Turn 3: Problems and No Cultivating Results
AA544 Dong Liang
Spirit Stone Vault: Approximately 30 thousand
External News:
The Emperor declared that the great Northern Campaign needed every force available and that those forces needed sustenance on the march to ensure that they could march to victory. Far more accurate rumors have surfaced that the great northern bastions have been overrun and burned to the ground by Barbarians who were offended over a few hundred burned villages with desperate attacks holding righteous Imperial ground against the horde. Instead of calling up the cultivators in a grand council and getting away from the imperial harem a different solution has been proposed. Led on by several scheming Eunuchs the emperor has declared that all sects are to pay twenty percent of their income for the imperial campaign to support the empire and allow the advancement of the celestial army to higher stages.
To resolve the matter tax collectors have been rumored to have left the capital with the escort of several lesser cultivators protecting them. Already several sects have quietly criticized the unrighteous and unfair action by the Eunuchs misleading the emperor to the current tax. Several martial sects have even proposed calling a great meeting of the sects to directly contribute men to the army but that has been ignored with messages failing to reach the emperor. Something is going to need to be done about these rogue agents with the elders divided on what is to be done to ensure a fair and just process for all sects. Some have suspected that taxes will fall directly on the auction but others have been determined in thinking that an assessor may directly visit the sect.
[]Administrative Fees: A tax collector is coming and they can be met without too much fuss or impropriety. As no one has a precise idea of what exactly is in the vaults and the sect is assumed to be poor from bureaucratic fees of the province, the taxes asked for should not be ruinous. Paying the tax collector a bit extra to cover the costs of travel and ensuring the sect stays righteous with a plentiful selection of joyous pills will help to dissuade any poor decisions on the collector's part more than any intimidation.
[] Low-Cost Intimidation: The traditional greeting for a tax collector has always been the sect's assembled golden cores armed and ready to conduct their noble duty. Generally, this ensures that most tax collectors and their teams stay in a proper frame of mind with three golden cores permanently tasked with ensuring them a comfortable stay in the sect during their evaluations. As with the last time the collector will leave after a few days, asking for a proper amount and correctly assessing what the sect can provide.
[]Construct an Array: To ensure that a fair price is provided without too many accusations of impropriety some sects develop improved means towards ensuring a correct mindset for the tax collectors. Generally, this takes the form of an array though some sects have used several fairly repulsive spirit beasts in a pit. The sect itself will work tirelessly towards making a pill with an adequate number of effects along with a proper array for their eternal preservation and maintenance. Ensuring that the tax collector toured the room at least six times will provide him peace of mind when conducting a fair and just assessment, especially as it can be constructed right next to the vault to help preserve rare herbs indefinitely. (Approximately 5k Spirit Stones)
Personal Actions(Choose Five):
Analyze Outer Disciple Training: The outer disciples are an illiterate mass of near-mortals but it cannot have been this way back in the day. When the sect was wandering the recruitment was individual but now with a province to manage something has gone wrong. Getting the recruits to be able to read a manual alone for teaching would massively speed up the training of cultivators but the priority seems to be on a few flashy techniques first. Outer disciples will of course never know as much as inner ones but breadth has seemingly been ignored and produced the current mess of inner disciples. (37)
With the lacking number of manuals and the complete inability of most outer disciples to learn outside of direct instruction, it is almost evident why they are so incompetent. Most save their limited contribution points to fight over personal instruction time and never attempt to learn how to read or are taught to. The manuals are used extensively by those who join the sect literate from the gentry with the knowledge hoarded despite not being relevant to any actual combat. Personal training is fine even if it brings out most cultivators as lazy and unable to keep up with significant issues appearing in learning more skills. Those the most desperate to advance or simply foolhardy attempt hunting to get the limited instruction time, leading to many inadvertent deaths of the less fortunate.
Look into the Training Camps: There has to be a better way of finding recruits than sticking a hundred youths into a small camp, feeding them, and then seeing if they can do a single technique after three months. Outside of organized classes, they seem to not absorb any techniques or absorb knowledge. Resources are certainly available and basic techniques are both elementary and well described. Something must be going wrong with the training process as it is impossible that an entire generation is so unmotivated for individual learning but willing to show up to classes. (70)
After a short time to get back into the proper appearance of a sect elder the issues that were discovered were rapidly remediated. According to the instructors, when presented with questions on the literacy of their charges, the universal complaint was that none of those recruited from the villages even knew characters, much less basic arithmetic. Ordering the instructors to attempt to remedy the situation led to much prattling in secret as it was judged that a few months was insufficient to make a disciple literate. Following up on the situation and personally interviewing the new outer disciples has found that for all the desperate attempts of the instructors, little literacy has been imparted. Apparently, at the recruiting point from villages, most of those taken in now are entirely uneducated leaving them deficient in all matters.
Approach in Secret: Disguising as an immensely prodigious outer disciple that can bridge the gap into becoming an inner disciple will take a lot of work but the deceit can immediately expose the root of the problem. By claiming to enter closed-door cultivation but putting on a disguise along with several treasures, getting a direct perspective on the training will be easy. Sure the inner and outer disciples may shape up when in the presence of an elder, much less a sect leader, but as they entirely lack awareness it should be incredibly easy to deceive them. Any mistakes will have to wait to be corrected and some may act differently in the face of a prodigy but something needs to be done to fix the problem quickly to focus on more important matters. (95)
With the great need for disguise and stealth a radical approach was taken to ensure a successful disguised infiltration of the outer disciples. First, a message was set out that there was a lead on the advancement to domain foundation to ensure that no one would be a bother during "closed door" cultivation. Afterward, the question of forming a new and entirely different disguise was raised necessitating almost eight different pills and a small number of cosmetics. By presenting oneself as a jade beauty it would be far easier to escape scrutiny through misdirection as no one could reasonably suspect that a sect elder would be disguised in such a way. To further improve the approach this new identity of Qiao Jiafu has been kept to the level of an incredibly prodigious body refinement cultivator that just broke through in early training.
