The House of Paradise was now officially the first branch sect of Ten Thousand Flower Valley. It was a suitable addition to the sect, a small step to eventually living up to its dramatic name. Since Chen Wentian was stingy in accepting disciples, it was up to Lin Qingcheng as the first disciple to set an example for any that would follow. Perhaps other branch sects would soon be established in the future.
She sat at the head of the room, looking over at each of the women who were now her disciples. Their names were Huang Ruyan, Liu Ling, Chen Wangyin, Yuan Qiaochu, Tang Mingtian, Mo Yanmi, Zhang Lili, Wang Yuyan, Xie Yunxi, and Qin Yan. They were all pretty and took care of themselves well, as was standard for women in their trade. They were all experienced and intelligent women in their twenties or above and well respected by their juniors within the house.
Lin Qingcheng spoke up again, "You all had a chance to leave in the past but for one reason or another, you've all chosen to stay. I'm glad. My branch sect requires women like you who embrace sex and sensuality. While society may shun you and look down upon you, I do not. My unique cultivation method requires you. If in the future I am able to distill a set of secret arts to pass down, it will also have the same requirements. As my master likes to say, we are fated to be master and disciple."
"Thank you, madam!"
"First things first..." She took out a piece of paper and read from it. "These are the principles of the sect that all disciples must adhere to. The first one is family. The House of Paradise will still remain a place of paradise for prostitutes and those that were enslaved to serve men. Those that don't cultivate, those that do cultivate, it doesn't matter. You are all one family in this house. Do not mistreat the women who are weaker than you. Do not shun the women who are different from you. Understood?"
"Yes!" The women replied.
Lin Qingcheng continued to read from the list she prepared beforehand with Zhou Ziyun. The other principles were sacrifice, commitment, and sexuality. All disciples would be asked to continue to sacrifice their body to provide funds to the house. While older ones could choose to retire from active duty so to speak, all other disciples still had to work to support the organization.
The principle of commitment was very straightforward. Lin Qingcheng required all member's commitment to help her future cultivation. While she would raise their cultivation, it was ultimately for her own gain. Just like the prior experiment, there would be many more instances in the future requiring their cooperation.
The final principle of sexuality was perhaps the most important. Lin Qingcheng's dao was based on sex and orgasms. She loved it, she craved it, she lived it. Similarly, all disciples had to embrace sex and sexuality just like their master. There was no other principle more critical as it tied directly to the future success of the House of Paradise.
"Madam, disciple swears to abide by the principles of family, sacrifice, commitment, and sexuality." The ten women knelt to the ground and bowed to their oath.
"Good, get up." Lin Qingcheng said, "Next order of business, we need to discuss our future plans. My master's Ten Thousand Flower Valley is still a small sect, with only eight disciples. It also doesn't have a lot of rules. Therefore, we have a lot of freedom in how to organize the branch sect. For the following topics, you all can propose your ideas..."
Lin Qingcheng and her council debated several topics deep into the night. She mostly sat back and let those more experienced with management discuss the details. She would make the final decision on everything based on their ideas. The discussions went smoothly. The women were bonded together by their new equal status as her disciples and the prior divisions completely vanished.
The overall day to day operations of the House of Paradise would not be changed. However, disciples of the branch sect would also be responsible for cultivating in addition to taking customers.
Having too many customers would no doubt interfere with their cultivation so the minimum quota was decreased by half. Disciples would also receive double the normal rate for their work.
All cultivation resources for the disciples were funded by Lin Qingcheng's wealth which came from Chen Wentian. All meals for the disciples would be enhanced and more chefs would be hired to prepare them. Mind Focusing Realm disciples would receive meat from Mind Focusing Realm beasts and Body Refinement Realm disciples would receive meat from Body Refinement Realm beasts. They would also get a variety of cultivation pills as needed such as the Bone Strengthening Pill, Body Washing Pill, and Marrow Bonding Pill.
Lin Qingcheng was responsible for guiding them in cultivation with regular lessons. Having been guided similarly by her master, her understanding of the three mortal realms was much more profound than any average mortal cultivator. While she could not bestow the immortal Nineteen Demon Subduing Palms as it was too special, she gave them access to a large collection of mortal level martial arts manuals. All the manuals were temporarily housed within the Zhao branch until a more permanent spot could be found.
