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Money and Power: A Xianxia Merchant Quest

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Triage said:
A flying weapon technique doesn't sound very diamondy or compatible with our path. Plus it would probably be an active technique that we'd need to maintain and take a lot of time to master. As a master crafter it seems far easier and more effective to just build into the weapon. But instead it looks like we're giving our nearly indestructible weapon extra durability.
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It isn't for the durability, it is for the diamond properties (which are unknown when used with essences different from earth) and potential synergy with the smite, as well as possibly having synergy with us, since we have diamond as our merging.

Applying a flying weapon technique to every weapon we make is impractical, since as we see, this takes the spot of other techniques we could use (unless we refine it, but than this still takes a spot), and diamond spirit have nothing to do with our pillars (otherwise we would get bonus compatibility to fate reading), as long as one of our pillars isn't in opposition to it, we can pillar it.

And we already have an offensive problem, the ranged offensive technique was incompatible with us, and our pillars are too important to get rid of even one, so this means we are somewhat limited in offensive mastery techniques options to only combining things with our touch of destruction.

A suggested idea for a fighting style was using fate reading to see our enemies ahead of time, and make a weapon specific to them, after which my idea is to keep those weapons and use them as flying weapons we can added to our arsenal and use at the same time.

I am also thinking a mastery technique using it may allow us to make our weapons sapient, like combining it with mediation, imbunment and creation, or something along those lines, sapient weapons may be guided to start growing themselves as cultivators, increasing our arsenal with time.
 
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Flesh sculpting or the Forge can replace particular ingredients, or with a lot of knowledge and care create novel ingredients with new effects.

Chachi knows that the difference between 1000 year cinnamon and regular cinnamon is the density of essence and Teotl, so she could just stuff a whole bunch of fire essence and a bit of earth from 7000 regular cinnamons or some other source and brute force make some.

She'd need to sit down with Teo and make a spreadsheet to figure out what the highest profit use of her time would be with something like that, long term it's probably making entirely new viable species (in consultation with Production) and short term replacing whatever their most expensive ingredient is, though Essence isn't cheap. Either option would send the farmers into a panic if done publicly, but you could hide it.

Anything like that likely falls under a sub option of "Make money with the forge" or "build infrastructure." Chachi is thinking more about artificial life these days, and thread ideas become new options, so those will be up next time.
 
Might be useful to at least look into the quicksilver work (even if we don't help), if we threw quicksilver in the forge, what will we get? Is it just earth and life?

If so, studying the structure may give us insight into non biological life.
 
Mr. Prokosch said:
She'd need to sit down with Teo and make a spreadsheet to figure out what the highest profit use of her time would be with something like that, long term it's probably making entirely new viable species (in consultation with Production) and short term replacing whatever their most expensive ingredient is, though Essence isn't cheap. Either option would send the farmers into a panic if done publicly, but you could hide it.
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Well if we wanted to work with the farmers, making new viable species that they would raise for us would probably work rather well. Though it would probably be better if we could get them as a subordinate in that scenario.
 
inverted_helix said:
Well if we wanted to work with the farmers, making new viable species that they would raise for us would probably work rather well. Though it would probably be better if we could get them as a subordinate in that scenario.
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They are trying to avoid it, they don't want to work for us, keeping it secret is for the best I think, at least as long as we are in a fragile position.

Us revealing something like it may promote them to try and assassinate Chachi to neutralise the threat, and even just not selling us anymore could do damage to our speed of recovery.

It is kind of hilarious though, how she said we were not strong in the ways our father was, maybe we are not as good at leading the bussines, but our talent makes us more of a threat to them (and basically any competitor) than anything our father could have been.
 
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The Captain's answer
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    • I just realized I'd written this out in my head but hadn't, you know, written it. Should have included it in the last post.

    You rely on the law. That's completely normal, it's how you were raised. It's perfectly fine for your laws to be The Law. What will be best for your cultivation then, would be to study the law. Get what wisdom you can from it, understand why it is how it is. Try to think of the Emperor's intentions, and then the Lords, and how those work with the Clans, which are the old monsters the Emperor tamed. Think about justice too, and how the laws are just and unjust. Decide which laws you will obey, even if it means death and destruction to all you hold dear, and make them part of yourself. Decide which laws you hate, and would discard in a moment if you could. In obedience and disobedience you can find a clearer image of your diamond self, the hard core that emerges when human artifice and animal instinct are stripped away. Your diamond self will help you through the next stages of cultivation. Know it well, feel its cracks and edges, but don't press on them. When the time comes, you'll need to fight that self to find something even truer, but that time is still distant.
     
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    • What are infernal, the infernal seed that people could take was mentioned multiple times, people who left the empire and needed it to survive, people within the empire, hiding in plain sight.

    The same question about undead, that were mentioned in the diamond spirit description, but were not given as an enemy of the empire.
     
    The undead are things that should be dead but are alive, Chachi briefly played with necromancy when she forced stagnant blood to hold life, but she intuited that Heaven wouldn't be super happy about it and switched blood for wood. The undead don't have an organized faction like the Abyssals, they're scattered abominations, but diamond is not a fan of them existing.

