Now that Aki had the means to practice cultivation properly and a very good reason to act with the utmost haste, one might expect that he would feverishly dedicate all of his time to obsessively practicing weaves. However, one has to remember that Aki is not the typical type of person to end up in stories like these, so that was not how he acted.

Aki was a firm believer in a healthy work-life balance, not just because it was better for mental health, but also because he genuinely believed it to be the best method to achieve good results. People can only do so much work in a day before their efficiency begins dropping off sharply. Workers doing long overtime hours of mental work generally don’t actually get much more done than the workers who have clearly defined start and stop times for work.

Did the same principles apply to cultivation? Aki did not know. But he was pretty sure that few cultivators had ever tried cultivating with a philosophy similar to his, so it was worth a try. The beliefs of cultivators in this world had spent generations upon generations coming to this point, where it was held as a universal truth that closed door cultivation was in any way a good idea. Aki had major doubts that shutting yourself away into a rocky hole to work at cultivation for years at a time would be an efficient or pleasant use of time.

Maybe he was completely wrong, and cultivators truly had no need to let their minds rest. Maybe working endlessly for long hours each day without rest was the truly superior method. However, Aki quite frankly did not want to live in a world like that. If he was going to make an honest attempt at becoming a cultivator, he would do it on his own terms.

Thus, in the days that followed his grim discovery, Aki did not spend every waking hour working with a manic intensity at his weaves. Instead, he woke up, checked his face for signs of aging, ate a hearty breakfast and then spent around four hours practicing Qi thread manipulation. He took plentiful breaks during this time of course, they helped clear his mind in preparation for further studies. After a satisfying lunch he spent a few hours relaxing by reading history texts from jade slips.

Jade slips felt to him like a comfortable compromise between a traditional book and an audio book. He found reading in this manner to be rather enjoyable, and understood now why there were so few physical writings in the sect. The slips were very convenient after all. He regretted that he could not find any slips containing stories made for the sake of entertainment, however he was luckily a man able to find enjoyment even in dry historical records, so he managed.

After his reading session, it would be time for his afternoon Qi thread manipulation practice. He typically spent another four hours practicing his weave creation skills, again with plentiful breaks of course. He would then enjoy his dinner and still have four more hours to spend at his leisure before it was time to retire to bed. He generally spent this time doing whatever came to his mind. Exercising and testing the limits of his new body, admiring the scenery while enjoying a cup of afternoon tea, or practicing his sagely expressions in front of a mirror. He slept a very comfortable 8 hours each night, as he found Qi manipulation to be rather tiring mentally.

Did Aki unlock hidden latent skills which let him grasp everything with ease? Not quite. It felt to him like he was a master craftsman who had never crafted a thing in his life. His body held all of the requisite skills to make it possible to efficiently learn, but he still had to practice forming weaves for quite a bit before he even begun to get the hang of them.

Aki suspected that if he practiced weaves that his body’s previous owner had used a lot, he might be able to learn them very quickly indeed. Regrettably, the inconsiderate fool had destroyed his core and all of his Qi strings, leaving Aki with only one Karmic Qi string to use. The techniques he had found on jade slips seemed much too complex for him at this point anyway. Besides, Aki had come to understand that the path of cultivation was supposed to be a personal journey, so he felt that copying what his body’s previous occupant had done would not work out well in the long term.

He spent the first few days of his practice learning to touch and move the threads of Qi floating around his courtyard. He managed to get the hang of it quick enough, and then moved to releasing karma Qi from his Qi string and manipulating that. Manipulating external Qi made him feel like he was a painter dipping a flimsy brush into a palette containing very runny paint, which he then attempted to paint precise mathematical patterns with. Manipulating his internal Qi on the other hand felt like painting directly with his fingers; It was simple but could easily get messy. He found that he could convert the karmic Qi he produced into other types with significant effort, however the Qi produced lost a vast majority of its potency. It seemed to be a lot more efficient to draw the Qi from the environment instead when he needed types other than karma.

After Aki had managed to get the basics of manipulating Qi threads down, he moved to forming weaves out of them. [Thread of Fate] turned out to be the easiest technique for him to practice. It was a lot easier to practice weaves using Qi from his own Qi string, rather than the external Qi from the environment. A steady, constant supply allowed him to gradually trace the necessary patterns, trying to tie them into the correct positions.

He managed to get a basic version of the weave working somewhat in only two days. He could find the “pulse” of his thread of fate, but his weave was too imprecise, letting him only sense a dull echo of what he was supposed to. However, he was confident that with steady practice he would achieve mastery of the technique.

It was after about a week of practice, while Aki was just finishing his morning Qi manipulation practice, that Passionate Seeker finally arrived bearing the reports Aki had been expecting.

“Master, I finally managed to gather all of the information that you wanted and compile them into the format you told me of. The information should be relatively recent.”

Finally. Aki smiled to himself. He had previously instructed Passionate Seeker to gather a sect census and a summary of sect finances. He felt like he could really use a bit of a break from his Qi practice, and this would finally make him feel like a proper sect leader.

