The Undying Immortal System

Boss Hong led me to the large settlement where the nominal disciple's Technique Hall was located. When the deacon in charge noticed that I was from the Alchemy Peak, he gave me an unfriendly look, but he still allowed me unfettered access to the manuals.

The main benefit of coming to this hall over the one on the Alchemy Peak was that it had techniques for all of the five basic elements. The main downside, however, was that it only contained techniques related to cultivation and martial arts. It didn't have any manuals related to alchemy or any of the other professions.

After copying down everything that I wanted from the library, I asked Boss Hong about the possibility of hidden caches of knowledge tucked away somewhere, but he didn't have any information about such places. While most of the gang leaders were using more advanced cultivation skills, these were all from the outer sect's Technique Hall, and I would have access to them once I ascended the mountain.

I wasn't entirely sure how much to trust the man, but it didn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things. A few extra techniques here or there weren't make or break for me.

While Boss Hong couldn't help me much with techniques, he was able to provide a bit of information on the factionalism that existed in the sect. Apparently, the divisions I had noticed on the Alchemy Peak were much starker on the Martial Peak, and small gangs from different factions constantly fought against each other.

One interesting tidbit was that Elder Hu's faction, the Tigers, had been able to recruit several promising disciples with powerful blessings in recent decades. This had nothing to do with their own efforts, though. It was all because the noble clans around the Wastes had started producing children with strong blessings at a far greater rate than normal, and most of them were focused on improving a person's combat abilities.

I made a note of these observations in my journal for future reference, but I didn't think too much more about the situation. While I was nominally a member of the Eyes, I had no desire to get involved with factional power struggles.

With everything I wanted to accomplish in the Second Ring complete, Boss Hong led me to the entrance to the First Ring where the outer sect was located. When we arrived, I passed him an extra pill bottle.

"Thanks for the assistance. Good luck on advancing."

Boss Hong gave me a deep bow. "Thank you, Lord Disciple."

The passage to the outer sect was a simple opening in the wall that surrounded it. There was no gate, and there were no guards. Instead, access was controlled through the sect's jade tokens, and unauthorized visitors were blocked from entering by a large-scale defensive formation.

As I passed through the wall, I couldn't help but wonder what happened to people who lost their identity jades. With nominal disciples regularly robbing the weaker outer sect disciples, there had to be some standardized protocol in place, but I had never run into this problem myself, so I didn't know how it all worked. I made a note in my journal to look into this in the future.

Following Boss Hong's information, I smoothly made my way to the outer sect's Technique Hall.

Passing through the outer sect, I felt that conditions here were a bit better than what the nominal disciples had to put up with, though only slightly. The First Ring was a mostly open grassland with a few small stands of trees dotting the area. There were no signs of the large-scale fighting that had churned up the earth in the Second Ring and turned it into a wasteland.

As I walked along the path to the Technique Hall, I saw a few small groups of houses in the distance. I noticed that such places tended to have arenas made from packed dirt where cultivators were practicing martial arts, but I didn't approach too closely. I wasn't confident that I would be able to fight against a large group of Martial Masters, so I did my best to avoid provoking anyone unnecessarily.

No disciples were lying in wait on my path, and I was able to smoothly access a town that served as a central hub for outer sect disciples. It had a Technique Hall, a Pill Hall, a Mission Hall, and a few other buildings.

I was interested in visiting the Pill Hall to check its prices, but I refrained from doing so. As I lacked any solid information on the mental compulsions the people here were under, I couldn't predict how they would react to my probing. Poking around buildings at random might cause unnecessary problems, and I wanted to avoid that if possible.

The Martial Peak's outer sect's Technique Hall wasn't much different from any of the others I had visited. It contained rows of bookshelves and desks, and an elder watched over everything to ensure no one caused any problems. The only thing that set it apart was that there were many more people here than I was used to. Over a dozen disciples were spread out around the room and studying various manuals.

After checking my jade, the elder gave me a disgusted look, but he said nothing and allowed me to browse the library.

My first stop was at the shelves containing cultivation techniques. I had already encountered many of these techniques in other libraries, but they did have one important manual that I had been hoping to find, a dual-element fire-earth technique. It was only Low-Profound, and I might never use it, but it represented a huge boon for future potential research into creating a three-element Earth Rank technique.

After paying the required contribution points, I took the manual, sat down, and began reading it.

