Hmmph AU: Corrupted Formations
It began, as things often do, with a seemingly innocuous thought. Mammal Taskmaster was part of a Sect that drew strength from Beasts, ones they rode upon. If Cultivators could draw strength from each other in Formations, or from servants in the form of Beasts, then shouldn't it be possible for mortals to contribute? Mortals technically had traces of Qi, so perhaps they could make up for their weakness with numbers, as a school of fish might, or a pack of wolves hunting a larger animal?
So Taskmaster researched. At first, the results were merely modified Formations, better able to gather large groups of weaker Cultivators to punch up against a singular stronger one. Nothing of moral concern. However, as time passed, and Taskmaster's research took him further afield, brought deeper secrets to light, he grew more and more disturbed by what he'd found, by how the universe seemed, at it's most fundamental level, designed to make those with greater power the cruelest, the most selfish.
Part of this was his investigation into the Sea Conquering Army's past, how much crueler they had been when they'd arrived at the height of their power, and how they'd become kinder as they grew weaker, as the Heavens lashed out at them. Centuries of torment had made them kinder... but then, what of the greatest power the Seas knew of, Heaven. Upon learning the truth, that the Heavens were nothing more than a Will that had gluttonously consumed it's own children to win a fight, something had snapped. The moral foundation he'd built his life on had been a lie. Something he'd kept after becoming a Nascent Soul, a belief that Heaven would punish wickedness, which had first bent to punishing the Golden Devils for past sins, had been broken by the revelation that this was all the equivalent of a depleted army incapable of mustering the strength to outright extinguish it's foes sending haphazard strikes at them when they poked their heads out, little more than the thrashing of a beast against the one who had wounded it terribly.
And the conflict between the Army and the Turtle Emperor had in turn been merely a tiny skirmish, which further damaged his mind. All of this struggle was meaninglessness stacked upon meaninglessness. The victor of that battle didn't matter, because reality bent to the cruelest, and neither side would have changed that. Alternate Cultivation methods wouldn't change anything, or they already would have.
No, if he wanted anything to change, he'd need to build a new Cultivation method from the ground up. An extension of the Formations he'd been working on, perhaps. As a child, he'd wanted everyone to work together, and hadn't understood the concept of a zero-sum game well enough to realize why they didn't, which had frustrated him to no end. But what if the Cultivation didn't give you a say in whether you worked together or not? A Formation that inducted you into it's ranks, whether you liked it or not.
He hadn't started immediately, of course, and for a time, no one even realized anything was wrong. He'd done more research, done small-scale tests. A village here and there that would work in eerie synchronicity, or who seemed to have been stripped clean of selfishness, and so on. Mental effects, soul effects, buffs, bargaining, negotiation, and so on. Things to make the Formation better able to convince those who could be convinced, and take by force those who couldn't. Simply telling them the truth worked in many cases, assuming their minds didn't rebel at the idea of Heaven being a lie.
Eventually, he'd begun in earnest. A Spirit Severing Cultivator such as himself ambushing a group of Nascent Souls engaged in diplomacy would ordinarily have been a declaration of war. Sure, the odds they could even hurt him, despite a few Great Circle Nascents being present, were low, but you didn't reach Spirit Severing by taking risks like that without a good reason. The fact that those Nascents were not killed, but became the first true members of his Corrupted Formation, often simply called the Corrupted, made it into the opening strike of a scourge that would ravage the Third Sea for millennia, and beyond. The last act of Mammal Taskmaster had been to try and induct the Turtle Child itself into his Corrupted Formation using the Realm that led to it's heart and the various methods of contracting/compelling/controlling Beasts, including at least one Sect that could include them in Formations already, to try and latch onto the Turtle Child, an act that compelled Heaven to intervene, killing the Turtle Child to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Corrupted, and to curse them as it had the Golden Devils. Those who believe in Heaven have labelled the Corrupted worse than the Golden Devils for this, and Heaven itself seems conflicted on the issue.
Despite this, the Corrupted have managed to weaken their Curses far more quickly than the Golden Devils, because unlike the latter, every mortal under Corrupted rule counts as Cultivator as far as Heaven is concerned. You see, like all Formations, the Corrupted Formation's strength is determined both by the number of participants, and by the strength of those participants. As all the Corrupted are technically part of a Formation at all times, this manifests as a boost in strength. For mortals and Qi Condensation Cultivators, it's immense, for Foundation Establishment, it's merely large, and for the likes of a Core Formation expert, it's minor. However, this is no normal Formation. As it is constantly in use, it roots itself ever deeper into an individual, subsuming their body, mind, soul, even their Dao in time. Those of a medical persuasion have described it as if it were making another set of meridians specifically for the use of the Corrupted. Even if they do nothing, even if they are a mortal who does not Cultivate, they grow stronger over time, or rather, they become a better puppet for the Formation.
Mammal Taskmaster was a genius of the type that would make Corpse Gulper look like Manuel. Unfortunately, his genius seems to have increased as his mind broke under the strain of trying to force the universe to care. It readily interlocks with Dao, Bloodline, Techniques, and even other Formations, serving as a basis they can use to leap to greater heights at the cost of choosing to do anything but follow the greater will of the Formation. In some ways, it might be better to think of it as a contagious Bloodline with brainwashing properties. As such Corrupted Qi is treated as a mixture of highly toxic and highly addictive, as most drugs will not actively attempt to worm their way deeper into your system even while you pull them out by force. It's technically possible to free someone, but they will lose all the benefits, and likely be left a broken mess by the memories of their actions while Corrupted. Supposedly, an individual with a Dao of Soul was able to free themselves and retain the benefits, and had a relatively easy time freeing others, but this appears to have been the result of a particular interaction of the Dao with the Formation, and thus is not replicable for obvious reasons.
