Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest]

So I tinkered around a few weeks back in doing my own install of DokuWiki since the last wiki went down.

A bunch of contributors have done a number of articles since then, and there's some useful information there. It's still a bit of a mess in the sense I haven't standardised page formats or organised things properly, but there's a lot of useful place information there.

You can find the wiki here.

For any Good Seeds interested in contributing, please let me know (I've also pinged this on Discord to get things off the ground earlier), and I'll set you up an account.

These Trials Stung!

"Yes, that is typically what is expected to be the weaker party in an inter-Sea war" The Voice observed. "When the foe possesses unanswerable initiative and superior strength, one cannot expect more than calamity"

"That's nice and all." Aliki mumbled, reaching at one of the scabbed over, charred holes on her body, wincing as her hand brushed over them. "But nothing I've done is doing much to fix them!"

"They are blows infused with the Heavenly Daos, it is a natural law that you be harmed--that you survived two blows from such a source is a testament to the durability of that body."

"You say it, but I'm not used to this!" Aliki deflated, curling up, the glint of red on her ear the only sign of the minor treasure that put her in contact with the Voice without needing to run back in. "Normally I can either stitch it up or just have lunch and fix it up! This is super uncomfortable though!"

The Voice is silent for a moment. "Perhaps inhibiting the pain response of your shell was a suboptimal move" It observed. "Consider this a tempering trial then."

Aliki puffed her cheeks out and blew a lock of her hair out of her eyes. "Tempering, Tempering, Tempering, it's all hitting people with hammers in hopes that they get better instead of stronger--it's very inappropriate!"

"It is the nature of the world that power is always accompanied by Pain" the Voice dispassionately recites. "Regardless, we will soon have company, pay attention."

"Company?" Aliki wondered--only to hear a knock at her door. She gave a little yelp of surprise and automatically hopped up into one of the upper corners of her meditation chamber, where she would count on her hair to root her up there and have something solid to her back while having the high ground on the intruder!

Or… That was the dream anyway--but her injuries twitched again as she started her leap, and she ended up stumbling mid-step, flinging herself into the incense burners and medicines left in the side in a clattering of brass and copper and all kinds of other jingling, musical metals struck by a larger, heavier object.

The door opened, a Legionnaire in ill fitting armor standing there--hair cut short and freckles of bronze standing out on otherwise ordinary features. "Ah! Centurion Floros, are you alright?"

Aliki's robes and hair were a wild tangle, her control and strength only leaving her further suppressed--one red eye stared back, blinking, glowing slightly in the dimmed light of the meditation chamber.

"Ummm…" The Legionnaire looked for a way out of this situation. "Ah! There's… Err, an invitation for you?" She reached into the satchel at her side and pulled out a parchment. "To a luncheon on behalf of Centurion Flavia Karkinos…" She looked frantically from side to side. "I'll… Just…"

She folds up the letter, and tucks it into the cushion at the center of the chamber, and backs away bowing. "Apologies for the interruption!" She squeaks, before slamming the door shut.

Aliki had nothing to add to that, she was too busy trying to wrap her head around that.

"A… Luncheon?" She mused, a trace of drool appearing on the side of her mouth. "Just… Giving me food?"

She slowly started to unwind herself. "That's… Does this mean I have friends?" She wondered. "There was that tiny girl a while back, but she sort of stopped appearing after a while? Did that count?" She grappled with the problem. "I don't know what to do with this. This hasn't happened before!"

"Victory forgives much in the way of character flaws'' The Voice recites. "The most toxic of beasts and the most hedonistic silkpants are all equally desirable guests to any who seek to build influence."

"But I don't have silk pants and I don't use poisons?" Aliki pushed back, finally getting the biggest tangle out and stretching herself out of the bundle she had gotten herself stuck in. "You made it very clear that I needed to use soft leather for the best synergy in empowerment after all!"

"They are expressions--regardless, your performance in the previous tribulation--however injured you may have been in the aftermath--proves you to stand a cut above and beyond the common masses of Cultivators. As you are presently politically and fraternally unattached, this makes you a highly desirable figure to form a relationship with."

"That doesn't sound very friendly to me though…" Aliki frowned, rolling back up to her feet and going to tidy her cultivation equipment. "Seems like a lot of problems."

