In what you would call the 'Central', in the biggest building, in one of the rooms, sat 100 people.
ninety-nine were from the Divine continent, the left over person came from the 'Morning star continent'.
The one of another continent started talking in the silent hall "1st scourge, The Bane of Man, please release your obsession of the 9th petal and become a lotus cultivator, it is not possible for it to exist."
The man, now a bit more muture than before, was the one with the blood demon as his avatar. He slammed his fist against the table from the Morning star continent "What do you know!?"
"Bane of Man, I know that to achieve the 9th petal you must feed it 1500 years of life, far beyond that of the great limit within the Divine continent." The man of morning stars said.
The 1st disciple's eyes turned blood shot "Silence your lying maw! The grand scrouge, my old master, made it to the 9th petal. In his final moment, he even gained the 10th petal."
The lotus preacher said in response "Stop deluding yourself, the grand scourge has to be many acting as one for revenge and hatred. Stop your spewing of urban myths. I don't understand why you will not choose the lotus instead of the flower, you need not worry of the pains within the flower.
"The lotus requires not that you go through trial and tribulation, the flower's first petal needs you to go against shadows of your past. The second already needs you to absorb 500 kilometers around you of all spiritual energy, causing many great beasts to go after the radiant spark of qi that you become. Remember that this isn't restricted to only 2nd leaf and below beasts, even 7th leaf beasts can appear."
The 2nd scourge, the Blade of Calamity, responded "It is a matter of pride."
The 4th scourge, the Curse of Permafrost, said "It builds character."
The 9th scourge, the Lord of Mahayana, said "It is a matter of heritage to our for-fathers, benefactor."
The 7th scourge, the Sun of Vengance, said "It just doesn't fit our style."
The 8th scourge, the Emperor of plagues, said "The cultivation methods you gave us were not good enough for us nine to convert to."
The lotus preacher preached once more "Ha, I'm sure you'll start singing a different tune when you're suppressed by new lotus cultivators, ah~ This is going to be so easy, I believe someone will, from a new avatar, get to your level in only 300 years, since all the down sides of the path of the flower, like the many tribulation subjected by heaven and earth obviously slows the progress of cultivators." He was extremely confident in this fact.
This caused many of the 99 High lords to gnash their teeth, or do other concealed shows of anger. Although the morning star continent had mysterious heaven realm cultivators, for a 9th leaf to show so much arrogance to those who had killed a 10th petal was too much.
The morning star cultivator felt like he had nothing left to say, and left as calmly as he had entered.
The room filled with those who slayed the grand scourge Jie Shu became deathly silent, until the Bane of Man broke the stalemate with his words "Junior 2nd brother."
"Yes?"
"In the last decade, I sometimes regret killing the grand scourge."
"Why?"
"If he was here, he would've long since been in the mysterious heaven realm, and would've rushed to the morning star continent to destroy it."
Sun of Vengance said "That would've been nice, although we would've already died long ago."
Those not of the nine scourges sighed or had a cold sweat come over them, as the grand scourge had traumatized most of them.
As such, the meeting of the high lords of Central ended.
Back in the boonies, Jie Shu sat in his room with 432 pills infront of him.
Sitting on a chair was the supreme elder "First young master."
"Jie Shu, or grand scourge." Jie Shu responded, this was a more private place, there was no need to accept the punishment of being called 'First young master'.
"...Jie Shu, I like people who take risks, I'll make sure no one gets in the way of the pill bombing." The supreme elder said "Also, you said you'd give me a better cultivation manual."
The supreme elder wasn't actually expecting something, just a thing said to break the tension later, after Jie Shu failed to produce a cultivation manual.
Instead of being forced to eat a loss, Jie Shu took out the prepared cultivation manual 'Flame of scourges' "This is the only one I've been able to write so far, this cultivation technique ties you to me 'The grand scourge, the Slayer of Gods, the King of Oblivion, ect.' and the nine banes."
"Nine banes? I don't seem to remember any group of that name, could you name some of the members?" The supreme elder asked, probably thinking of placating the mentally ill risk taker.
"The bane of man, the bane of frost, the bane of suns, the bane of blades, the bane of lust, the bane of enlightenment, the bane of plagues, the bane of steel, the bane of darkness."
"The bane of man? But that's one of the nine scourges, and you call yourself the grand scourge Jie Shu... Meh." The supreme elder paid it no mind, as it was the rablings of the mad.
He took the manual, and read it over because he was free.
Jie Shu salivated apon the pills "Servant!" He shouted at he snapped his fingers.
The girl he still didn't know the name of, understood what he was telling her to do, as she moved the many pills right next to him.
He looked at them, and smiled honestly, then started to scarf down. He did the same as always, decay the pills, and spit out the impurities. But nothing happened with the medicinal energies, he just let it keep on piling up, and it piled up rapidly.
