Chapter 5: Laying the Foundations

Of course, simply because Elder Flower had so graciously offered Jin help that even core disciples would have likely fought to receive; this did not mean that there were not at first several other things to handle.

After all, as surreal as it still felt, Jin had just passed the examination process for his ascension to the role of inner disciple. This meant that he had to be shown his new accommodations, the new cultivation and knowledge resources he now had access to and just generally acclimate to his new standing in the sect and in the wider world.

For this purpose Elder Flower had told him that he should first get used to the part of the mountain he was now inhabiting and to make a plan for his future.

More specifically, she had said that her offer was most definitely not an offer of apprenticeship and that she was simply interested in helping him perfect the combat system used by Ornstein. She was not taking charge of his entire career, as an apprenticeship would have implied.

Jin was quite happy with that. In a way, this was actually the superior relationship to have. After all, he had a lot of his own ideas of what he needed to create. It would be sad if the scenarios he could bring in from his past life would have to be put on hold because he was fulfilling some arbitrary tasks for a master who quite frankly did not have access to such a well of genius as he did.

But first, before thinking of his future projects, before he started meeting the Elder, Jin was planning on relaxing. Elder Flower had said that the visit to the Mad Monks Sect was still a few weeks off after all.

Jin was planning on using this time to familiarise himself with the situation he was now in and to rest his mind. The past week had simply been a blur of work and deadlines, and he wanted to visit the scenario library.

He'd been an avid enjoyer of video games for the past few years of his life; being offered free access to an inner disciple library full of scenarios created with the different cultural contexts might as well have been heaven to him.

But before he could get started on any of that, he had to go through the most dreaded and boring thing of any new entry into an institution.

The orientation.

The guide for this orientation was a wispy old man, who approached Jin after the boy had said goodbye to Elder Qin and Elder Flower and walked through the stone gate, forced his way through the group of inner disciples and politely shook everyone's hand and just generally introduced himself.

Jin would have guessed his guide to be around 75, but because the man was an inner disciple and the cultivation level implied in that position still slowed down ageing somewhat, he guessed that he was around 200.

It didn't seem like he would be going anywhere and would die on the level he had reached, but for all of that, Jin found Francis a peppy if a bit boring man. The boring part couldn't really be helped considering the age difference, and the relatively different levels of education the two of them had, but he appreciated the energy.

During the orientation, Francis explained several things, some of which Jin hadn't known before.

Firstly, being an inner disciple was better than becoming an outer disciple because the former, upon entering the rank, received a grace period of one year to acclimate to their new surroundings, before having to contribute sect points.

Back when Jin had entered the outer disciple ring of the sect, he'd had to start contributing immediately, having to do a variety of small jobs to get the requisite amount of sect points to pay for his stay.

In a similar vein, he didn't at the time of being an outer disciple have the option of contributing illusion Rooms.

Contributing illusion Rooms was one of the important ways that one could earn sect points as an inner disciple. After all, it was at the inner disciple level that people actually started getting good at making them.

The Rooms one made after passing the exams could be shown at the visitor library, where people from other sects came to look at scenarios. One's contribution would be measured by the amount of people using one's Room in particular. Alternatively, if one had enough of a reputation, or if the client was enough of a cheap skate to go with an inner disciple of low standing, one could get the commission to create one particular scenario.

Both of these methods were not that useful for people who had just gained the rank of an inner disciple, considering that both the library method and the commissions required a certain reputation to succeed. However, at least inner disciples had an eventual "financial" out, when they improved their craft enough to earn their stay with it.

This was why the inner disciple ring had actual servants, because unlike the outer disciple one, it was not completely self-sustaining with the labour of the disciples. The majority of them got paid through creating illusion Rooms and not doing menial chores.

At this point of cultivation, everyone in the inner ring had reached at least the foundation establishment stage. It would be a complete waste to make people like that sweep the floor.

One gained a personal servant as a sign of status after one's illusion Rooms became one's sole source of sect points. It was quite obvious that the disciples with servants were the ones more likely to ascend to core disciple status.

The Illusion Room sect was weird in the fact that it was one of the few ones which did not have more outer disciples than they had inner ones. It made sense in a way when one thought about it though. Martial sects profited from a large group of outer disciples that served as fodder in the case of conflict.

A sect based on craftsmanship only had so many resources and teachers to go around, so they rather restricted the intake but invested more into their higher stage members since those created higher quality products.

Jin's next goal in this pyramid scheme would be to attain the role of a core disciple.

These were the disciples who had been specifically picked out to have enough potential to form a nascent soul and who essentially got put into an acceleration program to achieve that. After having done so they would contribute long enough in that position until they got named Elders.

Jin wasn't anywhere close to that, having not even attained a servant, but it was good to know where one was headed.

He considered these things as Francis showed him around the inner disciple ring; the library, the mission exchange board, the food market, and the apartment blocks.

It seemed that in the inner ring, the sect wanted to further collaboration between disciples instead of isolating them so that they could focus more on the test that was coming at a set timeline. Similarly in Jin's previous life, the best video games had been collaborative efforts.

