position still slowed down ageing somewhat, he guessed that he was around 200.

It didn't seem like he would be going anywhere and would die on the level he had reached, but for all of that, Jin found Francis a peppy if a bit boring man. The boring part couldn't really be helped considering the age difference, and the relatively different levels of education the two of them had, but he appreciated the energy.

During the orientation, Francis explained several things, some of which Jin hadn't known before.

Firstly, being an inner disciple was better than becoming an outer disciple because the former, upon entering the rank, received a grace period of one year to acclimate to their new surroundings, before having to contribute sect points.

Back when Jin had entered the outer disciple ring of the sect, he'd had to start contributing immediately, having to do a variety of small jobs to get the requisite amount of sect points to pay for his stay.

In a similar vein, he didn't at the time of being an outer disciple have the option of contributing illusion Rooms.

Contributing illusion Rooms was one of the important ways that one could earn sect points as an inner disciple. After all, it was at the inner disciple level that people actually started getting good at making them.

The Rooms one made after passing the exams could be shown at the visitor library, where people from other sects came to look at scenarios. One's contribution would be measured by the amount of people using one's Room in particular. Alternatively, if one had enough of a reputation, or if the client was enough of a cheap skate to go with an inner disciple of low standing, one could get the commission to create one particular scenario.

Both of these methods were not that useful for people who had just gained the rank of an inner disciple, considering that both the library method and the commissions required a certain reputation to succeed. However, at least inner disciples had an eventual "financial" out, when they improved their craft enough to earn their stay with it.

This was why the inner disciple ring had actual servants, because unlike the outer disciple one, it was not completely self-sustaining with the labour of the disciples. The majority of them got paid through creating illusion Rooms and not doing menial chores.

At this point of cultivation, everyone in the inner ring had reached at least the foundation establishment stage. It would be a complete waste to make people like that sweep the floor.

One gained a personal servant as a sign of status after one's illusion Rooms became one's sole source of sect points. It was quite obvious that the disciples with servants were the ones more likely to ascend to core disciple status.

The Illusion Room sect was weird in the fact that it was one of the few ones which did not have more outer disciples than they had inner ones. It made sense in a way when one thought about it though. Martial sects profited from a large group of outer disciples that served as fodder in the case of conflict.

A sect based on craftsmanship only had so many resources and teachers to go around, so they rather restricted the intake but invested more into their higher stage members since those created higher quality products.

Jin's next goal in this pyramid scheme would be to attain the role of a core disciple.

These were the disciples who had been specifically picked out to have enough potential to form a nascent soul and who essentially got put into an acceleration program to achieve that. After having done so they would contribute long enough in that position until they got named Elders.

Jin wasn't anywhere close to that, having not even attained a servant, but it was good to know where one was headed.

He considered these things as Francis showed him around the inner disciple ring; the library, the mission exchange board, the food market, and the apartment blocks.

It seemed that in the inner ring, the sect wanted to further collaboration between disciples instead of isolating them so that they could focus more on the test that was coming at a set timeline. Similarly in Jin's previous life, the best video games had been collaborative efforts.

For this purpose, there was no more food delivery, unless one had a servant who would bring it. Instead, there was a gigantic mess hall where food was being served at all times.

In a similar vein, disciples did not live in isolated huts anymore, but in large houses with several apartments, where one had to deal with having neighbours.

This was the explanation that Francis had given, hinting perhaps that the two of them should collaborate at some point.

Jin politely refused stating that he first wanted to acclimate himself to the sect before even thinking of producing a new work.

As an addition to Francis' explanation he also suspected that one of the reasons why the disciples lived in the apartment blocks was the fact that the higher up the mountain they were, the less space was available. As a sect that had more inner than outer disciples, they had to use the space that they did have wisely.

The tour ended at the apartment building that Jin would be living in. It seemed that the sect simply built one new building once in a while and filled it up sequentially with the people who passed the exams. It also meant that the later one joined the inner ring, the further out one would live from its central amenities. Jin for example was now an inner disciple who had joined perhaps 15.000 years after the sect had formed and was already 2 km out of the centre with the library and the food hall.

This wasn't a bad thing though, after all this also meant that he had the newest building, a yellow brick house, towering into the sky and differing in architecture wildly from the simple hut he'd been living in previously. The roof was out of stone, and the windows were inlaid with glass so that one could open or close them at one's leisure. A luxury that he hadn't even known had been a luxury until he'd spent a draughty evening in his last domicile.

"This is where we part ways young man, do come find me if you ever need help. Who knows if you help me enough I might even let you inherit my apartment right next to the food hall after I die, haha," Francis joked with a full-bellied laugh and walked off leaving Jin standing in front of the building with nothing but the clothes on his back and his illusion Room in his hands.

The exam really hadn't taken that long and it was still day. Jin could for example use his time to go to the library, to get some food, or to otherwise explore the area.

However, after the week that he'd had he definitely deserved some rest. He entered the building through the front door and walked up the steps to the third floor, where he found his name engraved on a door. Next to it was a little bell attached to the wall which one could ring in a very fittingly old-fashioned manner to summon the inhabitant of the apartment. He chuckled and entered.

It was a quaint little two-room affair, with one room that was obviously meant for work, and one that was meant for sleep. His amenities hadn't improved too much, still not having a real bed but simply a futon on the ground this time. His workbench was only slightly larger with the writing equipment graciously donated by the sect already on it.

There was a wardrobe with five of the beige disciple rules already in it. There was also a bucket to get water from a well that must have been somewhere near, and some glasses and some wooden containers for personal effects of which Jin at the moment had none.

There was a tiny balcony, which he promptly entered when he found it. It consisted of two wooden beams that had been extended beyond the perimeters of the walls and on which a plate of stone along with a wooden railing had been installed. It was just big enough for a small table and a chair, both of which were still missing. He would get something like that later on, he quite enjoyed sitting on a balcony and looking at the sunset and the sunrise respectively.