He also started to build up spiritual energy for the 'Burst', stopping the use of spiritual energy for tempering.
After 324 pills, the 'burst' happened. While before this the medicinal effects kept on hounding at the walls of Jie Shu's insides, at this moment it completely overloaded the body. Not a mere overdose, a complete overload of medicinal energies.
The medicinal effects started to ravage the body, making the inherent resistance too spiritual energy that all humans have, a secondary thought to 'Fighting off the external threat'.
Normally the spiritual energy from outside would slip through the defences that had lowered, and then would also start rampaging. Or would start to automatically start circulating to become one with your dantian.
But instead it was pushed in forcefully through the skin, no longer restricted by the defences of the human form, and increased the amount entering by an improbable amount.
But it didn't rampage, it gathered in where the dantian would appear on your every day cultivation manual, since there was nothing that could cause you to lose functionality of one of your vital organs if you screwed up.
The medicinal energies also didn't seem to be rampaging, bit was actually forcefully pupeteered by Jie Shu to cause the body to focus on it, while also continuing to defend itself.
The more the pills were eaten the more the body neglected warding off spiritual energy, the quicker spiritual energy was gathered.
As this happened, there seemed to be a zephyr passing through the entire room. This was mysterious to 'The girl', and the supreme elder was just a little suprised at the amount of spiritual energy absorbed.
Finally all the pills were eaten, and the spiritual energy entered the fasted.
After Jie Shu no longer saw a point to going further, as all the spiritual energy in his range of 2 meters was absorbed completely in about 15 minutes. It was very slow since he used pure force of will, like all other times he went above and beyond his level in spiritual energy control.
People don't know this, but pure will is the way to gain the 9th petal. The only feasible way Jie Shu knows of now, as it stops the 9th petal from eating up your lifespan. But he knows he would find a way to feed it all the lifespan it wants, just to show it who's boss. And doing that, like all other methods before it to pass by 'The tribulations of the flower', makes you weaker than others who didn't cheat.
Jie Shu didn't know why, it just was.
Anyways, back to what Jie Shu was doing. Unlike the gentle injection of spiritual energy that Jie Shu had to do, as to not cause his body to go into a self-destructive war against spiritual energy, could now be ignored. As long as he gave his body no time to go back to rejecting the spiritual energy which started to become a threat.
The energy expanded with extreme speed, quickly forcing itself into the essence of the body. Improving the body entirely.
A little breeze brushed by the entire room, and Jie Shu stretched while examining himself "Controled pill bombing really is such a nice thing to do," He looked at what the screens said about his new form.
[Cultivation; Body tempering, mortal (3%)]
"But there's still such a long way to go." Jie shu said as he speculated what he could do currently 'I won't be able to crush a pebble with my bare hands, but if I punch it I should be able to make a crack, if there weren't the problem of it being too small. But a stick, that'd be easy wood splinters. Just the act of closing my grip could allow me to rip off some flesh from bone.'
Jie Shu already felt better, slightly better. His body had felt very unsensitive, unresponsive since before. It felt slightly better.
Though it did feel a bit different from the Supreme oblivion record's body tempering, but it was actually an improvement to control, actually an improvement in all factors compared to the same level of tempering compared to the Supreme oblivion record.
But... A pill bombing would have much more effect with the other S-rank cultivation manual.
He could've gone even further beyond, if he had used more pills. But begars shan't be choosers.
Now, how would Jie Shu gain even further amounts to feed his addiction?
Since he would now make a sect, he would do the sect way, exploit a place. A place where spirit herbs grow, a lot of spirit herbs. Hopefully a place with a high spiritual energy concentration, maybe a few hundred spirit gathering arrays.
Though this was nothing compared to his old abode, millions of highest tier arrays to take in spiritual energy from hundreds of miles around his home, making 'The great wastes', a place where cultivation in impossible since there was no spiritual energy.
Though when he hit the grand wall of the 9th petal he saw no use in it anymore, and destroyed it. The spirit gathering arrays specifically, and then it was preserved with another array, then hidden with another peak array.
Something like that would be a dream come true if Jie Shu got it now.
But he was almost 100% sure he wouldn't, since something like that could only be in a place without spiritual energy.
Back to pills.
Jie Shu was considering the honorable process of robery, but... That just didn't fit his current goals of making a sect. If he was a well known robber, then only a small group of cultivators would agree with becoming his (Sect's) disciple.
So that wouldn't work.
With his current power he would be allowed do jobs that gave about 2 pills a run, so that wasn't it.
His real power was enough for ones for 57 pills, but they look at raw power, not real combat power.
He could be supported by a faction, maybe do it with a female heir of some clan? But he's pretty weak... But that's only considering his raw stats, if he showed off in front of that female clan member, he should be able to gain support.
Wait, he was the first young master of a clan. He could exploit them! He would use them as a spring board for his own sect!
-Written in the 29th of december, 2022.