327. Building blocks

In the end, the meeting with the sect members lasted for over two hours.

It was not enough to simply talk about their future goals. Chen Ren had to go deeper and explain what he actually wanted to do with the sect from now on. He laid out his plan for how they would change everything around Meadow Village, from the sect grounds to the surrounding land, and how the village itself would slowly benefit from those changes.

He also spoke about recruitment.

An established sect needed more than mortals and a handful of cultivators. Even with fifteen elders now tied to the Divine Coin Sect, that did not change the fact that the sect itself still lacked proper disciples. They needed cultivators of different talents, different realms, and different professions. They needed people who could fight, people who could manage trade, people who could handle formations, pills, beasts, and crafts.

A sect could not rise with only one or two useful branches. It needed roots spreading in every direction. And on top of that, Chen Ren also spoke about puppet creation.

That part made Hong Yi stand a little straighter.

Chen Ren made it clear that the sect would be investing heavily in the puppet workshop. More resources would be sent there, and Hong Yi would be in charge of overseeing the work. But he would not be doing it alone. Others would assist him because as the sect grew, so would the number of enemies watching them.

Every supply carriage needed protection. Not just cultivators walking alongside it, but puppets and guns as well. If something happened on the road, the people escorting the goods needed enough firepower to survive until help arrived.

Chen Ren, of course, did not say what kind of enemies he was worried about.

But most of the people there seemed to understand there was a reason behind his urgency.

Talking about Jun would only make them feel like running away from the sect. Chen Ren could not allow that. In the first place, Jun himself would probably not bother targeting supply routes directly. If he did move against them, it would likely be through other people, which meant proper guards and puppet escorts should be enough for now.

After that, Chen Ren moved on to another matter.

Resources.

Not only for the cultivators, but for the mortals too. That surprised many of them more than anything else.

Although mortals couldn’t cultivate, that didn’t mean cultivation resources were useless to them. If used properly, some resources could keep their bodies fit and healthy. They could recover faster, endure more, and even become tougher than ordinary mortals.

Chen Ren wanted that.

If the sect was attacked one day, he didn’t want the mortals to be completely helpless. Even a little more strength, a little more speed, and a little more stamina could decide whether someone survived or died.

Of course, none of the mortals had expected to hear something like that.

Most of them looked far too shocked to speak.

Chen Ren could understand why they were shocked too.

Such resources could be worth the lifetime earnings of some mortals. Giving them to people who could not even cultivate sounded like a waste.

At least, that was what common sense said.

But Chen Ren did not think like that.

He saw mortals as the foundation of the sect. If he gave them some herbs to chew on once a year, then what was wrong with that? Especially if those same herbs could grow again within a few months once the sect grounds were properly transformed.

The cultivators in the sect didn’t seem too bothered by it either.

Afterall, Chen Ren promised them that all of them would break through to the F2oundation Establishment realm soon enough.

More than that, he would make sure they became strong enough to take on anyone in their realm.

To prove his point, he even showed off a few armour pieces and manuals from Sect Leader Yuren’s inheritance.

That immediately caught everyone’s attention.

Even if not everyone in the sect was combat-oriented, most of them understood the value of good equipment and artifacts. A strong manual could change a cultivator’s path. A good armour piece could decide whether someone survived a battle. And if the sect could provide those things, then the Divine Coin Sect was no longer just promising a better future.

It was placing that future directly in front of them.

Like that, the speech continued.

Chen Ren went over one point after another, explaining each part of his plan carefully. After every point, he emphasized the need to protect themselves better. The Divine Coin Sect becoming stronger meant they would have more enemies. That was inevitable.

He also hinted that he had clashed with some demonic cultivators inside the pagoda, but he made sure to reassure the mortals that he would not let anything happen to them.

Of course, he revealed exactly what was going on later in a more private meeting with the cultivators, Anji, and Xiulan.

He could not hide the threat of Jun from them. By that point, he knew they would take it better.

And things went as he expected.

Hong Yi and Feiyu were not too bothered by the threat.

Neither of them left the sect that often anyway.

Luo Feng was a little more uneasy, mostly because he had never fought a demonic cultivator before. In fact, he had never even seen one. But even that worry could not fully cover his excitement once Chen Ren promised him packs of rare seeds to plant in his farm.

The others were more or less the same. Worried, but willing to prepare for the threat properly.

Chen Ren also told them that the two new elders would protect the sect. At least, Yorren would. Shrey, on the other hand, seemed far more interested in moving through the village and checking every one of Chen Ren’s businesses.

Yorren was the one who was interested in battling outsiders, as he called them, and seeing whether he could get books as a reward for defeating them.

Chen Ren actually thought that might work.

But before that, Yorren needed to be taught how to deal with clans and sects in the outside world. Chen Ren would hate it if the man offended some young master or inner disciple and dragged him into even more trouble than he was already facing.

As for Yorren’s real identity, Chen Ren refrained from telling anyone else other than the people who already knew.

There was no need for it.

