Chapter 154: Demonic Influence (Patreon)

“If I may ask then, to what circumstance do I owe the pleasure of your visit, Elder Wei?”, Grandmaster Fang Gong inquired.

“Hmm… it is complicated.”

Liu Wei took a swig from the bowl of rice wine in his hand. The flavor was sweet and rich, clearly brewed with spirit herbs following a recipe which no one outside a sect would ever be able to afford following. The kind of drink that even a relatively powerful sect like the School of Blooming Dawn would keep only for special occasions and honored guests.

“I will gladly fill you in on the details later, but the gist of it is that one of our senior sect members has been assassinated at the hands of a fire cultivator.”

He took his time to let the significance of that sentence sink in while letting his gaze wander over the merry festivities below. They were sitting at the head of a table they were sharing with the school’s masters – the equivalent to a normal sect’s elders – located on a platform rising above the banquet that had been called spontaneously when he had arrived.

“And since I’m the only fire cultivator of the level necessary to do something like that in my sect, finding the culprit has fallen on me.”

“Which, I assume has set you on the way to the Burning Thorns Sect. Correct?”

“Quite so. And given the persistent instability of the Region, I didn’t want to head there without gathering information on how things are currently standing. After all, I did recently fight a war against everyone there.”

“I very much doubt you will have to worry about any resentments in that regard. With how many conflicts have been fought there in the time since, the war of the four sects is already old news for them. They have newer and more pressing resentments.

“Still, it’s a prudent approach, especially given the recent events at the sect you are heading for.”, Fang Gong commented. “And since you are looking for information, allow me to comment that you have come to the right place. The School of Blooming Dawn is always well-informed about anything important going on.”

Liu Wei nodded. That was indeed the case, and another reason he had chosen to come to this place specifically.

While the School outwardly acted and was treated like a normal sect, it was actually structured very differently. The structure of traditional sect was oriented after the structure of a family clan, with a strict strength- and seniority-based hierarchy and tightly knit, inward-focused social structure. Most members stayed at the sect for the absolute majority of their life and even the adventurous ones – like Liu Wei had been in his younger days – returned often and regularly.

Meanwhile, though their loyalty remained with it, most of its students didn’t actually stay at the School of Blooming forever, but moved out into the world to find their path independently. They would occasionally return, but the sect wasn’t their home anymore, except for those who returned to work as teachers themselves.

Because of this, the School of Blooming Dawn produced the majority of wandering soul cultivators in the alliance, which brought with it the advantage of being well-informed about everything that happened; especially so in regions that attracted wandering cultivators with opportunity.

“Since you are mentioning recent events at the Burning Thorns Sect. Could you fill me in on those?”

“Ah, yes, of course. How much do you know?”

“Barely anything, except rumors that some major upset has recently befallen the sect.”

“I see… I suppose the rumors haven’t traveled that far yet. Well, let me tell you, then, of the events surrounding the death of their new patriarch.”

Liu Wei put down the bowl of wine and stared at Fang Gong incredulously.

“Let me start at the point your sect was last involved with them: the War of Roaring Thunder. As you know, your sect’s relief force sent to the Serene Plains Sect was detected and attacked by a force lead by the Burning Thorns Sect’s former patriarch Guyuan Luli and he was ultimately killed in that battle.

“With his death, their former grand elder, Zhang Sha, was the only remaining cultivator of the Dao Contemplation Realm in the sect. As you will remember, he was among the cultivators you defeated personally in the battle at our school and left in our custody.”

Liu Wei did indeed remember the seemingly young fire cultivator well, though the fight itself hadn’t been too difficult.

“He was held here up to the end of the war, alongside the others. After he’d been let go, he assumed the position of patriarch of the Burning Thorns Sect. The sect would, however, soon run into serious trouble with its neighbors.

“Being at the fourth stage, Patriarch Luli had been one of the most powerful sect leaders in the region and his sect had enjoyed comparatively good treatment by the Roaring Thunder Sect as a result. As you can imagine, this led to grievances with many fellow sects that escalated after his death.”

“The Burning Thorns Sect found itself in several conflicts over territory and resources with its neighbors, multiple of which escalated to the point of skirmishes between their warriors. Patriarch Sha fought in several battles, but while he mostly managed to defend his sect’s possessions, he also suffered several wounds.”

