A soldier took me to a small cultivation room on the edge of the palace complex.


    “Swallow this,” he ordered once I was seated in the room.


    He handed me a pill that I didn’t recognize. I held it in my hands, examining it for a couple of seconds, but the soldier’s demeanor suggested that he wanted me to take it without delay. I didn’t know the exact effects of the pill, but I could tell that it was some type of poison. I didn’t seem to have any choice, and I didn’t think he wanted to kill me, so I put it in my mouth and swallowed.


    Pain lanced through me, and all of the qi in my body trembled. He had indeed given me a poison pill, but it was not a poison for the physical body. It was one that acted on the energy in my body.


    My cultivation base began to fall into a weakened state, and it felt like it might collapse entirely. I was a Martial Disciple, and what he had given me was at least a rank 2 poison. I had almost no resistance to a pill of this power.


    “Swallow this,” he said, handing me another pill.


    This time I easily recognized it as a Rank 3 Qi Gathering Pill. To me, giving such a pill to a Disciple was one of the worst ideas I could think of, but the soldier just looked at me emotionlessly. He wasn’t willing to take ‘no’ for an answer.


    I swallowed the pill.


    “Give me access to your qi,” he commanded.


    Relying on my ability I instinctively gave him control. He reached into my body and began twisting qi similar to how I had done it for… for Mei…


    He began braiding my qi. Everywhere he worked, I felt a sharp, stabbing pain. The poison he had given me earlier acted to alleviate the problems caused by calcification, but the way it did so was torture. My body was in agony both from the poison coursing through my system and the feeling of my flesh being ripped apart as the man slowly constructed meridians throughout my torso.


    The soldier was skilled though, and he was able to complete both of the meridians in my chest in less than a day. That told me that he had both high affinities and a lot of experience doing this.


    The biggest worry now was that my meridians followed their slave technique. This put me in a far more dangerous position than I had been in before. I considered trying to disperse the meridians he created and finding a way to forge new ones on my own, but this deep into calcification, I wasn’t sure I could manage it. If I significantly increased my water affinity, maybe, but it would be a risk.


    I had cultivated a different Rank 1 technique, I had the resistance enhancement from the system, and I didn’t plan to go past Martial Master 1, I convinced myself that I would be able to protect myself against any mental influences from only two meridians.


    Once he was finished, the soldier spent several minutes examining my body, checking to confirm that the job had been done correctly. I noticed that the meridians he had created were far more complex than those I had made in the past.


    Once he was satisfied with what he was seeing, the soldier nodded his head and looked me in the eye.


    “Follow,” he ordered.


    <hr>


    I was taken to a dilapidated building on the western edge of the palace complex.


    The gardens were overgrown, and weeds were poking out everywhere. The cobblestones and the sides of the building were caked in dirt. I didn’t hear any sounds of movement from within the courtyard.


    Above the entrance hung the sign ‘Cold Wind Palace.’ The ‘palace’ was large enough to house dozens of people, but it felt abandoned.


    When the soldier brought me inside, I saw a young man sitting alone in the lotus position in the middle of the main hall. The young man was concentrating on cultivating, but the soldier didn’t give it any mind.


    “Prince CaoHan,” he said, “Steward Fang has been assigned to you.”


    After saying this, he didn’t wait for a reply. He simply turned around and walked out of the building.


    I felt awkward standing there right inside the building’s threshold, but what was I supposed to do? My ability told me to just stand still and wait for orders from the prince, so that’s what I did.


    The prince continued cultivating silently for several hours without even looking at me, so I just stood there and watched him.


    I examined him with qi vision and saw that he was a Martial Disciple 1 who had never drawn any energy into his body. He was practicing creating his first qi filter, but his movements were rather inept, and he struggled with creating even the most basic shapes.


    When he applied a filter to his arm and began to try and pull in qi, his filter collapsed immediately. From what I could tell, his affinity had to be in the nine-star range.


    When he finally gave up, he gave me a cold look. He was angry, not at me, but at the world.


    “Prepare dinner,” he instructed.


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    I gave a bow, turned, and did as ordered.


    Over the next several days, this situation continued as the prince spent all his time working on basic cultivation while I performed simple tasks to keep him fed and clothed.


    After days of practice, I noticed that the prince had finally been able to create a filter capable of remaining intact as he drew in qi. However, I noticed that the purity of the qi he was pulling in was abysmal. It wasn’t my responsibility to step in at this point, but he didn’t have a teacher, and if he continued the path he was going down, he was going to ruin his future.


    I probed my ability at this point to see if it was appropriate for me to step in, but I didn’t receive a clear answer. I had not demonstrated any capacity to be able to teach him, and I wasn’t officially his teacher, so I had no responsibility to step in and help him. At the same time, there was nothing that would prevent me from doing so. If I had the ability to help, it would have been expected that I would do so in this situation.


    I saw a lot of myself from the early days in this world in the prince. He was going down the same path I had when I first started cultivating, and I knew where that would lead him. I didn’t want someone else to make the same mistakes I had if I could prevent it.


    Beyond that, if the prince continued down this path, he would have no future. If the prince had no future, I doubted if I would have much of a future either. It was in my best interest to keep him as sane as possible.


