I had two goals to work towards. Improving alchemy and improving cultivation. I didn’t have enough energy to work on my alchemy, so I went to improve my cultivation. Before that, I needed a cultivation technique. Off to the Technique Hall I went.


    Inside, I found there were numerous shelves of techniques available. I didn’t have a clue where to start looking or how to choose one. There was a guy standing behind a counter near the entrance, so I just decided to go up to him and ask.


    “Hello, can you tell me where the cultivation techniques are here?”


    “Cultivation? No need to look. We keep them behind the counter. The ones out there are all for different skills. We got a lot of skills out there, but cultivation techniques are limited. What level do you want? You can go Low, Mid, or High Yellow rank. If you want anything better, you’re going to need special permission.”


    “What are the prices?”


    “50 for the Low. Increasing it multiplies the cost by five. So, 250 for Mid and 1250 for High.”


    “What different techniques are available?”


    “Ah, we just got the one, the sect’s cultivation technique for all alchemists. It’s for fire qi. If you’re looking for something different, you got to put in a special request.  From Low to High, it’s really the same skill, it has just been improved. Of course, higher-ranked skills also are more difficult to master, so the Low tier can be seen as a simplified version. You got the skill from the exam, right? That’s the same skill. It’s technically a Low-Yellow skill, but it might better be called a Lowest-Yellow.”


    Though I was wary of trusting anyone, I had to ask what I cared about most. Truth or not, I wouldn’t learn anything if I didn’t ask. I could only hope the question wouldn’t raise any red flags.


    “Do they have any mental effects?”


    “Oh, of course,” he laughed. “They are perfect for alchemists. It helps calm and soothe the mind, allowing for a lot greater clarity in your work. You don’t want to be filled with rage when you’re trying to carefully concoct pills, do you? The technique helps with that.”


    “Any chance I could find one that didn’t affect my mind?” I asked carefully.


    “Let me guess, you want a strong, high-level cultivation technique that will have no effect on your mind.”


    “Ideally, yes.”


    “Uh huh, well I don’t have one, but I do have a spear and shield to sell you,” he said, laughing loudly.


    “Wh… what?”


    “I mean it’s impossible, kid. Not going to happen. Even if it did, I don’t know if I would want it. Most of the time people are looking for those effects, ya know? Helps to have a technique that puts you in the right frame of mind.”


    I left the Technique Hall slightly dispirited. Was it the truth? It made some sense. Cultivation had an incredible impact on the body. From that point of view, the idea that it wouldn’t affect your mind was laughable. Still, there should be a difference between natural shifts in mentality and outside influences.


    “System,” I asked, “is it possible to buy a cultivation technique with no mental side effects.”


    Yes. Anything can be purchased.


    “So, he was lying to me…”


    Calculating… Relevant information is available for 10 credits.


    Relevant information… What did that mean? Should I spend my only trump card here for an unknown? Well, 10 credits weren’t much of a trump card, were they.


    “Okay, go ahead and spend them.”


    Confirmed. 0 credits remaining.


    You can buy a cultivation technique without any mental side effects. If you only want a Rank 1 cultivation technique the cost is 1 crystal. Additionally, for that price the technique will be High-Heaven. Additional higher-Rank techniques can also be included without increasing the price.


    “Really? Wait, crystal? What’s a crystal?”


    Credits contain the energy of a Martial tier cultivator. Crystals are a higher form of System currency. They contain the energy of a god that has surpassed the Heavenly Dao.


    “So, you’re saying…”


    Credits expended, transaction complete.


    That… I think I got it. At least, I got the message the System was giving out. The fact of these techniques affecting the mind was a law of the Heavenly Dao. It was not something I could tangle with for the foreseeable future. Time to start working within the rules instead of against them.


    I need a cultivation technique. Right now, let’s say, best effort, I can make two High-Purity Basics a day if I’m lucky. That’s 20 points a day, though expenses will add up. So, is scraping together 250 for the mid-level manual in a relatively short time frame possible? Yes, but it will eat a huge hole in my pocket.