The floor would do for the moment. Jin promptly sat down.

It had been a wild week, but there was still one last thing to consider before he could truly let himself rest.

His cultivation

The first stage of cultivation was the qi condensation stage. It consisted of learning how to perceive heavenly energy, which was the prerequisite to gathering it. This in turn was the prerequisite for circulating it throughout the body, which purified it of its impurities.

Parsing through the memories that the body's original owner had of that stage very much made Jin grateful that he hadn't had to live through it. Purifying meant purifying and nothing less, the previous Jin had been forced to lay in a tub full of hot water outside of his hut and had expelled from his body more black sludge than anyone would have thought possible for a society where everyone ate organic food by default.

Once the body had been purified, it became an imperfect conduit for the heavenly energies which could now be channelled towards an effect. The effect in the case of the illusion Room sect, was the creation of illusions and the ability to insert these into the appropriate Rooms.

Naturally, every sect had different techniques for how they went about qi condensation, which depended heavily on what kind of techniques they wanted to be using and which attributes of a cultivator they valued. Quite generally these attributes were divided into body, mind, and soul. The illusion room sect was a sect of mind cultivators. This meant that in the limited amount of purification that could happen in the qi condensation stage, they focused mostly on the spiritual nodes present in the brain. This essentially allowed for the better processing power of the mind and thus for a better control of illusions. It was also why they valued disciples with a yin affinity, which was what Jin had.

If Jin had been a body cultivator, he would have instead focused on specifically purifying either his muscles, tendons or bones, depending on the martial technique of his sect. They would have preferred him to have a yang affinity.

Naturally even if one focused one's refinement on one particular aspect, all others were still uplifted. One could say that on average 50% of the purification occurred throughout the entire trifecta, while one could allocate the other 50% as one wanted. It was here that talent cut a line between those who had it and those who didn't.

Being able to direct more or less of the optional half, reflected one's general ability to cultivate and use the appropriate spells. Jin had, if he quickly recalculated into percentages the garbled spiritual nonsense taught in the manuals, diverted 56% of his purification and resulting refinement into the brain. This was considered quite above average, as most people only managed to control 50%. One was considered a genius if one managed to allocate as one wished more than 60%.

This was what Jin had accomplished before James had taken over the body, he'd finished the Qi condensation stage, focused most of its improvements on the mind, learned the appropriate basic techniques and was now decisively in the early stage of foundation establishment.

Foundation establishment was concerned with refining the body further so that it would be able to take in heavenly energy more efficiently and then serve as a better conduit for spells. While the first stage had been concerned with purifying the body, the second was concerned with refining it.

One generally spoke of nine pillars. Each set of three representing one section of the stage. Each pillar in turn consisted of the refinements of several spiritual nodes, of which there were hundreds in the human body. If Jin were to follow the general rule of the illusion Room cultivation sect, he would refine all the nodes and all the pillars he could in the area of the mind.

However, Elder Flower had suggested that he focus at least some of them on his physical capacities.

These were all decisions that would be made after he really sunk his teeth into the library. The later stages of cultivation consisted of messing with one soul, and he wasn't willing to do that without understanding the process at least somewhat better.

The understanding that Jin had brought with him was very rudimentary. Not the boy's fault, of course, since the sect simply didn't allow their disciples to have access to a lot of knowledge. This was what allowed them to actually expel the failed outer disciples, instead of having to kill or cripple them to protect their secrets.

This was supposedly the fate of failed outer disciples in other sects. They were either killed for trying to leave if they did not manage to pass on to the next level, or they were held in the outer ring as servants until they died of old age.

Cultivation was a demanding, exhausting, self-perpetuating process with several bottlenecks. People could get stuck and never recover or advance between every one of the stages of qi condensation, foundation establishment and so on. People who had failed to align their heavenly energy intake channels properly and had thus sabotaged their further ascension were as numerous as there was sand on the beach.

Jin sighed and entered the meditative position that he had been taught by Elder Qin when he entered the sect all those years ago. It was simply the lotus position but with his hands placed on the sides of his temples. A bit weird, but that was cultivation for you.

For the first time since he entered this new body, he focused on his inner world, instead of the outer one.

A meditative trance wasn't easy to achieve, considering that Jin or James in this matter was still relatively shaken by his entry into cultivation land, but after several minutes, perhaps even half an hour he finally managed to block out his surroundings and focus only on himself and the heavenly energy permitting every single atom of this world.

What he saw when he looked within simply confirmed the things that he had been experiencing for the past few days in his new body. His mind was faster, his body more healthy. Aches that he had not even known existed in his previous body had not been carried over. He felt as if he was walking on clouds and now as he was looking at the inside of his being he could see why.

The remnants of the qi condensation process, the purification had left him with not a body, but a temple. He was essentially inhabiting a villa made completely out of marble, whereas beforehand he had simply been bumming it out in a dirty cave with weird mushrooms growing on the walls. The occasional cockroach.

And to think that this wasn't even the final form. That higher stage cultivators felt even better.

Well, feeling better wasn't necessarily the way to describe his state of being. It was rather that he was lacking in any ailments. Negative effects like an aching tendon or persistent cold, things that one didn't truly care about anymore after they were gone. But of which a complete and utter lack was stunning.

Rather than just wanting to stay in the sect to live a decent life and access some luxury, Jin decided then and there that he wanted to stay also to cultivate more, to attain more of this goodness consisting of a complete lack of negativity.

All his bones felt as sturdy as iron, his tendons like ropes and his muscles like pistons.

His mind? A crystal cathedral in which information was sent from neuron to neuron mapped onto grey tissue faster than any supercomputer.

Jin didn't know how long he simply sat there in the meditative position. How much time he spent simply breathing in, and out, marvelling at this new existence. Took in the heavenly energy as he had been taught to do and used it to improve himself. He disregarded the cryptic instructions of the sect which still focused on the Eastern equivalent of the four humours when it came to foundation establishment and rather went through every part of himself slowly but surely cell by cell. Leukocyte by leukocyte. DNA string by DNA string.

