Calculating Cultivation

There was a horn in the distance as the caravan came to a halt for a third time. I had thought it was over at the first battle, but apparently word didn’t spread fast enough, or the different bandit groups just didn’t believe what had happened.

In the last two battles there were only four deaths and seven serious injuries, where the soldiers had to stay on the carts. Our overall combat strength had not decreased. This was definitely not worth that cultivation scroll. Trader Wei and Shao were silent as I let out a sigh. They both knew I did not like fighting, even more so when it would be a massacre.

There was no point in putting things off. I got out of the carriage just as the soldier in charge of the caravan came over. He had a grim look on his face, more so than the last two times. “Honored Cultivator Yuan Zhou, they have arrayed themselves just beyond that bend in the road.”

I followed the soldier around the bend in the road and immediately saw the problem. These people had built a wooden fort directly where the road was, between two steep hills. Looking at the number of bandits, there had to be at least 4,000 this time. This was starting to get a bit ridiculous. The second battle had only been about 2,000 people and they broke quickly after I had rushed into their lines.

It appeared they had raced ahead to join up with another bandit group. If these people weren’t poor farmers the vast majority of the time, I wouldn’t have believed it would be possible to get such numbers. These weren’t full time bandits, they were poor people who were desperate to change their fate. I saw women and children among the bandits on top of the wood walls and towers that had been built.

I drew my sword and advanced forwards. I could see the look of fear on their faces from under the brim of my hat. A cold gust of wind blew through the pass and there was utter stillness except for my continued advance. A man jumped down off the wall, wearing a martial robe. He was carrying a metal sword as well. But that wasn’t the most surprising thing. I could detect traces of energy within him. It was another cultivator. He began to advance towards me.

Perhaps I would get answers sooner than I had anticipated. I came to a stop a good distance away as the soldiers from the caravan assembled behind me. The other cultivator stopped as well. Based on the amount of energy he had, he would be in the Foundation Establishment stage at best, but the energy was melded in with his body incredibly well.

“I am Cultivator Yuan Zhou of the Heavenly Alliance. You cannot win,” I calmly said. I could see the fear in the man in front of me. He clearly knew he was outclassed.

“I am the Free Cultivator Han, not sworn to any sect. I cannot allow your caravan to pass,” he replied.

“So not with any sect? And your sword is only regular steel. One swing and I will cut through it with ease. I am beyond you for you are but a frog in the well looking upon someone who can crush you easily. I only speak, since I do not like violence and would prefer to exchange words not blows,” I explained.

“I owe these people a great favor. As a man and a cultivator, I won’t break my word. Even if it means my death,” he replied.

“I am not skilled enough to hold back my blows. If you do not wish to die, then you must dodge,” I said and then kicked off the ground, darting forward.

Han leapt to the side while bringing up his sword to block. Clearly he was acting on instinct and training. If he had a blade infused with energy that carried a conceptual weight to it, then it would have been the right move. But I had not been lying before. My blade easily cut through the mortal steel and through his side.

What was surprising however was the resistance my blade faced while cutting through his body. It wasn’t much, but there was resistance where there should be none. Someone at his level of cultivation, with the amount of energy within his body had no business resisting such a blow.

Cultivator Han went tumbling along the ground, leaving a bloody trail behind. He had lost the grip on his blade, which had been shorn in two. He let out a pained grunt as he brought his hand to his side where he was bleeding. I calmly walked over and brought the tip of my sword to rest on his nose. Once I had done that he didn’t move in the slightest.

“Will you surrender yourself into my custody?” I asked loudly so the soldiers behind me would hear.

“I am not foolish enough to keep fighting after such a loss. Thank you senior for your kindness,” he replied with a hint of bitterness in his voice. He shut his overly large eyes and lay there on the ground.

“Take Cultivator Han back to the caravan and provide treatment. He is my guest. Also collect the pieces of his sword and leave them in my carriage,” I ordered the soldiers. The man in charge quickly sent several out to collect the cultivator and his broken weapon.

I turned back to the wooden fortress. If before there was fear, now there was despair. “I will offer you all to clear this road for our caravan, or I will cut you all down,” I called out loudly.