    Infernals are terrible demons who live underground and if you can find them they may offer you their infernal seed to nourish in your body. The seed is symbiotic and gives you great power, but it also feeds on your spirit and life force. At some point the seed will hatch, and it will either master the cultivator and turn him into a demon or the cultivator will master the seed and become an Infernal Saint. Chachi was taught this is a lie the demons tell, there are no infernal saints, only demons wearing a human suit and playing pretend.

    Infernal cultivation is forbidden and hated by heaven.
     
    Mr. Prokosch said:
    The undead are things that should be dead but are alive, Chachi briefly played with necromancy when she forced stagnant blood to hold life, but she intuited that Heaven wouldn't be super happy about it and switched blood for wood. The undead don't have an organized faction like the Abyssals, they're scattered abominations, but diamond is not a fan of them existing.
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    Are they illegal or something, are their minds corrupted or can they act in a beneficial way to society.
     
    No imperial law forbidding the creation of undead, but most regional laws forbid it. It's legal in the Vast Swamp, Turtle Islands, and Volcanic Mountains, illegal everywhere else. Naturally occurring undead have no legal rights and it's generally considered a mercy to put them down.

    Culturally it's taboo to defile people's corpses and pretty gross to do it to animals.

    Chachi doesn't think they will inherently be evil or go on a rampage, but she doesn't like the idea of them. The undead are missing something hard to define that the living have.
     
    Mr. Prokosch said:
    Infernals are terrible demons who live underground and if you can find them they may offer you their infernal seed to nourish in your body. The seed is symbiotic and gives you great power, but it also feeds on your spirit and life force. At some point the seed will hatch, and it will either master the cultivator and turn him into a demon or the cultivator will master the seed and become an Infernal Saint. Chachi was taught this is a lie the demons tell, there are no infernal saints, only demons wearing a human suit and playing pretend.
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    That's interesting considering we plan to go underground.

    The seed more so, maybe it can be useful once modified.

    Speaking of spirit, we know of techniques to attack the body, ones to attack the minds, but are there techniques that interact with souls and/or spirits (if those are the same thing), either attacking or otherwise?
     
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    They exist, Oku's Black Lightning does physical and spiritual damage, it hurts the Teotl waterways, making it harder to channel techniques. Eventually it will destroy pillar integration, then damage the core and prevent the use of Teotl entirely. Chachi is very resistant to that type of damage.
     
    Flesh sculpting can interact with physical waterways like those of spiritual beasts, can it interact with those of the orthodox path too?
     
    Chachi doesn't think so, maybe if it was part of a mastery or something. Infamous users of the technique could make new spirit beasts and empower mortals so they could use techniques instinctively like spirit beasts do. If you dissect a spirit beast it has physical riverways and its core is a pearl-like organ usually found in the forehead, chest, or stomach. If you dissect a cultivator you won't find that stuff, orthodox teachings say that for the Ascendant the riverways and such are part of a spiritual body that overlaps the physical, with the mind acting as a bridge between them.

    Chach isn't completely sure what would happen if she added physical riverways to an orthodox cultivator, but since that's also not a thing in the stories she'd guess there's some reason that doesn't work.
     
    Logically speaking, it probably has issues if the physical waterways are located differently than the spiritual ones. There were probably some explosions and more horrifying consequences from such experiments.

    Still leaves the question of what happens if you threaded the needle in making physical waterways line up with the spiritual ones, but we're probably not in a position to experiment just yet
     
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    Blonddude42 said:
    Logically speaking, it probably has issues if the physical waterways are located differently than the spiritual ones. There were probably some explosions and more horrifying consequences from such experiments.

    Still leaves the question of what happens if you threaded the needle in making physical waterways line up with the spiritual ones, but we're probably not in a position to experiment just yet
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    Might be related as to why bodily cultivation isn't common knowledge, we know our reforging is a method, we know the beast lands have people cultivate in a matter similar to beasts considered false.

    I suspect abysall cultivation is a method of bodily cultivation, considering the spiders which were spiritually weak but strong physically, or people who are descended from abysall cultivators having stronger bodies.

    We are preparing now to take down Tet if I remember correctly, and can interrogate him for abysall knowledge with the frog's help, if he mind wipe himself, we can try to open him up and use art of evaluation and meditation to see how he ticks (although our aura may make it difficult).

    We didn't look into infernal seeds yet, so we don't have much clue about how they work.

    I suspect our cultivation knowledge is incomplete, and that by following the orthodox paths, we are not giving enough of attention to our body and mind.

    The slow and steady gain of spiritual beasts is similar to the slow and steady gain of our core reforging, might be a connection.
     
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    A question, has anyone ever tried to make a spiritual beast Exalt, if so, what were the results (I assume we know since our clan figured out beast exaltion)?

    And is basic imbuing something that focus on the spiritual side of things (I am looking to see if it may be possible to combine it with flesh sculpting to create spirit sculpting mastery technique)?
     
