Despite Violet’s increasingly-frantic objections, Jiang’s consciousness shifted up and out of his body as his body and soul left to do their work. He took on a kind of omniscient third-person view above Violet’s head despite retaining a secondary consciousness where his body was located. It was kind of like the split view he had in Scthqolik’s game, where the world was split up into multiple parts for his consumption.

  It would drive a less experienced cultivator to madness, and, indeed, this technique had been banned by most stellar compacts due to its extreme danger to all involved. Typically the leader of such groups would delegate certain stars and star systems to their subordinates such that no one ever had to split themselves up to establish control over multiple large regions at the same time. When this law was violated and the user did go mad, it could do one of a number of things to the observed region: the consciousness could forcibly occupy the observed body or bodies, pushing out the souls of single-soul bodies or homunculuses (occupying the body with the other spirit still inside if the body had multi-entity capacity), which was the good case; or in the worst case the free consciousness might become “free” which is to say detached from the physical plane. This could have varying effects. If the consciousness belonged to a particularly strong cultivator it might stay intact, drifting around at their choosing and occupying whichever regions of space they chose. This could, at times, lead to individuals with omniscient third-person viewpoints, should they find their original body again. If the cultivator was weak-willed, however, the consciousness could explode, converting the entire qi-presence of the consciousness into energy. In the extreme case this could devastate whole continents of planets, though luckily anyone strong enough to do such a thing or worse could typically maintain control of themselves in such a detached state.

  The detached consciousness was only one of two concerns, however, as the body of a strong cultivator was itself typically very, very strong. It was unwise to invest in spiritual power without the physical fortitude to wield and protect one’s self from it. Therefore, when a cultivator strong enough to astrally project themselves left their body to its own devices, the body would typically begin a mindless rampage throughout large swaths of space. Given that it was typically powerful cultivators much stronger than those around them that used this technique to control large swaths of space (much larger than a single individual could ever hope to personally control) their free bodies were almost always orders of magnitude stronger than all the cultivators around them. This could lead to… devastating rampages.

  The rampage of Xida the Terrible was one such particularly well-known incident in which three stars were destroyed before Jiang could intervene, but the incident cost him dearly on the interstellar stage as it became known that he himself used the technique to control parts of his domain and that this mad tyrant had learned the technique from one of Jiang’s scrolls. Jiang had been forced to forbid the use of the technique within his domain from that point forward due to external pressure, but secretly continued to use it up until the day of his imprisonment.

  Violet blinked at Jiang. Did he just stare off into space for thirty seconds without talking? He was a strange man indeed.

  Suddenly Violet felt her brain violently expand, a headache ripping into her skull. She screamed but no words came out as Jiang was forcibly suppressing them. She fell but the thud of her body on the ground was silent.

  ‘Sup. *Cough* *Cough* Hello, my loyal disciple.

  No one would ever believe her if she claimed her master invaded her thoughts with “““ ‘sup ”””.

  What are you doing? Get out of my head! Violet’s inner voice was frantic.

  Hmmm. I could invade your thoughts by force, but as a great master I respect the consent of all my subordinates.

  What?

  Then get out of my f*cking head!

  Jiang forcibly inserted a bleep sound effect in her swear.

  If I leave, you may never learn the secret to your next stage of cultivation! You will whither at stage ten forever! Indeed, you may perish before learning the secret to immortality.

  Violet was listening and said nothing. Jiang understood the silence as a gesture to continue speaking, or, well, thinking out loud inside Violet’s skull.

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  The secret to immortality is to live longer.

  Jiang inserted a ba-dum-ching sound effect, then continued speaking. Violet groaned at his unfunny joke, but didn’t interrupt him.

  Jiang continued speaking in her head, “Or, more precisely the will to live; the will to not die. For, you see, the will of the Dao is merely a reflection of our will on the world. How does our will interact with the collective will of all living things? How does our will interact with inanimate matter? Do we have the will to move mountains, or are we merely posturing to ourselves that we wish to accomplish something great when in truth we want nothing more than to rot on a couch and eat until we burst. Indeed, how many cultivators begin claiming they will ascend beyond Mt. Tai and fail even to climb a single blade of grass?”

  “We all claim to want greatness, but very few are willing to sacrifice anything to achieve that goal. Among the mortals so many claim to want fitness and health and prosperity, but how many are willing to give up even a single bite of food? They try anything and everything to avoid the plain truth in front of them that they must eat less and exercise more. There is nothing else.”

  “Indeed, for yourself as a cultivator the plain truth is simple: you must place the Dao above yourself and above all other things; you must sacrifice everything to the altar of your success.”

  “You may not have seen the true depth of my power yet, but I will tell you why I was once unassailable.”

  “The top of the mountain belongs to those willing to cast everything else aside and carry themselves to the top.”

  “There is nothing else.”

  Violet laughed, but chose her next words carefully, they went according to the effect of: “Prove it. Why should I believe you?”

  Jiang answered her question with a question.

  How long is this training program? Do you know yet?

  Violet did know. It was one week long and intended to bring all elders up to sequence 5. If they were not capable of achieving sequence 5 for whatever reason (e.g., if their former baseline was below that sequence and they were not capable of advancing to it in the course of the program) then they would fail and be killed. They had three days to rest and process qi, meaning the program began in earnest in the morning, or, really, in about an hour. Some or many were awake and training, no doubt, but only the stupid neglect their spiritual rest.

  Then I promise you, Violet, that I will bring you back to sequence six or seven by the end of it.

  And if you don’t, you’ll release my soul. She added.

  「Deal」

  A thunderclap echoed through Violet’s head.

  But if I release you, you won’t have my protection.

  I don’t need the protection of a weak master.

  Jiang laughed heartily.

  I am anything but weak.

  She smiled.

  In the morning they were gathered by a tall woman in a pink dress whose face was obscured by a pink vale. She spoke softly enough Jiang wished he had hearing amplification techniques active, but didn’t want to waste the qi (her words were some meaningless something about food and hoping the trainees were well rested or whatever). He didn’t care about the pleasantries.

  They were brought to a large banquet hall and ate. Violet did not speak to the other contestants and the food was not notable. Jiang wasn’t really paying attention. In the background his body had begun collecting qi from various locations around the city. He could feel his power growing slowly and was entirely focused on processing the qi into a more refined form.

  The more pure qi was, the stronger a technique could be formed from it. It was like lighting an explosion, you could use more explosive or you could use stronger explosive, but if you have a fixed-size container for it you need to use stronger explosive. Jiang’s container was mighty, but he always wanted to concentrate his qi reserves as much as possible. It allowed for mind-bending techniques such as qi-droplet remote-detonation and other high-level techniques that relied on very small quantities of very concentrated qi and indeed, some techniques required qi of a certain grade to function properly or at all. It also made the path through his meridians more efficient.

  When Violet finally arrived at the training-ground Jiang’s reserves had several drops of qi in various stages of refinement, as well as a small reservoir of unrefined qi of very low quality. Unfortunately, the baseline of the city was very low, which he knew to be caused by the poor spiritual development of the inhabitants.

  The training-ground itself was large and paved with stone, behind them the large light-gray stone walls of the training complex, in front and beside the metal fence surrounding the complex. It was a hideous place for training, the walls of the building crumbling, the pavers in disrepair, the fence possessing several holes dotted around in places. It was clear this place was only for new recruits— no cultivator of any renown was coming here— but there were easily thousands of those, all dressed in the green and gold or blue and white robes of the sect.