    Making my decision I stepped forward.


    “Prince CaoHan,” I said, speaking in a commanding voice. “Stop.”


    He ignored me and continued to cultivate.


    Not knowing what to say that could make him listen, I crossed the room, walked to his side, and pressed heavily on his shoulder to get his attention.


    “Stop, prince.”


    His qi scattered.


    His eyes widened in anger as he slapped away my hand.


    “How dare you!”


    “Prince,” I bowed, “that is not the way. You need to perfect your qi filter first.”


    “You dare lecture a prince on how to cultivate!?”


    I kowtowed before him. “Apologies prince, but I must. Cultivating like this will only harm you. Please allow me to assist.”


    He visibly struggled with this request. He wanted to send me away, but he had to know the path he was on would only lead him to failure.


    “Fine, assist me then,” he snarled.


    “Prince, please allow me to look at your cultivation technique.”


    He clenched his jaw and ground his teeth, but he relented and pulled a scroll from his robes.


    “This is the Indomitable Earth Mantra. It is a secret technique of our dynasty. You will never speak of it to anyone. It is said that whoever successfully cultivates this technique can never lose.”


    I opened the technique and quickly read through it. It was a basic Peak-Yellow earth qi cultivation technique, so I just needed to quickly note the filter design and the details for each acupoint.


    The prince’s words about a person who cultivates it never being able to lose worried me. There was nothing about the technique that made the cultivator special. That meant this technique would create a mindset within the one who cultivated it that would either make them believe they were unbeatable or make them unwilling to accept any loss. It was a dangerous technique, but looking at the prince, I could sense I wouldn’t be able to talk him out of using it. The best I could do was help him cultivate it as well as possible.


    Before I could help, I needed to know what I was working with.


    “My prince, what is your earth affinity?”


    His eyes blazed with anger, but his voice was cool and detached. “I was only granted a mid nine-star affinity.”


    That was going to be a problem. Training him to be able to cultivate a Peak-Yellow technique perfectly would take years, and if he wanted to advance smoothly, he didn’t have that kind of time.


    The thought of boosting his affinities popped into my mind, but I quickly dismissed it. That would have been beyond foolhardy. I needed to take a different approach.


    “My prince, please form a qi filter on your upper right arm.”


    He was angry with his situation, but he was smart enough to know that he needed help, so after a quick snort, he complied.


    I reached out with my affinities to try to fix the problems, but I didn’t have sufficient strength. I was only a Martial Master 1 with a mid eight-star earth affinity. Forcibly manipulating the qi in someone else’s body required either a high cultivation level or a high affinity, preferably both.


    I considered my options. I couldn’t raise my cultivation, but nothing was stopping me from raising my affinity. I had a Peak-Earth earth qi cultivation technique to try out, so I would want to raise my earth affinity soon anyway.


    “System,” I subvocalized, “permanently raise my earth affinity to peak seven-star.”


    Permanent Peak, 7-star Earth Affinity. Cost 172,500 credits. 149,660,775 credits remaining.


    That should prove to be more than enough for what I needed to do.


    I reached out and began manipulating the prince’s qi filter. As I did, his face showed discomfort, but he didn’t speak.


    “My prince, this is the proper filter for your technique. Try to draw energy through it.”


    As he did, I slowly relaxed my hold over the qi filter, expecting the prince to instinctively take control to stabilize it.


    He didn’t.


    The qi filter began to wobble, so I reasserted my control.


    “Prince, try to keep the filter steady.”


    He tried, but he simply didn’t have the strength. The filter was too complicated for him, and managing that while keeping the qi flowing at the right angle and velocity was beyond him.


    “Stop, my prince. We need to discuss this.”


    I saw frustration on his face, but he relented and let go of his qi.


    “Speak.”


    I had started down this path, and I didn’t know where it would lead me, but I would commit myself to it because I expected that if I didn’t, I would be trapped as a servant for a cultivation-mad prince until I died.


    “My prince, you need to make a clear decision about your future cultivation. There are a few ways to proceed, and you need to choose your path knowing the consequences of that choice.”


    He simply nodded in acknowledgment.


    “The first option is to proceed as you were before. Cultivate on your own and try to advance immediately. This will result in a severe mental influence that will control you for the rest of your life.”


    “No.” His left eye twitched with annoyance.


    “Second, you can try to find a way to increase your affini—”


    “No.”


    I nodded to his quick response.


    “I could help you train your ability to cultivate on your own. With your current affinity, you will require a significantly stronger soul before you can even begin to practice your cultivation technique properly. I can help you train, but it will still take time.”


    “How long?”


    “I cannot be certain. At least ten year—”


    “No.” He glared at me. “I must reach Martial Grandmaster before thirty.”


    I sucked in a breath.


    “Then I will need to directly assist you during cultivation. The only options you have are how much assistance I provide. The more I help, the better your foundation will be. However, if I control too much of the process, you may not have the experience you will need at later stages.”


    He looked me directly in the eye with fierce determination.


    “Do everything you can to make it perfect. I need a flawless foundation, but we must hurry. The faster I can cultivate the better.”