The Sect Leader System-Chapter 207: Empathy and Commonality

Jin LiJuan swallowed her pride, relying instead on the kindness of a relative stranger. “Senior Brother, will you help me with my spirit beast bond?”

“Of course, Junior Sister,” Pan Jiang said. “Though I certainly do not claim to be an expert on the subject, it’s likely that I know more about a typical sect’s beast pavilion than anyone here except for your master. I would be happy to instruct you on the subject.”

She cupped her hands. “Gratitude, Senior Brother.”

“To begin, it is important to understand that your particular type of beast bond is rare,” he said. “It’s an unusual subset of the rarest type of member of a beast pavilion, beast tamers. Far more common are beast masters.”

She had heard of neither of those terms, and despite herself, became a little curious. “Beast masters, Senior Brother?”

“You understand that eating beast meat has advantages for cultivators?”

She barely held back a grimace as the comment reminded her of her darkest hour and instead nodded.

“Most cultivators prefer a diet consisting solely of spirit herbs and beast meat, in a sense cultivating as they dine,” he said. “Consuming mortal food is essentially a waste of time.”

That made sense.

“For a small sect like yours,” he said, “it’s possible to fill those dietary needs simply by hunting.”

Jin LiJuan had heard some of the ladies talking while she’d been assigned to process the beasts into their various parts. With all the killing during the tide, they had enough meat to feed everyone in the village one serving a day for years, and through the marvel of spatial storage devices, all that food would stay fresh long enough to be used.

Considering how many nights she and the other orphans and, really, a lot of villagers had gone hungry, having so much meat available was a blessing. She felt proud to have contributed in even a small way.

“What if your sect had thousands of members?” he said. “Tens of thousands? There aren’t enough beasts in the wild to feed all those people.”

Huh. She’d never thought about that.

“Thus, sects must either devote resources to raising and slaughtering beasts or purchase meat from a sect who does. The cultivators dedicated to such pursuits are called beast masters. They do not bond with beasts. Instead, they use techniques to exert control over entire herds.”

Her parents had been farmers, having only a few animals to provide additional labor and resources, but the job he described sounded very similar to what various neighbors did with cattle and chickens.

“Beast tamers are a completely different animal.” Pan Jiang chuckled.

She stared at him blankly, not understanding what was funny.

He shook his head and continued. “They are combat cultivators, like those in the Martial Pavilion. Though they are able to defend themselves with weapons, primarily they use beasts to fight for them.”

“They bond with these beasts, Senior Brother?”

“In a sense,” he said. “Your bond with the wolf pup is extremely rare, possessing both extreme benefits and equal dangers. You can grow in power rapidly, advancing with your bonded beast as it consumes resources, but you are tied to it. If it dies, you die.”

She swallowed hard. No one had put the situation quite so bluntly before.

“Beast tamers form much lesser bonds. They work in partnership with the creatures, but experience neither the extreme benefits nor the corresponding danger that you do.”

“What am I, then, Senior Brother?”

Was she some kind of freak? An oddity to be looked down upon?

“Our sect would simply call you a bonded,” he said. “Your path corresponds to that of your single beast.”

“Do you know other bonded, Senior Brother?”

If there was a name for what she was, the situation must be somewhat common.

“I know of people like you,” he said. “I know of even more people who have sought to become what you are and failed.”

She tilted her head to the side.

“Imagine you are a powerful cultivator, one who intends on establishing what you hope will be a great family,” he said. “Your first child is born. You love that child and have great hopes for him or her. But there’s a problem. When the child reaches fourteen and is tested, the child’s spiritual roots are trash. E tier. Or even worse, F tier. What do you do?”

“Teach them to cultivate, anyway, Senior Brother, as Master has with me and most of the other sect members. If I love the child, that is the only decision that makes sense.”

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He chuckled. “You have not grown up in a sect, and the Rising Tide Sect and its leader are not normal. A cultivator with such low roots, even one who is the child of a powerful elder, would be ostracized. Wasting resources on a such a person would cause a loss of face.”

Her face fell. Was having low-tier roots that bad?

“In that case, there aren’t many choices, and none of the ones facing the parent are good. One, send the child off with plenty of money to live a normal mortal life. Two, seek alchemical remedies, which are often quite expensive and most of which don’t actually work. Or three, have the child become a bonded.”

Ah.

“How often does this situation of a powerful parent having a low-tiered child arise, Senior Brother?”

“Often. Very often.”

“Then, there must be many cultivators like me, Senior Brother!”

“Not at all.”

She was very confused.

“You have to understand that the conditions required to become a bonded are difficult to replicate,” he said. “Or mainly one of the conditions is difficult to replicate. First, it has to be done when the child has barely begun the cultivation journey, which is easy enough. Second, the beast, likewise, must be a low rank one, which can be easily found. Simply search out those newly born.

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“The last condition ranges from difficult to impossible—the beasts qi aspect and the child’s qi aspect must be extremely similar. It’s not nearly enough for the two to simply have the same element. I have met dozens of cultivators who use the Wind element, but none of them have come close to matching my exact aspect.