When he opened his eyes not knowing how much time had passed he felt possibly even more refreshed than he had before. More importantly, he could feel the difference between how easily the heavenly energy entered and exited his body as he directed it through the little cantrips that were taught to disciples so they could start on something easy. Expelling a bit of air, a bit of heat, condensing a bit of water.

He didn't know if the improvement of his channelling and technique came down to the fact that he was only now starting to familiarise himself with it, or that he had applied the knowledge of his previous life to the spiritual concepts of his current one.

Anyone looking from the outside would have been shocked at discovering that whereas he had sat down in the very early stages of the foundation establishment… In one cultivation session, he entered the middle stage of foundation establishment.

Only time would tell if such jumps would become the norm, or if it had simply been the result of integrating the life experiences of another highly educated human being into the context of someone who had already been quite talented.

One thing was sure, James had a lot to show this world, and it wasn't just his knowledge of video games that would bring him forward.

Chapter 6

The tip of Jin's lance shot forward before quickly retracting again along with the wooden shaft. The jiangshi that he had just decapitated with the move fell to the ground, just as another one of the eastern zombies managed to latch itself onto his back and drag him down to the panelled floor of the mansion he was fighting in. It was in that position that he lost the battle and the zombies swarmed him and tore him to pieces.

The first time it had happened several weeks ago, it had been a very traumatic experience. However, now he was getting used to it and very much realised the importance of the fact that the scenario did not simply end when he fell to the ground.

In honour of his first copyright transgression, Jin had in the past weeks been training in his use of a lance. Not that he owned one, of course, it was just that in the bountiful scenarios he now had access to in the sect library he could simply generate his own weapon. The lance was simply what he had chosen.

There definitely was something to the Illusion Room Sect's philosophy of throwing enemies at warriors to improve them. Jin had died numerous times and every time he went back in he felt like his skill in battle had improved significantly. It was in those last deadly moments of a fight that one gained the most insight into how one could have avoided death. Going in again immediately after and correcting one's behaviour in another attempt was where the biggest improvements came from.

The basic scenario that Jin was undergoing right now consisted of several waves of what he recognized as the Chinese folklore version of zombies coming at him until he dropped. Usually dressed in rags or official robes which had for some reason not decayed, these stiff corpses, often with a talisman covering their face, hopped in his direction and if they got their grip on him would tear him apart with their sharp fingernails and teeth. One of the least threatening enemies that he had found so far, however, the numbers that they came in could be quite staggering.

The first time he'd played the specific scenario he'd managed to defend himself against the first wave, which consisted of five of the monsters. The second one consisted of 13, the third of 47 and so on. Jin was now currently on his 5th wave and had just died for the sixth time that day.

It was actually kind of fun, but his improvement had been plateauing to the point that he decided to stop, while he was still ahead. The thing about having such a variety of scenarios available was that he didn't have to continue grinding at one particular piece and could therefore avoid diminishing returns. He'd already beaten countless scenarios containing a variety of Eastern mythological creatures and there were still countless more to go through.

He looked around the white space that he found himself in from which he could enter the scenario again. A simple visual representation of a placard with the word zombie inscribed on it would allow him to jump right back in. Instead, he picked the second option and exited the Room.

He came to himself in the gigantic library of the Illusion Room Sect, with its high walls and meticulous record keeping. He stood up from where he'd been sitting on the floor and picked up the illusion Room that had recently been preoccupying him.

He put it back on its shelf. All around him thousands upon thousands of Rooms buzzed. He was all alone in this part of the library. and that was for one very interesting reason. He was in the section designated for the scenarios that had not stood the test of time.

In other words, he was in the section with outdated products. After all, if someone made a newer version of the zombie swarm scenario in which the zombies were somehow more adapted to the needs of the warriors trying to learn from the experience, then what was the point of keeping an inferior version of the same product in the main part of the library?

This was one of the issues of using illusion Room submissions as the way to earn sect points. One was always at risk of having someone else develop a superior product, and thus having one's own being pushed into this relegation zone. Once here, naturally, one's Room did not earn any more sect points since no one was in fact using it. Unless one's name was Jin of course. He was probably making some people mildly happy.

However, because having one's Room relegated, and considering that new scenarios were usually better due to the discovery of new techniques or memory slips, most of the people who had produced the games that he had been playing in the last weeks were probably already dead.

He stretched with his hands up in the air and looked around. As always the area was completely empty. One of the reasons why he was here. The main area was actually quite busy. Visiting cultivators, and inner disciples trying to learn the newest tricks, everyone was there and there were comparably fewer Rooms in there as well. After all, there were so many zombie swarm scenarios, but only a few of them could be shown. Sure the inner disciples who had made the successful Rooms in the showroom could make copies, but considering that the production of the artefacts that contain the illusion also cost money and production time there needed to be a very strict balance of determining how much of what was actually needed. Worst case of course, Jin had learned from the librarians that people could still be sent back into these relegated archives if they were fine with learning with the second best, but after thousands of years, the librarians had also figured out a pretty good system for avoiding this.

He scratched his chin and hoped that his practice was enough to satisfy whatever expectations Elder Flower would have for the improvement he could reasonably make in three weeks. She seemed to put a lot of value on combat systems and Jin had learned a lot about those in the past few weeks. Especially about the way that they improved over time, scenario by scenario.

This was why he had been going through older obsolete models. To find out exactly what breakthroughs made one version superior to another. Eventually, he hoped that this would allow him to have such an oversight of the creation market, that he could predict and leapfrog the next future development and stay in the relevant zone for longer when he actually sat down to make another scenario. Which would probably be after his trip with Elder Flower.

He walked out of the relegation part of the library, absolutely stuffed to the brim with the creations of the sect's inner disciples over the ages, and exited into a large open space.

