Molting the Mortal Coil

His talent was mediocre.

Uncle Zhang told him that taking a week to first sense qi meant he was only a middling talent. Really, it wasn’t too bad… at least he could still cultivate, and he didn’t have low talent!

Seems I don’t get to have a hack to start out. Not only no class, not even awesome stats. Don’t I get anything for starting over here?

Now that he sensed qi inside his body, Uncle Zhang said it was proven he was a Cultivator and so now he’d be going onto a more balanced schedule. Adding two new topics to his schedule, physical training in the morning and mental training in the evening. The mental training was simply reading and studying in the basic clan library. He’d have to read about history, geography, and etiquette. The clan was happy to give free access to all its members about educational topics. Having more skilled clan members was a good thing, but they didn’t want anyone to waste time or have too much power so there was no cultivation knowledge or books about art, music, or other cultural subjects. They wanted all cultivating knowledge to be in their control and only given to those who prove loyalty and worth. Even the children in training had to prove their worth. Rewards of better training resources and skills were given based on how fast they cultivated and how well they used their skills.

Two years later, Sage was training in the morning physical training. Physical Training time was split between increasingly difficult exercise, sparring, and finally learning external martial arts. That is to say, Sage could soon get to say, ‘I know Kung Fu.’ They’d progressed through simple running and exercising after the first few months. Since then they’d been learning the Golden Mantis Body. It started quite simple, forced to repeat the same motions for hours at a time, before progressing into actual techniques and how to apply them. It was a very imposing style. The movements were fearless and forceful, striking with all of their being, each move seeming to attempt to put every possible muscle of the body into motion. They had an Elder demonstrate some of the forms for them and his qi solidified into a phantasmic image of a glowing golden mantis around his body.

They were told that as they progress through the ranks while practicing Golden Mantis the phantasm will continue to grow more and more solid. Not only could this act as armor and extend his reach, in the later ranks the phantasmal forelegs become as sharp as magical treasures. It formed a defensive armor and made their bare hands into weapons. They were the branch of a powerful clan after all. They certainly didn’t have the most powerful cultivation arts, but they certainly weren’t low quality. This wasn’t even the best martial art of the Lang clan. Training was exciting enough, though Sage wasn’t a great talent in the martial arts anymore than he was with qi cultivation.

Yet again, seems I don’t get any cheats at all. Is this the sort of world where I have to be like the Shonen hero and have to gain everything from hard work alone?

Sage was worried how very boring this path was. Being born a rare super genius from birth with all the best benefits, that was the life! Alas, it was not to be. While Sage was musing over these thoughts, his Uncle Zhang entered the training field. Waving Sage over to join him.

“Good News! We’ve been allowed to join the Young Master’s entourage on his trip around town for the Mid-Summer Festival. This is a great honor. If you can get to be friends with the Young Master you’ll have a much easier time in the clan.”

Uncle Zhang wasn’t a completely kind and selfless old man after all. He was hoping to get some benefits out of this nephew of his and Sage couldn’t really say anything to oppose it. In fact, given that this Uncle had taken care of the real Lang Sheng for years, perhaps he deserved something out of it.

They were walking the streets of the city. Sage and Uncle Zhang were only two of the dozen in the Young Master’s entourage. There was a single old looking man that was a protector at the Young Master’s side. Two others were just like Sage and his Uncle, being allowed on the entourage to try and build relations. The other 9 were the Young Master’s servants and friends. Sage hadn’t really tried very hard to make friends with the Young Master, but he wasn’t about to let his Uncle down. Sage also didn’t want to appear to be a toady or hanger-on. Those with friends like that are not people worth befriending in Sage’s opinion. If the Young Master was someone like that… then Sage had to stay as low profile as possible.

After a period of observation, Sage learned his Lang clan was not so nice. The Young Master was bumped into by a young boy. Surely the Young Master was angry, but what Sage saw next was blood-chilling. The Young Master leaned over to his bodyguard and whispered something. After which the bodyguard’s image flickered, and the boy who’d bumped into the Young Master fell to the ground. Not moving at all afterwards, a red dot of liquid formed on his forehead. Sage blinked a few times to make sure he hadn’t imagined anything and simply stared at the boy, barely older than his body was now. That boy’s life suddenly ended for accidentally bumping into someone he shouldn’t have.

Whoa, brutal! He doesn’t even care about murdering people on the streets?

Suffice it to say, Sage didn’t become friends with the Young Master.