Cultivation arts for the women were much simpler. All Body Refinement Realm disciples would be taught the Twelve Meridians Body Tempering. It would immediately improve their cultivation base, wiping away years of deviations and damage from trash tier cultivation methods. Mind Focusing Realm disciples would be given 'A Cultivator's Guide to the Mind' to study and reach their own insights and paths with mind arts. With these two semi-immortal level arts, their path to the Spirit Initiate Realm would be unimaginably smooth.
Another topic of discussion was recruitment. Lin Qingcheng's desire was to gather as many disciples as fast as possible as she had an instinctual feeling that she needed many more women for her orgasmic secret art. In order to accomplish this the ten directors would have to work hard to identify all possible disciples and recruit them.
A person's talent for cultivation was not created equal. Even though the cultivation talents of all the women at the house could be considered poor by any immortal's standards, there were still differences between them. While every mortal could increase their cultivation gradually, those with the absolutely lowest talent would never be able to break past the Body Refinement Realm without exorbitant resources that didn't exist. It was simply not possible to accept them into the sect.
Lin Qingcheng was very unsatisfied upon hearing this assessment.
"Really..." She frowned, "I guess the only way is to add more women to the house..."
If the existing women were not adequate, she would find more. She had been itching to go against the nobles and attack the high-class brothels. It was finally time for her to get started!
"Alright! I will continue my campaign within the city. You all, work with the Zhou You to identify two buildings within the lower district for expansion as well as one building within the middle district. Also start investigating all brothels in the upper district." Lin Qingcheng said. "Prepare for an influx of new women tomorrow. I will be back by nighttime but in the meanwhile, read through 'A Cultivator's Guide to the Mind'. Discuss it amongst yourselves and help each other."
"Yes madam!"
Eh. Everything since Experiment has felt rather... meh? I like Lin Qingcheng, she's fun. And I like her interactions with Chen Wentian and his other disciples. And I couldn't care less about a large group of random people working at her whorehouse. It's too many, introduced all at once, and they force her into a very different position where she's now a supervisor and... bleh. I don't care about them. Lin Qingcheng the supervisor is pretty dull too. And the main focus already has a bunch of sect building. Now we're getting even more sect building. How much sect building does this story need?
Even if you ignore all that (which really I don't think you should...), the cast size was already starting to cause some oddities to show up. The Ice sisters are all pretty underdeveloped because of this, but it kinda works because of their group unity and still-understandable-for-now distance from Chen Wentian. But that's only going to last so long.
If we now add Lin Qingcheng starting a whole new independent storyline alone, that's getting to be frankly too much to handle without the story all but seizing up into a total stall or skipping over even more stuff. Add in all these new characters in addition to the storyline with the factions and yada yada yada...
It takes too much time and focus off the actual story, and to make it that much worse I just don't see why I would care about it.
Sorry you felt this way, thanks for the feedback.
I can't get into too much since it would be spoilers but... Lin Qingcheng's mentioned that her disciples are important for her own cultivation.
https://discord.gg/dY5UApw Can discuss more in my discord
@Kirbyisgreen I hope it didn't come off too harshly. It's just that I like all the other bits so much.
Anyway yeah, even from this chapter it's clear you're going somewhere with it. I was never concerned this wasn't going anywhere. But uh, you *do* control how Lin Qingchen's cultivation progresses so... you know. Even if it is going there, it didn't exactly have to go there. But yeah I would certainly rather have this be important somehow than not.
I have to say everything involving character development just went straight out the window. Lin Qingcheng was supposed to be a fun character that gave a feeling of shyness or being pure. But since this chapter (coming back from a couple of chapters ahead) she's really kinda lost her identity. As well as this new experiment including her own disciples while she is still "training" just feels out of place. Also quick thing; Zhou Ziyun feels way too off what she seemed to be set for the novel so far like honestly, I get more of a vibe that she's evil and will take over the sect soon.
And what happened to all the ice sisters? It's like they've been forgotten and nothing happens. Since the tournament thing, I was really excited at the prospect of a fight and furthering relationship development that could've come from that.
Going off what 46rtyrty44 said that I totally agree with, is it feels like Lin Qingcheng is now starting a whole new independent storyline alone. And I do recall our MC although being quite young, what happened to him? All he's doing now is just being a background character, following his own disciples. He's a leader and should act like one.
