Chapter 10: A Model

Chapter 10: A Model After returning from the second visit to the sect, Master Yi Rong had excused himself to rest. He wouldnt be alive much longer. He had mentioned that the sect would come and collect his body for disposal once he passed to keep secrets of his cultivation from leaking or anyone disrespecting his corpse. I had inquired if people might use corpses, but he had refuted that idea. Demonic cultivators stole other peoples cultivation and did not progress on their own. They were basically kill on sight or flee on sight if you couldnt kill them. The Imperial Sect offered a bounty of a hundred level 1 Spirit Stones for every demonic cultivator corpse brought to them and had the sects underneath them honor that. So, if anyone was a demonic cultivator, they had to keep very low profiles. I had discussed with Master Yi Rong about modeling my eventual channels, but he knew nothing about it and muttered something about foolishness. That meant I was on my own to figure out my path. While it was tempting to divide parts of my body into quadrants and link meridians up from those quadrants, that was not advised by one book I had read where someone went with two cores. The issue was imbalance. If the cores were imbalanced, then it would cause massive issues. For my four-core plan to work, all four cores had to pull energy equally from across my body and I couldnt do quadrants. If they progressed at uneven rates, it would be a disaster. Based on what I read, it was hard to say how much wiggle room there was. There werent many people who attempted multi-core cultivation, and none were in the successful section of the library. The big issue was that a higher mote count was one thing, but a core that was not just as strong meant that my astral soul wouldnt be cleared when I detonated my core. Once I took a step into the second stage, I would be stuck with the motes I had. I wouldnt be able to remove or add Qi motes. That was why I needed to have a perfect plan beforehand and adjust my final mote count and layout once I had decided on everything. I could move the motes inside of my body, but it took time and focus. That was one reason the second stage was so long. They were the smallest of pinpricks and acted like a car on ice. Move them too fast and they would slide. That meant going slowly. I had practiced moving the motes inside of me and could enhance parts of myself. Master Yi Rong and the introduction book from the sect had said that spreading them out in the body was the best option to avoid imbalances and to get used to them. That was what I had done. I might be reinventing the wheel on a lot of other things, but I could accept advice when it made sense. That still left figuring out the channels. Using the motes inside of me to lay them out wasnt practical with how time consuming it would be and how they would slightly shift. Perhaps in time, as I got better, I could do that with more motes, but for now it was too hard. That left me with creating some kind of model I could adjust and inspect. This was the one thing a cultivation society couldnt match up with a modern society, three-dimensional modeling. I also needed to decide on the shape of my channels and meridians. There were a lot of options and ideas on this topic, but there was no clear best option. Some said straight line channels were the best since it allowed the smoothest flow. Others said that curled channels were the best since they could handle stress more. Another claimed triangular channels were best for their stability, others circular. The same issue was true for meridians. There was no clear best answer. I had looked at what the meridians and channels were supposed to accomplish and the best way to achieve that instead. Meridians drew in energy to fill up the cores through the channels. Each had to be attuned to an element or concept to endow the formed soul after the core explosion with that element or concept. Earth and water were the two primary elements chosen by cultivators of the Cloudy Moon Sect. What would work with one element or concept wouldnt work with another. Also, one could only absorb that type of energy through their meridians. There was no neutral or universal option. Cultivators had tried aligning to Qi itself, but they didnt get anywhere. The more fundamental the concept, the less the energy wanted to be drawn in and the harder it was to find resources that focused on that type of energy. Earth and water cultivation resources, pills, and other things were available. But something like time, there was nothing, and the energy wouldnt budge in the slightest, creating a dead end.Updated from The meridians and channels had to be attuned while you constructed them and by the time you realized you had screwed up at the Core Formation stage, it was too late to go back and change things. But people still tried believing they had some kind of advantage or insight that others did not. I focused on earth elemental attunement. It wasnt my first choice, but it was a safe choice. I was doing so many other crazy things, a different element or concept could easily make my cultivation worthless. I would look out for other opportunities, but it was the best path forward currently. Once that decision was made in my mind, everything else slid into place. The channels would be triangular for maximum strength. The meridians would use a hexagon focal lens design. These were the most common options chosen for the earth element that had been successful in my reading. Yi Rong had said he had done the same for stability, but it also meant his cultivation progress was too slow and he was going to die of old age before making a solid core. While he would try for the fifth stage in his last moments, there was almost no chance he would make it and he had resigned himself to failure. The main thing left was to figure out the meridian and channel design to connect