    I decided to start by aiming for the 50-point low-level manual. That would let me start making money more quickly and easily. Would it harm my future and foundation? Did I really care? Best to just start moving forward.


    Time to make the drugs.


    <hr>


    Over the following three days, I transformed the seven peonies I had remaining into three high-grade and four mid-grade pills.


    As soon as I finished, I headed to the Provisions Hall. The transaction there was straightforward. The accessible area of the hall was just a small room with a single counter. I handed over my pills and they gave me points. My contribution point total jumped from 0 to 50 in an instant.


    One thing that I didn’t expect was that I also had a large amount of ‘special’ contribution points. Because I earned 15 points during the selection exam, I was given 150 special contribution points. These points were unique in that they could only be used to purchase ingredients. While they wouldn’t help me learn new skills, they would provide my starting capital.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    This made clear the choice that had been given during the selection exam. Craft more pills for a huge boost in starting capital or save the flowers and use them to make general points later.


    I held off on buying any more ingredients for the moment and rushed to the Technique Hall. The exchange for the Low-Yellow manual went smoothly, and I was about to rush to my room to start cultivating when I caught myself.


    I was no longer a kid trapped alone in his room, struggling on his own to make even the slightest progress. I had access to resources and teachers now. At a minimum, I could make myself pills. Let’s at least try to play this smart.


    It would take me a couple hours to build up enough energy to make a pill with a good chance of High-Purity, so instead I decided to check if there were any lectures on cultivation available. I had maximized what I could draw from the Earth Heart Mantra in the distant past, but that didn’t mean I had been using it to its full potential. There could easily be something I missed or didn’t know.


    After looking at the cultivation lectures available, there were indeed many options. Purchasing a seat to a lecture from a Martial Master was going for anywhere between 10 and 100 contribution points. The cost differences seemed to be from the size of the class and the person teaching it. Each lecture would be on a defined topic regarding cultivation, with the Martial Master giving his personal insights.


    The lectures didn’t interest me too much. Having gone to university, I had a pretty good understanding of how much I could learn from a single lecture, and that didn’t even factor in that the teacher was the one choosing exactly what to talk about.


    I focused on the options for personal tutoring. A one-on-one lesson from a Martial Master could actually be surprisingly affordable. Sure, some people had priced a one-hour lesson at several thousand points, but some were also available for as little as 50 points.


    I decided to go to the receptionist to ask a few questions. The receptionist was an older woman with graying hair. She looked like the kind of person who might have been a fixture of this place for decades.


    “Hi, can you explain the pricing for one-on-one lessons? The range of prices is pretty large. What do I get for paying so much?”


    “Welcome, no problem! Mostly it just comes down to who the teacher is. If someone is asking for hundreds of points for a lesson, they are probably an outer sect disciple that is trying to earn a little extra. The ones asking for thousands are usually quite high-ranked outer sect disciples.”


    The woman put on a conspiratorial expression.


    “I’ll tell you a little secret. Those expensive lessons aren’t about learning. If you take them, don’t expect a diligent teacher. Those are really about making connections. If you are looking to move up to the outer sect, gifting a powerful disciple a few thousand points is a way to establish yourself there,” she said with a wink.


    “Now, the cheapest options are different. 50 points is the lowest we allow them to go. Some would give you an hour of their time for even less. These are mostly new, low-level Martial Masters. They are all still nominal disciples, and they are probably still learning how to make Superior pills. Each set of ingredients costs 30 points, and when you keep failing, well, you burn through money pretty quickly. The lower the price, the more desperate they are.”


    She gestured toward a group of names with even higher prices.


    “Above 100 points you will probably find people who can occasionally make High-Purity Superior pills, so they are no longer in dire straits. Though, after they can do so consistently, you won’t find them giving lessons anymore. They will be working on their alchemy.”


    I thanked her for her information and left. I needed to make some money.


    The next several days, I dipped into my ‘special’ points to buy pill ingredients. It ended up only costing me 30 of them to build up the funds I needed for a lesson. I had decided to go with a teacher that only cost 50 points for two reasons. First, they were cheap, and I didn’t have any cash. Second, I figured it was better to give coal in winter. If the people offering lessons for 50 points were in more need of it, they might well put in some extra effort.