The only redeemable character at this point that I feel has been set up really well is Wu Qianyu. Her development toward her new dao or whatever of having sentiment is really nice and seeing how she is very mature and respectful towards the MC gives off the feeling of what a sect/cultivation novel should actually feel like.
I doubt I'm going to stick around any further for this novel as I really feel it has gone off base. Great quality story building for up to here. I'll check on the other chapters up ahead to see where the story is going but if I don't see anything redeeming, cya it's been fun.
Fax.
I thought the main character had a lot of self worth and was very picky on who he liked to begin with but instead it became the fact that he felt a lack of self worth to get with a pretty girl and was too shallow minded for anyone he deems unattractive. I lost all respect for the mc when he lost his virginity like the stupid monkey he is (which was long ago).
The fact he’s running whichever direction his junk points as if it were Jack Sparrow's compass is not surprising to me at this point, I have just accepted to believe that’s how the story is with the hope there will be some interesting future developments.
Its understandable for you to have favorites.
In my novel, I tried to make the women each have distinctive characteristics. The novel is about the MC collecting his harem, not so much about him cultivating as that's boring and you can read non-smut novels for that. His cultivation art helps with that but not in the ways other smut novels do it through mind control or mind-breaking sex.
I do make sure to spent time with each of the disciples though it is impossible to be equal for so many. Some will have more, some will have less. If you like the ice sisters, there is a major arc upcoming after around chapter 110 that highlights them.
@Kirbyisgreen If focusing on cultivation is boring first off why a cultivation novel/setting? Secondly why are you focusing on it for all of his disciples making way more of it than if it were just 1 persons cultivation if cultivation is boring according to you?
I've really enjoyed the story so far, but personally for me, I find this character development for Qingcheng a little weird. The previous chapters, where Qingcheng and Ziyun performed dances for Chen Wentian, were already meh for me. It felt weird pushing their character development in that direction. I just started reading the series, so I am sure my opinions, if considered,would might cause inconsistency for future chapters released beyond what is currently posted. From my understanding of Qingcheng, she is a bright, playful, "pure" girl who has been a sheltered princess before meeting Chen Wentian. I get that she wants to grow and improve their master-disciple relationship into an official lover relationship, but that dancing scene and her deciding to build a branch sect seemed very forced. On a different point, I feel like the main character is too much of a pushover. Despite being an immortal who have seen many things in lives (deaths, brutality, etc.), he seems too much of a weak child (I understand he is only 25 but still). He lets himself get pushed around by his disciples and does not seem to an immortal-like character. Even though they are lovers, he is always in a submissive position. His lack of confidence with women should have been resolved by now and his lack of understanding of women should not affect how submissive he is. For a cultivation novel, and I don't want to sound sexist, but where is his man pride? In a cultivation world where women are often abused and used as slaves, why is Chen Wentian so submissive? Unless in later chapters it is revealed he reincarnated into this realm from the modern world where morals and gender equality exists, I feel like his character does not fit into the world setting.
Also I understand that Qingcheng Dao is about sexual pleasure and she pushed for embracing sexuality, but I find it a little off putting with her actions sometimes. To me, it feels like she is "cheating" on Chen Wentian. Because he is busy with other matters and other disciples, he can not always be there for her to increase her cultivation. I can understand why from that she is nurturing a batch of female disciples to absorb the energy from their orgasms to cultivate, but this clash/dual identity of her pure character and desire for sexual pleasure is very confusing. I guess in the cultivation novels where things like water and fire coexisting (yin and yang) is normal, but I just can't see those two personalities coexisting (pure/commitment to Chen vs sexuality)
@xhu I feel the same.
Why would we need a whore branch....
He doesn't care about "Mortal" money anyway ....
You have a real talent for writing fiction. It was good. One of the few chapters that really got me engrossed. Very few books do so these days.
I think they should also have a faction of Eunuchs like the Unsullied from GoT to bolster their ranks and protect their territories as they expand
Slight update, i completely forgot about the Twelve Meridians Body Tempering, so this has been added.
Bland chapter, too much deviation from the original plot at this point. I hope it was fixed later on.
dropped. bye
Its must be hard writing novels where the most vocal readers are beta males desperately trying to be alpha and thus wanting the the mc to be the most one dimensional dominant person they can imagine..