It was in this hexagonal room with its many attendants and cultivators from all the different parts of the world that one generally chose which part of the library to enter. This usually coincided also with the question of which part of the library one was qualified to enter.

After all, the visiting cultivators who paid a daily fee for access to the scenario storage did not also have access to all the memory slips, and to all the publicly available techniques of the Illusion Room Sect or its shelves stocked full with cultivation strategies, techniques and journals of those who had come before.

And as always in a room as large as this, through the bustle and hustle one could identify a group of young masters with seemingly nothing to do with their lives other than to simply stand there sipping tea, or alcohol, or whatever was in those little gourds they were carrying around.

"Still strolling through the relegation library in search of inspiration to one day join its ranks?" One of those inner disciples jeered at Jin as he walked past. He had long black hair tied together in a bun. Instead of wearing the basic beige robes, he was wearing an elaborate red and gold outfit overdrawn with motifs of phoenixes and Imperial mountain landscapes.

"I mean, I agree. Trash has to stay with the trash, but aren't you at least smart enough to know that you can only learn from what's good today?"

A small sigh escaped Jin's lips as he glanced at the idiot and at his giggling clique of school girls who were actually several decades-old men. This of course made the whole thing even more pathetic.

"Alas," Jin started. "I still have many centuries of knowledge to catch up on before I can truly call myself qualified to make a scenario worthy of this glorious library," he said diplomatically, earning himself a sneer from Lung junior, which was in fact the boy's name.

"Perhaps by the time you're a desiccated corpse, you'll have managed to make the basic stickman, to join the other failures," Lung junior said and demonstratively looked away from Jin as the latter continued strolling out of the premises, getting some pitying looks from the other illusion Room cultivators.

The others, those visiting from other sects and paying exorbitant fees to even be present here, were too busy to care about anything and were simply hurrying around, trying to use what little time they had to get in as much training as possible.

"I'm checking out," Jin said when he arrived at the front desk where a bored grey-haired Elder was sitting, leaning back in her chair and staring at the ceiling. The woman imperceptibly nodded and Jin left the building.

It might have seemed odd to have an Elder be the receptionist in a library for inner disciples, but the fact was that since Jin's sect was one of the few sects that allowed the entry of outsiders, there needed to be a strong presence in the rooms to prevent the sects with feuds from starting a fight and wrecking something.

He'd heard that the Elders simply switched the responsibility around between them and that each and every one of them had to do only a year of the service per millennia.

Exiting the library into the fresh air Jin breathed a sigh of relief.

Every time he was forced to interact with Lung Junior he felt slightly afraid that it was going to go horribly wrong. It was very obvious that the boy, or rather, 79-year-old man from what Jin had found out, didn't like him. It was even more obvious that this dislike had been inherited from the boy's father, Elder Lung.

Jin had been confused for the longest time after his passing into the inner ring about why exactly the man had been so triggered by him. However, despite no one being willing to give him any answers he had soon come to deduction on the reason for the man's dislike.

There was another part of the library that he hadn't mentioned previously, mostly because he never truly wanted to go there. It was the part of the library filled with templates for illusionary attributes. For example, if an inner disciple wanted to only create an enemy, he could just use template A for the surroundings in which the fight would occur. That way they had less work, but also the person who had created the template and made it available earned a small amount of the fee charged for the use of the Room. A win-win so to say.

Well, as it turned out the entire template section of the library was mostly taken up by members of the Lung family. They seemed to be one of the oldest noble families of the sect and had specialised over the years in creating templates for others to use.

Jin suspected that due to the rather high level of architecture he had exhibited in his illusion Room, they thought that he was going to try to become a competitor.

This of course wasn't the case, as he found the usage of templates to be completely devoid of any sort of creativity and that was coming from him as a professional plagiarizer. Nevertheless, this didn't prevent Lung Junior from trying to stick a foot between Jin's legs every chance he got.

Considering the boy from what he heard had been an inner disciple for several decades now Jin was honestly quite surprised that he wasn't trying harder to rise up, or was there perhaps a system of seniority when it came to being promoted to core disciple?

Anyway, it didn't really matter. The Illusion Room Sect wasn't as inherently violent as warrior sects were, so the most that Jin would have to be afraid of would be some sabotage, maybe some petty theft of ideas.

He heard that several gangs of inner disciples simply waited by the library for a new concept to be dropped into the room full of worthwhile scenarios.

They would then quickly collaborate with their friends and create a slightly superior version of the scenario to knock it into the relegation zone. That way they didn't have to be creative, come up with a concept themselves and with a minimal amount of effort invested could reap a somewhat middling salary.

It really took all kinds of people, he thought with a shake of his head as he made his way back to his apartment. All of this didn't really matter that much at the moment. Tomorrow he would be meeting Elder Flower, and soon after he would be leaving with her for the Mad Monks Sect.

-/-

Jin found Elder Flower after having walked around what he felt was half the mountain. On one side of the inner ring, the inner disciples had their space to work, study and live. On the other side of that ring was still relatively untouched wilderness. It was there that cultivators could stride through nature, and meet up without the hustle and bustle of the disciple village.

It was also somewhere where Jin could meet an Elder without having to be bothered by people coming in to interrupt their interaction or maybe even spying on it.

He'd walked through mostly forests and meadows, some rock outcroppings which got more common the more up the mountain one travelled and the occasional cloud, which from his position engulfed him like a particularly thick fog.

Elder Flower was waiting for him in a meadow full of bright green grass that swayed in the wind, sitting under a blossoming Sakura tree with the same outfit she had last time. Wide green pants, sandals, and a tight shirt, her sword scabbard hung at her waist. She was sitting on a large grey boulder which looked out of place in the grassy clearing. As if she'd brought it there with her.

"Junior greets Elder," Jin said with a bow, fist clasped in his palm.