“He is just one man! Take the pills of courage and resist!” One of the men at the top of the wooden wall called out. I was not going to let this descend into another massacre. I focused and jabbed out with my sword, giving it a twist.

The man’s dead developed a large hole straight through it. “You cannot win!” I yelled out as their leader collapsed backwards, already dead before he hit the ground. “Now lay down your weapons, open the gate, and disperse.”

“Kill him!”

“Arrows!”

“Fire!”

This was honestly ridiculous. A wave of wooden arrows came at me. I easily knocked the ones heading at me out of the sky. Why couldn’t these people understand that they were completely and totally outmatched?

It was honestly one of the most aggravating things I had ever encountered. After the second battle I had some hope that these people possessed common sense along with a will to live. Apparently I had come to that conclusion a bit too soon. I saw many of them ingesting pills. Their big eyes widened a bit more and they became more frantic.

I continued to advance even under an intense barrage. As long as I moved quickly enough the archers had a hard time targeting me. Once I was closed to the wooden wall, I took a deep breath and swung.

“One Swing To Sperate Heaven And Earth.” The words helped me focus to maximize the efficiency of the energy I used for this technique. The wood wall separated at the base. The people crowded behind it were cut in half. The wooden towers and the portion of the wall in front of me began to fall over.

“Fire!” The soldiers behind me unleashed a barrage of arrows over my head into the large gap I had created. Bandits were rushing into the gap while their companions screamed on the ground, most of them moments away from dying.

I felt both sick to my stomach and numb at the carnage. I moved back and forth in front of the gap cutting down the bandits that reached me as more arrows rained down into the gap. The soldiers’ arrows had their tips fire hardened and some had stone tips.

Arrows didn’t kill people right away normally. That was something I had come to discover. They primarily injured people to disable them from fighting. These fanatics took the injuries, but kept rushing forward. I slowly fell back and the soldiers from the caravan had moved to form a ‘V’ shape in front of the large gap in the wall.

I noted that other portions of the wooden wall had already been set on fire. The soldiers had a limited number of clay pots with fire oil, extracted from a plant of course. The mounted soldiers had ridden in close while I had caused a distraction and lit the wooden wall aflame, forcing the archers off them, and blocking any view from the wooden towers.

That meant all the bandits had to rush through the gap. After a minute, they couldn’t rush anymore due to the number of corpses. The archers kept firing as runners brought up more arrows from the caravan. I had to hold my position and keep cutting the bandits rushing straight ahead so the soldiers didn’t get overwhelmed.

Three minutes into the massacre, the fire consuming the wooden walls was starting to die down. The gap in the walls was littered with mounds of corpses and the ground was thick with blood. The screams of the dying continued to sound across the battlefield.

The problem once again came down to how far we were outnumbered. Five minutes into the massacare the arrows had run out and the archers had picked up spears to join the lines of soldiers holding back the bandits. I kept cutting people down, one person a second, but even then they had started with around 4,000 people. Since the start of the battle I had probably killed a tenth of their force. I didn’t bother to keep count.

The soldiers had killed another tenth. With a final tenth being wounded in some way. The fire that had consumed the walls was getting close to finally dying off. Once it died off they would be able to leverage their superior numbers against us.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed this. “Fall back! Fall back!” The soldiers on my side began to retreat while I dealt with the fanatics that rushed over their fallen comrades to die at my blade. Bandits began to run past me and try to flank me. They were like a river, and I was a big boulder in their path.

The soldiers continued to retreat, forcing the bandits to run further and further. The mounted soldiers harried and killed the people in the front. I retreated as well once they were far enough away and had regrouped. That was the downside of the Kylo drug, it made people fanatics and exhausted them. The soldiers, while slightly tired from the initial fighting were well trained and kept the fighting at a manageable pace. Also, they had good sources of food and training.

The poor peasants were malnourished, crazed, and by the time they reached the soldiers they were completely exhausted. I cut my way back to the soldiers and retreated behind them. I noted one person who had their arm cut off rushing forward with a wooden spear in their off hand while their stump leaked out their life blood. They impaled themselves on one of the spears the soldiers’ was using and died.

