Chapter 386 – Life 104, Age 19, Martial Disciple 1

I extracted my five chosen recruits from my inner world and lined them up on the cold floor of the underground cavern. There were two young men and three young women. These weren’t the most powerful youths in the village. These were the ones with the greatest hatred toward the black-robed soldiers.

Once everyone was in place, I slammed my hands together, creating a booming clap that caused all five youths to instantly awake in terror.

“Who? What?” As one of the boys looked around frantically, his eyes settled on one of the girls. “Ling? What—”

The girl, Ling, was equally frantic, but her attention was on the girl to her left. “Ngoi?”

Focused on each other, the five youths didn’t even notice me standing above them. So, I pulled a spear from my inner world and slammed its haft on the ground, creating another booming echo that drew everyone’s attention.

“Welcome to the Underworld Academy. You may call me Teacher.” As I looked each youth in the eye, I pressed down on them with the power of my soul, keeping them from speaking. “The five of you have been chosen because you bear a grudge against the rulers of your village. I am here to offer you the chance to fight back.”

Reaching into my storage space, I pulled out four racks of weapons, each one holding a different type of polearm—spear, ji, guandao, and crescent moon spade.

“If you accept this offer, I will train you to use these weapons to fight back against your oppressors. I will help you expel Lord Mandakh from your village, and I will put you in a position where you never need to worry about being conquered by a random warlord again. If you decide to reject this offer, however, I will erase your memories of this meeting to ensure you do not betray your comrades. Make your choice.”

Stepping back, I placed the weapon racks between me and the youths and allowed them to come to a decision on their own.

Having been both kidnapped and woken up in the middle of the night, the five youths weren’t exactly thinking clearly. So, after my short speech, they just sat and stared at each other for several long minutes.

One of the boys turned his attention to the weapon racks, and I saw a spark of desire light up in his eyes.

Suddenly, he jumped to his feet, ran forward, and grabbed a guandao. Then, he turned and made as if to lunge at me.

Terrified, Ling gasped as her right hand shot to her mouth. “Dak… no.”

The moment the boy, Dak, stabbed at me, I stepped to the side and bashed his left with the haft of my spear. Then, with a flick, I knocked the guandao from his grip, sending it sliding across the cavern floor. Finally, I swept the spear around, hitting Dak in the back of the knees and knocking him to the floor.

I placed the point of my spear against his neck and gave him a cruel smile. “Does this mean that you have chosen to reject my offer?”

Ling climbed to her feet and slowly walked toward me. “Please, sir—”

“Teacher,” I corrected.

“Y… yes. Teacher… Please, don’t hurt him.”

I grunted. Then, using environmental earth qi as a support, I flipped my spear around and used its butt end to send Dak sliding back across the floor to lie with the others. “Last chance. Do you want to learn how to fight or not?”

Ling glanced wearily at the other four youths. Each of them seemed apprehensive, but Ling turned back and nodded at me confidently. “Yes.”

Dak was barely conscious by this point, and the other three showed varying levels of terror, but Ling’s agreement gave them direction. Each one nodded and agreed.

“Very good. Then the first thing we need to do is find each of you a suitable weapon.”

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It didn’t take long for me to regret not having Meng LuYao with me. Back on the Nine Rivers Continent, her blessing, which let her sense people’s talents, was nice to have, but it wasn’t overly important. On the Central Continent, however, it would have been a game-changer. I had five youths that I was trying to teach, and I didn’t have a clue which weapon suited any of them the best.

Another problem was that my expertise was limited to the moon spade. I barely knew anything about the saber, and I didn’t have a clue about how to use something like a chain. So, I had decided to limit my recruits’ options to polearms. The guandao and the crescent moon spade were still two very different weapons, but I should still be able to teach basic thrusts and parries.

Even with limited options, figuring out which of the four polearms best suited each youth took time, and I could only rely on the rate at which they improved to judge their relevant talent levels. This made me wonder how normal people on this continent chose their weapons. This was something I would need to learn before bringing my clan here.

I tried purchasing an ability similar to Meng LuYao’s blessing, but it was far too expensive. Without severely limiting both its Rank and which talents it worked on, this kind of ability was priced in shards, not credits.

After giving up on that idea, I considered simply purchasing information on the relevant talents of my five recruits. However, this felt like admitting defeat. The point of my Return was to learn and grow. This wouldn’t happen if I just purchased everything from the System.

So, instead, I worked with my recruits on all four polearms and carefully tracked their rate of improvement. It might not have been the most efficient way to go about this, but little about this Return was ‘efficient.’

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Each night, I spent two hours training my recruits. Then, I gave them a tea brewed from herbs grown by the green-robed farmers, sending them into a deep, peaceful sleep. This allowed them to wake up in the morning, rested and refreshed, ready for yet another long day in the fields.

While they toiled away, I spent my time underground, practicing with the moon spade.

What I was trying to do with my recruits, treating all four polearms as essentially the same type of weapon, was ultimately flawed. This was especially true of the crescent moon spade. The ji and spear might be relatively similar, but the moon spade was a different beast entirely.

Unfortunately, though, none of my recruits were fans of the moon spade. They had all drifted to one of the other weapons. So, I needed to figure out how I was going to teach them.