"Elder greets junior," Flower answered and motioned for him to sit down in front of her.

Jin did so, committing to a seiza, uncaring of the grass stains he would likely find on his robes later. It wasn't like he was the one who would have to wash them. He didn't have a servant, but facilities were available.

Elder Flower looked him up and down and it was the first time that Jin had the opportunity to truly look her in the eyes. They were a clear white. Hadn't they been a different colour last time?

Did it matter? This was cultivation land. These things could change.

"I'm glad to see that you followed my advice and directed some of your nodes to more physical attributes," she eventually said.

Jin nodded. "It is foolish of the inexperienced to ignore the advice of the wise," he said politely. Without posing the burning question he had of why exactly she'd wanted him to do so.

A smile hushed across her features. He felt like she was reading his mind and laughing at his unwillingness to ask.

"What do you think of the martial capacity of our sect?" she asked. She elaborated at his confused look. "How strong are we in a fight?"

It sounded like a trick question, if he said that they were weak, as expected from a craftsman sect, then he could be accused of not being loyal enough. If he said they were strong, it could be considered a stupid answer considering that warrior sects should obviously be stronger.

Always fun to try and unravel these complex social situations in a world where powerful people took offence very easily. Jin sighed inwardly.

"It's a complicated question because the product that we are focused on making would technically make us into better warriors." He started. "Over the last weeks, I have been improving my martial abilities against the Rooms in the library. I think that with the unfettered access that I have as a member of the sect, someone could advance very quickly, very far. However, on the other side, there's the fact that we assign so much of our cultivation to the mental while only learning spells unsuited for combat."

"I guess I'm trying to say that I don't think that we're particularly weak or strong for a sect that does not focus on producing warriors. Martial sects are definitely stronger, while other craftsman sects likely lag slightly behind."

Elder Flower hummed and seemed to consider his answer. "A very incomplete picture," she eventually decided. "It likely makes more sense for me to simply tell you things instead of asking you questions which require knowledge you do not have."

Jin wasn't mad at that, she was right after all. He was a newbie in this world, in more ways than just one. What was the point of asking him anything really?

"The Illusion Room Sect suffers the same issues as all non-combat sects do. The higher up the cultivation ladder you go, the more the difference in martial prowess shows. Other cultivators were focusing on becoming stronger while we were focusing on getting better at our craft. I'm sure that if you put the same amount of training into your skills with any given weapon you would end up being able to hold your own against the inner disciple of a martial sect. However, the second they start learning techniques and advancing beyond the core formation stage the whole equation becomes very very skewed."

"That makes sense," Jin said, occasionally making sounds of agreement and nodding.

"However, it is a mistake to think that the Illusion Rooms Sect is completely helpless. It is just that most of our members focus their cultivation in a direction that doesn't necessarily use our greatest strength to its fullest."

"What is our greatest strength, if I may ask?"

"There is no single reason why things are done a certain way. The enemies we create in scenarios do not need to have completely logical combat processes simply because we want to create as realistic an experience as possible. After all, making something unrealistic, and defying the logic of our world would also offer a very interesting combat experience. That is why I'm so impressed by Ornstein and his abilities to follow the logic while creating something new."

"Thank you, Elder."

"There are spells that we learn later on in the sect that will likely make you a combat threat considering your apparent proclivity for meaningful innovation. That is why I have instructed you to dedicate at least some of your cultivation to physical attributes. Eventually, depending on your talent you will learn Templating," she explained before leaning black and looking at him closely.

Jin knew that she would continue with her explanation when she saw fit and didn't see the need to interject by asking what templating was. They sat there in silence for several minutes which slowly turned into half an hour which turned into one hour.

Jin didn't mind, as he could spend the time looking at a beautiful woman, as much as he didn't try to let that part be noticed, but he did nevertheless find it curious.

It was after an hour and a half that Elder Flower spoke again, the sun having moved a significant distance over the sky. "If an illusion creator can create a combat style for a human-like entity and stick it into a Room, is there any particular reason why he can't externalise that combat knowledge, consisting generally of a series of specific movements onto his own body? In simpler words, templating is taking on the attributes of one's creation that one so intimately knows and using it as a guide using one's own body as a conduit to bring that combat effectiveness into reality."

Jin's entire world shook as Elder Flower spoke. He finally understood why she had told him to focus on physical attributes. From what she was saying, he could take Ornstein's combat ability which was already several times higher than his own after weeks of practice and simply take it for himself? The dash wouldn't work, of course, he didn't know how to do that. But all the other ways of wielding a lance, after being adjusted for height? He could have all that, really?

Elder Flower closed her eyes at his obvious excitement. "I see that you understand what I mean. If you had a lance like your character does, you could wield it the exact same way assuming that the way it is being wielded now is logically consistent with the reality of the world we live in instead of just with your scenario."

"That's why it's so important to perfect it," Jin realised out loud. "Not only will it provide a more worthwhile experience for warriors challenging the illusion, but it will also make me stronger in return."

Elder Flower nodded. "There is always more than one reason why something happens. If the only good thing coming out of me taking you with me to the Mad Monks Sect would be the improvement of one product, I would not. However, it also raises the general combat potential of our sect, while also showing face to the monks whose use of quarterstaff resembles your creation. You will show them Dragonslayer Ornstein and they will appreciate the intricacies of his combat style."

Jin nodded earnestly. "Understood Elder."

"Good, templating is the skill that is probably next on your chopping block. However, you are nowhere near close enough yet. It's not even worth discussing anima yet, solid projections constructed in the shape of those monsters you are intimately familiar with. I simply wanted to inform you what you will be working towards," she said and Jin's world shook again.

Anima? He could one day create the monsters from his games? Wouldn't that make him invincible? No, of course not, there had to be a weakness.

"What will we be doing until then?" Jin asked.

"You will continue honing your weapon skills against the Rooms and perfecting the design of Ornstein. However, you will be doing so with a sword," she said and pulled out a bamboo sword from somewhere. She threw it at him and it flew through the air to land with its handle first in Jin's hand.