For this purpose, there was no more food delivery, unless one had a servant who would bring it. Instead, there was a gigantic mess hall where food was being served at all times.

In a similar vein, disciples did not live in isolated huts anymore, but in large houses with several apartments, where one had to deal with having neighbours.

This was the explanation that Francis had given, hinting perhaps that the two of them should collaborate at some point.

Jin politely refused stating that he first wanted to acclimate himself to the sect before even thinking of producing a new work.

As an addition to Francis' explanation he also suspected that one of the reasons why the disciples lived in the apartment blocks was the fact that the higher up the mountain they were, the less space was available. As a sect that had more inner than outer disciples, they had to use the space that they did have wisely.

The tour ended at the apartment building that Jin would be living in. It seemed that the sect simply built one new building once in a while and filled it up sequentially with the people who passed the exams. It also meant that the later one joined the inner ring, the further out one would live from its central amenities. Jin for example was now an inner disciple who had joined perhaps 15.000 years after the sect had formed and was already 2 km out of the centre with the library and the food hall.

This wasn't a bad thing though, after all this also meant that he had the newest building, a yellow brick house, towering into the sky and differing in architecture wildly from the simple hut he'd been living in previously. The roof was out of stone, and the windows were inlaid with glass so that one could open or close them at one's leisure. A luxury that he hadn't even known had been a luxury until he'd spent a draughty evening in his last domicile.

"This is where we part ways young man, do come find me if you ever need help. Who knows if you help me enough I might even let you inherit my apartment right next to the food hall after I die, haha," Francis joked with a full-bellied laugh and walked off leaving Jin standing in front of the building with nothing but the clothes on his back and his illusion Room in his hands.

The exam really hadn't taken that long and it was still day. Jin could for example use his time to go to the library, to get some food, or two otherwise explore the area.

However, after the week that he'd had he definitely deserved some rest. He entered the building through the front door and walked up the steps to the third floor, where he found his name engraved on a door. Next to it was a little bell attached to the wall which one could ring in a very fittingly old-fashioned manner to summon the inhabitant of the apartment. He chuckled and entered.

It was a quaint little two-room affair, with one room that was obviously meant for work, and one that was meant for sleep. His amenities hadn't improved too much, still not having a real bed but simply a futon on the ground this time. His workbench was only slightly larger with the writing equipment graciously donated by the sect already on it.

There was a wardrobe with five of the beige disciple rules already in it. There was also a bucket to get water from a well that must have been somewhere near, and some glasses and some wooden containers for personal effects of which Jin at the moment had none.

There was a tiny balcony, which he promptly entered when he found it. It consisted of two wooden beams that had been extended beyond the perimeters of the walls and on which a plate of stone along with a wooden railing had been installed. It was just big enough for a small table and a chair, both of which were still missing. He would get something like that later on, he quite enjoyed sitting on a balcony and looking at the sunset and the sunrise respectively.

The floor would do for the moment. Jin promptly sat down.

It had been a wild week, but there was still one last thing to consider before he could truly let himself rest.

His cultivation

The first stage of cultivation was the qi condensation stage. It consisted of learning how to perceive heavenly energy, which was the prerequisite to gathering it. This in turn was the prerequisite for circulating it throughout the body, which purified it of its impurities.

Parsing through the memories that the body's original owner had of that stage very much made Jin grateful that he hadn't had to live through it. Purifying meant purifying and nothing less, the previous Jin had been forced to lay in a tub full of hot water outside of his hut and had expelled from his body more black sludge than anyone would have thought possible for a society where everyone ate organic food by default.

Once the body had been purified, it became an imperfect conduit for the heavenly energies which could now be channelled towards an effect. The effect in the case of the illusion Room sect, was the creation of illusions and the ability to insert these into the appropriate Rooms.

Naturally, every sect had different techniques for how they went about qi condensation, which depended heavily on what kind of techniques they wanted to be using and which attributes of a cultivator they valued. Quite generally these attributes were divided into body, mind, and soul. The illusion room sect was a sect of mind cultivators. This meant that in the limited amount of purification that could happen in the qi condensation stage, they focused mostly on the spiritual nodes present in the brain. This essentially allowed for the better processing power of the mind and thus for a better control of illusions. It was also why they valued disciples with a yin affinity, which was what Jin had.

If Jin had been a body cultivator, he would have instead focused on specifically purifying either his muscles, tendons or bones, depending on the martial technique of his sect. They would have preferred him to have a yang affinity.

Naturally even if one focused one's refinement on one particular aspect, all others were still uplifted. One could say that on average 50% of the purification occurred throughout the entire trifecta, while one could allocate the other 50% as one wanted. It was here that talent cut a line between those who had it and those who didn't.