My mind kept going back to the idea of a Return to Simplicity. The moon spade was not a simple weapon. There were several different possible ways to design the weapon, and each design added new complications. For example, if the tines of the crescent moon were sharpened, the weapon’s user would need to be more careful with thrusting with the spade end. I needed to ‘simplify.’

Taking out a simple mortal moon spade, I reshaped it, folding the spade end into more of a butt, and bending the crescent moon into more of a spear. This was the closest that I could get to a generic polearm while still having my analysis ability recognize it as a moon spade.

Then, like I had with earth qi, I stood in the middle of the cavern and dropped into a flow state. I tapped into the moon spade qi that surrounded me and relentlessly practiced the most basic of attacks and blocks over and over. This was far from the most effective way to use a crescent moon spade, but it was simple, and it was designed to work equally well with any polearm.

When night fell, I went topside and retrieved my recruits, but during the day, I stayed hidden away, developing my own unique combat style.

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After a month of training, all five of my recruits had made decent progress in learning the basics of armed combat. In one-on-one fights, none of them would have any trouble taking out Mandakh’s black-robed soldiers. Sadly, though, this level of prowess was entirely meaningless.

The black-robes were the weakest of Mandakh’s troops, and he had hundreds of them. Even if my five recruits were slightly more skilled, they couldn’t fight against Mandakh’s numbers, and once the red-robes entered the fray, my recruits would find themselves outmatched.

For my recruits to have even the slightest chance of taking out Mandakh, they needed more strength, and they needed more support.

The second of these issues was easy enough to deal with. From the very start, my goal wasn’t to create powerful champions. It was to create leaders who could rally the villagers to their own defense, and it was time to start making this plan a reality. So, I gave the recruits a mission:

“Over the next few days, spend some more time interacting with the other villagers. The five of you are my generals. I want each of you to select five trustworthy lieutenants. They don’t need to be the best fighters—we can teach them how to fight. They need to be loyal, and they need to be able to keep their mouths shut. We cannot allow Mandakh or his people to learn of what we are doing.”

This task turned out to be a bit more challenging than I had expected. Two of the girls simply brought in the five people in the village they were closest to, and Dak simply recruited the biggest men he could find. The other boy, Zan, even recruited one of Mandakh’s spies.

The only person who truly took my assignment to heart was Ling. She carefully sorted through the villagers, looking for those who were both trustworthy and generally capable.

I was disappointed with these results, but I didn’t do anything to change them. This wasn’t my village, and there was only so much handholding I was willing to do to save it. And, in any event, all of these people would need to be brought into our conspiracy eventually. These poor choices would only really affect the village’s stability in the long term.

Except for the spy, of course. With him, I had to use a memory-suppression soul technique and send him on his way.

With everyone’s lieutenants chosen, we moved on to the more difficult task, improving everyone’s strength.

No matter how much the villagers trained, they would never be a match for Returnees. Even with their cultivation bases gone, Returnees still had far too many advantages, such as pills, formations, and refined artifacts.

Even setting Mandakh aside, the villagers I was working with would likely never be able to measure up to the red-robed overseers. The villagers were only getting two hours of training each night, while the overseers were training constantly.

So, if we wanted any chance at victory, we needed to cheat. Due to the Saint’s rules, none of us were allowed to cultivate, but there were ways to increase a person’s strength other than cultivation.

My first thought was to feed all of the villagers Strengthening Pills, but since these pills were created through beast alchemy, I didn’t really want anyone to know they existed. However, when I thought about the herbal teas that I was using to put everyone to sleep each night, I had an idea.

Herbs had power on their own. Alchemy made herbs both less toxic and more potent, but technically, herbs didn’t need to be turned into pills to be effective. After all, demon beasts were able to gain power by consuming herbs directly, so why couldn’t humans?

I took out the ingredients for an earth-based Strengthening Pill and steeped them in hot water, creating a tea. Then, I examined my concoction in energy vision. As expected, it was a worthless mess, but it gave me ideas.

Strengthening Pill required three ingredients: beast blood, an herb of the appropriate element, and a binder. Maybe teas just needed a different binder?

Entering a new type of flow state, I began testing different combinations of ingredients, hoping to find one that worked. The core of these experiments was the blood of Rank 1 oxen from my Plane of Earth. Everything else was up for grabs.

After three weeks, I pieced together something that looked like it might be effective.

“System, move my next five temporary reset points forward to this moment.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 1 credit. 1,386 credits remaining.

With a hesitant exhale, I picked up a cup of beast blood tea and drank it down.

It tasted terrible, and it had a horrendous effect on my insides. Only seconds after drinking it, I pulled out a poison pill to end my suffering.

After returning, I stared at the cup of vile brew that sat in front of me. I wanted to pour it out, but something stopped me.

Drinking that stuff was deadly, but… did I need to drink it? I needed to absorb the medicinal energy from its herbs without allowing the toxic energies into my body. What if…

Driven by some distant memory that I could barely recall, I flexed my earth qi to create a bathtub. Then, after filling this tub with hot water, I added the ingredients of the ‘Strengthening Tea.’ Finally, taking a deep breath, I removed my robes and allowed myself to sink into the bathtub.

Almost as soon as I did, piercing pain shot through my body, causing me to consume another poison pill and start over. However, before this happened, I felt the wu of the beast blood flowing into my skin.

This would work. I was certain of it. I just needed to try again.