He looked at it curiously and guessed that it made more sense to become proficient with a sword rather than a lance considering the latter didn't really exist in this world for a reason. He sighed. He would still have to learn the lance, however, to perfect his Ornstein.

"Most cultivators use a sword, so any disciple of the sect benefits from knowing how it is used and getting as good with it as possible. After all, you have to know what the general audience has as an option when they face your scenarios," Flower said.

Jin nodded, understanding the logic.

Elder Flower stood up and pulled out her own wooden sword.

"We start now," she said calmly and swung at him.

Chapter 7: Travel the world, meet interesting people, kill them

It was after another three weeks of tutelage from Elder Flower that Jin was standing in the mission room of the middle ring. Well, calling it tutelage was probably an overly enthusiastic way of describing it. They rarely met, and Flower simply directed his training, telling him what to focus on and giving him the opportunities to do so.

That was why he had been focusing almost solely on swordsmanship and cultivation. His enthusiasm for delegating more of his cultivation nodes to physical pursuits was even higher now that he knew the actual reason for such an action. Templating, especially with the innovative combat styles he would be creating, would make him a relatively dangerous fighter even if he never spent nearly as much time or effort on it as the cultivators of a warrior sect.

He was pleased with his progress, and his rising understanding of this world he was now trapped in. Elder Flower similarly didn't have anything to complain about.

Even after getting more exposed to him this past month, she still wanted to take him with her on the trip to the Mad Monks Sect. This was why Jin was in the mission centre. A place that he had originally decided not to visit until the end of his one-year grace period allowed by his promotion to inner disciple. For some or other reason, Flower had told Jin that she would pick him up from here before their departure.

Considering her focus on meeting him where they could remain unseen previously, it was weird why she wanted to showcase their relationship like this now. There must have been some internal sect politics involved in the decision, however he had decided not to get involved and to simply go along with the flow. He wasn't qualified to have an opinion on the matter and even if he did, there wasn't much he could do to change Flower's intended actions when one considered what she was doing for him. He would go down in the sect's social context as ungrateful and no one would help him out of their own volition ever again: Essentially, he was being forced to pick a side, without knowing what side he was picking, or knowing if the reward was worth it.

Such was life.

Regardless of the reason why he was here, Jin was here now. This meant that he could look around.

It was a busy place, perhaps the busiest in the whole inner ring other than the library. Several wooden counters stylized with dragon carvings were set up to face the entrance hall and there were multiple boards stacked full of missions and what seemed to be bounty posters.

There was a constant stream of beige-robed disciples going in and out and talking to the clerks, who were disciples themselves, to register a job or to get their reward in the form of sect points or something else.

As expected, it was the bounty board that had the least disciples standing in front of it. The Illusion Room Sect was not necessarily known for its combat prowess and violent pursuits.

It was thus there that Jin walked to, wanting to see who this world considered to be worthy of having a price on their head.

The general currency of cultivation land was spirit stones, which could also in the sect be exchanged at a ratio of either one spirit stone for 96 sect points, one-third of the yearly upkeep of an inner disciple. Or the other way around, 106 sect points for one spirit stone.

Naturally, the highest bounty, all the way on top of the board, gave the person who succeeded in beheading and proving the death of the Black Immortal Chen Ju, 136,000 spirit stones. This would be enough to set up Jin for life if he only ever wanted to be an inner disciple. It was mentioned on the poster of the youthful-looking man with black hair wearing a black kimono that he was presumably at the nascent soul formation stage and that as a demon cultivator, he might have the combat potential of someone well above that.

It was quite obvious to Jin that everyone higher than halfway up the board was too powerful for him to even bother thinking about. He thus turned his attention downwards where he found that the lower a cultivator's cultivation, the stupider the nickname they would get. For example, Chicken-headed Pig God was an experiment gone loose from one of the more experimental sects. A man with the head of a chicken, he was regularly seen riding on the back of a domesticated wild boar to loot vegetables off different farms. The reward for his capture was set at 15 spirit stones.

Next to the picture of the comical chicken-headed man was a more worrying portrayal of an insane-looking young woman with murder in her eyes. Apparently, she was a Mad Monks Sect outer disciple turned bandit after her cultivation had diverged into insanity.

It turned out, that one of the side effects of fucking up one's opening of mental nodes or certain spells could very well result in harming one's sanity in general. Not something that Jin wanted to mess around with. That was why he was very non-experimental with his cultivation and mostly listened to the advice of his elders. The time for innovation would come someday in the future. Very, very far in the future.

"Thinking of taking a bounty?" a voice suddenly said behind him.

Jin jumped in surprise and twirled around to find Elder Flower leaning against a nearby wall and looking at him with a small smirk.

Not wanting to give the wrong impression, Jin quickly raised his palms in the air and shook his head as rapidly as he could. "I've only been training as a combatant for less than a year. I don't think that this is what's best for me," he said hurriedly.

Elder Flower kicked off from the wall, drawing the looks of some of the other disciples milling around the mission centre. "Well, I think you're at least not an embarrassment now," she glanced at the bounty board. "Chicken-headed Pig God shouldn't be that hard to beat, should he?"

It was after the last few weeks of instruction, that Jin had gotten used to the peculiarities of the Elder's humour. Therefore he knew that she was joking and did not actually plan on throwing him against a dangerous criminal.

"Well, if I face someone with even a bit of training as I am now. I think I'm going to be the pig to the slaughter. Not them," Jin murmured as the two of them slowly removed themselves from the building and the centre of the bustling inner disciple town. Elders were not that uncommon, there was always one of the library after all, but Elder Flower was a special Elder. She was beautiful and had the grace of a warrior, not a scholar. The male disciples couldn't help but glance her way.

It symbolised the male desire for women who could easily break them in half, either physically, or emotionally.