"A partnership of that kind nonetheless opens many opportunities--both in gaining patronage within the greater houses of this Clan and in the resources such a position entitles you to." The Voice lists out. "So long as no children are demanded of any such partnership, there should be no issue."

"Why would that be a problem?" Aliki asks. "I don't think I'm missing anything down there…"

"You are not yet in full control of your physique, any such exposure to it would kill your partner in short order, such would be a violation of the laws of your patron clan and result in your expulsion, limiting your ability to survive this time of troubles."

"Oh." Aliki nods in understanding. "So don't let the doohickey into the special place, got it."

"... Technically correct." The Voice actually seemed to take a minute to react to that! Was that a good thing or not? "Avoid such relationships until you break through to Nascent Soul and can fully control your power." The Voice pauses again.

"On that topic, now that you have stabilized your cultivation into Foundation Establishment, we must begin determining your long term plans". The Voice aggressively changes the subject, and Aliki returns to the cushion to settle back down, all ears.

"There are two options available to you at the current juncture." The Voice agrees. "Two opportunities to seize greater advantage for yourself. You can seek the Emperor's Pillar and assert the dominance of your [Red Queen] over the will of the Heavenly Daos. I am uncertain as to the consequences of taking this route--the Master may have blazed the trail, but this would be extending it on a pathway he did not take. It should be an interesting case study either way."

"That's gonna be tricky…" Aliki mumbled, rubbing her chin. "There's a lot of Cultivation needed just to get to the Eighth Pillar, I can move pretty fast if I put my mind to it, but that's a lot of time for things to go wrong, isn't it?"

"True, and the Heavens are unlikely to tolerate a follower of the Master's Path to advance into the realm beyond the Ninth Pillar." The Voice elaborated. "While the Cultivation requirement is relatively limited, the Tribulation is liable to be of exceptional difficulty. Success is far from guaranteed. However, the effects should be interesting either way."

"I'll think about it and see how fast Foundation Establishment goes by--there's apparently this funny labyrinth that Old Gold dug out in the middle of the desert somewhere, if I can get strong enough, it might be worth trying out!"

"Secret Realms are a reliable way of building strength--though a repeat of your adventure into the Qiguai Realm would be undesirable at this time--and I lack the inclination to continue salvaging your vessel in times of peril--you will need to learn an Escape Technique"

"Oh! Oh! I heard of those!" Aliki chimed in. "It's part of why the Blood Path is so hard to stamp out, right? The ability to just go fwoosh and pop up somewhere else?"

"Yes, at your current level, you are capable of learning my Sanguine Body Shift." There's a buzzing in Aliki's head, beginning from where the earring sat. Transmitting the knowledge into her head…

Infusing a drop of Blood Essence into the tip of the finger, drawing a Blood Rune into a cask containing enough of one's own blood--or Ichor in Aliki's case--to reforge the body. Upon breaking the link to the Blood Rune, the soul follows along that shattered link and reforges the body from the material left behind. A peerless evasion technique so long as enough food could be supplied to prepare the cask in the first place.

"That's gonna take a lot of hunting," Aliki groans. "And I can't hide them all in one place either"

"Regardless, it will allow me to avoid expending further wisps of my Will to prevent your destruction in times of calamity" The Voice elaborated. "Doing so while you were at Qi Condensation was easy--doing so now that you are Foundation Establishment is hard. You should rely on your own strength now anyway."

"I guess you're right" Aliki sighs, and flops on her back. "So, that was one path, what's the other one?"

"Stay the course of Orthodoxy, when the time comes that your Core is at its full flower, call down a partial tribulation and divide it. Rebuild each of the lesser cores, enter Nascent Soul from there."

"Dual Soul? There's stories about that, but how is that better than some kind of weird fundamental thingie like the Emperor's Pillar?" Aliki wonders.

"The Soul is the most powerful thing in the cosmos, to the best of my studies. Mere wisps of it can infuse life into the lifeless, drive an otherwise mundane shell into demigodhood. More importantly, thought and creativity are rooted in the presence of a Soul--and by dividing yours in twain and then empowering each into a Nascent Divinity, you maximize your capacity to thought and conceptualize--even beyond the enormous supply of Qi this arrangement permits."

"Huh, that's a big deal, isn't it?"