Year 0 Outer sect New disciples 10 Disciples 497 Graduates 2 Casualties 6 Total 499 Inner Sect New disciples 2 Independents 42 Boreal Night Hall 15 Midnight Sun Hall 22 Four Seasons Hall 25 Graduates 0 Casualties 1 Total 105 Core Disciples Elder Thousand Lakes 4 Elder Boreal Night 5 Elder Midnight Sun 5 Elder Four Seasons 3 Elder Raging Waters 4 Elder Wild Heart 3 Total 24 Elders Active service 3 Closed door cultivation 1 Away from sect 2 Total 6

This information did not show much of anything new to Aki. He had not looked into the different departments in the inner sect much, so that was something he needed to do later on. In this world, people counted years from big events, so Aki had decided to start his own year count from when he arrived in this world. Although this data did not give him any major insights, he liked having it. He was the type of person who liked having all sorts of data collected and stored in the appropriate places, after all.

Next, Aki turned to the jade slip he anticipated a bit more. It was time to take a look at the state of sect finances. The numbers were in high-grade spirit stones, which were worth 100 low-grade ones.

Year 0 Income Spirit stone mine 421 Share of pill sales 220 Spirit fruit sales 40 Beast core sales 75 Pill reagent sales 96 Tribute from vassals 217 Total 1069 Expenditure Tribute to liquid sword sect 320,7 Outer Sect allowances 59,9 Inner Sect allowances 126 Core Disciple allowances 144 Boreal Night Hall funds 50 Midnight Sun Hall funds 100 Four Seasons Hall funds 150 Central Hall funds 50 Low-grade pill purchases 60 Formation Maintenance 93 Miscellaneous 53 Total 1206,6 Profit -137,6

Studying financial spreadsheets really made Aki feel like he was being a proper sect leader. Most transactions within the sect were done using sect points, rather than spirit stones, so the data was primarily related to purchases and sales to and from outside the sect. He instantly noticed a few things of interest. First his attention was brought to the tributes the sect was obligated to pay to their overlord, the Liquid Sword sect, which were set at 30% of their total income. Man, even in this world you can’t escape taxes. The old saying goes that the only certain things in life are death and taxes. In this world however, there are immortals. Does that make taxes the only certain thing?

Now, Aki was not a person fundamentally opposed to taxation. In his previous world he had happily paid his taxes on his earnings and was prepared to do so in the future too. As long as he believed that his tax money was being put to use for the good of society, he would not have any issues. In this world however, things don’t quite work like that.

What exactly do we get out of these tributes we pay the Liquid Sword sect anyways? A tribute feels closer to something like mob protection money than taxation, so I can’t really feel too enthusiastic about paying it. Aki of course had no problem with the fact the other sects were paying him tribute, that was a completely separate matter! Off the top of his head, Aki could think of a few ways to avoid paying these tributes, but he would need to think more deeply before he would consider unleashing the forbidden [Tax Evasion] technique, or would it in this case be considered [Tribute Evasion]?

A second matter of interest to him was that elders did not have any spirit stones directly assigned to them, meaning that any resources they wanted from the secthad to come in through indirect channels. For example, elder Midnight Sun was in charge of Midnight Sun Hall. Whenever she would need spirit stones for her own purposes, she would either have to earn them independently or take them from the resources assigned to the hall.

With this current system, it was impossible to tell how much of the budget was actually being used for hall expenses, and how much was being used for the elder’s personal purposes. That seemed like a recipe for corruption, a system where leaders attempted to bloat the budgets of their departments so that they could skim more money off the top. Similarly, they could skimp out on expenses in order to secure a larger slice for themselves. The situation may not be as dire as that but would definitely need further looking into.

The sect was currently selling high grade pills outside of the sect and buying low-grade pills. The Four Seasons school of pill concocting used in the sect was not that suited for producing large amounts of low-grade pills, being better at making more specialised, higher-grade pills. The profits from pill sales apparently mostly came from the supreme grade pills that Elder Four Seasons concocted for sale in auctions. He would need to visit Four Seasons Hall, and the other halls too for that matter, before he could make better judgements on the situation.

The sect was currently losing spirit stones, but that was not too dire of an issue. They had a bit in excess of 2000 high-grade spirit stones in savings. The sect currently sold quite a bit of raw materials, with pills being the only refined product sold. Ideally, Aki wanted to move his sect up a bit in the chain of refinement. Selling raw materials was generally a lot less worthwhile than selling products refined from them. Still, for that he would need to invent or find new products to refine, and he was not quite sure whether he was up to that task.

Overall, Aki was quite satisfied with the report. Sure, not everything was going great, but now he had a bit of an idea of what direction to go towards in the future. Aki was not that interested in turning his sect into a powerhouse, but he was the type of person who could not ignore what he judged to be inefficiencies if he had to opportunity to fix them. Feeling rather energised from studying the reports, he returned back to his Qi manipulation practice.