Jin, for his part, was not nearly as masochistic and while he knew that marriages and affairs occurred within the sect, he had been too busy on not getting cast out and making sure his career was on track to focus on such activities. In addition to that, he was now in a different culture and he didn't quite know if he found the way that the natives approached relationships to be attractive.

It was all very transactional.

"Will we be going to the harbour?" Jin asked after they'd walked a bit. The harbour was a designated outpost higher up on the mountain that he had only seen from below since it belonged to the core disciple ring. It was the place where other cultivators could land their flying devices to visit their mountain, and pay for entrance into their scenario libraries. He didn't quite know if this was the case, but he presumed that it was also the designated area from which people generally left the sect if they were to do so with flying. He couldn't imagine they wouldn't fly, as the Mad Monks Sect was quite far away. Far enough at least that they would need several weeks of walking to reach it and that was with their improved cultivator physiques.

"No, we will not be going to the harbour. As an Elder of the sect I can lift off from anywhere," Flower responded. "But before we go, there's something I have to give you," she said. Jin looked at her and waited expectantly as she pulled an entire sword, a real one this time from the leather pouch at her hips. She handed it to him, handle first. It was a simple thing, unadorned and made out of pure bone. It didn't have a cross-guard since it was a jian.

Essentially a long sharp stick. A pointy one.

"I don't think you're quite at the point where you merit a sword," Elder Flower said ruining the moment. "But, as we leave the sect I cannot exclude the possibility that you will at some point have to defend yourself. For that occasion, it is better to be prepared."

Jin nodded and took the sword, looking at it awkwardly since he had not received an appropriate scabbard. Seemingly noticing his confusion, Elder Flower handed him the sort of scabbard popular in cultivation land. Made out of cloth and leather it allowed Jin to strap the sword to his back where he could pull it out over either of his shoulders depending on what kind of situation he was in.

"Thank you, Elder Flower. I shall endeavour to become worthy of it soon," Jin said with a serious nod as he adjusted to the new balance of his body. The sword wasn't overly heavy, but it was different and he was much more aware of his body than he had been in his past life.

"Do try to do that," Elder Flower said, stopping on a bare patch of land now that they'd entered a more empty district and pulled out her own bone-white sword from her scabbard. She dropped it onto the ground where it promptly grew several times in size until it was about as big as a canoe. It floated in the air at the level of her knees and she promptly hopped onto the surface, unafraid that a simple slip could have divested her of a leg.

She gave her disciple an expectant look and Jin awkwardly made his way onto the sword after her. He didn't quite know how much he trusted the stability of this thing. The nimbus cloud, sure, but propelling oneself into the air on the flying sword? That just seemed…

Whatever thoughts and doubts he may have had were obliterated as the sword lifted into the air tip first and rocketed from the grounds of the sect as if they were... on a rocket.

Had there not been some sort of protective enhancements, the initial burst would have surely thrown Jin violently off the vehicle, but for some odd reason, he found his feet firmly rooted on the bone and no wind buffeting his face and hair. This was good, as since the transportation method had edges, he did not necessarily have any place where he could really hold on. Unless he wanted to hold on to Elder Flower, which might just be considered offensive enough that it would have been better to just die instead.

"You're very well acclimated to flying," Elder Flower commented as they burst through the clouds and the world suddenly opened before them.

Jinn was too stunned to answer.

If he thought that the view from the mountain had been amazing, or that the view from his aeroplane trips in his previous life had been comparable, then this blew everything out of the water. The air was fresh, the sky stretched out in front of him endlessly, and the sun turned the few clouds that they flew over into pink cotton candy. The horizon stretched out further than his eye could see, and from this angle, it seemed like the world was much larger than Earth. The curvature was significantly smaller. They continued speeding along until Jin almost forgot Flower's comment. However, he remembered just in time to not be rude.

"The only thing to fear is fear itself, I would have had to fly anyway, and it is better to choose to do so without anxiety," he said calmly. Flower nodded in front of him, her long black hair bobbing up and down. He'd never talked to her from this angle. Jin laughed inwardly.

"Some details of the trip," Flower said after a while.

Jin wondered if she sometimes undertook the trips just to enjoy the scenery. It was a magical moment. He nevertheless listened attentively.

"Warrior sects earn currency through hunting monsters and defending the border when a demon incursion is suspected to occur. Their payment and their prestige depend heavily on their martial prowess. In contrast, we are a commercial sect. We sell a product, of which there is no true intrinsic value like the martial prowess used against demons and beasts. This means that we need to upkeep good diplomatic relationships with as many sects as possible," Flower explained.

Jin nodded along. It made sense to him. They were essentially going on a public relations tour in a way. Perhaps the Mad Monks were valued customers, or perhaps his sect was trying to turn them into such.

"Obviously the better we can showcase our competency during this visit, the more likely the Mad Monks are to visit our sect with their disciples to give them combat experience, or to commission Rooms outright. In addition to this, the Mad Monks Sect is one of the sects close to ours geographically. Thus in the event of an attack, be it from demonic cultivators, monsters or demon incursions, we are somewhat reliant on the kindness of our neighbours to survive. Despite our templates and our anima, our combat prowess is not sufficient to be self-sufficient."

"Do martial sects not respect those who do not follow the path of the warrior?" Jin asked. "Is that why it is you who is going?" He had gleaned contextually during his tenure in the middle ring, that Elder Flower was one of the few elders in the sect actually capable of fighting against another elder from a martial sect.

Flower nodded. "It definitely helps. Also being a relatively young beautiful woman is always a plus," she said bluntly, making Jin almost choke on his spit. While Elder Flower was indeed beautiful, her outward appearance wasn't necessarily in his focus whenever he thought about her. After all, she was an authority figure first and foremost.

"I understand," Jin said. "I'll be as diplomatic and polite as possible."