"It is the path I walked at my peak. I simply converted one of my Souls into a great wealth of Will and the energy required to permit adaptation while I allowed my younger Soul to disperse its cultivation and start fresh. I gambled that its Lifespan would have started from scratch." A note of frustration entered the Voice's ordinarily emotionless tone there. "Alas, they barely reached the Twelfth Heavenstage before the Body began to decay, and I began my final project. It is a shame that the younger soul's degradation now is terminal, or I would have infused it into your vessel when it was prepared."

"Huh," Aliki blinked there. "Well, I'm glad it didn't come to that? I suppose?"

"Mmm, this has not been a complete waste of my afterlife" The Voice concurs. "Regardless, it is a potent path in its own right--at the very least, establishing a Great Sect of your own would be no problem."

"Hmmm. Would that be a good thing though?" Aliki wondered. "This place is doing well enough, isn't it?"

"Should it stand strong when you reach Nascent Soul, true--but much can still change in the centuries that would take you. It is wise to keep your options open."

"Huh, so, go to the party, try to make friends, but don't commit to anything unless it's really valuable, right?

"Correct."

"Easy enough!" Aliki bends over and picks the parchment up from where she had flopped down over it. "I wonder if they'll have anything new? I like being surprised…"

Heaven blood curse array.
"Fan Yan, do you think that the chicken scratch you made matches the symbol I gave you to copy? I tell you it does not." I throw his to the second exact pay at him, maybe a bit harder than necessary. "You're fired, leave and don't come back." A caterpillar jumps off his shoulder and onto my hand. I look over at the other 20 mortals that have stopped carving arrays into the walls of Thousand Song City to look. "You do realize that when the Blood path comes you, your families and your neighbors are all going to be depending on these arrays? Yes! Well act like it! Every miscarved symbol means the final array will be that much weaker! Working slowly is fine. I am paying you by the hour and I can hire more workers if needed. Working sloppy is NOT." I look around at the still staring workers ``Well what are you waiting for? I am paying by the hour. Working slowly and carefully doesn't mean you should stop and do nothing!". They get back to work. The mortals are much more cooperative in Golden Devil lands. None of this constant skittish jumpiness. It really gets on my nerves.

All of the workers I hired are craving tiny Heaven Blood curse arrays. Making many smaller overlapping arrays is much less susceptible to disruption or battle damage then making a single large array. It is still usually impractical because it takes an order of magnitude more time for the same effect. However, my calculation caterpillars share my understanding of arrays and can add their own understanding to an array as it is craved. All they lack is hands to carve with which is where hiring mortals come in.

The Heaven Blood curse array really only could have been invented by a demonic clan with some very self-sacrificial members. It is an array that deliberately draws down heaven's hatred of the blood path. If I drew it personally I am quite sure I would be hit with a tribulation or something. Yet at the same time it can only be drawn by someone with an understanding of what it means to be hated by the heavens which means that normally everyone that can draw it is punished for drawing it. Fortunately the heavens don't notice mortals which means I am able to do quite a nice cheat right now. I still never would have drawn in golden devil territory, but I figure that heaven's wrath being drawn somewhere far away from our lands is all to the good.

Any cultivator on the blood path that so much as looks at these walls will start becoming ill with the effect increasing the closer they get. I expect that when the walls are completely done they will start giving off static like many cultivators pressing against the limits of their realm do. But there shouldn't be a problem unless the walls happen to develop into a genius loci which is very unlucky besides the war with Noble Devil alliance should be long over by then so not my problem. If the city actually holds out long enough for that to be a problem I will be amazed and delighted.

_____________________________________
At this point I sort of wonder if pings are actually needed for threadmarks.

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Searching for Wrathful Cultivation.

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On Wrathful Cultivation
By Maria
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A note from the editor: While the Captain's knowledge on this subject far outpaces my own, her manner of speaking can seem a little coarse, and perhaps more informal than one would typically find in an article for the contribution board. I have therefore made some slight changes to render this text more palatable to the clan's readership, as well as extirpating some of the… riper… language. However, there is only so much that can be done until one finds oneself with a document consisting entirely of redactions and the words "if", "and", "but", "the", and "Letha for fuck's sake stop it", and thus much of the original character remains. I can only apologise. I did my best.

Most manuals on cultivation tell you that to do it, you need to learn how to sit the (copulation) still. This is true. Everyone, new kids especially, should learn about clearing your mind, sitting down, shutting up, and not bothering anyone else. Even if you can't cultivate. Builds character. Stops you (urination)ing off your elders, too, which is a good thing.