Unexpectedly, this drew the attention of nearly everyone in the room. Evidently, it was uncommon for someone to purchase access to the Profound-Rank techniques, and seeing an inner sect disciple in the outer sect Technique Hall was even more unusual.

A big, muscular man lumbered over to me. "Who are you? I don't recognize you."

Tapping into my aggression circuits, I gave him a disdainful look. "Oh? Should I take that to mean you are familiar with everyone in the inner sect?"

He slammed a fist down on my desk in a poor attempt at frightening me. "This is our hall. Get the hell back up the mountain and stop bothering us."

The deacon in charge cleared his throat, drawing everyone's attention.

This caused the burly man to back up a step. Even in his rage, he wasn't willing to break the sect's rules.

"Let me guess. You aren't capable enough to get into the inner sect's library, so you think you can come down here and avoid a fight. Step outside. Let me teach you exactly how bad of a decision that was."

He punched his right fist into his left palm a few times in a gesture that I'm sure he felt was intimidating, but I just shook my head in derision.

I looked at the man in qi vision and saw that he was a Martial Master 7. I wasn't sure how my limited combat skills would fare against members of the Martial Peak, so I was slightly worried by his high level of cultivation, but his foundation was terrible. Even without knowing his cultivation technique, I could easily see that his meridians were poorly positioned, and they were so leaky that I doubted they would actually function as intended.

Slapping down this idiot wouldn't be a problem, but he might have a powerful backer. If he had a boss with a solid foundation at Martial Master 9 or higher, I might be in trouble. So, while going outside and giving this fool a proper beat down might be satisfying, I needed to find an alternative approach to dealing with him.

However, there was no reason to hurry. The sect's rules protected me while I remained in the library, and an annoying fly wouldn't stop me from copying down everything of value. After grabbing the Rank 1 and 2 Profound-Rank cultivation techniques, I swept through the fighting manuals and copied down everything I didn't already have.

I also checked some of the manuals that were duplicates of ones I had gotten on the Alchemy Peak. I was slightly worried that the versions I had copied earlier had been tampered with in some way, but after carefully checking a few of them and finding no differences, I stopped worrying about this so much.

After filling my mental library with everything that interested me, I stood up and stepped outside.

By this point, dozens of cultivators had gathered to form a solid ring around the entrance of the Technique Hall. I had expected a few people to want to mess with me, but I was a little surprised that so many had decided to join in on the fun.

However, after thinking about it, I realized that if nominal disciples could earn rewards by stealing an outer sect disciple's token, outer sect disciples were probably rewarded for stealing the token of an inner sect disciple. Most of these people likely didn't care at all that I had used their Technique Hall. Instead, they were here to earn rewards.

The brute who challenged me in the Technique Hall was the first to lumber forward.

"You finally came out. Ready to be taught a lesson?"

I held up a hand and smiled at him. "Not quite yet. Give me one moment."

I then used a Rank 2 movement technique to flash outside of the circle quicker than anyone could react.

While I might have been able to use this technique to escape my pursuers and quickly make my way to the entrance of the inner sect, that would have been a risk. This technique was only intended for short bursts of movement and consumed a large amount of qi. Without knowing the extent of this group's capabilities, using my energy in such a way would be dangerous.

So, instead of making my way out of town, I simply flashed to the entrance of the Mission Hall and ducked inside. Like with the Technique Hall, no one would be able to cause any problems inside.

The Mission Hall on the Martial Peak was similar to the Pill Hall on the Alchemy Peak. The room was filled with bulletin boards that listed a variety of missions of various types and difficulties, and directly across from the entrance was a long desk where busy receptionists greeted sect members and recorded who had accepted which missions.

As soon as I entered, I walked straight to a waiting receptionist and handed her my identity jade.

"I would like to place some missions."

She gave me a strange look. "Place?"

"Yes, let's say two, I want to place two missions."

"Sir, you cannot—"

"I'm from the Alchemy Peak. As I understand it, I'm allowed to place missions here, correct?"

This caused her eyes to widen. "Yes… yes. What missions would you like to create?"

"First, I want to hire a group of high-level Masters who can safely escort me to the entrance of the inner sect. I will offer ten High-Purity Meridian Builder pills of the highest quality for this. However, the failure penalty should be… 100,000 contribution points."

"Escort… to the inner sect? But that's…" She looked at me with a confused expression as she spoke.

"Yes, that's all. One group escort, ten pills."