He could see from her hair that the Elder nodded. "It's good that you understand. While you might also be challenged to a sparring match by some of their disciples, accept and lose gracefully. If you can win, of course, do so, but you're neither good enough with a lance, nor with a sword to beat someone who's been training their whole life."

Jin clenched his fists at his side. His combat prowess was increasing at a decent pace in his opinion, but six weeks were obviously no replacement for a lifetime. "I'll do my best Elder Flower."

She threw him a backwards glance at that, her green eyes meeting his. "I'm sure you will, you'll get more opportunities in the future," she muttered. "I think they'll be more impressed with your illusion Room rather than your fighting ability. The focus is to get them invested enough in it to help improve Ornstein. A collaborative project like that will surely help the diplomatic connection we have with their sect. Regardless, these are all worries for tomorrow. My sword is fast, but the mountain of the Mad Monks Sect is still too far away to get there in one day. We'll have to stop to rest at some point."

Jin hummed thoughtfully wondering at what sort of rest station they would be sleeping at. There were countless villages in the empire, each one of them smaller than the next. He didn't know much about Flower, but he felt that as an elder cultivator, despite how much she likely thought of herself as an ascetic, she would still hesitate before sleeping on a pile of straw which was likely the best they would be able to get in a village.

Did that mean that he would get to see a bigger town? He'd never actually done so, only hearing about them. Tales from the capital. His body had belonged to a farmer boy, whose first ascension to a higher status had occurred with the sect. There had been no in-between of visiting cities and earning money as a mortal.

"We will be staying in the village Xaingur. It is one of the villages on the outskirts of the border of influence where we still recruit disciples from. We have a small outpost there. It is commanded by an inner disciple responsible for our efforts in the region and for providing an outpost either for defence or for sleep for those of us who travel."

Jin had never heard of the village, but that was to be expected with his lack of education. He would have been more surprised if he'd known the place.

"Is serving at an outpost like this a job that I will also be able to take at the mission board later on?" he asked. Perhaps it would be nice to take a break from the sect sometime in the future and maybe talk with someone whose entire life wasn't completely controlled by the wish to become immortal. Cultivators were weird, and not really his people. This was showcased by the fact that he hadn't made a single friend after or before his promotion.

Solitary creatures, cultivators mainly stayed amongst themselves, and even amongst themselves, didn't interact much with each other.

"Yes, it's one of the jobs you can take later on. Generally, it is given to someone who has all the resources necessary to create a scenario anyway, which they can just as much do in one of the outposts. It generally pays enough that for a 10-year stay, one can then be back in the sect for 40 years without having to do another job."

Jin nodded assuming that even from the back she could feel the movement.

The two of them descended into silence after that conversation and it was a few hours later that the sword they were flying on tilted downwards and started homing in through the clouds towards what Jin recognized to be a little village consisting of around 200 farmsteads.

It was the average farming village really. Most houses had a large garden in which they grew vegetables. A pig pen, some cows, goats, chickens, and the entire village was surrounded by rolling hills and flatlands full of what he recognized from the top as rice paddies. The landscape looked plaid.

It was still the early afternoon, which made him wonder why Flower didn't want to do the whole journey in one day. If today represented half, then they could have arrived at the Mad Monks Sect in the evening. Maybe she wanted to arrive there at a certain time? Or fresh from the journey? Or was checking up on the village like this one of her responsibilities as an Elder?

Whatever the case, the scene that he was seeing from up above looked quite idyllic so he didn't particularly mind going there and having a look around. After all, he had been working incredibly hard ever since his promotion back at the sect. He deserved a vacation, even if it was only an afternoon.

"Something is wrong," Elder Flower suddenly said with a harsh voice, causing Jin to perk up from his dreams of taking a walk along the rice paddies and petting a cow or two.

"Huh?" he articulated eloquently.

"There should be people around, but I don't see anyone. Even the animals seem to be mostly inside their pens. This isn't how it's supposed to be. People should be running around, farming, doing something," she explained. Jin refocused his gaze and after a second purview noticed the same thing and also came to the conclusion that something was not quite right. The thing about villages back in the day before everyone worked from home was that they were always bustling. If the people weren't on the fields they should be filling up the streets of their little hamlet. The fact that there was no one outside was incredibly suspicious.

The flying sword changed direction, and where before it had been aimed at landing directly in the middle of the village from where they would have probably walked to wherever their sect outpost was, it was now flying directly towards what looked to be a medieval tower made out of stone on the outskirts. Perhaps made like that so that one could purview the domain from above. The thing grew larger as the flying sword grew nearer, and Jin soon made up a brown blur which actually turned out to be a landing platform probably for exactly what they were about to do.

Elder Flower pulled up the sword, finally initiating the landing sequence and the two of them gently tapped down not a second after the sword landed on a wooden platform extending out from underneath the tower's thatched roof from where they could see all around the village to once again ascertain that no one was out.

They turned towards the structure they just landed on, a large door leading to the top floor of the tower. Elder Flower held a hand over the door, and a small flash of light escaped it and the door knob rattled for a second. She then opened the door, just in time for a sword to be thrust directly at her torso.

Seemingly undeterred, Elder Flower grabbed the weapon by the edge and held onto it, kicking the person who had tried to assault her back into the tower where they landed on their back with a groan.

However, rather than some evil assassin, what the Elder and the disciple found writhing on the floor was a young woman of about 20 years wearing the high-quality beige robes that were emblematic of the Illusion Room Sect.

"Report the situation, disciple Ting," Elder Flower barked.

From that Jin concluded that they had in fact not been attacked by an assassin, but simply by a coward trying to defend themselves. Or maybe this was the normal greeting in cultivation land when one met one's sect members outside of the mountain?

Inner disciple Ting was a small woman with short brown hair twisted in elaborate braids, big expressive green eyes and a terrified expression on her face. She promptly kowtowed on the floor and apologised.

"There's a monster on the loose!" she exclaimed hysterically as an explanation for her actions.