The effects of the Formation are threefold. First, as mentioned, numbers, strength of the individuals, and time spent Corrupted all strengthen individual Corrupted. The second effect is accelerated healing. Generally speaking, regardless of their Cultivation level, Corrupted heal twice as quickly as they should. It's theorized that unhealthy Corrupted are 'borrowing' the healing of hale Corrupted somehow, just as normal Formations pool their strength together to make single construct to fight for them. Though this explanation suffers from the fact that even in eras where there aren't many Nascent Corrupted, a single Nascent will still benefit from this. The third effect is believed to be some form of reverse-engineering of Dao Magic uniquely possible thanks to Mammal Taskmaster's personal Dao and it's interactions with Formations. Every Corrupted gains some special ability. Raising the dead intact, always knowing where a designated target is, pyromancy. It varies with the individual, and in the case of mortals who are born, live, and die as Corrupted to Corrupted parents who then repeat the process with their own descendants, is often something that directly aids in their main task, as they are not capable of interests beyond that, but in cases of outsiders inducted in one manner or another, it often provides them with a sort of secondary Dao Magic. More limited, but usable as if it were a normal Technique.
More than a few Cultivators have been tempted by the power on offer, or believed themselves capable of mastering the Formation for their own ends, or even simply been convinced by Mammal Taskmaster's ideology that the only way forward was to force cooperation, but regardless, they were consumed by the Corrupted Formation. It is said that the Heart of the Turtle Child remains a cursed place, both for the sheer density of Heaven's lightning that tries to cleans the area, and because, impossibly, the Corruption refuses to be stamped out. It is whispered that every Corrupted individual's soul comes here when they die, stolen away form wherever they would have ended up instead, constantly fueling the effort to claim the Turtle Child in truth, and then begin the dread task of reviving it to take the others. Most dismiss the idea, believing that Heaven would simply strike the effort down again were it to succeed, but some note that Heaven struck the Child down
before the Corrupted Formation could actually take hold. Wouldn't that mean Heaven considered the possibility of a Corrupted Turtle-Child too grave a threat to risk?
It is generally agreed that letting things progress to that stage would be against everyone's interest, regardless.
Recently, rumors have swirled that a new Corrupted with some bizarre Technique that lets him fight far, far above his station as a Qi Condensation disciple has been deliberately seeking out and converting Foundation Establishment Righteous Path Alliance members. Nothing to be too concerned about yet, but we'll keep an eye out.
AN: In Mechanical terms, Corrupted immediately gain +22 Impact and doubled healing rates(IE, they go from Crippled to Wounded in one Turn, and even mortals have the equivalent of this, so situations like an arrow in the eye that would normally kill them Crippling them due to an arrow being lodged in their brain, more Corrupted showing up, and then holding off the enemy long enough for the first dude to recover enough to limp away are not uncommon), as well as Cool Thing, as long as they have either an early Nascent or equivalent lesser Cultivators(with mortals being counted, but it takes hundreds of millions of mortals to equal an Early Nascent, so they tend to either be incidental targets or targeted after the Cultivators have largely been dealt with), and since they don't really have needs like 'entertainment' or 'being able to stand up in my bedroom' and breed like rabbits to take advantage of this. They stack their population insanely by Quest standards, straight up doubling or more every 20 years, in direct contrast with main timeline Blood Path. Corrupted Formation members stack this when they use normal Formations to punch up, which is another thing they can do, because Mammal Taskmaster is a mad genius with the Formations Dao. Meaning regular ass mortals can threaten Qi Condensation people of other factions in equal numbers, making them a nightmare to fight on the army-scale without overwhelming force or assassinating their high-tiers, and the range on this Formation is
at least anywhere else inside the Region. They don't exactly get a ton of information from other Regions in this timeline either.
Since their Cultivation doesn't
technically violate Heaven's strictures, they can still Cultivate the old-fashioned way, they just do it more slowly, and have a lot more bad luck, kind of like the Golden Devils. This impact buff can also be increased further either with massive numbers of mortals, or higher-end Cultivators. A Great Circle Nascent would raise it to 25 even on their own. Not to mention, as they get used to their new body, the buff increases even further, usually +1 every 20 years(so a 100 year-old Cultivator would have 27 Impact even if they didn't have a single notable deed and their special ability was useless somehow, making them undefeatable among Qi Condensation) unless they have an extremely compatible Dao(encouraged by giving those with higher compatibility among the mortal population Cultivation resources, as even that choice is taken from them) or Bloodline-based affinities. If it weren't for the fact that they're basically zombies at the mortal level and zombies that mostly retain their personalities at the Cultivator level(hence higher/more cerebral Cultivation being possible at all for Corrupted Formations), it would be a straight upgrade. Of course, this doesn't really go against the whole 'Monsters are stronger than People' grain the universe is pushing like Mammal Taskmaster was hoping, and I'd probably compare it more to what the people on the Beast Worlds are experiencing being restricted by what the Beasts will and will not allow them to grow into except a thousand times more limiting and violating, but hey, he was pretty crazy by the end. In the hypothetical situation where the Corrupted Formation managed to raise a Nascent Soul up from the ranks of Corrupted mortals(less likely because Cultivation efficiency is somewhat gimped by lacking a life philosophy beyond what the Corruption forcefeeds you, which still technically counts enough for it to be possible) they'd have 72(Early NS) Impact from their time spent Corrupted as of 1000, and 174 by 3000(Late NS) but luckily this almost never happens because everybody realizes how bad it would be and goes out of their way to kill older Corrupted as much as possible.
2361. I'd like an Cultivation Boost for Jiang, please.
@Kaboomatic