“Keep moving backwards! Hold formation!” As I caught my breath I watched as the fanatics were quickly losing steam the moment they entered combat. The soldiers kept continually retreating, leaving a trail of corpses and dying people in their wake.

They knew how to combat fanatics that had ingested the Kylo drug. The key to winning was to outlast them. The first battle they had turtled up, since there was no good choke point. Here with the large hills to either side and difficult rocky terrain, the bandits were forced come from one direction. They had to transverse the obstacle course that was their fallen brethren. Many fell down after tripping over a corpse or slipping on blood. They got back up and kept rushing forward, but it quickly exhausted what little energy they had.

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I stayed behind the soldiers as we retreated all the way back to the caravan, which was about half a kilometer or a quarter of a mile away from the wooden wall that had been built across the road. It took a mortal about two minutes of hard running to cross that distance. The bandits were barely able to breath once they reached the soldiers.

“Hold position! Hold position!” The people manning the carts were not idle either. They each had equipped themselves with a wooden spear and reinforced the line of soldiers on the flanks. They weren’t trained to move in formation or do a fighting retreat. But what they could do was a hold a line with pointy sticks. Even the merchants got into the action, since if the line collapsed, it would be their deaths as well. Trader Wei and Shao both had wood spears and had joined the final defensive line.

I let out another sigh and advanced into the battlefield once more, cutting down the bandits. There were cheers once I did that, since it greatly reduced the pressure on the soldiers and members of the caravan.

One swing, one death. A hundred swings, a hundred deaths. A thousand swings, a thousand deaths.

By the time the battle was over, the battle line had created a wall of corpses. The bandits had to climb over the dead people and were easily stabbed once they reached the other side of the corpse wall. All told, there were probably 3,200 dead, another 600 wounded, and 200 had run off.

On our side six soldiers had died and another fifteen had taken wounds. Two of the cart handlers died, another seven were wounded. Trader Wei and Shao were both fine.

The first time the battle was far enough away from the caravan I didn’t have to see the cleanup. The second time there weren’t enough corpses to make a huge fuss. Now, there was a tremendous amount of carnage that needed to be handled.

The soldiers were put on sentry duty to rest. All the wounded were taken back and tended to. The merchants and the cart handlers began to pick through the battlefield and make piles of corpses that were set alight once they had been stripped of anything of value. It was a grisly process, one that I thankfully did not have to participate in.

Instead, I was sitting at a table behind my carriage, so I didn’t have to look at the carnage. This privilege was one I would not easily discard for any reason. Cultivator Han was sitting at the table with me, his side had been bandaged.

Shao set out tea for both of us. The two halves of Cultivator Han’s sword were also put on the table in front of me. “Congratulations on your victory,” Cultivator Han finally said after sipping some tea.

“It was a massacre. It isn’t something to take pride in,” I replied. I still had my wide brimmed hat on, concealing a large portion of my face.

“That is the kind of battle legends are made from. You killed a thousand men by yourself in this Battle of Gray Pass.” I rolled my eyes at that comment. It really was nothing impressive and a bit depressing.

“My sect is quite isolated. I would hear about your journey of cultivation. The methods you have used to advance your cultivation, the culture of the sects, and anything related to more powerful cultivators.”

“I am a Third Stage Body Transformation cultivator. I have completed strength and flesh training. I still have organ, muscle, bone, mind, and marrow training left to complete. I primarily use the Seven Body Transformation stages method that I learned from my master,” he said. That was a completely different cultivation system compared to anything I knew.

“And after Body Transformation?” I asked.

“Then there is Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, and after that I do not know.” Based on his strength, I wouldn’t be too worried until that Nascent Soul level.

“The goal of your cultivation is to increase your lifespan and seek immortality?” I asked.

“Of course, what else would cultivation be?” he asked.

“Just confirming the similarities between what I have learned and what you have learned. Why not join a sect?” I asked. There were more important questions, but I didn’t want to go right to the question of how he was cultivating and where he was getting energy from? I had enough patience to pace myself.