“For a bonded, that closeness determines if the bond will succeed or fail, and if it succeeds, how much benefit the cultivator will get from it. Imagine an extremely weak bond. The cultivator only receives, say, one percent of the power of the beast. Even if the cultivator spends many resources getting the beast to rank seven, the small percentage would mean the cultivator probably wouldn’t even reach the peak of Qi Gathering.”

Jin LiJuan hadn’t understood how lucky she had been. The fact that she didn’t have a qi aspect meant that she matched perfectly with the wolf pup’s, allowing her to gain the full benefit of the bond. It also meant she’d experience the full danger as well.

“Your options and potential are limitless,” Pan Jiang said. “If you suddenly develop a liking for beasts, you could still become a tamer, using the pup and others to fight for you. You’d just have to understand that the rest of your menagerie would not give you benefits like the pup does.”

She fixed him with a look. Adopting more beasts was not going to happen.

“Yeah. I didn’t think so.” He laughed. “Since you and the beast are always going to be at relatively the same power level—”

“Relatively the same, Senior Brother?”

“My understanding from Kang Lin is that the pup is a third of the way through rank two but that you’re still at the beginning of Qi Gathering minor realm four. It seems as if you catapult three minor realms when it ranks up instead of advancing in lockstep.”

She hadn’t thought about it that way, but she supposed that was exactly what had happened last time.

Jin LiJuan cupped her hands. “Gratitude for the explanation, Senior Brother.”

“I get the impression that you want to be a fighter, though, instead of settling into a profession?”

“Yes, Senior Brother.”

“With your bond, sending the beast to fight for you is just as dangerous as you entering combat, so it makes sense for you to train hard and fight alongside it.”

Part of her wanted to leave the beast behind when she fought, use it only for increasing her power. But that path would be stupid. The beast would always be as or more powerful than her. Not using it was dumb.

“Yes, Senior Brother.”

“Good. I thought I’d have a harder time convincing you of that.” He smiled. “In the coming days, we can arrange for you to spar, for the pup to spar, and for the two of you to spar together against an opponent.”

“Gratitude, Senior Brother.”

“Now we come to the crux of the problem—tamers and bonded treat their beasts as partners. There is mutual respect and understanding. Most of those relationships involve actual affection.”

Jun LiJuan tensed. She didn’t know if she could ever feel anything other than hate for it. At best, she aimed for acting neutral toward it.

“How do we get from the distrust, distaste, and outright hostility you feel to where you need to be?” he said.

That was what she wanted to know because, after days of racking her brain, she’d come up with nothing.

“According to the beast tamer that I spoke to, the keys are empathy and commonality,” he said. “We’ll start with the latter. What do you and the beast have in common?”

She looked at the creature. Beams of sunlight penetrated an opening, highlighting dust in the air. It pounced around attacking the motes. Playing. Being silly.

“Nothing, Senior Brother. Nothing at all.”

“Really? I can think of two things off the top of my head.”

She frowned. “Please instruct this lowly one, Senior Brother.”

He looked like he wanted to reach out and tousle her hair. She was quite glad that he didn’t.

“For one thing, you are both orphans,” he said. “Not only that, but you were both present when your respective parents were killed.”

Hmm. She hadn’t considered that the pup was an orphan. It was true, though.

“For another,” he continued, “you both desire power. That desire is his driving instinct. I think it may be yours as well.”

Okay, so maybe she and the beast did have a few things in common.

“Realizing that the beast’s advancements are a win-win situation is a good start. You get what you want by helping it get what it wants. It’s a symbiotic relationship,” he said. “If on the other hand you only see the beast as a path to power for yourself, the bond will not stand the test of time, and you will be left powerless or dead before your time.”

“Master has told me all that, Senior Brother! It’s not that I don’t want to like the beast; it’s that I can’t.”

Tears wanted to form, but she suppressed them with a force of extreme will.

“That’s where empathy comes in,” he said. “Put yourself in the beast’s paws.”

She frowned at him again.

“I’m serious. I want to you to meditate. Imagine that you’re safe and warm with a cocoon that provides for all your needs.”

As instructed, she assumed a lotus position and visualized the situation.

“Suddenly, the cocoon is jostled. You’re shaken. The cocoon cools. It no longer provides you sustenance. You’re trapped, hungry and cold.”

Jin LiJuan shuddered. Inside her deep meditation, she could feel what he described. The tight confines of the cocoon. The cold. The hunger.

“This goes on for days,” he said. “You struggle to escape, but you can’t. You don’t know where you are or what happened. All you know is that you’re going to die slowly, wasting away due to starvation.”

She felt her heartbeat increase. Her breathing grew labored.

“Finally, though, as you’re on the cusp of succumbing, light appears. The cocoon is cut open. Hands pull you from it. You’re face to face with your savior, a cultivator. Jin LiJuan of the Rising Tide Sect.”

Her eyes popped open, and when they found the wolf pup, she saw it in a whole new light.