While I was pretty sure I could make it there on my own, there was little downside to paying for an escort. I had pills to spare, so using a few to stop anyone from causing me additional headaches was a worthwhile investment.

After just staring at me for several seconds, she finally responded. "Yes, I'll confirm this mission."

I handed over the necessary pills and then told her the next mission I wanted to post.

"Second, I want to offer a mission for a friendly spar. Anyone who accepts this mission must be at least a Martial Master 7, and they should be someone currently in the city. For accepting this mission, I'll offer two Rank 2 healing pills. If I am defeated, I'll award the victor with five Rank 2 Meridian Builder Pills."

"A spar…" She began writing but paused upon hearing my details. "Sir..."

"No failure penalty there, right… that's a problem. Let's say… This is supposed to be a friendly spar. If anyone who accepts this mission decides to cause trouble for me afterward, the mission will be considered a failure. The penalty will be 100,000 contribution points. How about that?"

"This…" After hesitating, she finally began writing again. "I can't make that mission. The penalty is too steep for the reward offered."

"Oh? Then raise the reward for defeating me to ten pills. That works, right?"

She reluctantly dropped her head. "Yes, sir."

"Great! Then let's get these missions posted."

Outside, the crowd had grown even larger. It seemed that once people started gathering, everyone in the area wanted to come and join in on the fun. The moment I opened the door to leave, the burly man growled and began marching up to me.

"Enough. Time for your lesson!"

I remained in an open doorway so that he couldn't do anything rash and raised a hand to stop him.

"One moment." I looked around at the crowd. "I have just posted two missions. I believe their rewards will satisfy everyone here."

This caused people in the crowd to start shouting and confusion.

"A mission? How can you post a mission?"

"He's an alchy!? A damn alchy was stealing our techniques!"

The crowd became much more hostile at this revelation, so I backed up into the Mission Hall and gestured for everyone to come inside.

"I'll just wait in here for someone to accept my mission then."

This caused most people in the crowd to begin looking around uneasily at their compatriots. Almost no one was willing to be the first to move, but the burly man just gave me a menacing look and stomped his way into the hall.

"Let's take a look at these missions of yours."

He first picked up the posting for an escort, and upon reading it, he growled. I could see his hand twitch to crumple it up, but he refrained. That would have been a huge breach of the Mission Hall's rules. So, he had to settle for giving me an evil glare.

"No one's taking this mission, coward."

I just smirked and waved his comment away. "I can wait."

After that, he picked up the mission for a spar and started laughing. "Yes! I'll accept! Let's do this!"

He walked toward me like he wanted to hurl me outside, but I pointed to the counter. "Go officially sign up first."

"Of course, young master. We should do this properly." A grin was plastered to his face as he handed over his jade to sign up for the mission. Then, he came back to me and gestured welcomingly at the door. "Shall we?"

We walked outside together and were instantly surrounded.

The burly man shouted and started shoving people away. "Back off! He's mine."

I looked around the crowd and gave everyone what I thought was a calming smile.

"Don't worry. If anyone wants to fight, all you have to do is sign up for the mission. Just let me finish this one first, okay?"

The crowd fell into a stunned silence, but it didn't last long as the burly man charged me.

I could have met him strength against strength, but I wasn't confident in doing so. Without knowing anything about his blessing or which techniques he knew, a direct conflict, even against a Marital Master, was risky. There were several metal techniques in the sect's library for temporarily enhancing a person's bodily power, and I didn't have anything equivalent for use with fire qi.

However, I had learned several fire-based movement techniques. The flashing I had used previously was one of the more powerful ones, but it took too much energy. Instead, I simply focused on increasing my speed to cleanly dodge every punch he threw. As I did so, I kept my qi vision running to watch for any techniques he might try to use to surprise me.

The burly man couldn't land even a single attack, and as the fight wore on, he became enraged.

"Do you only know how to dodge!? If you're a man, stand still and fight me!"

His shout shocked me enough that I paused my movements momentarily.

I looked at him with scorn. "Are you a child? Why would I just let you hit me?"

"How dare you!"

He lunged at me, and it appeared as if he had been utterly consumed by his rage. As he closed, I dodged his punch, but it had just been a feint. He pivoted on his right leg and swung at me with his left.

However, I had been ready for this attack and was able to narrowly slip past it. This left the burly man completely exposed, so I swung a qi-empowered fist right at his solar plexus.

The brute was blasted backward and collapsed to the ground.

"Thanks for the spar." I looked around at the crowd. "Anyone else?"