A person was standing with both of his hands on his forehead. The man’s name was Zhang Zhi, he had just turned forty this year but due to his cultivation he looked like a man in his late twenties. He was the one that took the first spot for the foundation establishment elders at the clan tournament. Due to his fairly young age and high cultivation level, he was highly regarded amongst the clan.
Half an hour earlier he and the other tournament participants were brought into a room. There he saw some copied over manuscripts, even while they were walking in some women clan members were diligently working on copying them down from some nearby notes. He straightened out as he saw that their current Patriarch was standing there, handing down some papers to people that were copying them over.
“Ah, I see that you all are here, could you all just line up. There is much work to do, best if you line up in order of your tournament placement.”
The patriarch ordered while waving his hand around, moving it in a certain direction. The Zhang clan elders looked at each other and just followed the instructions, lining up by the wall. Zhi was the first one getting approached by their new leader, he was slightly shorter than Zhang Dong and had a more ectomorph like physique. He looked at the silver-haired man in front of him as he placed his hand on his shoulder, he could feel some strange energy wash over him the moment that happened.
“Zhang Zhi, Great Circle, 40 years old… you should probably switch to sword arts from those spear arts…you practice the Dragontide method, I see…”
Zhi was a bit astonished that the man that he never interacted with started naming things that he shouldn’t know. The man started claiming that he was better at the sword than the spear, he had followed in his father’s footsteps that was quite renowned for his spearmanship. The white-haired Patriarch mumbled to himself for a moment before placing his index finger on Zhi’s forehead.
“This might feeeeel a bit funny, just bare with it…”
The moment Zhi heard those words he could feel information getting forced into his brain. This knowledge was something that he knew by heart, it was about his cultivation method the Dragontide Manuscript. It was different though, the wisdom contained was far superior to the understanding of the technique he previously had. He backed away, holding onto his head in shock as most of the knowledge remained intact. He instinctively wanted to seclude himself and try out the improved cultivation method.
“T-this…”
Before he could say something the Patriarch looked to one of the people that was copying down his scribbles. Talking to them in a pleasantly sounding bassy voice.
“One Improved Dragontide manual, please~”
He said while one of the girls brought over the goods, Zhang Zhi got the item shoved into his palms his eyes going wide as it was the same cultivation method that was imparted into him, just written down the ink didn’t even look dry.
“If you have any questions, they should be answered in there, now go reinforce the foundation, you have a week.”
Zhang Dong had improved his Impartation of Knowledge skill, but it still wasn’t perfect so he needed those copied over manuscripts with all the required data. Zhang Zhi being the typical cultivator nut started shaking furiously as he looked at the manuscript in front of him. He knew that improving cultivation methods that you didn’t make yourself was extremely hard. But there it was, his family art improved even he could tell that it was far beyond anything the clan had in their library.
He was baffled, he wanted to hug the man in front of him and beg him to take him on as a disciple. But he managed to stop himself, for one this man was the clan’s Patriarch and he already had disciples, two he was ten years younger than him. The others next to Zhi glanced in his direction, they saw his eyes redden and his lower lip quivering not really sure what was happening.
“Thank you, Patriarch, this Zhang Zhi will never forget this act of kindness!”
What followed was a furious display of ass-kissing in the form of kowtowing, which made the Patriarch’s eyebrows twitch momentarily. He coughed into his hand and moved over to the second person. He placed his hand on the older looking man and within a couple of minutes, the man was down on his knees, thanking the young clan leader for being so benevolent.
Zhang Dong started moving past the quivering clan members, trying not to look at their over the top behavior. Everyone was receiving the improved versions of their cultivation methods. The ones that had yet to receive their manual had stars in their eyes and sweaty palms, they looked like a bunch of puppies before you fed them. Most of the people were old men past their forties, so the looks on their faces were priceless, Matt had to force himself to not laugh in front of them.
“Oh, you’re Liu’s and Xue’s…”
About at the end of the line, was the mother of his graying disciples. She and Xue looked very similar, having that unhealthy white complexion that people in this world liked so much. She looked a bit more refined than her daughter that still had some baby fat stuck on her face, also she was quite flat. She made up for that deficiency with her back end, which was quite large in comparison.
“Zhang Jie greets the Patriarch.”
She gave him the usual bow of respect before Zhang Dong went through the motions and imparted the improved Rainwater Sutra art to her. The woman was wondering what was the deal with this man, her children just couldn’t shut up about how great he was. She finally knew how those two brats started progressing so fast, this man teaching methods were quite unusual. Her head was throbbing but her knowledge of the cultivation arts increased by leaps and bounds.
“You should tell gramps to not cultivate before I look through his cultivation art, it has way too many flaws in it.”