my meridians to my cores. I ordered a large, life-sized humanoid wooden mannequin. I then used color string to represent my channels, but it was frustrating. This implied that I could wing it, but it wouldnt be optimal, and I needed optimal if this was going to work. Looking at my core design was also slightly frustrating. The problem was spacing out the channel connections at equal distances to have uniform pressure. This was key while forming a core. All cores were spherical. But that was the Dantian, the area where the core would reside. It was made spherically to resist the pressure from the energy contained within. But it didnt need to be spherical. People had tried other designs but failed. Triangles were the strongest shape, but they built most cores using a sphere as a guideline. Not a triangle. Triangles were the strongest shape, because of the property of only having a single shape if the lengths were fixed. The motes would form a framework inside of me as points to build the scaffolding for my soul. I had already planned triangles for the internal structure, but the core could also benefit from triangles as well. I had some wire purchased and cut up a piece of paper into equilateral triangles. It took three days of constant work, but I worked out a model that used equal sized triangles. A 20 sided icosahedron, with 12 vertices. If each face and each vertices had 10 channels at each location and with 4 cores, that would mean 128 meridians and channels. The fake core at the center would have 4 channels and four meridians for 132. I would assign four channels for the fake core, since it would be much smaller than the other main ones and one channel could come in from the side of the pyramid structure, with a main core at each vertices. I had made the model by hand in order to gain a better understanding of the shape I would use and ingrain it into my mind. The channels would converge at the vertices to apply focused pressure, but spread out on the faces to ensure stability of the core if there was a shift in pressure. Too high pressure and the slightest mistake would have a cultivator going off prematurely. The real challenge now became how to route all these channels. The issue being if I made the first one short and straight, the last one would have a much longer path. One of the main things that was stressed was balance in forming the core. That was why trying to form a core in a limb was a terrible idea. The meridians also needed to be as spread out as possible to maximize energy intake. I knew there was a solution, but it wasnt something I could work out on a sheet of paper or even a useless mannequin. With the number of channels needed, it would be very packed inside of my body. If two channels overlapped, that would cause an imbalance which was bad. The next thing I had made was four wooden icosahedron balls with slots for thin rods to form a pyramid shape. I painted each edge on the balls with a black rod connecting them to make seeing them easy. I then got four different colored threads. Red, blue, green, and yellow. I then pushed metal needles into the soft wooden balls with a color of thread attached to it and hung the structure from a beam in my testing warehouse. The other end of the thread had a needle as well. I then had the frame of an enormous person constructed and set up in my warehouse with a wooden core with colored strings in the middle. All of this wasnt that expensive. It was more my time that I had to spend explaining what I wanted and making adjustments to get things the way I wanted. Once the model was set up, I stood on a stepladder and handpicked each thread one by one and maneuvered the thread to a place on the humanoid frame and stuck the needle into it. The outer facing sides of the cores connected to the limbs, while the inner portions of the core connected to the torso. It took five days of carefully maneuvering needles to finish the first iteration of my core design. One thing I had realized was trying to curve the channels around the cores was not a good idea. They would have to go straight out the other side. That meant I would pay about 1,500 tael a spirit stone. But if their hunting ratio improved, that could be brought way lower. We also need new equipment, which will cost about 1,000 tael, he replied. What kind of equipment and how long is it good for? I asked. Clamps, snares, a core drill, a core extractor, bait, scent concealer. That would cover us for about a year. We go on about 6 hunts a year or would like to if we can cover the license fees. The best option would be to purchase 10 licenses at once and then go on an extended hunt for six months. So, six thousand tael upfront. And lets say you get five spirit stones with the new equipment. I would get five thousand tael back. You would get spirit stones and could sell them yourself or trade for favors with cultivators. Your success rate is about forty percent, perhaps fifty percent, if I am charitable. What are the best teams success rates? I asked. One and a quarter hunts per spirit stone. But they have cultivators. For regular people, the best hit one and a half spirit stones per hunt. That was eighty and sixty-six percent, respectively. What is stopping you from becoming a top team? I asked. Experience. That is another reason why we have been struggling. My fathers old team retired, while we brought new people on. It takes time to get good. In five years, we will be one of the top teams, Xiaotong replied. I considered the man in front of me. What he wasnt saying was that hunting was high risk. He could easily get wiped out, and then I would have nothing. The good thing was that once I signed on as his sponsor for his team, none of his team members could work under a new sponsor unless I agreed. So, no jumping ship after I had invested in them. That was why some teams didnt get sponsors and just focused on earning for themselves. Still