The first conclusion that can be reached about the lower disciples is that they struggle with the most elementary of techniques, failing time and time again, and even worse steadily practicing it wrong. When corrected they react with hostility and aggression declaring their incorrect and half-remembered ramblings to be the clear correct path. The dorms for outer disciples are further uncomfortable and tend to smell of several strange and unseemly scents as it appears that many do not maintain an adequate sense of hygiene. This has only been made worse with the confined quarters and may to some extent explain the total obliviousness of lower-ranked cultivators as their sense of smell has clearly atrophied.
-Qiao Jiafu Alchemical Journal 1
Worrying events have come with what should have been a simple request for a training manual for an escape technique of the Body Refinement stage. Instead of the manual being provided, a senior in Qi condensation continued to be strange about the matter, insisting that there was only one such book and it was in use by him. After getting the book with a mild bit of diplomacy the situation was even worse as continuing to interrogate the outer disciples found no additional copies. Even worse, several have been found unable to even understand the manual, professing to not have even bothered reading it due to some gross inability.
-Qiao Jiafu Alchemical Journal 3
Following up on the clear deficiency in literacy and the clear degradation of the recruits, the next people to investigate have been the righteous instructors. These are inattentive, incompetent, desperate to avoid the position, and unwilling to so much as teach characters. Upon volunteering for an instructional position with some senseless reason of wanting to teach even less washed nearly-peasants the instructions provided on how to do so were horrifically deficient. Instead of even trying to get them to read a simple instruction book every technique had to be exercised and directly demonstrated. Upon walking out over the sheer indignity and interrogating another three imbeciles assigned to the duty this standard has been repeated. Even intensive discussion of the low standards kept for disciples has proven a disappointment as training has failed to instruct them in even a few hundred characters.
-Qiao Jiafu Alchemical Journal 4
Pretending to seclude for a few days of pill refinement to build up a supply to calm down has significantly helped but exposed further issues. The gardening practice has led to those gardening taking an unrighteous tax like some mortal scholar. From there the ingredients are sold for almost nothing to the outer disciples with the finest cuttings left to those in higher stages. The cauldrons left have universally been tarred by ash due to incompetence and the instructions provided on how to make even the simplest of pills are deficient. The manuals and recipes call for strange measurements and proportions more appropriate for incapable peasants. Asking for six cuttings of finger length is never a proper measurement and more than explains the lack of care for the cauldrons through constant imbalances of qi.
-Qiao Jiafu Alchemical Journal 7
With the clear failure in getting adequate quality reagents the only option that was left was hunting for them, but no bestiary was available, nor guidance for where to hunt. Thankfully, as passive sensory techniques are generally undetectable, hunting for the right creature could easily be done. After the first dozen though, a gaggle of outer disciples started to attempt to follow similar methods, hiding like idiots in foliage and attempting to stay a single hill behind without any attempt at concealing their qi. After the first few received a pleasant conversation on following their betters the remainder tried harder to hide, with a fortuitous two saved from getting mauled by a local golden bear after attempting to hide in its cave.
-Qiao Jiafu Alchemical Journal 11
Publicly coming back with a pile of corpses, claiming them as hunted, and ensuring that no seniors attempted to take them has come easily, with an immediate "revelation" declared to go into closed-door cultivation. Converting the hearts and marrow of the bodies to several charms for the sake of hiding from the sure-to-be more aware inner disciples took some time with inadequate tools, but enough could be fashioned from cave rock. After three weeks of cultivating and simply increasing qi output to the Qi Condensation stage, the declaration of becoming an inner disciple followed shortly. Using a forged letter of being taken as the personal student of the sect elder while being the sect elder has limited the experience provided but expediency was necessary to start fixing the sect.
-Qiao Jiafu Alchemical Journal 17
As a new inner disciple, several fellow juniors had to be reminded of their place as non-prodigious cultivators after a few complaints of unfairness. The problems only started with inquiries over how many contribution points it would take to access the manuals, with several essential techniques priced strangely. After checking with an otherwise respectable elder about the prices, it has been discovered that some imbeciles have made manuals expensive and training only more so. The rewards given for hunting have been inadequate with gardening effectively ignored in favor of some strange standard favoring bureaucratic tasks and pill-making. Most inner disciples when adequately pressed have entire libraries of pills to attempt to use in personal combat, but many are poorly made. For the five Qi Condensation cultivators that were fought for giving offense in their propositions, all knew less than four combat viable techniques and one even had to be saved from his idiocy of failing to take into account the effects of consuming four pills at once.
-Qiao Jiafu Alchemical Journal 19
With the necessity of actually running the sect and the grumblings over the elder being in a cave for longer than a year coming about, something needed to be done to ensure that the disguise was expended. Declaring a desire to go deep inland to hunt a six-headed dragon despite the warnings given by the idiot who could not manage his pill-making was the only logical choice available. Losing the trail of the idiot and his friends but ensuring that they could at least sense the qi flare of the beast was the only way forward, with Qiao Jiafu "surprised" at encountering something of an equivalent stage to a Core Formation elder. For all of his faults, the idiot did attempt to charge in to save Qiao Jiafu necessitating the fight to be rapidly concluded or else the imbecile would almost certainly perish.
-Qiao Jiafu Alchemical Journal 24
12 Hour Moratorium