He also didn’t want Hong Yi to start asking questions about the puppet. The man already had enough manuals and blueprints to keep him busy for years. When Chen Ren handed them over, Hong Yi looked like he wanted to run straight back to his workshop and go through all of them for a year without being disturbed.

Just one look at those manuals was enough for him to realise how valuable they were.

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The same was true for Feiyu when Chen Ren told him how many materials the sect now had.

Once Chen Ren showed Feiyu a few samples and handed him some pieces of armour, the man immediately started speaking with visible excitement.

According to him, if he was able to work on more things like these, then he might be able to push himself closer to the Foundation Establishment realm. Chen Ren hoped that was true, but he still reminded Feiyu not to get swept away by the new shiny things in front of him.

Gun production still had to remain a priority. That was extremely important to the sect.

Still, it was good news either way.

According to what Feiyu told him, during Chen Ren’s absence, they had already started working on more models of different guns, slowly advancing the craft even further.

That just meant that Chen Ren’s dao was accumulating a good amount of qi right now as well.

That was another piece of good news.

Once he dealt with both of the sect’s craftsmen, the meeting grew more serious.

Chen Ren began giving out orders on how they were going to change the sect over the next few months. For that, one person was going to be very important.

Actually, two.

Luo Feng and Qing He.

Luo Feng, with his dao of farming, needed to take care of growing the herbs and other plants that would help create the artificial qi vein. Qing He, on the other hand, needed to tell him where to put everything and create an array around the area so all the potential qi released by the plants did not scatter or mix into the wrong places.

Meadow Village’s roads were not travelled much by outsiders.

People usually only came around winter now, seeking protection because there was a sect here. But Chen Ren knew that sooner or later, others would realise what was happening.

After all, Cloud Mist City was extremely close by.

When people passed through Meadow Village, they would talk about what was happening here. News would spread sooner or later. But by then, Chen Ren wanted the Divine Coin Sect to be large enough that no one could easily bully them.

In the end, they were still only an emerging sect right now.

And this was a dog-eat-dog world.

Inside the pagoda, Chen Ren might have been strong because of the restrictions placed on everyone. But the same was not true in the real world. Here, there were too many cultivators who could crush him if they truly wanted to.

And right now, a lot of the cultivator world was probably looking for him.

After all, he had crushed many of the biggest cultivators in the empire in the pagoda rankings. He had even beaten some of them with his tricks. There was no way information about him was not being searched for already.

Once those sects learned that he was out of the pagoda, some of them might come to trade for his treasures.

Or in other words, threaten him until he handed them over.

Qing He would be a good guard against them, but Chen Ren wanted more than that. Before things reached that point, he wanted the Divine Coin Sect to become an established sect, so any sect thinking of coming after him would at least hesitate.

The empire protected established sects far more than emerging ones.

Emerging sects were everywhere. They appeared and disappeared all the time. Established sects, however, had weight behind their names.

That was why this whole project needed to remain as discreet as possible for now.

At the same time, Chen Ren wanted the lords to slowly assimilate into the sect so they could protect it if anything happened. And judging by the fact that they had not really caused a scene since arriving, Chen Ren thought they would do well enough.

For now, that allowed him to focus on everything else.

That mostly meant recruiting more cultivators into his sect.

Chen Ren had more than a few now, especially if he counted Jadefire Hall as part of their strength, but that was still not enough if he wanted the Divine Coin Sect to become an established sect. Established sects had dozens of cultivators under them, sometimes even more. Mortals, no matter how useful they were to the sect, would definitely not count in the eyes of the empire.

So, while the sect was being transformed, he needed to hold another recruitment drive.

But there was a big problem with that too.

Chen Ren could not simply announce it and expect cultivators to come rushing toward him. Even if he spread the news in Cloud Mist City, very few genuine people would be interested. Most of the cultivators who came would probably only be there to gather information about the pagoda.

His name was famous now.

That made things more complicated.

If people joined for that reason, then they would only be members in name. Even though Chen Ren wanted more cultivators, he was no longer desperate for them. His sect had already grown strong enough to stand on its own feet, at least compared to where it had started.

Bringing in people with obvious temporary self-interest would only harm the sect in the long run. They would take what they could, learn what they could, and leave the moment a better opportunity appeared.

To be honest, Chen Ren might not have cared about that before.

But now, he disliked the idea of guardian sects or any other sect benefiting from people he had helped raise. The Divine Coin Sect was no longer just trying to survive. It was stepping into direct competition with them.

That meant he needed to be more careful.

He had to think of a good way to bring cultivators into the sect while still giving himself enough time to observe them. He needed to know what kind of people they were, how strong they were, and whether they were worth investing in.

And there was one way to do it that Chen Ren had already thought about.

A way that would ensure he gained a lot of talent that had not yet become part of any sect. There was even a small chance he might uncover a genius hidden somewhere among them.

More importantly, he already had the best person to handle it for him.

So, after a few more personal meetings about how they would transform the sect and distribute resources to support everyone’s cultivation, Chen Ren approached Shrey with an idea.

The moment Shrey heard it, the merchant grinned.

***

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