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    Mr. Prokosch said:
    The undead are things that should be dead but are alive, Chachi briefly played with necromancy when she forced stagnant blood to hold life, but she intuited that Heaven wouldn't be super happy about it and switched blood for wood. The undead don't have an organized faction like the Abyssals, they're scattered abominations, but diamond is not a fan of them existing.

    Infernals are terrible demons who live underground and if you can find them they may offer you their infernal seed to nourish in your body. The seed is symbiotic and gives you great power, but it also feeds on your spirit and life force. At some point the seed will hatch, and it will either master the cultivator and turn him into a demon or the cultivator will master the seed and become an Infernal Saint. Chachi was taught this is a lie the demons tell, there are no infernal saints, only demons wearing a human suit and playing pretend.

    Infernal cultivation is forbidden and hated by heaven.
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    Well, that puts something of a damper on our plans to tunnel underground, if there are pockets of Infernals everywhere. It might still be the best course, but I'd say it's no longer a slam dunk.

    Blonddude42 said:
    Logically speaking, it probably has issues if the physical waterways are located differently than the spiritual ones. There were probably some explosions and more horrifying consequences from such experiments.

    Still leaves the question of what happens if you threaded the needle in making physical waterways line up with the spiritual ones, but we're probably not in a position to experiment just yet
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    Alternatively, make physical waterways where there are no spiritual ones yet. We could try to graft wings with physical waterways onto ourselves?
     
    Sigil said:
    Well, that puts something of a damper on our plans to tunnel underground, if there are pockets of Infernals everywhere. It might still be the best course, but I'd say it's no longer a slam dunk.



    Alternatively, make physical waterways where there are no spiritual ones yet. We could try to graft wings with physical waterways onto ourselves?
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    Never experiment on yourself first. We're rich enough to compensate volunteers.
     
    Blonddude42 said:
    Never experiment on yourself first. We're rich enough to compensate volunteers.
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    I also think using spiritual beasts is also a good idea, trying to approach it from the other side, making a spiritual beast into orthodox cultivator first, since they are easy to get and there are no ethical concerns with experimenting on them.

    A spirit sculpting technique will make such a process much easier, but I think elixir guy mentioned that you can guide the growth of waterways with elixirs when he experimented on the quicksilver, so it may be possible to start off synchronising or doing the opposite with a beast.

    Although I think our elixir guys should know what happens, I can't imagine we didn't try exalting a spiritual beast upon discovering beast exaltion.
     
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    Sigil said:
    Well, that puts something of a damper on our plans to tunnel underground, if there are pockets of Infernals everywhere. It might still be the best course, but I'd say it's no longer a slam dunk.
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    That brings a question, how strong are infernals and infernal cultivators, since I am guessing the supposedly infernal saint name wouldn't be given without a lot of power to back it, and infernals are born at the same stage infernal saints are born.

    How hostile are they historically, do they just offer their seeds or are they violent too, is the empire in conflict with them like with abysalls or only with those that take the seed.

    Why are they called demons, are they evil, if so in what way (we know abysalls are disgusting and slavers), and are infernal cultivators generally evil too, or can they just be people who want to progress beyond the limits of the orthodox path without prospects of sainthood or mind for politics.

    I am mostly curious of if they are tempting devil we can try to ignore, or if they underground monsters we may need to prepare to.
     
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    The beast exhaltation elixir Chachi made doesn't do anything for spirit beasts, except mildly poison them. Her guesses for why, ordered by what she thinks is the most to least likely explanation:
    • The beast's spirit is already tied into its body too deeply to be uplifted, it's already been twisted by a flawed form of cultivation.
    • The beast needs a custom elixir. Just like human elixirs don't work on beasts, beast elixirs don't work on spirit beasts. Maybe since it's no longer a 'blank canvas' each species of spirit beast would need a custom elixir.
    • Her conventional elixirs lack sufficient power to exhalt a being that's already spiritually potent. It's a 'heavier load', metaphysically, and needs something stronger to lift it up.
    Chachi thinks grafting wings would be totally viable. At first she's not sure why you'd want to do that over just integrating them in some chest armor, but as she considers it a bit longer she warms to the idea, as it might allow for more intuitive control and the wings may benefit from her physical cultivation and merging.
     
    Chachi is no expert on infernals. From what she does know:
    1. Infernal Saints are supposed to look like humans, but actual infernals look like horrible fire-metal-plant-monsters. She's never seen them except for artistic representations.
    2. When they come to the surface it's a big deal, and is met with overwhelming force. This can mean the local lord, to the lord and multiple saints, all the way up the the emperor intervening personally. So she thinks they have a lot of might. On the other hand, outside of infernal seeds they don't seem to be good at infiltration.
    3. She thinks, maybe, that people can deal with them peacefully if they want. That's not technically illegal like abyssal trade is, but she hasn't heard of any profitable infernal trade goods and taking on abyssal seeds is illegal and punished with death.
    4. On the other hand, she's not "people". Her spirit is marked by Heaven and she thinks any Infernal would know her instantly as an enemy.
     
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