Zhang Dong needed about ten to twenty minutes to process one person, but due to there being two hundred people that he had to go through it took him two days to finish everything. You could see a big line of nervous youths just outside his chambers. Matt made a mental note to have the clan members build him an office for things like this. There were a lot of people from the side families here so they weren’t familiar with the place, their eyes moving left and right as they examined every nook and cranny. They looked at the inner members with envy in their eyes, but now with the new Patriarch also being from a side family, they felt like things would change.
After the two days without sleep, Matt flopped onto his bed. He had 198 more people in his database as he didn’t need to add his two disciples that were already training in other things that he got for them. After checking out their affinities he noticed that due to his Dao of Heavenly Lightning their grades towards the lightning element were increasing. He sure wished he could afford to buy Dao knowledge for the water element with so many water cultivators around, but he only had a small fraction required. The Dao of water was a greater Dao, so it required a lot of points.
He laid on his huge bed looking up at the ceiling, but he was actually looking at his system window that was showing him the Qi cultivator profiles. Luckily the techniques didn’t vary as much as he thought. This was probably due to this being a clan and not a sect, so most people specialized in similar fields. You didn’t really have divisions for pill forging, crafting or beast taming as clans tended to stick to one profession. The Zhang clan specialized in restorative pill forging that went with their water arts that were suited for healing.
*Glad that their techniques don’t vary as much as I thought. Got the basics down, now I need to prepare the regular weapon training techniques, the evasion techniques, they don’t really use any body refining techniques…So still a lot of work left.*
The Qi condensation techniques were really cheap so he got a ‘Water Nymph Physique’ for the female cultivators, it was similar to the Sylph Physique that Xue was using. For the male cultivators, he found the ‘Leviathan Constitution’ , this also belonged to the water element bracket. These two worked similar to the techniques that he got for his disciples, the girls got more agile while the men got more resistant. They were a bit worse than what he got for his disciples, but they were fashioned for water type cultivators so they would complement their strengths.
He decided on those two for one reason, they would let water cultivators use their Qi skills even in harsh environments devoid of any water elements. The more they progressed in his refining techniques, the more Qi they could store in their body for later usage and the less they needed to use for their other techniques.
Zhang Dong meditated for an hour, not sleeping just yet as he headed over to his dimensional regalia. Inside he saw many clan members shuffling about, they were carrying various tools and resources. Some of them were sweeping, some of them were scraping the moss from the bricks. The more Matt gazed at the building the more it looked like a university dorm that he was familiar with. It was long and made from bricks with many rooms that were connected to a hallway. It was several stories high if you squeezed two beds into each room, you could fit about 250 people in. Maybe more, as cultivators liked to sit down and meditate instead of sleeping which took up less space.
After the walls got cleaned up you could see the reddish color of the bricks, it had that steep Mansard roof that Victorian-era buildings back on earth had. It had some sash and bay windows plastered in, making Matt wonder where this thing came from, as most buildings in this world were more or less Oriental, but there was that one western looking tavern back in the gloomy town.
The moment the people saw him they bowed and started working faster and harder, fearing that their new boss would start whacking them if they didn’t speed things up. The place was getting renovated, beds and furniture were getting carried in as Matt was preparing this place for the training that he was going to give his warriors. He thought that making the people live around each other and spar would increase their coordination.
He was still of the mind that that whole place would be some kind of group activity, so he wanted to increase his peoples’ teamwork. He wanted to implement some group exercises to elevate the synergy between his clan members. It would be good if they figured out each other strong and weak points, then complemented each other’s flaws.
He wasn’t going to do it alone, as he had some more experienced members help him out with the formations they could put the people in. They wanted to segregate people into groups, each Foundation Establishment elder would get a team of ten Qi condensation juniors to lead. He wanted to assign everyone at the start so that they could get to know each other better, this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary as it was quite common to put soldiers into smaller teams.
“I guess eleven people isn’t much of a platoon but it will do…”
He would be the company captain while the twenty elders below him would be his officers, the Qi condensation members would be the grunts. He would need to either make specialized squads or more all-around platoons.