She figured that this ‘Gramps’ that the new Patriarch was talking about was her grandfather Zhang Jin, she didn’t know if she should laugh or cry about the way this man refereed to her adored grandfather.
“Ah yes… I’ll be sure to pass it on, Patriarch.”
The dazed Zhang Clan foundation establishment elders waddled out of the gathering room, their heads hurting a bit but this was a small price to pay. They all felt invigorated as with the imparted knowledge, they were sure that they could reinforce their flawed foundation pillars.
What was the Foundation Establishment cultivation realm? It was the first real step on the way to cultivation, everyone could condense Qi in this world, but not everyone was able to advance past that. If you wanted to further advance you needed to create your dao pillars, people that advanced to the early stage only had one pillar while advancing further they formed more. Depending on the cultivation technique the amount of those pillars varied. The thing that also varied was the state those pillars were in.
The lowest kind were the cracked pillars, a myriad of cracks like spiderwebs would run through them, indicating a flimsy foundation that could be shattered at any moment. After that came the flawed pillars, they had fewer imperfections ruining through them. These types of pillars were very common among the Zhang Clan practitioners. After that came the superior pillars, flaws in those were difficult to spot. The last ones were the perfect pillars, the rarest and the most difficult ones that a cultivator could produce.
A cultivator could have mixed pillars, flawed ones together with superior and cracked ones. Most people around the world that used average cultivation methods had flawed pillars with some cracked ones in the mix.
Zhang Dong having an immortal grade technique was the owner of perfect pillars. Also they were special lightning dao pillars which increased their rarity even further. With the improved versions of the cultivation arts, Matt hoped that everyone could transform their flawed and cracked pillars to the superior version of them, maybe even add a couple of new ones in the process. The better your pillars were and the more you had of them, the smoother your cultivation path would be in the future. This was also the reason Matt was cultivating at such breakneck speeds, he faced no bottlenecks whatsoever. The only thing holding him back was the amount of spiritual energy he could absorb to expand his lightning core.
Back in his chambers, Zhang Dong looked at his system screen, the shoulder touching wasn’t only for figuring out people’s names and what they were good at. He could actually save everyone’s stats into his database, in it he could see the personal data of the people he examined.
*I’m sure glad that I took that analyzing skill.*
He couldn’t see the progress of the people he analyzed as he saw it in his Disciple section. He could pull up the database at any moment, update it and see how everyone was progressing. He could also plan ahead, like with Zhang Zhi, his talent wasn’t that great only at a C+, but his affinity with the sword was at an A+. But for some reason, Matt saw that the only weapon techniques the man had were spear ones. Zhi’s spear affinity was much lower at a C, it was a travesty that this man was training in an art he had no talent in.
*Should I get him to try out some sword arts, or is two months not enough…*
Matt didn’t know if retraining yourself before going to battle in two months would be wise. But the A+ indicated that the man had superior talent in swordsmanship, also he was a lot older so some things should translate over. There were other people that were already using the sword as it was a common weapon type along with the spear and saber, so it would come in handy.
*I can’t give him my sword art, it’s for lightning Qi…*
Due to being the Patriarch, he had access to all of the best techniques that the clan could offer, though they were worse than even his lowest graded technique. He looked through the more advanced sword techniques the clan could offer, they were mostly in the lower or middle grade, but there was a high grade one that could be used.
He upgraded it to the low earth grade, the thing about this whole process was that he was learning all of these skills almost instantaneously while not even cultivating them. Matt didn’t know if knowing so many skills would even be good for something, he looked through his technique library but he didn’t see any options for combining skills which he could use.
*Damn, I can’t even sell these as that would undermine my clan in the long run…*
He threw the motion of selling off cultivation arts out the window, as he didn’t want a paper trail leading to his doorstep. Also, you couldn’t earn much back for anything below the core formation as most sects and clans had their own stuff below that level. Training in some random techniques could impede your progress.
*Well time to go through the youngster techniques…*
He gave out a sigh as there were two hundred of those Qi condensation juniors he had to go through, at least upgrading techniques from Qi condensation didn’t cost that much. Also, they weren’t that bad as the foundation establishment ones, being a lot easier to produce for the lower level clans and sects like them. Matt flexed his cultivation aura which alerted a nearby clan member that was in his service. This was quite a nifty way of getting people to come over, he didn’t even need to use his voice.
“Give this to the Zhang Zhi fellow, tell him that he should try it out. Also, tell the junior members to come to my chambers in order of the tournament results.”
Matt didn’t want two hundred people looking at him silently while he analyzed others one by one. It would be less stressful if he just takes care of them one at a time, they were young so they could wait in line all day. Which they would have to as he had to look at their cultivation method, write it down for them, then have others copy it over. This would be a lengthy process, they didn’t have time and he also wanted to teach people some actual battle skills later on.
“Okay, let’s get this over with…”