Being able to direct more or less of the optional half, reflected one's general ability to cultivate and use the appropriate spells. Jin had, if he quickly recalculated into percentages the garbled spiritual nonsense taught in the manuals, diverted 56% of his purification and resulting refinement into the brain. This was considered quite above average, as most people only managed to control 50%. One was considered a genius if one managed to allocate as one wished more than 60%.

This was what Jin had accomplished before James had taken over the body, he'd finished the Qi condensation stage, focused most of its improvements on the mind, learned the appropriate basic techniques and was now decisively in the early stage of foundation establishment.

Foundation establishment was concerned with refining the body further so that it would be able to take in heavenly energy more efficiently and then serve as a better conduit for spells. While the first stage had been concerned with purifying the body, the second was considered with refining it.

One generally spoke of nine pillars. Each set of three representing one section of the stage. Each pillar in turn consisted of the refinements of several spiritual nodes, of which there were hundreds in the human body. If Jin were to follow the general rule of the illusion Room cultivation sect, he would refine all the nodes and all the pillars he could in the area of the mind.

However, Elder Flower had suggested that he focus at least some of them on his physical capacities.

These were all decisions that would be made after he really sunk his teeth into the library. The later stages of cultivation consisted of messing with one soul, and he wasn't willing to do that without understanding the process at least somewhat better.

The understanding that Jin had brought with him was very rudimentary. Not the boy's fault, of course, since the sect simply didn't allow their disciples to have access to a lot of knowledge. This was what allowed them to actually expel the failed outer disciples, instead of having to kill or cripple them to protect their secrets.

This was supposedly the fate of failed outer disciples in other sects. They were either killed for trying to leave if they did not manage to pass on to the next level, or they were held in the outer ring as servants until they died of old age.

Cultivation was a demanding, exhausting, self-perpetuating process with several bottlenecks. People could get stuck and never recover or advance between every one of the stages of qi condensation, foundation establishment and so on. People who had failed to align their heavenly energy intake channels properly and had thus sabotaged their further ascension were as numerous as there was sand on the beach.

Jin sighed and entered the meditative position that he had been taught by Elder Qin when he entered the sect all those years ago. It was simply the lotus position but with his hands placed on the sides of his temples. A bit weird, but that was cultivation for you.

For the first time since he entered this new body, he focused on his inner world, instead of the outer one.

A meditative trance wasn't easy to achieve, considering that Jin or James in this matter was still relatively shaken by his entry into cultivation land, but after several minutes, perhaps even half an hour he finally managed to block out his surroundings and focus only on himself and the heavenly energy permitting every single atom of this world.

What he saw when he looked within simply confirmed the things that he had been experiencing for the past few days in his new body. His mind was faster, his body more healthy. Aches that he had not even known existed in his previous body had not been carried over. He felt as if he was walking on clouds and now as he was looking at the inside of his being he could see why.

The remnants of the qi condensation process, the purification had left him with not a body, but a temple. He was essentially inhabiting a villa made completely out of marble, whereas beforehand he had simply been bumming it out in a dirty cave with weird mushrooms growing on the walls. The occasional cockroach.

And to think that this wasn't even the final form. That higher stage cultivators felt even better.

Well, feeling better wasn't necessarily the way to describe his state of being. It was rather that he was lacking in any ailments. Negative effects like an aching tendon or persistent cold, things that one didn't truly care about anymore after they were gone. But of which a complete and utter lack was stunning.

Rather than just wanting to stay in the sect to live a decent life and access some luxury, Jin decided then and there that he wanted to stay also to cultivate more, to attain more of this goodness consisting of a complete lack of negativity.

All his bones felt as sturdy as iron, his tendons like ropes and his muscles like pistons.

His mind? A crystal cathedral in which information was sent from neuron to neuron mapped onto grey tissue faster than any supercomputer.

Jin didn't know how long he simply sat there in the meditative position. How much time he spent simply breathing in, and out, marvelling at this new existence. Took in the heavenly energy as he had been taught to do and used it to improve himself. He disregarded the cryptic instructions of the sect which still focused on the Eastern equivalent of the four humours when it came to foundation establishment and rather went through every part of himself slowly but surely cell by cell. Leukocyte by leukocyte. DNA string by DNA string.

When he opened his eyes not knowing how much time had passed he felt possibly even more refreshed than he had before. More importantly, he could feel the difference between how easily the heavenly energy entered and exited his body as he directed it through the little cantrips that were taught to disciples so they could start on something easy. Expelling a bit of air, a bit of heat, condensing a bit of water.

He didn't know if the improvement of his channelling and technique came down to the fact that he was only now starting to familiarise himself with it, or that he had applied the knowledge of his previous life to the spiritual concepts of his current one.

Anyone looking from the outside would have been shocked at discovering that whereas he had sat down in the very early stages of the foundation establishment… In one cultivation session, he entered the middle stage of foundation establishment.

Only time would tell if such jumps would become the norm, or if it had simply been the result of integrating the life experiences of another highly educated human being into the context of someone who had already been quite talented.

One thing was sure, James had a lot to show this world, and it wasn't just his knowledge of video games that would bring him forward.