    As soon as I had scraped together enough points, I went back and scheduled a lesson for later that day.


    <hr>


    The teacher I chose was named Cao MeiLan. She looked slightly older than me, like she was in her late twenties, but with the way cultivation played with ages, I had no idea how old she actually was.


    Cao made clear that she was just passing on her own knowledge, and that, as she was still a beginner, she could be wrong about some things. However, most of what we covered was considered basic best practices by everyone in the sect. It might not be accurate, but it would be the same advice anyone else would give me.


    First, purity of qi was absolutely vital. According to Cao, it would be better to spend five years advancing a level with near-perfect purity instead of jumping a rank in a single day. For alchemists, it was imperative. Purity affected both the quality of flames produced and your control over them.


    For the pills I was making, it didn’t matter much. Apply heat and boom you had a pill. For more advanced pills though, it became trickier to deal with pill toxins during refining. Maybe they were located within a cluster of medicinal energy, so you had to deftly target them. Maybe the toxins burned at an extremely high temperature, but the medicinal power evaporated at a low one, so you have to keep hot and cold places right next to each other. Extremely fine control of heat was a necessity, and it was only possible if you kept your qi purity high.


    Second, she talked about some of the techniques available for purchase and made a few recommendations. These techniques could improve temperature, control, accuracy, or other basic aspects of qi control. According to Cao, these techniques were just crutches. In the end, you really wanted to be able to do this all without them, but if, say, your purity wasn’t high enough, the techniques were a solution. The focus of the lesson was on cultivation, so we didn’t spend much time on the topic, but I was grateful she mentioned it.


    Third, she told me something I had been wondering about. To advance from a Martial Disciple to a Martial Master one had to create meridians in their body. Disciples had qi locked in their muscles, but meridians were pathways that began to allow it to flow freely from one part of the body to another. Someone with a single pathway was considered a Half-Step Martial Master. A level 1 Master had two meridians, level 2 had three, up to Martial Master Peak which had a total of 12 meridians in their body. Creating meridians was completely different from cultivating as a Martial Disciple, so to advance past Martial Disciple Peak one would need a proper Rank 2 cultivation technique.


    Fourth, Cao talked about the order to open acupoints. The order I had done it in previously, arms, chest, legs, extremities, was considered standard for most warriors. It quickly built upper body strength. However, she made the point that for alchemists, especially for Disciples who couldn’t move qi freely, the most important acupoints are in the hands. That was where the most available qi would be. So, there were two general schools of thought. Open the hands first, so that you have quick access to their reservoirs, or open them last, so you have the most practice to make them as pure as possible. Her personal suggestion was to do the upper arms first and do the hands last for the greatest balance of benefits.


    Finally, she spent the rest of the time helping me practice creating a qi filter when cultivating. She had used the Mid-Yellow version of the technique. Though she wasn’t allowed to share it with me, since it simply used an upgraded version of the filter from the Low-Yellow technique, she was able to provide valuable insights on how I could improve it.


    Overall, I would consider the lesson 50 points well spent.


    Afterward, I went back to my room to cultivate. I didn’t use any pills since Cao told me not to. She said I should worry both about the extra pill toxins from even a High-Purity pill as well as the problems with properly purifying qi when it is being drawn in at an accelerated rate. According to her, I should try to avoid boosting my cultivation through pills until I reach a bottleneck.


    This time, my cultivation was slow and deliberate. I didn’t have a looming deadline like that crazy Su Clan challenge. I could take my time. I spent it working on making my qi purer and purer. In the end, there was only so much a Low-Yellow technique can do though. I hit a complete wall at 80% purity. It was far better than I had ever done before, but I knew it still wasn’t enough. I needed a better technique.


    Still, I moved forward with opening my first acupoint. It took me a month of study before I did so, but I had finally returned to Martial Disciple 2.


    I only had one month left before I had to start paying rent, and I had 0 points in my account. It was time to start moving some bricks.