That was something Liu Wei was all too well accustomed to. It seemed an inevitable law of the world that between cultivators, every advantage, every success would breed envy and greed that would unload as violence, as soon as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

“I see. But since you say he succeeded in defending his sect’s interests, I assume that is not the upset people are talking about, is it?”

“Indeed not. It is at this point that things become a little muddied. From what we know, a demonic cult turned up in their territory and began making trouble.”

“A demonic cult? How rare. Though I suppose it’s not too surprising they would choose times like these to reveal themselves.”

Demonic cults were organizations that practiced so-called demonic cultivation, a style of cultivation that had, long before it was called by that name, been the predominant form of cultivation before the advent of the modern soul cultivation. Younger than body cultivation but far older than soul cultivation, it was the practice that the first cultivation sects had formed around.

It worked the same as soul cultivation up to and including the core formation realm, where the practices diverged. Where a soul cultivator would use the Qi they had gathered in their core to bring their soul into the physical realm to then begin the process of soul-body-unification, demonic cultivators would carve physical Qi channels through their body, which allowed them to use it to empower their bodies directly. This practice continued indefinitely, with a finer and finer web of channels providing power from a core growing ever larger and denser.

The big problem of demonic cultivation was that these channels eventually began to impact the body and mind more and more as the cultivation progressed, slowly stripping both of the ability to feel.

Even the most good-natured and virtuous practitioners would eventually become cold, distant and aloof. The less virtuous would turn to the most extreme of their desires to sate their need to feel, in which they would escalate over time until, eventually, they would be as dangerous and vicious as wild beasts. That viciousness had even given rise to what many still considered the most vile practice to ever have existed in cultivation: the refinement of humans into cultivation drugs.

Back when this form of cultivation was dominant, these effects led to a split into so-called virtuous and unvirtuous sects. The former sought to resist the influence of their cultivation through extensively practiced self-control and asceticism – which was something that influenced the culture of the sects to this day – while the latter embraced the changes as an ascension to a higher, more natural state of being.

When soul cultivation, with its many advantages, was finally discovered and began spreading throughout the continent, most virtuous sects were quick to embrace it along the many that were founded on its principle, which marked the beginning of the modern era of cultivation. Most unvirtuous sects either followed suit or were eventually wiped out as the superior soul cultivators no longer tolerated their practices. The few that remained hid away in the shadows to continue the pursuit of the inhuman form. Eventually, as the practice was renamed ‘demonic cultivation’ for its dark effects on its practitioners, they became known as the first demonic cults.

None of these original cults remained, but since demonic cultivation was, like body cultivation, a lot easier to figure out and perform than soul cultivation, offshoots and revivals of them continued to turn up to this day.

“Indeed. They attacked and massacred several small settlements near the Burning Thorns Sect, which drew the attention of Patriarch Sha. Perhaps looking to spare his already battered forces the effort or perhaps to rack up his list of accomplishments following his unlucky streak, he went out alone to confront them. An act which his sect members naturally celebrated as a noble gesture – until they were returned his severed head.”

Liu Wei leaned forward.

“You are telling me Zhang Sha, a cultivator at the second stage of Dao Contemplation was killed by a demonic sect?”

“From what we know, yes. It seems to have been an ambush that he ran straight into.”

Even then, that was still was nearly impossible to believe. Demonic cultivation may have had terrible side-effects from today’s perspective, but the original reason it was so thoroughly replaced was not that, but simply that soul cultivation offered far greater potential for power. Even the strongest of the strongest demonic cultivators were known to only barely be able to keep up with those in the early Dao Attunement Realm. For a demonic cult to overwhelm, much less kill a cultivator at the Dao Attunement Realm, even a wounded one, was almost unheard off.

“Since then, several more of their elders, all at or near the peak of Dao Attunement, are rumored to also have died at the hands of the cult. Part of that may also have been pretense though, as Zhang Sha’s death also left the sect without a cultivator at the Dao Contemplation Realm, kicking of a brutal succession struggle. In short: The sect is experiencing a crisis so extreme it may be on the verge of collapsing entirely.”