*Well, if I use specialized groups it would be easier to train them. But if everyone gets split up and my medics are lost without any combatants to cover their butts, they will be screwed.*
Naturally, everyone was good at something, most people knew how to fight but the first ranker and the last ranker were miles apart. Matt thought back to his gaming days, mostly the MMORPGs he played. Most parties had a tank to keep the monsters busy while the damage dealers either used ranged attacks or flanked them from the side. The healers could then keep their party refreshed and ready for the next fight. There were also the buffers and debuffers and various other specialized classes, but he would be keeping it simple for now. The Zhang clan being a water elemental clan, had some good healing arts which Matt would be upgrading for future use as skills like those were a necessity.
*Guess I’ll go for the more all-around team setup, better be safe than sorry later.*
*Got eleven people in one platoon, would be good to have at least one medic/healer, then some frontliners to keep the enemies busy while the backliners either bombard them from afar.*
He looked at his database, focusing on the Qi condensation members. There would be enough people with healing abilities to cover each team, but all platoons wouldn’t have perfectly balanced setups as the people were picked mostly through combat. Teamwork was fine, but he also had to take into consideration that everyone would be separated and would have to fend for themselves.
The cool thing about this world was that the cultivators had specialized techniques for team combat. They were called formation techniques, Matt also fought against one of those formation techniques. The people from the Tsai clan had combined into a giant volcano golem and gave him a good whacking before he turned the tide. He was holding two books in his hands, they were the formation techniques that he had chosen for upgrading.
One was for attacking while the other was for defense. Matt hoped that with the increased grade the formation would shine even more, maybe allowing the people inside to reach close to the core formation level. The formation techniques didn’t have any cap on how many people could use them, so in theory, if all 220 of them used that Water serpent transformation, going into the core formation area wasn’t that far fetched.
*Would be good to get these up as high as possible, formation techniques are indispensable in large scale combat.*
He thought back to the rock golem, he still had that technique manual with him. It was of low grade of course, but he reckoned if it was of a high grade than he would have probably lost during the power struggle at that time.
Matt sat down on a chair that was brought in by his fellow clan members as he was still in the medallion realm. He scanned through the most used techniques, thanks to his library he could organize them like in a spreadsheet. Everything was nicely presented, from the most commonly used skills, the highest-graded ones, he could compare everything and take out the most essential ones for further improvement.
While he was busy with clicking the air, the Zhang clan members on the sides started staring at him while they cleaned the building. They looked with wide eyes at their silver-haired Patriarch while seeing him poking at the air in front of him. Was this some kind of ritual for a new technique or something? It would be far too rude for them to ask but the sight of their leader swishing his finger up, down, left and right was making these people have sweaty palms from the way their boss was frowning.
“Ugh, why are there so many of these skills… just learn one and stick with it…”
Matt rubbed his forehead while staring at his decreasing points that were declining with each second, soon he would run out. Luckily he got most of the skills that he wanted and more spirit stones would be arriving as well. The next thing on the agenda was the equipment, thanks to his golden touch he knew exactly what each person had an affinity for so he could design the right weapon and gear for them.
*Guess I’ll have to use that dancing platform as well… the clan robes don’t really have much to go for them…*
He vanished from the pocket dimension and appeared in a certain heavily guarded room, there were many intricate inscriptions on the walls that were pulsating with spirit energy. This was a secret chamber that the dimensional regalia was resting in. The moment he showed it of, his grandpa looked like he had laid an egg. He knew the implications of having this sort of item around, if any sect figured out that they had it with them, there would be nothing that could save them from extinction. Unless they just gave it away, but luckily this thing didn’t give off any immortal artifact aura. You needed to get really close and actually touch it to feel the wondrous immortal radiation that it was giving off. So, they decided to hide it for now.
The people that were working inside had sworn an oath of secrecy, it was something to keep people’s mouths shut. Other clans used different methods, in Zhang clan’s case if a person tried blabbering out the secret they would find themselves bursting from inside. Guess there was a lot of water in a person’s body, so a water clan would know how to come up with a technique that would use that and explode a body from the inside.
Matt was a bit apprehensive about the methods, but kind of knew that this was the only way to be sure that no one spilled the beans. The people that were working inside the pocket dimension weren’t against it at all, everyone knew that this safeguard had to be made. Also, the people inside the medallion didn’t actually know of the treasure’s grading most of them reasoned that it was a heavenly graded artifact at most, as the dimension inside wasn’t all that large. No one actually touched the item as it was used by the Patriarch.
Matt went out of the room and headed to his chambers, it was time to get some crafting done after that he would start cultivating, he really needed to get into that late stage as soon as possible.