Then you get older, cop on a bit more, and learn about other ways you can build up your Qi Condensation. Most everyone knows about moving cultivation. Sword Cultivators and Body Cultivators in particular; helpful for them. There's others, too; Drunkards talk about the Cultivation of Inebriation (cultivating while drunk) all the damn time. Heard some of the Goatmen cultivate with rocks. Thing is, there's usually a running theme. Cultivation is a thing you do when you're calm.

You know what I (copulation)ing say to that?

(Excrement of a bull.)

Calm is the easiest way, yeah, but it's not the only way. Me, I'm a grumpy (derogative term for a female dog) at the best of times, and (copulation)ing crazy to boot. Calm doesn't work for me. I use getting (urination)ed off instead. Wrathful Cultivation.

I'm not going to (copulation) about too much explaining what it is or what it does too much – far too many (copulation)ing articles on this board talk about (excrement) like they're written by frustrated poets who're still sore over their nature haikus not getting a gold star from the teacher when they were seven – but I'll go over the basics so you know what the (copulation) you're reading about. Wrathful Cultivation is a meditation technique that uses anger – lots and lots of anger – to put you into the necessary, unthinking mental state to process qi. It's not good for beginners at (copulation)ing all, because you need to be able to cultivate pretty much automatically to make it work or you'll blow a hole in your meridians so big you could stick what's left of Pleuron in them. However, if you know what the (copulation) you're doing, it's not a bad way to start pulling in qi while you're fighting, offsetting the cost of bigger techniques a little bit.

Granted, it'll also turn you into a frothing lunatic who

(Another note from the editor: My attempts to sanitise the following paragraph were, at best, ineffective. On consultation with the author, we have agreed that perhaps a detailed description of violently converting a Demonic Altar Cultivator's entrails into extrails with one's bare hands while laughing maniacally, stopping only to void one's bowels into his mouth, was not necessarily relevant to the wider text, and might safely been removed. You're welcome.)

But if you're reading this, that won't bother you. In fact, if you're reading this, that's probably part of the sales pitch. We're all frontliners here. Or we should be. If you're an array engineer or something than for (copulation)'s sake, go do something else, there's nothing for you here.

Now. Cards on the table. This isn't the method I used to learn how to do this. I didn't need to learn. As mentioned before, I've the natural temperament of a really, REALLY hormonal mama scorpion whose youngsters all just got (sex act named after a sub-par tea brewing method) by a passing sand-snake with "ALL ARACHNIDS (sex act I cannot even begin to describe)" written on his (buttocks). This (excrement) just came to me while I was learning moving cultivation. But it seems to work, and it struck me some of the rest of you might get use out of it, so I worked out how to teach it. If these methods don't work for you, come find me and I'll try and fix it. Unless I'm busy. Then I'll tell you to (go forth and multiply.)

Any case, the trick to Wrathful Cultivation is fairly simple. Most of what you're doing revolves around emotional recall. You're Optimatoi. You've spent most of your life treating your emotions as this annoying background noise that you can ignore because duty. That has to stop. Anger is about to be your best friend, so go figure out what makes you mad. Then dwell on it. Really just get in there, examining all those little details that just (urine) you the (copulation) off. If the anger starts to fade, pick a new thing. This needs to last.

At the same time, keep practicing normal cultivation. If anything, practice it more. Practice it till you can do it backwards, sideways, upside down. Get people to slap you at random while you're doing it. If it throws you off, you need to practice more. Up the distractions as you go on. I had a kid in my squad with the most annoying, nasal voice I've ever heard. I got him to start telling me about his feelings at random. Worked a charm, once I stopped trying to throttle him.

So you have anger, and you have cultivating. Time to combine the two. Use your emotional recall to get mad as all (copulation). Then start cultivating. You can't stop either of them. You're going to start wanting to move around. Let yourself. The qi will feed into the emotional recall and pump the anger up. That's good, because the anger will, if you've not (copulation)ed up, start feeding into the Cultivation. Turn around is you are going to get violent, so make sure you've a few friends around who can beat you in a fight. Be a bad way to accidentally demolish a village.

If it works, congratulations, you now know how to weaponize losing your temper.
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@ReaderOfFate @Alectai @Kaboomatic , may I have a threadmark please?