“Sects are quite insular. Using their nexus points to great effect to temper their bodies. I am one of the few cultivators that takes up work to get paid in order to use such a location to advance my cultivation.” Now we were getting somewhere.

“These nexus points, what exactly are they?” I asked.

“My apologies senior, but how do you not know?” he asked me.

“That answer is complex. I would hear exactly what these nexus points are?” I asked again. I wasn’t going to explain to this frog how he was trapped in a well. I wanted answers and my patience was quickly evaporating.

“They are locations blessed by the heavens themselves that allow one to temper their body,” Cultivator Han replied.

“No one has investigated these points? Tried to make more of them?” I asked.

“There might have been attempts, but as far as I know, no. And someone of my status would not be able to look into the inner workings of a nexus point.” I sipped my tea at that annoying answer. They had a location that provided energy. How was that energy getting there? Why wasn’t whatever was drawing away the energy environment impacting these nexus points?

I got up, since there was one last thing I needed to do. “I am going to inspect your cultivation.” I went over to Cultivator Han and put my hand on his shoulder. I then released the smallest burst of energy possible. This was a minor trick Yang Heng had taught me. The results were interesting and I went back to my seat.

The energy used was the smallest amount I had ever seen. In fact most of the energy had disappeared entirely, only leaving behind some traces. Calling the first stage of this cultivation system Body Tempering was quite accurate. These cultivators were using very small amounts of energy to refine their body. They were squeezing out every possible advantage from the energy they used to make their body stronger.

I sipped my tea once more, thinking on everything I had just learned. “How strong is the strongest cultivator in the Flame Sect?” I asked.

“Most sects have at least one elder in the Nascent Soul realm.”

“How long do they live for?” I asked.

“At least a thousand years,” he replied. I let out a scoff at that. Their strongest person was below me most likely. In fact, it appeared their entire cultivation system might be a precursor to the cultivation I knew. They had to refine bits of energy to even develop a soul to then go through the cultivation steps I had.

But their efficiency was off the charts. My body naturally grew stronger through the natural infusion of energy. They had to complete that process manually. Their life extension wasn’t based on energy, but on the improvement of their physical body to the extreme. It reminded me of the path of Body Cultivation, where the entire point was to use energy to strengthen one’s body.

I would need more knowledge and to think about this a lot more. It truly was a separate cultivation system from what I could tell. Energy was not being used to build structures as part of one’s soul. Instead they were using minute amounts of energy to refine their bodies to perfection, a process that naturally happened with the kind of cultivation I practiced.

While my form of cultivation was far superior, it was also dependent on a lot of energy. This new cultivation system was designed to work off as little energy as possible. That made me concerned how powerful one of these nexus points actually was. The amount of energy I needed for my cultivation was immense.

To put it in perspective, I was drawing enough energy to match Cultivator Han’s cultivation every minute or so. The difference was incredibly massive. However, there was something interesting that caught my attention that I wanted to confirm.

“How do you perform strength training, the first step of your cultivation system. Be as detailed as possible,” I demanded.

“It is a matter of mediating and refining the energy one breathes in while inside the nexus chamber. Holding that energy inside oneself and pushing it throughout the body to strengthen one’s body and get it used to energy. Supposedly the most talented can breathe in energy from the very air itself, but I have not had such luck.”

My brain froze at that last statement. “People can use the energy in the air? Are you sure about this?” I asked intently.

“Yes. There isn’t much, but it is there.” I looked around but could not see any energy. The amount in the air had to be absolutely miniscule. “The key part of the Body Tempering stage is to focus on what you need to do to improve your body. Each Sect uses a different method they have developed and possibly a different order. But the stage is the same for everyone.” Except me, which I didn’t say.

“Go rest. I need to think on what you have said,” I ordered. Cultivator Han quickly got up, bowed, and left my table. I held out my cup and Shao refilled it with more warm tea.

I needed to think very carefully about what I had just learned and all the implications. The most important thing was going to see a nexus inside one of these sects. Once I had seen one, I would be able to figure out quite a bit about what was happening with this place. Were they something that the people of this bubble had created on their own? That seemed very unlikely. But did they create a link to some kind of central energy repository? Now that was something that was much more interesting.