When he was fourteen, Sage was taught the signature art of the whole Chong Clan, the Insect Immortal Index. Sage had completely stepped into the ‘Ki Building’ stage when he was 11 years old. That made him eligible to learn his first secret arts. He now knew a Ki Cultivation art, Mantis Heart; a Martial Art, Golden Mantis Body; and now a Ki Technique: Insect Immortal Index. While the Lang Branch Clan had their secret Mantis arts, the Insect Immortal Index was passed down from the main Chong family. It was the powerful technique that allowed the Chong clan to rise to their high and lofty position.

It consisted of three main abilities: Merge, Mutate, and Mature.

Merge allowed the cultivator to form a symbiotic link with an actual physical insect. Allowing them to form a mental bond with the insect, controlling them and using their abilities to communicate with others of its kind. In addition the Cultivator can feed his energy to their symbiotic partner giving it abilities far beyond ordinary members of its kind. It was even possible for the insect to live inside the cultivator’s body and spawn children to work for it.

Mutate let the Insect Immortal Index cultivator transform insects into different forms. The most basic ability, let two insects of similar but different species to interbreed. It was possible to splice together many different bugs to create more powerful creatures with the features of their choice.

Mature is the last ability and was equally as powerful. By trading energy the cultivator can force insects to mature faster, their bodies reaching later stages more quickly. This is used to cause larvae to grow into later stages and have newly laid eggs hatch and mature to full grown members of their species very quickly. It’s very important for the many insects that go through chrysalis to get them into the stage the cultivator wants in an efficient manner.

With such surprising powers, it was no wonder the Chong Clan had grown strong. They were definitely not a well loved clan. Those that controlled a swarm of wasps or a mound full of iron skinned ants, had a hard time keeping opponents from fleeing immediately. The clan had famously raised many species and variants of different insects. Each of the main factions and family branches were actually formed around particularly powerful and successful insects. Refined and empowered with every generation that passed, the Chong clan only continued to grow more powerful. Each member of the clan taking the Insect Line of their parents and working on making their own new tweaks to the line.

The Insect for the Lang Branch Family was unsurprisingly a Mantis. The Colossal Iron Mantis to be specific. It was an insect created many generations ago, known for its tough iron grey carapace and for its ability to grow larger in size as its linked cultivator became more powerful. Sage was only at ‘Ki Building’ stage, so his Mantis was quite small. About a half-foot in length at best. It wasn’t huge, but it was certainly large enough to cause a person serious harm. The vicious sickle like forearms nearly an inch in length made them like scalpels.

This is the best thing so far. I have my own little murderous pocket monster now. It’s just a little weird that it has to live inside my chest.

The Insect Immortal Index also had a secondary support set of techniques, the first, Ki Feeding, dealt with how to transform the qi in order to use it to feed and nurture insects. The second, Hive Body, dealt with transforming the cultivators body in order to create cavities for the insects to live in. The Lang clan had a slightly more skillful version of the Hive Body technique which included a simplistic spatial array. When inscribed in the cultivator’s dantian a link forms between it and the outside world. This allows the cultivator’s linked insect to enter the other dimension of their dantian like Ki does. This enabled the Lang Clan to not have massive Mantes wandering about their compound at all hours of the day and night. The limitation was of course that it only worked on the cultivator’s linked insect, and the Insect Immortal Index only allowed the cultivator to merge with one insect at a time. The bond took a few hours to fully form so it wasn’t something that was created in the middle of a battle.

Any other insects the cultivator wanted to bring with him needed to reside within their body, which was quite restrictive given size limitations. The version of the technique that other branch families used increased the actual space inside the body, but it wasn’t as drastic of an improvement as the Lang’s Hive Body technique. Each rank that the cultivator improved to multiplied the amount of internal space, while the Lang version additionally added a space inside the dantian that was nearly ten times larger than the space available in the rest of the body. With no linked queen to control them, the majority of the Lang clan focused entirely on their Colossal Iron Mantis and perfecting their Golden Mantis Body rather than using any other insects. The only real difference is the more experienced Lang clan members bred unique attributes into their Mantes in order to do their part and contribute to the growth of the clan.

If a cultivator’s Mantis performed exceptionally well it was used as a new progenitor for the family, taking over as the new baseline for the Colossal Iron Mantis. If the changes made were drastic enough, it could even cause the name of the clan bug to change to match it’s new abilities. Each of the different factions in the clan also had their own slightly modified versions which they’d interbreed with the new main lines when called for.