converting my wealth to spirit stones would be useful. Spirit stones could be directly traded for spirit coins, which were minted by the high ranking sects. It wasnt easy to convert tael to spirit stones. While the standard rate was 1,000 tael, one could not go out and buy 100 spirit stones for 100,000 tael. There would be markups. That is where sponsoring a hunting team came into play. I might even get a good deal if I was lucky, but it wasnt a moneymaking venture. It was a currency exchange venture. Very well, I will sign on as your sponsor, I replied. Xiaotongs face brightened considerably. I would have to tighten up my budget for a bit, but it was doable. Xiaotong stood up and bowed deeply. Thank you, Young Master Yuan. I will want to see the rest of your team and your equipment purchases. I will also pay for six licenses up front. That was how much I could afford at the moment. After that, we went to the Hunters Guild and signed a sponsorship contract. He introduced me to his team. Two other men and three women. All of them looked worn and a couple of them had serious scars, but they didnt look like drunkards, fat, or lazy. Once introductions were done, we went to purchase equipment. Everything was set up in a shop run by the Hunters Guild. I looked over the various items as Xiaotong explained them to me. One of the hardest things is figuring out exactly where the core is. I am our core expert on the team. There is no device that can detect a core? I asked, and he shook his head. A cultivator can sense it if they are skilled enough, but normally no. Even then, I have been told it is very blurry and imprecise. I use the density gauge on the drill as it shows how much qi is present. Once it spikes, that is where the core is. Most cores are in the head or by the heart. But you only get one, possibly two chances to drill if you are lucky, he replied. Extracting it is easy? I asked. Once you have it located, then it is simple. I only failed in extraction twice years ago. Now, if I can locate the core, I dont fail. I nodded at this. I would be interested in going on a hunt sometime. What are the requirements? I asked. Xiaotong paled a bit. Young Master, I could not take responsibility for your safety. If anything happened, I would be in grave trouble. I meant getting a permit to be a Hunter, I asked. He calmed down a bit at this, probably thinking I was just curious and not wanting to get eaten. A training course and then a series of tests. There is a book available if you are interested in reading through it. Then you are given a provisional permit. You complete five successful core extractions out in the field in the following year, and your permit is no longer provisional. The book cost a tael. They clearly meant the high prices as a barrier to entry into this profession. Xiaotong purchased his equipment with my money. He brought out his old equipment and showed where things had broken, how the gauge wobbled all the time on the drill, and how his supplies of consumables had run low. I also purchased him six licenses as well. Each team could get 20 level 1 licenses at most per year. Most teams didnt get that many. There was a total cap of 100 licenses per year for level 1. A sponsor could only sponsor a single team, so I couldnt take over the guild by supporting multiple teams. There were six other teams, making for seven. Rogue cultivators who were trying to fund their cultivation through hunting led four of them. I was quite curious if I could gain an advantage with my sight. The biggest roadblock was locating the spirit core or stone of a beast. If I could spot it, then it would be easy to build up a lot of wealth. I would use Xiaotong to learn the basics and then I might go hunt on my own. The real money was in extracting a core from a level 2 or 3 beast. But I had to be careful not to get blinded by greed and ignore the danger. It wasnt cheap remaining in the sect. While I planned to do chores to get sect points, resources for cultivating werent cheap, especially at the higher stages. It also explained why most cultivators didnt start businesses. They could just go out and kill a few beasts to get insanely wealthy. It also explained the disconnect between tael and beast cores. Cultivators wanted to use up the cores, but there was a limited supply. That was why there were fluctuations in the price as demand ebbed and flowed. I probably wouldnt go into hunting full time. But it would be good to see how things were done. More knowledge was never a bad thing. Now I just needed to make more money, a lot more money. Perhaps selling mining solutions would be the best way. I would go in and offer to take over various mining operations for a slice of the profits or a large set fee. It might put pressure on my own mining operation and revenue stream if people copied me. I frowned at that, but it wasnt a tremendous deal, even if they did. There was always a demand for metal and they could export it out if the city had a surplus. It was high value and small enough to be easily carted away in the trade caravans. I would need to put together a presentation and figure out the other major stakeholders in the various mines around Half Moon City. Then I would invite them to the Illuminated Moon and make my pitch. I would need to sit down and work out the numbers and contracts that would be acceptable. But selling mining solutions would be a good way to bring in a sizable amount of revenue while avoiding an equal amount of debt. I had enough business success and income that the movers and shakers of Cloudy Moon City were aware of me. I hadnt stepped on that many toes either, and was under my fathers protection. That was why there had been no pressure or attacks on my businesses. The risk with selling a mining town improvement service was that it might drag me into the local drama in a way I didnt want. I would have to give it a lot more thought.