On the continent I grew up on, I never found where all this equipment and mechanisms were hidden. I had a lot of guesses, but no actual confirmation. Here, I needed to find whatever central location was controlling the arrays and formations that made up this place, since that was where energy would be located. A nexus could be a way to find such a location.

There was also the matter of learning this new cultivation system. While it might not seem that useful for me, I still existed as part of my physical body. That was the point of the second breakthrough to move my consciousness into a body constructed of energy. If I could use the techniques these people had developed to extend my lifespan, that would be a huge boon.

Right now, I was dependent on energy saturating my body. That was how my cultivation worked in terms of extending a person’s life. None of the structures mattered in that regard. It was all about having more energy in one’s body. That was why the first breakthrough was so big. It drew in more energy for a cultivator to work with on a consistent basis. All the steps before that required getting energy from an external source.

Either floating Qi in the air to energy that had been compressed into various items. Cultivation was about the use of such energy. I considered why cultivators on the continent didn’t do what these people were doing.

The answer was obvious in hindsight. There was no culture of using small amounts of energy to alter and improve one’s body. The cultivation system was already in place and cultivators were working to find the best method in the system the Heavenly Alliance used. This system was completely different on a fundamental level. The one I used was superior with the energy available, which was why there was no one looking into changing the physical body with small quantities of energy.

Even if someone did succeed, it would only create a small bit of life extension. In comparison, the Heavenly Alliance system was much faster. Still, there was an opportunity to learn and seek improvement to my cultivation. The real challenge would be entering the Flame Sect to see this nexus and look over their cultivation instructions without causing an incident.

While I could easily bully my way through, I would try to be polite first. I did not like fighting and if some powerful cultivator came and ran roughshod over me without even a demand first, I would be very angry. I had to at least give them a chance to cooperate.

While I was looking down on these people, it would be wise not to underestimate them. Just like with the lack of metal, they made efficient use of what they had. I didn’t doubt that the cultivators of the Great World did everything in their power to maximize their use of energy both for their cultivation and for fighting.

The fact that cultivators were so insular and rationed energy, showed that each nexus point was valuable beyond compare. Cultivator Han had made it clear with his words that sects formed around nexus points. Without one there would be no sect, or at least, not for long.

This meeting with Cultivator Han was quite fortuitous. Before I would have raised too many questions and not have known what to ask when I visited the Flame Sect. Now I knew exactly what I was after. Hopefully they would be willing to trade knowledge for knowledge. That was my most precious and abundant commodity.

If I needed to enlighten them that they were frogs in the well, that was fine. I just wouldn’t allow for anyone to unnecessarily delay me. This caravan trip was already quite slow, but running into a wild cultivator was incredibly valuable. I felt a lot more confident as well, now that I had a better understanding of the power scaling of this place.

I would not be running into any demonic cultivators like Aoyin, who could use me for whatever they wished. I was the Aoyin of this Great World, or an immortal. I would still need to face a cultivator at this Nascent Soul stage, but I highly doubted they would be able to beat me. They might be able to threaten me, but that was a stretch.

A big thing this place was lacking was materials soaked in energy. There were no metal bars that had higher stages based on the amount of energy they had within them. My sword was beyond powerful in relation to the weapons they had. Even if they had some kind of gun, I was not too concerned either. With how rare metal was in this place, they might have a one off device, but they would not be equipping hundreds of individuals.

It was strange with how my situation had suddenly reversed itself. Instead of being the weak cultivator, I was the overpowered senior that could do whatever they wanted. It was both a freeing and terrifying feeling. I could easily understand now, how cultivators would become full of themselves. After enough massacres like the ones I had done with the caravan, they would look down on mortals, and on beings weaker than themselves.

I couldn’t blame them either. No matter where I went, the cheapest thing was life. It was a bit depressing, but I promised myself that I would not fall into depravity. I would not be a push over, but I would do my best to not resort to violence as a solution for everything. I needed to remain sane. I felt I had done well so far with the hundreds of years I spent on cultivation.

But if I continually killed people, my mindset would only deteriorate over time.

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